A friend of mine put me on to a Pastor John MacArthur. Though agnostic, I am not against listening to religious sermons in that traditional religions are often sources of wisdom, advice, and philosophy. And if you get a good presenter such as Mr. MacArthur even an agnostic hell-bound heathen such as myself can glean a valuable lesson or two from him. However, enroute from Phoenix to Vegas I was listening to a particular sermon from Pastor MacArthur about the role of government in a Christian's life, specifically how a Christian may be prone to respond negatively to over-taxation. And while I was interested in how a religious person would view the role of an increasing socialist state into one's private life, he cited a common complaint that is the subject of my post today.
The lamentation of anti-religious types trying to purge Christianity from the government and history of the US.
This is nothing new. Most recently near my hometown, Belle Plaine became the (almost) victim of the reprehensible attention whore, Annie Laurie Gaylor and her "Freedom from Religion Foundation." Gaylor has a lengthy rap-sheet of harassing small American towns to provide her meaningless life with a meaningless point, but she is certainly not the only person driving the purge of religion, "god," and Christianity from the government. Hawaii's legislature succumbed to the pressure of the ACLU to do away with prayer before their sessions. Schools are doing the same. And in general most democrats and leftists seem to have a vendetta against religion in places where it's been historically, traditionally, culturally, and above all else, benign.
This then begets decries from the Christian community as they see god, Jesus, Christianity, etc., increasingly removed from their culture, to the point it's logical conclusion will be, like smoking, that you'll only be able to do it, observe it, and partake in it within the confines of your own home.
But what really confuses Christians is the seeming personal nature of Gaylor, the ACLU, and leftists in general. Why don't they pick on Jews? Why don't they pick on Muslims (they're cowards). And why are they seemingly searching for problems that don't exist, just to give them the fabricated rationale to further erode and eat away at Christianity in America?
Well I have a theory. And though my theory may not be right, and it may not stop this uncalled-for assault on Christianity in America, it might at least explain why and therefore provide some sanity to my Christian brothers and sisters.
You lied.
And more so, you lied to the absolutely worst people you possibly could. Christian children.
My Christian colleague Chris Bechtloff, who I love dearly, likes to simply dismiss this as the "Fuck You Dad Stage" of Christian children. Children raised under Christian homes are forced to attend church. And as they age, natural rebellion sets in. You add a bit of secular or atheist philosophy from school, and like a 15 year old highschooler claiming he's an "anarchist" or a "marxist," soon you have a rebellious teenager leaving the church for good because it's cool, it's fun, or (frankly) you're so poorly educated in your own religion, you can't tender the arguments to reason him or her back.
But whereas this plays out in practically every Christian household resulting in the rank and file Americans who inevitably return to the church when they have their own children, the future Annie Gaylor's of America, the ones who actively wage war against Christianity are ironically forged in the furnaces of the most Christian (and I would say extremist) of homes.
Be it a born again Christian family where the parents falsely use "god" as an excuse/forgiveness for their mistakes and force the fanaticism upon their children
The family of a pastor/preacher where god and the church and him/herself are more important than the children and the bible is manipulated to verify it so
Or just good ole fashioned hate-filled, power-hungry sadists who "lord" the bible over their children as a means to control them juuuuuuuust under the line of law of abuse
that is the fire that turns your children from obedient little future Christians, to the Anakin Skywalkers of the Christian world who will wreak massive havoc on the Christian community in the future.
And it all starts with a "first step lie." A "virginal lie" or "original sin" if you will.
You tell them you have proof that Christianity is the true religion....
oh...I almost forgot!!
and if you don't believe that you will burn in hell.
This is bad enough scaring the piss out of little 3 and 4 year old children who want another cookie, but are threatened with eternal damnation for daring to covet said cookie. But the extremism, the zealotry, the fanaticism that some Christian households have is that incredible pressure that galvanizes a future enemy of Christianity. And it is that pressure, combined with that innocent lie up front that creates the people presenting the majority of the problems you face in America today.
For what will inevitably happen, especially under hate-filled Christian households, is a child will try his or her best to appease and adhere to the impossible (and often changing) standards of their parents, pastor/s, and teachers. In the process, this hate-filled Christian household will ruin that child's childhood. They don't know that of course because they're in the thick of it, but they will grow up. And when they do, they will come to realize a few key things.
1. Their childhood was wasted. Matter of fact there was no childhood to speak of. And with the demanding pressures of self-supportation, survival, employment and general adulthood upon them, there's no way they can ever get it back.
