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how do y’all combat laziness? being lazy when it comes to prayer, reading the Word, even chores as well. is it spiritual warfare?
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Having a real you do not have to walk a hundred miles on your knees through the desert repenting kind of day
#begginnnggggg my extremely judgmental Christian coworker go stop talking about certain popular Christiantopics that make me want to throw#up! please just give it a rest for one day I’m so tired#pers*nal
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Pastor imprisoned in Turkey for his Christian faith says youth aren’t ‘prepared for what is coming’ | Fox News
Published 1 day ago Pastor imprisoned in Turkey for his Christian faith says youth aren’t ‘prepared for what is coming’ Pastor Brunson, wife say suffering was 'worth it' Pastor Andrew Brunson and his wife Norine speak out on 'Fox & Friends' on how they got through his two-year imprisonment in Turkey Pastor Andrew Brunson , who was imprisoned for two years in Turkey before the Trump administration helped free him in October, told the Southern Baptist Convention Monday night he believes the next generation is going to experience more intense Christian persecution The North Carolina native missionary warned the thousands of pastors gathered in Birmingham, Ala to be prepared
Brunson, who prayed for President Trump in the Oval Office upon his return to US soil, opened his remarks on a "Blessed are those who are Persecuted for Righteousness" panel by asking those in the crowd to raise their hands if they prayed for him so he could thank them and point to the importance of those prayers for the nation of Turkey overall
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION CLOSE TO 'GENOCIDE LEVELS,' LARGELY IGNORED DUE TO 'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS': REPORT
"Your prayers sustained both me and my wife," Brunson told them "The Lord just made me a magnet for prayer, and I think someday you're going to see that it was really something tremendous that God was doing"
The evangelical pastor shared that he was suicidal during the two-year imprisonment but was sustained through Bible reading and prayer, especially from his wife, Norine Brunson shared that the Lord spoke to him in 2009 about warned him that in Turkey difficult times were ahead Video
"I don't think that we're prepared for what is coming," Brunson added "Especially the next generation, I fear that many of us are complacent and we're unaware and this means that the people in our churches are going to be blindsided by what comes. You are the ones as pastors and leaders of churches who have the task of preparing the next generation"
SOUTHERN BAPTISTS VOTE TO EXPEL CHURCHES THAT MISHANDLE SEX ABUSE, RACISM
The missionary of 23 years in Turkey was arrested and charged with terrorism and espionage and accused of "Christianization," which was deemed a "hostile act" He told his fellow pastors that persecution is nothing new but they must be prepared for it
"Many of you are going to have the opportunity to stand in that line of suffering and you have to prepare yourself for that," Brunson said
COLORADO CHRISTIAN CAKESHOP SUED A THIRD TIME FOR DISCRIMINATION
Brunson explained that his time in prison "tested my love for God," but that he resolved never to compromise his relationship with God
"I made a decision towards the end of my first year in prison that was a turning point for me I decided that I am going to fight for my relationship with God If I lose my intimacy, my closeness to Him, then I've lost everything"
The SBC annual meeting concludes Wednesday night with a panel on sexual abuse, a topic at the forefront of this year's meeting, as membership has been steadily declining among the 47,000 churches in the denomination Caleb Parke is an associate editor for FoxNews.com You can follow him on Twitter @calebparke ADVERTISEMENT.
