Pastor David Responds: Part 4 - Preening the Feathers

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This is the final part of this four part series. Pastor David begins to laud his own goodness to prove his superior faith:

And yet I am as sure that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of all who will receive Him, as I am sure that the sun is hot. 

God has given me a wondeful marriage--29 years with one dear wife.  We have no skeletons in the closet and no ministry horror stories with reference to our home. I have five children.  We are a diverse yet unified bunch, all on good terms with each other and our neighbors--Christian and non-Christian.  The answered prayers we have experienced are stunning.  The provision, the guidance, the inner strength, and yes the chastening of the LORD too--are so real. 

I will do somewhat as you said.  I will continue my ministry.  You are another reason why I will continue my ministry--your terrible past encounters, your present egregious cynicism--compel me afresh to continue my appointed ministry of "the glorious gospel of Christ."

"And yet I am as sure that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of all who will receive Him, as I am sure that the sun is hot."

David, you say it is so, so it must be so. That's as fair as a point I can give you with that one. As far as I'm concerned, I am pretty damn sure that Prince Humperdink is still running the small country of Gildor and the Dread Pirate Roberts is floating the high seas. Nah...that stab wound in his belly was but a minor flesh wound and shouldn't affect his abilities to thwart the armies of Floren at all.

Also, two things. First, the sun isn't hot depending on where you are with respect to it. Distance or angle can render it pretty damn cold. Secondly, the sun being hot can be tested empirically. Your religious mumbo jumbo about Jesus Christ being some sort of gallant knight on a white steed for all who accept the fairy tale cannot be tested empirically. Is it possible that he isn't as you say he is? Why yes! It is!

After all, young squire, you're an atheist, just like me. i just go one god further.

David, I'm genuinely happy (again) for you. I love that your family is awesome. I love that your marriage has lasted as long as it has. I love that, should your testimony be true, you are a good example for humanity on how people should live, according to you. I wish that all humans, religious or otherwise, would be like you.

But that's not the issue here. If you beat your wife every day, burned your kids with cigarettes, despised your neighbors, even murdering one of them and getting away with it, lied to your parishioners every time you got up in the pulpit. and did any other manner of evil - yet confessed your sin on your deathbed, saving your soul in the process - though you laid waste to hundreds of lives while you lived, and hurt those you should love the most, your family, you would be granted a place in heaven, just like those who lived the perfect life, and "accepted Christ" during it.

That one was easy. What about this David? A man who has been married for 29 years, has no skeletons in his closet and no ministry horror stories with reference to his home, has five children, is on good terms with all people he touches--Christian and non-Christian, living the perfect life - yet never believed in Jesus, that man, David, will go to hell, according to your "glorious gospel of Christ".

Now put those two scenarios together. Does that seem so "glorious" now? Yeah. I didn't think so either. I'll stick to the second scenario, knowing there is no hell, no god, no deified Jesus, no heaven, and live my life the way I see fit, doing what I believe to be right (just like you, though you attach a trivial religious paradigm to it).

Now about cynicism. My writing may contain a fair amount of what you consider to be cynicism. But it's really just looking at the world with a realistic and pragmatic point of view, without assigning ideological answers to that which I don't understand or need to learn. So you can accuse me of ignoring your gospel because I was affected my morons and idiots in my formative years, but that's really just for you  to dismiss my reasonable words so you can walk off into the sunset, having "presented the gospel," believing that "God's word will never return void."

And finally, thanks for calling me blind, using the following Bible quote:

Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to everymen's conscience in the sight of God.  But if our gospel be hid, it is hid from them that are lost: In whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.  2 Corinthians 4:1-4

That was an easy one for the Apostle Paul to say back in those days. There wasn't Google to search whether his story was bullshit. So he could pull a "because I said so" on anyone and everyone. It won't work these days. Not on the educated, anyway. Not to mention, this flies in the face of who your god says he is, a loving god who wills that none perish - and yet he willingly and purposefully blinds the minds of people so they can't figure out the riddle - which is stupid anyway?

You can keep your god David.

And, if you ever get up here to Minnesota, let's go out for a beer together. I'd love to chat.