2. They family was ruined. I know, I know, "God is more important than the family," "Abraham Issac," those are really cute lies evil people hide behind and abuse Christianity with in order to excuse their lack of parenting, love, or effort in raising children. But no matter how you excuse it, the child has no family, and they WILL realize that when they're older, and your religion will be to blame.
3. No matter what you say, Christianity (and all religions) are circular in their logic and proofing. You have no empirical evidence. You have no scientific proof. And Christianity (as is all religions) is not proven by the scientific method. You can go ahead and rush to your bibles (or Torahs or Korans) and try to rush to the page where some nomad high on khat wrote something while sunstroked in the desert 4,000 years ago, but I know you know that isn't proof because...
4. Four...ah yes...four. In the end, when you get into it with even the most ardent of preachers, the most devout of pastors, they inevitably concede it's all about belief. It's all about faith. Ultimately there is no proof, and the entire religion hinges on your belief in Jesus. This is so key to Christianity that my father's (and many other pastors') churches were/are ACTUALLY NAMED "FAITH."
But think about that. "Faith."
Not "Proof."
Not "Evidence."
Not "Empiricism."
You name your churches FUCKING FAITH.
Which means that first lie you told to those little 2 and 3 year olds, was precisely that. A lie. And a lie that costs those innocent children their lives, or at least their childhoods.
Alas, when you sheepishly admit to the now-adult child, who now has the logic and reasoning ability to get you into a corner, that it was all a lie AND that the price was a lost childhood, a lost family, untold mental torment, AND a likely dysfunctional and impaired future...
what the hell did you think they were going to do?
They are going to go on the war path and exact their pound of flesh with a couple gallons of blood for interest for a debt that quite literally cannot be paid back.
Alas, you needn't "wander the desert" anymore. These people actively, passionately, and aggressively attacking Christianity are Christianity's own creations. They are your own Frankenstein monsters who are turning on you. And though I charge egregious "Dr. Emil Schaffhausen" fees for my advice, let me impart a little free advice to the Christian community.
Lead off with the truth with your children about your religion.
Tell them it is a BELIEF, a FAITH, a THEORY you have and choose to believe in.
Present to them your bible and the many founts of wisdom within. Explain to them why you believe those things and subscribe to such doctrine and why you think the child should too.
Even WAIT until they're old and mature enough to understand the concept of "beliefs," "faiths," the "after-life" and morality and make your case then.
If you do that they may just stick with Christianity. Better still, in the long run they might actually turn out to be genuine Christians who understand the faith and are sincere in their belief, unlike 95% of the posers you have filling up the pews now.
But for the true love of God, don't break your own damn 9th commandment by lying to your own children.
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Another Calvinist like Pastor Mac: Voddie Baucham.
ReplyDeleteVoddie on believing the Bible: http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=530914253
If you believe it will come true- Disney movies.
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea what you believe is really important- Global warming, racism, practically every leftist issue. Che is mass murderer, but good because he believed in the revolution. You can see what they do to Trump everyday with their headlines.
And baby boomer Christians find themselves beholden to modernity. If they actually fought to build a community for their children (rather than trying to scare them), then they'd be in competition with government, and they might lose their retirement.
They like to talk about culture wars- some of them are very honest and say they lost. They lost because it isn't a military endeavor. It is a trading endeavor. We needed enough of an economy (and autonomy) to create and disseminate cultural products. This would not look like Lifeway crap. It would be reminiscent of, say, Venice.
Good post, can confirm that pushing it to hard has negative results, I'm a good example. Although I'm glad my Mother insisted on Catholic schools for my education (I was way ahead of my public school peers), the daily Mass & religion classes burned me out. I don't hate the Church, just indifferent, with no desire to return.
ReplyDeleteI think your premise is wrong. By and large, the lie comes in with the practice, not belief in general.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the left doesn't go after Jews because, by and large, most non orthodox Jews are in fact, liberal and part of that crowd. They've given up belief long ago. I'm never more astonished when I hear a person claim to be a Jew, but an agnostic/atheist. You are right, in that they don't go after Muslims because Muslims fight back. And fight back with the left's own PC tools.
Back to the lie. There are actually quite a bit of empirical historical data, Not of the tenets of any religion per se, but of much of the history found in the new testament. Even the crucifixion was documented by Josephus. The epistles were in fact, letters. Why would these guys write these as they did, and believe what they did, dying for it if it were a lie? Where the lie comes in is in the practice. And you'll find that "FU-DAD" syndrome more in the stricter denominations such as Baptists and Evangelicals. You can't lump all the denominations together in one big "christian" pot.