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Progressives fight back on the Christian right's grotesque
(Getty/Chip Somodevilla) Progressives fight back on the Christian right's grotesque "religious freedom" power play New HHS rule is a sweeping assault on civil rights fueled by the religious right Advocates are pushing back hard -- Your message has been sent successfully Send email to: //wwwsaloncom/2019/06/01/progressives-fight-back-on-the-christian-rights-grotesque-religious-freedom-power-play/ Send Paul Rosenberg June 1, 2019 4:00PM (UTC) Unusual times demand unusual measures If you value Salon's original reporting and commentary, we urge you to support it — by supporting our writers directly Right here, right now, you can make a financial contribution to help make Paul Rosenberg's work possible All funds go directly to writers
Last Tuesday, a coalition of advocacy organizations and health care providers filed suit to overturn the Trump administration’s most sweeping effort to advance the religious right’s discriminatory agenda This was a Health and Human Services rule announced on May 2 that would vastly expand the “right” of individuals and entities to refuse to provide a service based on religious grounds
That rule threatens to cut off federal funding to force compliance with its profoundly unworkable requirements. “As a result, health care facilities may do away with reproductive and LGBTQ services altogether, leaving millions without access to critical health care,” the plaintiffs explained in a press release Dubbed the "denial of care" rule in the lawsuit, it’s not only a perversion of true religious freedom, the suit argues, but a violation of several different constitutional principles, as well as the Administrative Procedures Act, whose requirements were flagrantly ignored Advertisement:
To be clear, this has nothing to do with the genuine freedom to adhere to one's religious beliefs There have long been provisions for health care providers to abstain from practices for religious reasons, in carefully balanced ways that preserve patient access to care and maintain patient health as the central focus of medicine But the "denial of care" rule turns all this upside down, placing an imaginary right to discriminate at the center, and requiring everything else to accommodate them As with the wave of new anti-abortion laws, discriminatory loss of access is precisely the point It's a feature, not a bug
“Discrimination is always wrong, but in this case, it can be deadly,” said Richard Katskee, legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State “Religious freedom is incredibly important It's right to believe and worship as you see fit But it's never an excuse to discriminate It's never an excuse to harm others Yet that's exactly what the denial of care rule does It can't be allowed to stand”
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The suit was filed by Americans United, the Center for Reproductive Rights , Lambda Legal , and Santa Clara County, California (which includes San Jose and much of Silicon Valley), in US District Court for the Northern District of California It follows three earlier lawsuits filed by city and state governments — starting with the city of San Francisco and followed by both California and New York state — but brings new arguments to the table
“Private clinics can make some sorts of legal claims including the constitutional claims that government agencies are not suited for,” Katskee said They not only bring claims on their own behalf, but “also on behalf of their patients and recipients of services, who face barriers to asserting their own claims and protecting their own interests,” according to the suit
Plaintiffs in the suit include five private facilities which provide reproductive health services and health care services for LGBT individuals, four individual physicians and a licensed counselor employed by these facilities, two LGBT community service organizations, and three national associations of medical professionals Advertisement:
“Our organizations are jointly representing millions of health care providers and community centers that are dedicated to serving the LGBT community, abortion providers, individual doctors and three national associations of healthcare professions and medical students,” said Jamie Gliksberg, senior attorney at Lambda Legal “These health care providers and community centers are really providers of last resort for their patients If these organizations are forced to cut back on their services or even close their doors as a result of this rule, the implications for LGBT people and for people living with HIV are incalculable. They literally save lives.”
While the main impact of the rule reflects the religious right’s theocratic direction that has come to the fore since the 2009 Manhattan Declaration , the manner of implementation reflects the Trump administration's authoritarian instincts This includes the lack of a fair and lawful process in drafting the rule (as first seen in Trump’s "Muslim ban"), the violation of separation of powers in usurping Congress’ power of the purse (as in Trump's attempts to build his border wall), the weaponization of chaos and confusion, and the shift from an incremental erosion of rights to a massive frontal assault
Most dramatically, the rule’s scope goes far beyond anything previously contemplated, as explained by Genevieve Scott, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights
“This rule invites almost any health care worker to deny medical treatment to patients based on their personal religious or moral beliefs," Scott said "It extends not only to doctors and nurses — even EMTs and administrative staff are encouraged to deny care Advertisement:
“The rule is intentionally confusing and unworkable for health care facilities to implement,” she continued “To avoid potentially violating the rule and losing their funding, many facilities may end up doing away with services that staff might object to, including reproductive health care services like abortion and contraception, and LGBT services” Beyond that, Scott added, “Other facilities may be forced to close Millions of people could lose access to this incredibly critical health care”
