Yes. Satan said that and was banished from God's presence. I'm okay with that.
The Christian god of the Bible is defined in many ways, and has been so, throughout history. Popular ideas of who God is have come and gone. But once the masses, however fractured, accept a version of God, he changes again. It has to be this way as the potential realm of the supernatural shrinks smaller and smaller with each scientific discovery and Google search.
Think back to the era around Jonathan Edwards (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God), Issac Watts, John Newton, etc. At that time, God was quite the angry and jealous being, ready to strike you dead at a moment's notice, yet somehow loving and wanting of your worship, at the same time. Edwards' famous sermon graphically depicts how God would hang a man by his toes over the lake of fire, terrifying him into obedience, the gentleman knowing full well that God held all the cards, and could drop him whenever he so chose. And yet in the same sermon, Edwards unabashedly and passionately spoke of how much God loved the human race.
The cognitive dissonance is amazing. People bought it like crazy. Revival happened. Tent meetings and services lasted for weeks, people lying in the aisles, frothing at the mouth and repenting of their "sins."
Then God softened. The Billy Sunday types slunk away from society and built their walled compounds - Christian universities. Bob Jones, Pensacola, Liberty, Hyles Anderson, Wheaton, etc. These universities trained their men to be apologists - assholes, really. They then sent them off to run IFB and other fundamentalist churches, preaching their hatred for "them" and their love for "us," unless, of course, you were a woman.
Then God softened even more. The shrill Bryan Fischer, David Barton, Raphael Cruz, and Franklin Graham types grew even more afraid. The proof of their god, in the rest of society, was slipping away.
And who was to blame?
Me.
Yes. Me. My words. The words I put out online, in my own little corner of the e-niverse. I am turning people away from worshiping an asshole and singing about a dead guy being inside of them.
The problem is, if God is really as powerful as these people claim, able to turn the weather and kings' hearts wherever he wills them, then why do I matter? I simply don't.
But if I do, I'm more powerful than God.
And I'm okay with that. Truly. I'm not the most loving person in the universe (or e-niverse), but I'm thousands of times more loving than the god of the Bible.
The Christian god of the Bible is defined in many ways, and has been so, throughout history. Popular ideas of who God is have come and gone. But once the masses, however fractured, accept a version of God, he changes again. It has to be this way as the potential realm of the supernatural shrinks smaller and smaller with each scientific discovery and Google search.
Think back to the era around Jonathan Edwards (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God), Issac Watts, John Newton, etc. At that time, God was quite the angry and jealous being, ready to strike you dead at a moment's notice, yet somehow loving and wanting of your worship, at the same time. Edwards' famous sermon graphically depicts how God would hang a man by his toes over the lake of fire, terrifying him into obedience, the gentleman knowing full well that God held all the cards, and could drop him whenever he so chose. And yet in the same sermon, Edwards unabashedly and passionately spoke of how much God loved the human race.
The cognitive dissonance is amazing. People bought it like crazy. Revival happened. Tent meetings and services lasted for weeks, people lying in the aisles, frothing at the mouth and repenting of their "sins."
Then God softened. The Billy Sunday types slunk away from society and built their walled compounds - Christian universities. Bob Jones, Pensacola, Liberty, Hyles Anderson, Wheaton, etc. These universities trained their men to be apologists - assholes, really. They then sent them off to run IFB and other fundamentalist churches, preaching their hatred for "them" and their love for "us," unless, of course, you were a woman.
Then God softened even more. The shrill Bryan Fischer, David Barton, Raphael Cruz, and Franklin Graham types grew even more afraid. The proof of their god, in the rest of society, was slipping away.
And who was to blame?
Me.
Yes. Me. My words. The words I put out online, in my own little corner of the e-niverse. I am turning people away from worshiping an asshole and singing about a dead guy being inside of them.
The problem is, if God is really as powerful as these people claim, able to turn the weather and kings' hearts wherever he wills them, then why do I matter? I simply don't.
But if I do, I'm more powerful than God.
And I'm okay with that. Truly. I'm not the most loving person in the universe (or e-niverse), but I'm thousands of times more loving than the god of the Bible.
ReplyDeleteIf what you're saying is true, it's a really good thing that the reality of God is not who humans make Him out to be. Because, if that's really who God is than even I would't believe in Him. The thing is, humans can say anything they want about Him. They can attempt to find His flaws and make Him look bad. But in the end we're judging Him by our standards of who we think He is. If you really want to know who He really is read the book He gave us.
Not a chance. Every single human being has their own morality. That which they deem right or wrong. Whether they admit to it or not. If the god of the Bible disagrees with my (or your) sense of morality, we either accept or reject it.
ReplyDeleteCase in point: If a man killed his son because "God told him too," we would all agree he should pay the earthly consequences of his actions. We do not allow for "God told me to" in our judicial system. Abraham was an idiot. A total buffoon.
Quite frankly, if the highest order of faith is trusting that if you kill your son because God told you to, God will make it be okay, I want no part of that faith. I will never lay a hand on my son. In fact, I will poke God in the eye and tell him to go fuck himself.
The worst part about Christianity is that we believe that murdering a human being and worshiping his blood is perfectly acceptable. That would never fly today. But, because it "happened" 2000 years ago, it's okay.
"We can't possibly understand God's ways" is a cowardly cop-out. In fact, we MUST understand them. He expects us to with the threat of eternal punishment. How wonderful for a supernatural being to create a world where we have to choose the right path to not go to hell, but then tell us we can't possibly understand him.
Wait, hold on, people founded BJU because of your blog?
ReplyDeleteLol! No.
ReplyDelete