Crossing the 13-year-old threshold

Can anyone of you women — who grew up in the Christian tradition — talk about the feeling you had when faced with the idea that God chose a 13 or 14-year-old middle eastern, pre-Muslim era girl to impregnate with himself and he didn’t choose you?

Did you secretly want this for yourself?

I don’t believe in miracles, but if that really happened, how was it that those back-woods, middle eastern, death-loving desert hicks didn’t take Mary out and stone her when they found out she was pregnant?

I guess if you believe in miracles, just shove that in the same box.

On that same note, the tradition teaches that God — born where livestock eats and poops — is supposed to devour your entire concept of majesty. Jesus lived around and taught mainly the common folk. The eye of the needle is a clear concept. And yet, the focus of so many churches throughout history is opulence and grandeur. See Soloman to medieval Catholic churches all the way to super-mega-Churches today.

The message is this: God says greatness and godliness is being poor, self-less, and miraculous to the needy are the most important things to him.

And his followers gather together and in beautiful unison, they sing out, “Fuck that.”

Every time a few centuries pass, an angel gets a gun

Stan at TYWKIWDBI posted the above image of a painting titled, “The Archangel Barachiel with Harquebus.”

He wrote:

I have to admit I’ve never considered the possibility of angels/archangels carrying armaments, but I’m undoubtedly ignorant of some Biblical references.  Anyone?

There were a range of answers including discussion of “where’s his wings?” and something to the tune of, a modern depiction of an angel who once wielded a sword.

There was one comment which I found to be true based on my research of the bible and that was this one from Abbie:

I just finished reading the Bible (and the apocrypha!) and angel actually aren’t really that important. The original hebrew word just meant “messenger” so for the most part angels are just ill-defined beings that say stuff for God/Yahweh.

Revelations, which is much later, angels are a more defined concept, and they appear wielding “sharp sickles” in chapter 14.

The idea of “archangels”, armed or not, must be later theology. (Satan as a character is pretty undefined in the Bible. I don’t know where the whole “fallen angel” thing comes from, maybe since the “Satan” (a hebrew word meaning “adversary, NOT a proper noun) in Job is able to speak to God, but the later conception of Satan is not on as good terms.)

AF- the “cherubim” in the OT are winged griffin or sphynx-ish creatures, not chubby baby angels.

While Satan is among the characters that I learned about at church and at school, he’s incredibly quiet in the bible as a singular character. There are gods of the era that are demonized, like Baal. And the character that shows up in Genesis (the snake!), in Job, in the desert temptation scene with Yeshua, and then again in Revelation — we’re made to think he’s the same character.

I was taught that — by taking the bible as a whole — you piece together the picture of Satan. However, the Satan story as a fallen angel is a confused bit of folklore based on a passage in Revelations about a fallen star.

As a Christian, not understanding where Satan comes from is taking the bible out of context. Even though the context is a cobbled together bunch of disconnected stories.

The monsters of the Bible are God and later Jesus, who came to earth in a minuscule pocket of the world to bring salvation from a place called hell that God, nor Jesus, nor the Holy Spirit are able to defeat for whatever reason or another.

Dear Christian, doesn’t that strike you as odd? 

Are we really supposed to accept that Hell is the cosmic equivalent of a vehicle’s blind spot? No matter what Yeshua or God does, they will never be powerful enough to defeat Satan. So by the sheer misfortune of thought crimes, you and your loved ones who don’t invite Yeshua into their hearts are bound for eternity without God’s glowing, all-powerful love?

Something smells fishy. 

Satan is more clearly depicted in tradition than biblical description. As are angels and the monotheism of YHWH.

When read from a certain perspective, the bible makes God out to be several characters who existed in the minds of different tribes and people groups back then. And even the forced ideology of the “trinity” is essentially jamming down your throat that you’re supposed to think three beings are one. Clearly, they are three. But you have to fight logic for faith.

It was tradition and theology that created monotheism, in the form of a pantheistic, back-bending, mind-numbing exercise in mental aerobics.

If you can accept that three are one, than apparently you can accept that God, Satan, Heaven and Hell are plausible and acceptable concepts.

If you can accept that “all-powerfulness” also includes “not-all-powerfullness,” then by Jove, you should be a Christian.

Matthew 10:34 should read, I didn’t come to bring peace, but heavy artillery

On Saturday night, Tina and I shot a beautiful event packed with glamourous people eating gorgeous food and tasty drinks.

As I’m going through the film, I stopped on this image (click to enlarge image above) of a guy preparing plates of food. I noticed his forearm covered in ink. I looked closer and noticed it was a heavenly-looking Jesus icon holding some mega-life-altering artillery.

You could probably take out airplanes with that machine gun.

Steve P. could probably identify the exact kind of weapon it is. He might even told us he shot one yesterday with his friends.

Honk.

For those of you who don’t know Matthew 10:34 (through 37), here it is for your viewing pleasure taken way out of context by yours truly:

 ³⁴ ”Do not think that I came to bring peace to the earth. I didn’t come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword. ³⁵ I have come to turn
” ‘sons against their fathers.
Daughters will refuse to obey their mothers.
Daughters-in-law will be against their mothers-in-law.