Pastor David Responds: Part 3 - Where He Sticks His Foot in His Mouth

Part 1
Part 2

Let's get right into it for Part 3. Pastor David Nicholes writes:

I began attending a non-denominatoional (sic) Bible study group that met frequently during the week.  Before long I began to see some of what you seem to have seen also.  I learned that there were very many different points of view about major and minor issues.  Happily I made acquaintence (sic) by the grace of God with many spiritually mature people who guided me to greener pastures and steered me away from the poisened (sic) spiritual wells that are so ubiquitous.  This is precisely what Jesus said would be the case: Matthew 13:1-58.  

I remember early in my Christian experience (1979) hearing a prominent Bible teacher named, Frank Sells, give a mesage (sic) entitled MIXING THINGS WHICH ESSENTIALLY DIFFER.  In it he blasted the evil ministry of Bill Gothard.  I never heard of Bill Gothard and had no idea why Frank Sells was so worked up about this man.  Then I began to meet Gothard disciples.  Then I understood why Frank Sells was so worked up.  I learned about Hyles a few years later.  I also learned more about the rich grace of God. I learned that the world is a terrible spiritual battlefield--not primarily a political battlefield.  

I sympathize with you my friend.  The world, including many, many children (note the last awfully poignant word in the book of Ezra) is rife with horrors, child abuse and rape as you mentioned. I, like you, am astonished at the proflic (sic) religious madness that is generated in the name of God.  There are enigmas.  We do in many cases "see through a glass darkly."  I do not propose a neat tidy moral answer for much that takes: "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known (Psalm 77:19)."

David, you're falling into the same trap as the Gothardites. You just can't see it, because you are convinced that your belief system is "spiritually mature" and has "greener pastures." But, oddly enough, that position is EXACTLY the same reasoning that Bill Gothard and all his followers use in their dogma. You can't get away from that when you are dogmatic in your beliefs, believing in an inerrant and infallible book, written by men. 

As expected, the canon is full of contradictions (even in the four gospels, read side by side), outright lies (the prophesies referenced by the Book of Matthew, God's pretense of "love" for humanity), and vindictive set-ups by the very god you worship (placing the tree in the garden, then sending a talking serpent to trick his people, testing Job by killing everything in sight, etc.). You can't get away from a myriad of interpretations when mere men (no women) wrote these pages independently over thousands of years. To pretend that the Bible is a singular organism, inspired by God, is to stick your head in the sand, and call everyone who doesn't see it your way "foolish and blind" - which you did, further in your letter, as did the Apostle Paul! 

Look at you! You're as spiritual as Paul.

Your argument is worthless. Bill Gothard is as right as you are. He gets his religion from the same book. He just interprets it differently. You may disagree, but it's no different than a Hamlet club disagreeing on the true meaning of falling on a sword when you could have lived another day. It's still religion. Meaningless drivel, derived from an ancient book, cobbled together by councils of men (no women), by majority vote! Notice that? Even the councils of men disagreed on the canon and what should and shouldn't be included. Their votes were never unanimous.

Shouldn't those men have been inspired by God? After all, they were putting together the canon, the inspired word of God. If one man voted against the book of Ezra and voted for the book of Ezekiel, while another man voted the opposite in both cases, which man was the actual inspired gentleman? And if only one of them was, why then do we have both Ezra and Ezekiel included in the Bible? They couldn't BOTH have been inspired, could they have?

Anyway...I'll leave that to smarter men than me.

Let's talk about the last chapter of Ezra.  I have no idea what you mean by "note the last awfully poignant word in the book of Ezra." The last word is "wives." But let's back up a bit and speak of the whole chapter in light of your statement, "I, like you, am astonished at the proflic (sic) religious madness that is generated in the name of God."

That whole chapter was about a stupid little rule that God set up for his nation of Israel - that his men could not marry foreign women. Women who were not Jews. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that God had a really great reason for not allowing the gene pool to be expanded. 

Now, in that chapter of Ezra, God was messing up the peeps of Israel. And they decided that their foreign wives and kids from those wives were the culprit. So what was their solution? 

Kick them out of camp. Yep! The women AND the children. Boom! Gone. No help. No assistance. Just dump them off outside the walls, and then they would be saved from the wrath of God.

And you think we have religious madness today? THAT, my friend is the reason why your god is fucked up. He sticks to rules that make absolutely NO sense, and innocent women and children are left to wander the desert, so God's elect can live another day, saved from his wrath. And you say I'm supposed to accept the fact that religious abusers and rapists are enigmas? Hell no! Your own holy book DEFINES that abuse.