Santa Clara County runs the second largest public health system in California (after Los Angeles County), and is lead plaintiff in the case County counsel James Williams painted a more precise picture of on-the-ground concerns about the rule “Not only does it extend conscience exemptions beyond employees directly providing care to encompass even janitors and administrators, it also dramatically expands what a person can object to doing, far beyond providing actual care,” Williams said “Under this rule, staff could refuse to even tell a patient what services are available at what facility, or about alternative treatment options if staff objected to those services or treatments”
There is already a system in place for balancing personal beliefs and medical needs, Williams said, which involves advance notice and important exceptions for emergencies But under the new rule, he continued, an objector's “refusal to assist in patient care during an emergency could lead to delays in care and worse medical outcomes, including fatalities,” he warned The fact that any employee could object — possibly without anyone even noticing, as in the potential case of a receptionist or administrator withholding information — would inevitably compromise access to care Advertisement:
“The rule privileges particular religious views over all other medical, legal and operational concerns,” Williams said. “This really is a public health risk That's why the county is gotten involved in this case In our view compliance with the denial of care rule is operationally unworkable, endangers patient health and creates insurmountable staffing challenges”
The consequences are even more severe for providers serving specific targets of right-wing animus
“This rule erodes trust between patients and their providers, will result in denial of medically necessary care, and will have a chilling impact on LGBT patients, encouraging them to remain in the closet when seeking medical care, for fear of encountering discrimination,” said Gliksberg “The breadth of the harm this new rule will cause is impossible to exaggerate, and opens up yet another front in the Trump administration’s assault on civil rights of minorities and already marginalized, vulnerable populations.” Advertisement:
Julie Burkhart is the CEO of Trust Women , which operates abortion clinics in underserved areas “Patients at Trust Women Seattle have conveyed that they have been disrespected and demeaned by other health care providers for making independent decisions about their health care, including past and present reproductive health care choices,” she said “Our clients often come from stigmatized populations, who find it challenging to obtain compassionate health care"
This new rule would affect Trust Women and its patients in a variety of ways, Burkhart said:
One, we might find it challenging to keep our doors open if we were to lose government funding for our patients who are on state insurance. Second, we might have to alter our mission and vision of the organization Third and most important, our patients would suffer as they might not be able to find the same quality care that we know we provide, if people are allowed to work within the organization to have a moral objection to the type of health care that we deliver
Katskee said that the proposed rule is unconstitutional in at least four ways, as explained in the complaint filed last Tuesday:
It violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, by advancing the religious beliefs of employees at health care facilities at the expense of patients It violates patients’ rights of privacy, liberty and equal dignity, which are guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment It violates patients' free speech rights because it interferes with their ability to be open and honest with their doctors, which is going to prevent them from getting the care and information that they need It violates the Equal Protection Clause by targeting and disproportionately harming marginalized communities, most obviously women and LGBT people.
There are statutory problems as well, Katskee added: Advertisement:
The rule is arbitrary and capricious, violating the federal Administrative Procedure Act because it fails to take account of the harms to patients and the administrative nightmares for hospitals and clinics, even though these were all reported to the department of Health and Human Services during the public comment period on the proposed rule Finally, Congress did not authorize HHS to do this In fact, the rule violates a number of federal laws that protect patients’ rights to care, to access information, and to nondiscriminatory treatment
The rule is yet another example of Trump’s repeated attempts to usurp congressional power — most dramatically in his attempts to steal money designated for other purposes to pay for his wall The ninth count of the suit asserts a separation of powers violation “The Constitution vests the Spending Power in Congress, not in the Executive Branch,” it says “The Executive Branch cannot amend or cancel appropriations that Congress has duly enacted . The Rule imposes requirements not authorized by the underlying federal statutes and would allow defendants to withhold, deny, suspend, or terminate federal financial assistance for noncompliance with those requirements.” Therefore, “The Rule’s conditions improperly usurp Congress’s spending power and amount to an unconstitutional refusal to spend money appropriated by Congress, in violation of constitutional separation-of-powers principles”
This rule must also be seen in a broader context, in which Trump’s power grab is symptomatic of a more far-reaching anti-democratic movement, which Trump certainly builds upon, but did not invent
“This rule is part and parcel of a grand misuse of the concept of religious freedom,” Katskee warned “Religious liberty is the right to believe or not, to worship or not as you see fit But when it is distorted into being a weapon, a way to discriminate and harm other people to make them bear the cost and burdens of your religious exercise, that goes way beyond what is constitutionally permissible Yet that is exactly what the government has licensed here This is the next huge effort by the federal government, by the Trump administration, to advance that misuse of religious freedom”