³⁶ A man’s enemies will be the members of his own family.’ —(Micah 7:6)

³⁷ ”Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. ³⁸ And anyone who does not pick up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹If anyone finds his life, he will lose it. If anyone loses his life because of me, he will find it.

The Language of Christianity

I hope you take the time to watch this video. The link above and here will take you away from Le Café.

I hope you let it challenge you. And I hope if you aren’t challenged, it’s because you know this crap information already.

And if you watch it and say to yourself, “This is from a ‘liberal’ news source. I don’t believe it.” I hope that you wonder why it is you think that’s a bad thing.

The world is full of lies, and this is probably another one of them.

Or maybe it’s not … bum bum bum.

 

 

This is a “love” story

Believers claim boldfaced that the New Testament is a story of love, forgiveness, and representative of an awesome, merciful, all-loving god.

Keep that in mind when you read this story from Acts 5: 1-10:

¹ Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. ² With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

³ Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? ⁴ Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

⁵ When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. ⁶ Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

⁷ About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. ⁸ Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”

⁹ Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

¹⁰ At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.

Moral of the story, god will kill you if you fuck with lie about his money. This is a biblical tale, not a myth. It’s something that could happen to you … but, it NEVER does.

Via The Holy Bible.

I trumped you with the F word

Image via Wikipedia

This noggin of mine has been mulling over the F word lately.

The F word comes up in debates. It’s come up in conversations. And it’s high time I addressed it directly.

Of course I’m talking about “Faith.” You know what I’m talking about. People with faith tell people who don’t claim to have faith that they have faith.

If you said to me, “Jeremy, you have faith in Tina. You have faith in technology and in airplanes.”

I would say to you, “Yes! You’re right. I have faith that Tina will not go out and run sexually rampant with random men (or women). I have faith that the plane I’m riding in will not fall from the sky. And I have faith that Apple computer manufactured a damn good computer that won’t crash every day and lose all my work.”

If that’s “faith,” include me among the very faithful.

Faith pertains to experience. It might not always be tangible. I’m 35 years old. I have 35 years of being emotionally hurt by people. I have 35 years of emotionally hurting other people. I have 35 years of riding in planes.  I have 35 years of riding in cars. And 35 years of using technology. I have 35 years of living in America.

For 35 years, no one has killed me. But I’ve seen or heard of zillions of people getting killed.

I have 35 years of knowledge that no matter what I do, I cannot control anyone or anything else. I have no good reason to believe the floor will not give out except for the fact that it didn’t do it yesterday.

I have faith that Tina is going to do what she can not to hurt me. But no matter what, she might, and that’s okay. That’s life experience. The same goes for strangers and family. That doesn’t mean a car isn’t going to cross the median and ram head on into mine. That doesn’t mean that the floor beneath my feet isn’t going drop out beneath my office chair.

In that regard, I have strong faith. Some might say I’m more faithful than others.

So what about faith in the deity or deities? 

Why then do I not have faith in God? There are great things that appear supernatural all around me, then why don’t I have Christian-branded faith? 

I don’t have faith in god, because there is no indication to me that god exists. And the reasons that a believer uses to establish faith are not solid reasonings to accept. Nature is natural, and while it’s AMAZING, the Christian rationale for nature’s existence is completely unimpressive nor plausible compared to the scientific explanations.

There are several people on my facebook wall that say, “God will always be there for me. He will never leave me or forsake me.”

As a Christian, I was taught  god was always there and he would never leave me. But apart from my imagination, he wasn’t anywhere to be found? Sure, I tried and tried to convince myself that, say, Jesus was hugging me when I was scared. I was taught that other people prayed for Jesus to hold them, and they were convinced he did that if asked.

I remember going to high school and telling other people, “Yeah, last night I prayed Jesus would hold me last night, and he did.” I had faith that he had, but full knowledge that he had not. And after a while, you get the feeling that other people were in on the secret.

It’s as if faith in God is only a metaphor that all believers are aware of, but won’t admit. When I read the bible as an outsider, I arrive at the same conclusion. It’s a club of people who know that Jesus will never really hold you when you’re frightened, but everyone perpetuates the idea that he does to comfort those who might think they need it in the future.

The idea of heaven and hell is farfetched, but without it, the club can’t exist properly.

You should have faith, too

Why do you think the “faith” card gets pulled in debates? What is your faith experience? Would you agree that the term is faith or do you think we should trifle over semantics? I want to know.

Turrets Syndrome will set you apart

“BAM! … We’re sending you out … with an awkward, self-induced Turret Syndrome! Praise, Jesus!”

This video of a Canadian pastor named Todd Bentley will blow your mind. Pastor Todd Bentley is founder of the dominionist group Joel’s Army, according to Joe My God, “BFF of anti-gay freak show Lou Engle.”

Bentley is traveling the country filling baseball stadiums and other large venues with other pastors dying to learn Bentley’s tattoo’d and pierced message of the hip, cool Jesus.

Get a load of this video:

Read more info here.

Snippet:

Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous “supernatural healing revival” in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don’t bat an eye when he tells them he’s seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. “He was looking very Jewish,” Bentley notes. Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read “Joel’s Army.” They’re evidence of Bentley’s generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that’s gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other “hyper-charismatic” preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers.

Via Joe.My.God.