If the vision of god depicted by modern Christian fundamentalists is correct, we are all truly hosed.
Jesus said a camel could get through the eye of a needle easier than the rich could get into heaven and by world standards, certainly by historical standards, even the poorest of us in the West is very, very rich. We wear mixed cotton-polyester blends and all enjoy vegetables, whether we realize it or not, that have been raised using biblically forbidden methods such as crop rotation and not observing every seventh year of letting fields lie idle. Some of us eat shellfish, even rabbit, and don't get me started about bacon and pork. We work on Saturday (a capital offense - try explaining to Yahweh that we changed the Sabbath on him) and have abolished slavery without compensating the slave-owner, two biblical offenses.
We allow women not only to enter a temple while menstruating (we don't even ask anymore) and to argue with her husband (both explicitly forbidden in the Bible) but to own property and vote. (The whole idea of voting and limited government has no basis or precedent in biblical teachings.) Fathers who beat their children as the Bible commands are now prosecuted, not praised, and parents no longer have the biblically-guaranteed right to kill their children or sell them into slavery if they talk back or if father, who is, as the Bible tells us, lord of the home in the same way god is lord of the world, thinks it best.
Yes, our penal code has become more compassionate, but in doing so, it has deviated dangerously from biblical teachings. We do not stone adulterers or cut off the hand of thieves. We no longer pull out people's tongues for saying religiously offensive things as the Bible commands, nor do we pour molten liquid down their throats.
We no longer practice animal sacrifice, the heart of religious service in the time of Jesus; I honestly can't remember the last time I made a burnt offering to the Lord.
Since Jesus said we should not just forgive our enemies but love them, I imagine that excluded pre-emptive war and torture, so anyone who participated or supported those un-Christian activities might have a lot of explaining to do.
Many of Jesus's followers were quite confident they were following his teachings but again and again he reminded them that
a.) they were coming up short and
b.) that god, not they, would be the judge of that, and that some of them would be in for a nasty surprise, especially those - surprise, surprise! - who had abandoned the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, and by so doing had abandoned Jesus.
Now I'm not saying that I endorse this belief system but if I became "born again" tomorrow unless I suffered a head injury that made me incapable of reading or thinking, I would be filled with dread and humility, not joy and self-congratulatory pride. Accepting the "many are called but few are chosen" view of reality is dark enough; why rub it in by going around telling everyone that you are among the few (and by implication everyone else is going to hell forever and ever, amen)?
Accepting the Christian world view as it is understood by fundamentalists of the American variety would be like accepting that you are enrolled in a course set up so that most people will fail, with a cranky professor prone to fits of homicidal rage who never directly tells you what you have to do (he doesn't even bother to make his presence known) to pass the course ready not just to fail you but to torture you for failing.
I just don't see how this could be comforting to anyone and doubt anyone who has really thought it through could either (which is why I believe most fundamentalists have not done much thinking). There is a reason generations of Christians described themselves as god-fearing instead of the current batch of god-gloaters.
If Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, and Glenn Beck are all going to heaven because they have decided they are, then I am not all that sure I would want to go there anyway.
Jesus said a camel could get through the eye of a needle easier than the rich could get into heaven and by world standards, certainly by historical standards, even the poorest of us in the West is very, very rich. We wear mixed cotton-polyester blends and all enjoy vegetables, whether we realize it or not, that have been raised using biblically forbidden methods such as crop rotation and not observing every seventh year of letting fields lie idle. Some of us eat shellfish, even rabbit, and don't get me started about bacon and pork. We work on Saturday (a capital offense - try explaining to Yahweh that we changed the Sabbath on him) and have abolished slavery without compensating the slave-owner, two biblical offenses.
We allow women not only to enter a temple while menstruating (we don't even ask anymore) and to argue with her husband (both explicitly forbidden in the Bible) but to own property and vote. (The whole idea of voting and limited government has no basis or precedent in biblical teachings.) Fathers who beat their children as the Bible commands are now prosecuted, not praised, and parents no longer have the biblically-guaranteed right to kill their children or sell them into slavery if they talk back or if father, who is, as the Bible tells us, lord of the home in the same way god is lord of the world, thinks it best.
Yes, our penal code has become more compassionate, but in doing so, it has deviated dangerously from biblical teachings. We do not stone adulterers or cut off the hand of thieves. We no longer pull out people's tongues for saying religiously offensive things as the Bible commands, nor do we pour molten liquid down their throats.
We no longer practice animal sacrifice, the heart of religious service in the time of Jesus; I honestly can't remember the last time I made a burnt offering to the Lord.
Since Jesus said we should not just forgive our enemies but love them, I imagine that excluded pre-emptive war and torture, so anyone who participated or supported those un-Christian activities might have a lot of explaining to do.
Many of Jesus's followers were quite confident they were following his teachings but again and again he reminded them that
a.) they were coming up short and
b.) that god, not they, would be the judge of that, and that some of them would be in for a nasty surprise, especially those - surprise, surprise! - who had abandoned the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, and by so doing had abandoned Jesus.
Now I'm not saying that I endorse this belief system but if I became "born again" tomorrow unless I suffered a head injury that made me incapable of reading or thinking, I would be filled with dread and humility, not joy and self-congratulatory pride. Accepting the "many are called but few are chosen" view of reality is dark enough; why rub it in by going around telling everyone that you are among the few (and by implication everyone else is going to hell forever and ever, amen)?
Accepting the Christian world view as it is understood by fundamentalists of the American variety would be like accepting that you are enrolled in a course set up so that most people will fail, with a cranky professor prone to fits of homicidal rage who never directly tells you what you have to do (he doesn't even bother to make his presence known) to pass the course ready not just to fail you but to torture you for failing.
I just don't see how this could be comforting to anyone and doubt anyone who has really thought it through could either (which is why I believe most fundamentalists have not done much thinking). There is a reason generations of Christians described themselves as god-fearing instead of the current batch of god-gloaters.
If Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, and Glenn Beck are all going to heaven because they have decided they are, then I am not all that sure I would want to go there anyway.
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