The God-forsakin' Blog

A Christian minister asked a Christian president, who was elected by Christians for Christian reasons, to behave in accordance with Christian principles. And yet, the majority of the country's Christians are mad about it. And despite that, the rest of the nation's Christians continue to insist that there's a "real" Christianity that somehow the majority of Christians are failing to practice despite the fact that those Christians make their whole personality about how Christian they are. The decent humans that still adhere to Christianity - who are very much the minority of Christians - continue to believe that Christianity has an actual moral core and a message that can make its adherents behave in a more moral way. They continue to tell me that there's a baby I've thrown out with the bathwater by rejecting Christianity in its entirety.  And I get it. I used to think the same, for decades. I would "no true Scotsman" every Christian who behaved im...

Ever since November of 2016, the question has haunted me: How did the conservative Evangelicals I grew up with so thoroughly lose their principles? And the correct answer is: They never had principles.  But for once, I don't intend that as an insult. I mean this as a distinction between two different ways of looking at morality. Evangelicals never had principles; they had RULES. Because that's how their churches train them to think. They (along with the Catholics, who have fallen into the same error) are religious fundamentalists. They don't treat morality as a set of flexible guidelines that can and should change over time; they treat morality as a set of rules that are "the same yesterday, today, and forever". If the Bible said it in 2000 BCE, then it's still binding 4 millennia later (except if there's another rule that negates it, such as the "no bacon" thing being negated by Peter's vision in Acts).  But there wasn't a "That wa...

  The fact is that, even when I was a committed Christian, as soon as I was old enough to think for myself I was starting to have doubts and questions. But I kept convincing myself that my doubts and questions were the Enemy trying to deceive me, or my own frailties and inability to grasp infinity with my finite mind. And I kept convincing myself that the obvious bullshit I believed in was not obvious bullshit.  I wasn't deliberately or maliciously lying. Not like Republican politicians, or Evangelical megachurch pastors, or other people who get rich from lying to their followers about how Jesus is the answer to everything. But... I was having to pretend to myself that untrue things were true. And pretending to yourself is still pretending.

  *Deadpool/ Wolverine spoilers ahead* No really, this will spoil the entire plot of the film if you haven't seen it yet, DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE. Okay, you were warned. Be it upon thine own head. Jesus and Deadpool. What a pair. One is a fictional character loosely based on a real person, a loudmouthed iconoclast who pisses off authority figures and hangs out with sex workers and willingly gives his life to save the world then comes back to life... and so is the other. You know what's funny about Evangelicals being mad at Deadpool over the "Marvel Jesus" thing? If they thought about it for a second, they'd realize it's actually complimentary to Jesus. Deadpool is saying that he strives to be the kind of man willing to endure torture and death in order to save his friends. That is the one thing he could do to feel like he matters - despite having already done lots of heroic things, THIS is the image of a true hero to him. In other ...

When conservative Christians are called out for their support of hateful politicians and policies, they often insist that they are acting out of love for their god, not hate for their neighbor.  And b ack when I was a conservative Christian, I too would have insisted that I loved my neighbor. And it took me far longer than it should to see that I was working from a definition of "love" that was not on speaking terms with actually loving people.  I couldn't say that I loved my gay neighbor if I supported policies and politicians that would stop him from marrying the person he loved.  I couldn't say that I loved my trans neighbor if I was forcing her to use the men's room, where she would be in great danger of being beaten up (or worse) by conservative Christian men.  I couldn't say I loved my immigrant neighbor if I was forcing him to choose between breaking the law to enter a safe country or die in his home country.  I couldn't say I loved my female neighb...

  I was talking with an agnostic Jewish friend today about conversion and de-conversion and realized something: I feel a lot more urgency to try and convert people FROM Christianity than I ever did to try and convert them TO Christianity.  Even though I used to believe eternity was on the line, a bit of me still felt that if there was a god who truly was perfectly just, he wouldn't ACTUALLY consign a decent person to everlasting hellfire just because they didn't believe in him. As long as they BEHAVED the way Jesus would have wanted. After all, even some Biblical verses implied that there would be people who professed belief yet would not be saved, and people who would be surprised to find themselves saved. But knowing that we only have this one life, and Christians are wasting theirs - at best, by simply wasting their Sunday mornings, and at worst, by using their time to make everyone else's lives worse by their actions and especially by their votes - makes it feel much mo...