For instance, I'm Catholic. It's who I am, as well as what I believe. I left, and came back because through my own investigation, I found it true. I taught my kids so they would have it. What they do after 18 and moved out is up to them. I gave them the tools, they can discover for themselves. Don't give them the tools, they never will. All through the gospels Jesus says "those with ears ought to hear". So there it is. It's there, up to you to figure out.
As far as removing it from the public square, we are a judeo christian culture. Religion aside, it's what grew this country. What rankles me is the trend these days to slam christians, who are by and large innocuous, in favor of Muslims, who are not. Nothing funnier than lefty white women marching on behalf of Sharia. I guess it's all fun and games until you get beaten for not covering your hair, or gang raped at a public celebration.
BTW - there is no empirical or historic data anywhere on Mohammed. But there is plenty on what happens when you ditch your judeo christian culture and then appease muslims.
Its' not the lie. It's the hypocrisy.
I don't understand why you are so upset that religious belief has no proof. All empirical knowledge is subject to revision; every scientific truth is provisional. Most serious philosophers of science hold only that scientific method allows us to identify false beliefs and not truth. Godels theorem basically says the same incompleteness applies to logic and mathematics:
ReplyDeleteThe first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of the natural numbers. For any such formal system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.
Most knowledge is like Newtonian physics, good enough for most practical purposes. And when we get into how one should live your life, or what an individual owe to others, we are in a place where logic and empirical knowledge gives few certain answers.
The church downright hates single people over 25 or 30 who aren't desperate for marriage and kids. So long as the church practices ageism, marital statusism and familyoitry, it will never reach the over 50% of the population that happens to be single.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, they don't care either.
I guess the apostle Paul had it all wrong. He wouldn't make it up the steps of most churches today.
Here's another message MacArthur did on the role of government, but it goes more into economics
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eag7mKYDvU
Can't say it often but you nailed the fuck out of this topic. Good on ya!
ReplyDelete"After considering the Bible, as well as the principle that you cannot make your way to Heaven by good works, and that people who surround themselves with lying evil people usually go to Hell, I can't see any good reason why we should continue to go to a church full of lying evil people unless it is your plan that we all go to Hell."
ReplyDeleteAnd so I informed my parents of my wish not to go to Hell because of the works of lying evil people, and that I refused to go to churches full of lying evil people.
Nobody in my family could see any fault with it.
We all stopped going, because it was the only reasonable truth to be spoken.
It turns out the rest of the family were going to church only because lying evil people expected them to go.
I haven't set foot in a church except to watch friends marry since I was twelve years old.
You are correct that many "Christians" lie. To themselves. To those around them. And yes, even to their own children. Dr. MacArthur is one of the few pastors today to call out the lie and hypocrisy of the American church.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget as a young man, if you stick that throbbing penis inside a beautiful woman and enjoy it without being married or dating for months and months and months, the skygod hates you forever and ever and ever unless you repent.
ReplyDeleteI'm a shining example of religion and bad parenting.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we had religion in our home. My parents would often start with, "It says in the bible ..." Church every Sunday and Sunday afternoons felt like death. I still remember the feeling. My father was a drunk and my mother was crazy. Both the vicious nasty kind. It's never completely out of your head.
DeleteI can hear it right her in Alberta clear across the internet. You have skin in this, and I reckon you probly lost some of it in the process of coming to terms with the faith. It is what it is, we have to all find our own way.
ReplyDeleteI was raised by progs. My parents were progtards before the term 'progressive' was even perverted to mean what it is today. They lead with lies too and if you think the Christians are bad - HAR HAR HAR! Suffice it to say I was Darkly Enlightened and OD'd on Red Pills 10 years before you ever penned your first blog post!
The Christians lead with far more truth than lies, Cap. I have my own issues with the faith, everyone does. But your problem here isn't faith based - it's people based. The guys that abused and discredited the faith 30 years ago are pushing The Narrative, political correctness, and shit house science today. The reason progs hate the faith and the bible is that there is far more truth in it than lies.
I'm going to rebut this on my own blog - stop by if you're so inclined and feel free to crap in the comments. ;)
Not everything can be explained by theory or science. Yes, there is a thing called faith. It's not exactly a lie and you're not a real scientist.
ReplyDeleteThere isn't anything wrong with a belief in a higher power so long as you don't interfere in others lives.