Frankly, being religious does not make you good. Being religious does not make you prone to doing evil things. Being non-religious also does not make you inherently good. Nor does it make you evil. Religion has nothing whatsoever to do with morality at all. Morality of individual human beings, sometimes parroting the collective, is present despite the presence or absence of religion.

Rape, my friend, is a human problem. We created it. We can eradicate it. Abuse as well. But not in your worldview. You look at the world and, speaking religiously, say it is crumbling and headed for destruction. To you, that is inevitable. You cannot see the good, because your religion dictates that we must be brought to our end, completely reprobate from all good, so that your god can send his son back to you. Your outlook on life is hopeless.

I, my friend, have hope. No matter how baseless you deem my hope is, I don't care. I have it. And that, David, is what matters. Not some pie in the sky Bible verse that has no meaning.

Part 4 (Final Part) - Preening the Feathers

A Pastor Writes - I Respond

I won't name the Pastor, but he recently emailed me the following email:

Dear Friend,

I found your remarks strikingly sobering.  I am an Independent Baptist Pastor.  I loathe with all my loathing Jack Hyles' vile legacy though in my early Christian experience, late 1970's and early 1980's, I was rather impressed with him and his view of ministry.  I now know his empire was rotten and I thank the Lord often for giving me warning against him before I was ensnared in the Hyles/Hammond cult.  The best one could say about the Hammond/hyles cult was that is was a form  of present tense salvation by works. 

Then you mention Bill Gothard.  He is an evil Old Covenant syncretist.  I call him Bill "the butcher" Gothard.  He butchers the scriptures and he butchers people's lives.  I am still stunned and appalled at what took place in the woeful homes that took that man's teaching seriously and in heavy doses.  He is a spiritual "ishmaelite"--Galatians 4:29-31. 

To which I responded, a bit rambling at times:

Dear young squire, 

Thank you for your kind words. I must implore you not to be sober. Pastor Hyles and Bill Gothard, while horrible representatives of the Christian faith, and not indicative of everyone in the faith by any means, were simply a beginning catalyst on my walk out. The true facts of my de-conversion are quite reasoned and minimally have anything to do with evil people. Though, the fact that evil people exist because of the faith, not faith existing in spite of evil people, is part of the reason why I left. 

See, there is no way to butcher the Bible. It is open to any and all interpretations and cannot be taken as a singular organism. After all, the councils that put together the canon, as we know it, voted on everything with a majority vote. If God had his hand in it, the Bible god, who allegedly contains all sorts of omni characteristics, would have made sure their were no contradictions in it. More importantly, my view is that, if these men were actually godly men, led by god, the votes would have been unanimous. 

So, don't blame Hyles for my current life. Don't blame Gothard. Blame your god. He was the one that didn't take it upon himself to solve the riddle to mankind with a simple tutorial. Blame your god for not striking down these evil men before they could destroy lives. He was so active in the Bible at doing so, and yet, now, he's bloody impotent. He watches while little children get raped in dark rooms and the men get away with it with no consequences. Sure, you claim they will have consequences, but this god, who sees all doesn't have the capacity to stop the raping of the child and wills that she continues with a destroyed life? 

If you were god, you would obliterate the evil man. Free will be damned. With a god who transcends all, there is absolutely no excuse for any evil done to any innocent being. And all the clauses your religion sets up just keeps your hands tied from coming to any sort of solution for mankind to move forward - in your view. 

But hear this, young squire - I'm happy as a clam! No need to weep for me! I've thrown off the shackles of your god and have learned to live! Life, for me, is one big happy experience. Sure, I get sad and angry, at times, even swear on occasion. But so do you. I just don't have anyone to blame it on but myself. And thus, I know how to fix it. 

Carry on with your good work. But consider rethinking your premise - these evil men of the faith are not evil because they misinterpreted the faith. Rather, they are evil because the faith dictated that they COULD be evil. That humanity saw their bullshit and took them to task is a celebration of US and not your impotent god. 

Love, 

I. C.

I love it when people write to me. I hope he writes again. But, suffice it to say, there are two things that irritate me about people trying to get me to come back to Christianity:

1. That the only reason I left was because of bad people. If only I had been surrounded by good people, I would still be a Christian.

2. That the person writing or talking to me, in exclusion of all others, holds the keys to the most correct interpretation of the Bible.