There’s an even deeper threat here, according to Frederick Clarkson, author of " Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy ," and a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates “The rule is a sweeping attack not only on the civil rights, health and even the lives of people seeking health care, but an attack on religious freedom itself,” Clarkson warned Advertisement:
“The Christian right, since the signing of the Manhattan Declaration in 2009, has sought to turn what may be the most liberatory idea in the history of humankind into a tool of insult and repression of the religious views and civil rights of others The idea that one can use religious freedom as an excuse to choose what laws one will follow is an affront to the very idea of a civil society in which the laws apply fairly and equally to all,” Clarkson said “If one can refuse to provide health care to people based on vague notions of religious and moral objection, this places health and medical decisions not in the hands of medical providers, but in the hand of sectarian religious leaders and vigilante moralists risking the lives and the religious freedom of any of us, or people we love, who may end up in their care”
These specific attacks may be new, but the underlying arguments are not, Clarkson noted “If the kind of reasoning behind such religious exemptions prevalent on the Christian right and in the Trump administration today had prevailed in the 1950s, lunch counters in the South would still be segregated (along with everything else) and interracial marriages would not only still be illegal in Virginia, but not recognized by those to whom they are deemed religiously incompatible or morally deficient,” he said “And it would all be legal” Paul Rosenberg
Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News, and a columnist for Al Jazeera English Follow him on Twitter at @PaulHRosenberg MORE FROM Paul Rosenberg • FOLLOW PaulHRosenberg Related Topics
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Questions About Hell I Never Thought to Ask When I Was Christian
0 Comments Questions About Hell I Never Thought to Ask When I Was Christian June 4,
Hi and welcome back! As y’all know, I grew up as a very fervent Christian before deconverting around 1994 I deconverted because I found out the religion’s main claims simply aren’t true That said, for years afterward I kept finding more and more Christian claims that turned out to be equally untrue! Deconversion opened up a whole new capacity to make observations and ask questions that I’d never imagined while I was Christian And a lot of those observations and questions came up around the topic of Hell Join me today for a romp through the stuff about Hell I never even thought about till after leaving Christianity! ( James Lee ) The photographer isn’t kidding! — See here for a list of cities named for some variant of Hell This one’s in the Cayman Islands
(I decided we’ll need a second part to this post about similar questions about Heaven Stay tuned for that one on Saturday. Also, it is very important to me to note that most of the following questions have hand-waving answers I guarantee any Christians reading this post that I’ve heard these false answers since deconverting. I consider them unsatisfactory Yes, even that one And that one) The Most Sickening, Cruel, and Evil Doctrine in a Religion Full of Contenders for the Title
A lot of the really disgusting, grotesque, evil, cruel, stomach-churning gruesomeness in Christianity gets glossed over with centuries of iconography, re-framing, and very fine art and architecture Nonetheless, Christianity remains a very ugly ideology containing largely very ugly foundations
Some Christians these days seek to de-fang and redeem this dreadful religion I don’t think it’s possible, but it’s their one lifetime to spend however they wish ( an it harm none ) And usually, they zero in quickly on Christianity’s most repulsive, sickening, and evil doctrine of all: the idea that a good and loving god who cherishes justice and compassion could ever send anybody to the afterlife commonly known by Christians as “Hell”
Out of every evil doctrine contained in Christianity, Hell stands supreme as the worst of all of them The moment I know that a particular Christian believes in Hell as a destination for noncompliant humans, I know quite a bit about that person that they really shouldn’t ever want anyone to know
Belief in Hell drives humans to do and accept evildoing that chills good people to the bone–and not only to excuse it in their own god, but to revel in the idea of him doing this to their enemies It also cows good people and terrorizes them into bending knee to this evil ideology and those who promote it
No wonder early Christian evangelists pushed the idea of Hell so hard No wonder at all It allowed them to work all the dark deeds they craved, to brutally control those who might otherwise oppose them, and to gain power they did not otherwise deserve to wield Oh yes Hell, as a concept, has been most useful to Christian leaders–most useful indeed
That’s why they push it hard even today– like John Piper recently did to parents , hoping they’ll impress their young children with the horrors he imagines exist in Hell (Check out his herpy-derp Jesus smile in the pic at that link Sick!) And Yet
Hell-belief isn’t universal among Christians–even among the most extremist of them You’d think that evangelicals, having fused completely with fundamentalists by now, would be nearly-unanimous there However, according to the 2015 Pew Religious Landscape Study , only about 82% of them hold that belief The demographics involved are interesting, to say the least
In 2016, LifeWay put out their own ( poor-quality ) survey about general Americans’ Hell-belief In it, they discovered that only 40% of survey respondents agreed with their official party line about Hell I don’t take this survey nearly as seriously as I do Pew’s, but it’s useful to gain an idea of general trends Chances are good that America is heading in the same direction as Western Europe in terms of beliefs
It all makes me wonder if maybe people are starting to ask some serious questions about a belief that back in my day seemed as universally accepted as, say, belief in Germ Theory
Back then, I didn’t even think about some of this stuff I didn’t even know how to formulate these concerns, much less ask serious questions about them First Off, Which Hell?