ReplyDeleteChurch is just 1 hour a week, compared to 40+ of school and homework. The whole Bible is perfectly readable within just 1 week, to an adult, while children could read a gospel and some of Paul's epistles in that time. And the threat of hell, even to a believer, isn't taken as seriously in real life as the threat of never getting a great career if one doesn't get good grades in school and spend six figures to attend an elite university. Now *THAT* is an abuse of faith and empirically/economically debunked! But people keep falling for it, so at least you know that the devil is real!
ReplyDeleteThe problem you have with religion is that you see it as something to participate in during valuable free times, but the 80% (or worse, for brighter kids) of time in schooling that is completely pointless is an accepted way of life. Schooling plus religion is the worst mix. Over time and with the internet, schooling is simply worse than ever and information and commentary on religion is easier to discover than ever, and yet leftism and atheism and perversion always seem to win. Must be that r-selected reproduction at work, thanks modern technology and easy living....
Religion isn't even completely based on faith, if you look at the revelations and miracles and prophecies and other wrinkles in reality that happened over thousands of years. These aren't reproducible, because angels aren't doormats, but they happened often enough to reduce the faith requirement non-trivially below 100%. You're engaging in pseudo-skepticism by dismissing any evidence just because it isn't predictable or measurable with profane methods or happened to yourself personally. The iron age nomads who saw visions were as shocked as any modern mortal would have been in the same situation. They were as modern as any people before their time. You're not special.
The most traditionalist religious groups who treat religion as a way of life today are the happiest, most fertile, and longest lived populations on record. Even in the first world, the most religious have 5-10 additional years of life expectancy, with the greater benefit going to males. In the harder times before antibiotics the saints would live decades longer than sinners, and those times might come back within this century. They're doing something right even if no one can seem to figure out exactly what their secret is, extracted from theology, and that's precisely the point. Their mystery is their own.
By the way, the only reason religious people have lower IQ's is because IQ is only valuable as a complement to immorality at some point, like in the legal profession, or among the sociopaths in grad school. Religious people are found disproportionately in the trades doing real work that can't be faked, and making a good living, even if it doesn't take much intelligence. Being modestly above average over many generations is how religions succeed, even if they don't produce very many "heroes" who always seem to combine genuine talent with genuine cheating. Those pagans come and go, while the little Jews and Christians remain.
As for American Protestants, they combine the worst aspects of the lack of authority and a plethora of conformity. Those two things seem to run together. Conformity is the substitute for authority. They're a boring, disloyal, and yet unpredictable mob racket. They could go from witch burning to transcendentalism seances to prohibition to environmentalism every couple generations without a thought. Most traditional Protestant countries in Europe actually have more practicing Catholics now, at least in terms of church attendance. It's a heretical branch of the faith that can only last among rural yokels before fading out.
"You have no empirical evidence. You have no scientific proof. And Christianity (as is all religions) is not proven by the scientific method."
ReplyDeleteCap, this is an argument from materialism, that only things having material attributes can be proven to exist. A few moments of reflection will demonstrate to your satisfaction that there is much more to existence than mere physical matter. For example, you speak of "empirical evidence" so I believe that you believe such a thing exists. However, try giving empirical evidence for "empiricism" itself, or for "economics". Both are concepts without physical manifestation; one cannot describe either of them in terms of material attributes. Imagine a cup of economics or the colour of empiricism, if you will.
As for lying to children, I would say, rather, that the education was merely left at the initial stage and not continued in a more mature form. Children are taught by rote initially to give them a sense of knowledge and a sense of competence in its use as they master the simpler methods and processes; only later do we delve deeper into the subjects to explain "whys" as opposed to "hows". In effect, we begin learning by first discovering the rules before we discover the reasons behind them.
I lost sleep over this post. I lay in my bed last night with tears in my eyes over it after my husband showed it to me.
ReplyDeleteBecause every single word was the fucking truth.
My father, the oldest of 12 from a dirt poor Eastern Tennessee Primitive Baptist minister, graduated from Southwestern Theological Seminary the day after I was born, thus ensuring the hereditary religious cancer was passed on to the next generation of my family.
When I was 11, my parents uprooted my 3 younger siblings and I to move us all to Japan because "god called them to".
And if you think pastor's children are bad - wait until the only thing a missionary kid has to worry about is "not getting deported" in a country where the password was: assimilation. I cut my teeth on the very subjects my father preached against each Sunday.
I spent a lifetime vying for the attention of 2 people who would rather "pray for me" than parent me. How is a child supposed to compete with god for significance and importance in the eyes of his followers?
