Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

So some “Jesus is My Boyfriend” singer has been shown to have feet of clay? Well, shit, there goes my denomination’s liturgical calendar for the next 0 days.

 

Freedom of Religion is not a right to abuse the faith of the people - Sinclair Lewis (maybe)

 

Maybe.

 

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I was baptized a Southern Baptist nearly 40 yrs ago and I’ve got to say they were the kindest most loving people. They accepted me with open arms. Now that was a long time ago and maybe they were just different but they were much more low key than the born agains that I had left the year before. I then went to college and awakened to the reality of Christianity.

 

Which is?

 

Why does murderer who accepts Jesus as his savior before execution go to heaven but the Buddhist who walks closer to the steps of Jesus go to hell?

 

Well, it's not *quite* that simple. In Christianity, God makes the final call, and that's between the person and God, although God gives his word, in the Bible, about what salvation entails.

As it relates to Christianity...a person who acknowledges their total deficit to God, and need for Jesus to advocate (like a lawyer) for them in front of God the judge, is more righteous than a person who lives well and doesn't acknowledge the need for Jesus as an advocate. Such is the chasm between the very best person in the history of the world not named Jesus and Jesus. There is, say, a half-inch, in existential status, between that person and the worst person, and 1,000 miles between that person and Jesus. The bridge over the chasm is Christ.

 

If you don’t know the password, you can’t get into the treehouse.

 

I've seen that one attributed to Lewis, Darrow, and a few others. Wise words, but the real attribution has gone walkabout.

So was I. The church our family attended at the time was diverse and cared about people more than it did dogma and legality. I think the beginning of the end was the rise of celebrity fundy figures in the 80s and the Tea Party.

This line of questioning got me kicked out of the BSU at my little bitty college in Mississippi. There was someone in Parchman who was scheduled to be executed. He raped a small (two-year-old?) child and then smothered her to death in a mud puddle. Then he conveniently found Jesus and some churches and our denominational student union began to advocate for his release because he was a new person thanks to the grace of Christ.

Here's the thing. I am against capital punishment.* I'm also a believer in the rehabilitative approach to incarceration. Letting someone go just because they said Jesus made them all better, especially when the crime involved is one where there it is almost a certainty they'd do it again? No.

At the next meeting, some of the ministers involved in this and our program coordinator said they were going to reach out to the family of the little girl and tell them they needed to forgive this man and work with us to get him released from prison. I was already feeling queasy about their reasoning for wanting him to walk out with a cleaned record and no possible treatment. This was too much. It was cruel to the people who had not only lost a child, but lost one in such a horrible manner.

I made an appointment with the man in charge of the BSU and asked him if he didn't have any qualms about this. He said if it had been his little girl, he would rejoice because she was in a much better place in heaven with Jesus. When he answered me, he had that weird, flinty edge some Fundies get when they figure out they could get into an argument. I saw this and calmly said I thought it was cruel to ask that of someone who had to hear about their daughter's last moments in the courtroom and has to relive their loss every time there's a news story, every time some church person knocks on their door or calls them or writes them about forgiving their daughter's killer.

"Please don't bring them into this," I said.

He stared at me as if I'd committed whatever he considered the lowest form of blasphemy

I added, "We'll have to agree to disagree, then."

"No," he said, "You are not to come back here, EVER. You're not a real Christian. I'll make sure no one has a word for you EVER."

He kept his promise, because I was shunned by everyone at the BSU for the rest of the semester. Kind of interesting in retrospect.




*I am also not a fan of abortion. FWIW, the rubber did hit the road here and it was not an option. I think everyone needs to make up their own mind based on what they are facing. Dennis Miller is right. If you're not the one who can get pregnant, you don't get a say in this.

 

lol final call. If God's anything like Angel Hernandez ...