First and foremost, I had no idea how many visions of Hell there are in religions from humanity’s past and present I thought only Christianity had a real Hell As it turns out, however, plenty of religions divide their afterlife into pleasant and unpleasant sections, sending the deserving to the pleasant one after death–and everyone else to the other
Wikipedia presents us with a list of some of these Hells: Kur: the Sumerian afterlife Dark, dreary, and unpleasant A lavish burial and libations from family members could alleviate the unpleasantness A lake of fire: Egyptians believed that people who misbehaved in life were thrown there Ammit, a demon goddess called “the devourer of the dead,” ruled it Tartarus: the Greek religion’s place of torment for immoral people Anaon: a sort of Hellish place in old Breton folk religion , where the damned do penance Peklo: an old pagan Slavic Hell where souls atoned for their crimes Rotaimo: the realm of the dead of Sámi shamanism , ruled over by the god Ruohtta Anyone who didn’t live according to the religion’s principles ended up there forever Naraka: in Hinduism, where souls go for expiation of sins Hetgwauge: in the First Nations’ Haida mythology , bad people go to this dismal, unpleasant place to be tortured Among other punishments, souls there get to watch the lord of that realm eating their dead body.
I could go on and on and on
With so many hells to choose from, why would someone fear Christians’ Hell but none of the others? What makes Christianity’s Hell correct, and all these other Hells incorrect?
And I should have wondered this I read mythology voraciously as a child–my family had books around like Bullfinch’s Mythology and the like Somehow, though, it never occurred to me to wonder why the Hell that my society overwhelmingly believed was real just happened to be the one worth fearing over all others How Does Eternal Torture Work Out to Justice?
Most Christians who buy into the idea of Hell consider it to be an eternal destination full of absolutely nothing but torture .
These same exact Christians also tend to think that when children die young or get born with catastrophic congenital conditions that are completely incompatible with life, all that horrific stuff happens for a reason–even if they don’t know what that reason might be Some of them punt to mystery Others default to sin nature (the idea that the supposed wrongdoing of Adam and Eve passed down to their children for all time; we’ll cover this bizarre, crazymaking notion in more detail soon) What Christians don’t tend to do is insist that these children deserved to suffer and have brief, horrific lives of pain. Such an idea is monstrous, even to them
They also don’t tend to believe that these infants and children who die so young end up in Hell
There’s a reason why so many Hell-believing Christians issue children a get-out-of-eternal-torture-free card Hell, as it stands, represents the most obscene injustice imaginable It lasts forever Those stuck there can never expect pardons Its pain is purely punitive, not rehabilitative, so it exists purely as a form of vengeance for what largely exist in Christian mythology as thought crimes (such as disbelief in the mythology itself ); going there hinges surprisingly little on how good and decent a person is during life
Christians want the people who go to such a cruel fate to deserve it somehow –otherwise their god is unjust And even the TRUEST of TRUE CHRISTIANS™ know that infants did nothing to deserve such a fate Even to suggest such a thing around a dead child’s grieving family would likely provoke a reaction that’d end up on the evening news Why did I never wonder how an eternity of punishment for a finite lifetime’s offenses works out to divine, ultimate justice? Tasting Without a Tongue
Of course, I’m getting ahead of myself bigtime.
Nobody has ever found any objective support for the idea of any afterlife, much less the Christian conceptualization of it Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) remain subjective and highly-dependent upon their experiencers’ cultural beliefs about the afterlife
The fact that finally broke me of the notions of Heaven and Hell is simply this: everything we think, feel, sense with our five senses (or six, as some scientists reckon it, adding in proprioception ) comes from the physical nature of our bodies These bodies, specifically
The pleasure we feel from sex, eating, dancing, sleeping in, partying, cuddling our pets, running ultra-marathons, you name it: it derives from pleasant sensations striking our nerve endings, taste buds, visual cortex, and whatnot By stimulating our brains or feeding them chemicals of various sorts, we can be made to feel very strong and pleasant emotions We can do the same to alleviate many unpleasant emotional states.