As a result, when I graduated high school and moved back to the States, I never set foot in a church again. The fastest way to piss me off? Tell me to "have a blessed day". *shudders*
And when I had children of my own, I waited until they were at an age of reason and allowed them to CHOOSE the religion they wanted to learn more about.
Heaven is merely a place people convince themselves exists in order to feel better about what happens when they die. This post put the finger on 42 years of white hot hatred towards the christian community that I could never understand why I felt it.
The only thing I can figure is that the Cap'n has personal experience in the matter. There were just too many small details that only a fellow PK/MK would notice or understand.
Thank you so much for giving words to the feelings I've had my entire life.
You see it from only one side...we took our children to church. Later, they sort of rebelled, but not against church, against doing what was right. But we never quit on them...and today, they go to church, love their children, siblings love each other and they love us as we love them.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the difference. We didn't take them to church and live one way. We live and taught them about Christ. When they rebelled, we did not go into shock, but gave them additional scriptures to think about. When they would argue with us as children, I took them to scripture that related and said for them to take it up with God.
I determined in my life, I would not live like a hypocrite. We quit cussing, drinking, and other stuff we would not want them to do as they grew up. Did they go through a rebellious stage, yes they did, but in the end, they returned, because we planted the right foundation in their lives.
The problem is, we have too many Christian parents who live like hypocrites. They tell their children not to do something, why they do it. Too many know little about God's Word. They only want what God can give them, a new fancy car, a big home, more money, etc. Of course this is all not true, even though God can, He did not come to make us rich, but to free us from our sinful desires and make for us a place with Him for all eternity. Despite what people think, it beats the alternative.
So, parents forcing their children to go to church, while they live like hypocrites, know nothing of the Bible, etc., I can see why children would rebel and remain this way. God said, train up a child how they shall go, and when they get older, not immediately, they will not depart.
I'm curious hat sort of "empirical proof" you'd accept as proof of God's existence, Cappy. Someone performing a miracle in His name? I thought about this question after seeing an episode of Star Trek:TNG where an alien was using advanced technology and holograms to convince a planet's people that she was their version of the Devil, come to collect on an ancient debt. That's when I realized that even if angels were to start streaming out of the sky and performing miracles, there would be no way we could know if they were the agents of the Universal Creator, or just a bunch of alien grifters using our own iconography (combined with their technology) to dick around with us. So belief would pretty much HAVE to be a matter of faith, even if you saw miraculous, unexplainable feats performed before your eyes.
ReplyDeleteSo why then would God bother trying to provide us with "proof", when the only proof that would be viable is the ability to stand equal with God at some point outside of the observable universe and judge whether or not He is the legitimate Creator of it? Thus, atheists can never get what they want: solid, material proof of a Creator's existence. There's really no point in asking for it.
Of course, when you add human intelligence, creativity and interconnectedness into the equation, things get a lot more complex and hard to explain. Is religion a human necessity - something that evolved that human societies depend on in order to function? It's looking like this might be the case. Just look at the replacement/birth rate of atheist societies and how quickly atheists embrace Gnostic "clap your hands and you will make it real" crap like Marxism or New Age woo of some sort or other. (Also, look at how vulnerable hard secular societies like Sweden are to being overrun by Muslim Rape Gangs.) You can argue that the Christianity of the natives did nothing to stop this. (And that's a problem with a lot of formerly effective religions, like Christianity. Like all institutions, they can be corrupted via SJW infiltration, misplaced compassion, and resource abundance. The way to deal with this is not to abandon a useful tool like religion, but to remove the source of its corruption--or else wait for the environment to become harsh enough to allow the old, restrictive rules for behavior to come back into fashion.)
ReplyDeleteAnonymous A Texan said...
Don't forget as a young man, if you stick that throbbing penis inside a beautiful woman and enjoy it without being married or dating for months and months and months, the skygod hates you forever and ever and ever unless you repent.
...And if you're a young man and you stick your throbbing penis inside a beautiful woman you barely know and you get a raging STD that you can't cure, don't blame the SkyGod, because He told you not to do that shit. The sexual rules imposed by the church in ages past were part of a campaign to keep people disease and bastard-free (in an age before welfare and penicillin) and to funnel men's sexual urges into the building of civilization. (Also, to insure that each man had his own wife and that there weren't a lot of aggressive, thirsty guys stirring up trouble because most of the desirable women were tied up in harems belonging to the top ten percent of the male population.)
Also, read Song of Solomon sometime. God doesn't hate sex - He just wants to keep us from the consequences of engaging in it recklessly.
Cap, it reads like your father was an overzealous kook more then a Christian.
ReplyDelete