But our bodies die–and what makes us us no longer occupies them afterward In many old religions– like that of the ancient Egyptians –eternal life depended absolutely on the preservation of the body, because the soul reunited with it after death Christians generally believe that they’ll get all-new bodies upon reaching Heaven (though they can’t explain what age, gender, or appearance that body will have without making wild guesses) The problem with that idea is that a lot of what makes us us comes from quirks of DNA and conditioning of the bodies we possess right now And a lot of what many people like in this life, like sex, is stuff that the Bible tells us won’t happen in the afterlife
The facts remain: we know of no way for people to sense things without a body We remain unable to demonstrate any human sensory perceptions that exist independently of our bodies
Why did I not wonder how I’d feel anything without a body to provide the sensations to me? And why did I not wonder how losing this body I occupy now would radically change who I am as a person? Why Were the Christians Around Me So Sure About Who Was Going to Hell?
Speaking of a dead child’s grieving family …
When powerhouse Christian evangelist Billy Graham died , all kinds of other Christians knew exactly where his soul went afterward Most felt positive that he’d ascended to Heaven A few others, seeking notoriety, loudly insisted that he’d landed in Hell
Ask Christians if a truly evil person is in Heaven or Hell, and usually they insist that this person went to Hell They do this even if that person experienced a miraculous conversion before death, like Jeffrey Dahmer did They don’t like imagining themselves sharing Heaven with serial killers, any more than they like imagining a Hell filled with the souls of those who died all too young
Christians all appear to have very strong opinions about who is and isn’t in Hell When it’s the fate of someone they love, they’ll generally abstain from judgment or hope for the best Otherwise, they seem quite certain Indeed, I saw many of my peers gloating about the idea of people going to Hell They still do gloat about it , just like they have for many centuries
Why didn’t I notice just how self-serving Christians’ opinions were when it came to who was heading for Hell? Why didn’t I notice how often their opinions meshed with their own desires and worldview? Not Without My Mother
Now we arrive at possibly my biggest sticking point with Hell-belief This is the one I truly wish had driven me from Christianity, the one I wish had been my dealbreaker I wish it’d been my line crossed–my stentorian roar, my barked-out this far and no further
It wasn’t
But I wish I’d had the integrity, strength, and compassion back then for it to have been so
Why did I not value my loved ones more than I did? Why was I willing to allow Christians to use my fear to separate me from those I loved most?
These questions represent a regret that drives me to tears sometimes Every so often, it makes me bite my knuckles, moan fitfully to myself in near-sleep, shake my head as if doing any of this could ever deny those thoughts access to my mind
Sometimes, it even works
I was just a kid , FFS , so I try to be as gentle as I can with myself Immediately and always and at the end, Mom forgave me The least I can do is try to forgive myself
Still, it gets to me sometimes I know damned well what she would have said if someone had tried telling her to abandon her daughters to Hell and enter Heaven without us She’d’a told ’em to stick it! But I folded immediately
Why didn’t I notice anything weird about the way so many Christians utilize terror to sell a god of love? Seriously, THIS Is the Best This God Could Do?
Part of what I’m talking about today is the Problem of Hell Christians named it that because they can’t satisfactorily answer it So they capitalized it and largely declared the whole shebang too mysterious to answer.
Basically, it runs like this:
Given that Hell is monstrous, evil, unjust, and in every way antithetical to the values of love, mercy, justice, and compassion, how in the world can any god who values that stuff allow anyone to go to such a realm?
I can really see why some Christians opt out of the whole mess by renouncing the entire concept But Jesus clearly believed that Hell was a real place He also taught that it was somewhere people could end up going –even if they were positive they were going to Heaven
But the idea of Hell gets even worse than that when we start wondering how an omnimax god could even have designed a cosmology involving Hell I’m not even a god and I could do a lot better than what Christianity has evolved over the centuries
It’s beyond painfully obvious to me now that Hell exists in Christianity because its hucksters couldn’t sell the religion without it
They still can’t. Hell: The Cage of Feral Rats, Lowered Over Christians’ Heads
It hurts to think that anything could have terrorized me so much that I would ever forget what is most important I forgot every single value important to me: objective truth, compassion, kindness, community, integrity, all of it
No more Not ever again
Christians can keep their evil god and their disgustingly perverse doctrine of eternal torture for noncompliance They can use it to sever ties of their own–to rend mother from child, brother from sister, and lovers from each other But I know the tactic for what it is now
Woe betide the next charlatans seeking to induce terror in me, hoping that fear will ensure an easier sale of whatever snake oil they’re selling
See, thanks to Christianity, I now know exactly what questions to ask about whatever pitch they try
NEXT UP: A quirky little 80s cartoon becomes relevant again–somehow What in the world?!? Join me next time and find out! Then we ask the big questions wondered about when I was Christian
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