Tag: bible

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My parents were Catholic and so they took it up themselves to raise their five children as Catholics. In order to make this happen, I endured 12 years of Catholic schools. I am afraid the Catholic school system let them down terribly. On the plus side I acquired a pretty good working knowledge of the Bible and religious doctrines, at least, as understood by the Roman Catholic Church.

The first big roadblock to me continuing as a Catholic was I could never understand why Jesus Christ had to die for our sins. Nobody could really explain the reasoning. It hardly seems fair to have an innocent man die an incredibly violent death in order to save the souls of the worlds’ sinners.

Now, I get that something had to be done. The sinners were doomed for Hell but why God determined that the only way this could happen is for Jesus to die. Wait, I take it back, I really don’t understand why God created a world of sinners that needed Jesus to die in order to save them. Jesus whole death sentence is based in the failure of humanity to uphold God’s laws. Something he knew was going to happen when he created Adam and Eve.

Why does God need to have such suffering in order to say, well OK, Jesus died a horrible death, by dying, Jesus showed how much he loved human beings so I will give all human beings a second chance to get into Heaven. Even more troubling to me is that God knew Jesus would willingly die on the cross so even before He set all of this in motion, why bother?

I was in a Spanish Church with a Christian friend. We were marveling at the artwork which depicted Jesus on the cross when she said “you know he would do all again. Die for our sins.” Which,OK, given Christian Myth, true. But why? This wonderment that Jesus would willingly suffer death to redeem man leaves out the important question, at least for me. God could ask anything, certainly less painful methods of execution, yet he demanded death, a rather unpleasant death at that. Why?

Based on this fundamental tenant of Christian faith, why would I believe that God is a loving God. He sounds more like a sadist to me. Pain and suffering is a part of the plan. Dear God, why?

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Texas wants to bring back religious training back to the public schools. The idea here is that the majority religion is Christianity and, given this fact, Texas’ children will learn a little bit about it and become model citizens.

I am probably more blase about religious education than the typical non-religious person. It doesn’t bother me in the least because I know after 12 years of Catholic education, religious training only increased my antagonism towards religion. Add forced Sunday church services like my parents did and Texas will probably get the same share of non-religious people as before Texas began religious education. Really if kids are already having problems with math, history, English and science what makes Texas think that educators will be any better with teaching religion?

But that is not that question before us — the question is can Texas government make children learn about Christianity. I would unequivocally say yes if it weren’t for one important factor. The assumption here is that Christians will sit down and agree on what is to be taught.

Given the past 2,000 years of Christians bitter and brutal quarreling about Christian doctrine, this assumption is a lot of wishful thinking (See Savonarola, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 1970’s Northern Ireland if you need some refresher on this). The primary reason the founding fathers separated the Church from the State is that European Christians had spent the last thousand years or so killing one another over religion. All of whom claimed, by the way, they were Christians.

The Founding Fathers thought that any preference to any religion would cause trouble with the other religions — especially within the various Christian groups. Better to leave religion to the individual who can practice as they wish without government interference or, and this is important, government giving a preference to any one belief.

The public schools are already a cultural battleground. Texas will only make it worse with the introduction of religion. Part of me, would love to see the various Christian groups attacking one another about the right Christian doctrine to teach. Particularly since they also claim that the Bible is clear cut about doctrine. Not. Only my sympathy for teachers and students who face an already difficult struggle with non-religious education and, of course, the fear of bloody sectarian warfare keeps me from fully supporting religious education in the public schools.

But Texas is going do what Texas is going to do, so we shall see. Have your bandages ready.

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I know a Christian who, on occasion, posts about the coming of judgment day. She thinks it is  imminent. She usually adds a little jibe about how an awful lot of people are going to be going to Hell if they don’t get right with the Lord now. I am sure she would see this as a gentle reminder about finding Jesus before it is too late but it reeks with delight that a bunch of sinners will finally get what they deserve. I wish I believed her good intentions story but there is too much condescension in her tone to ignore. She is trying to save us from Hell but people are ignoring her.

This nasty superiority, more than anything else, detracts from what passes as Christianity in the modern world. So I wasn’t much surprised that Pope Francis was criticized for wanting to find Hell empty if he ever happened to visit. Of course, these Christians felt Pope Francis was missing Jesus’ whole point (see here, here and here) which is sending non-believers and miscreants to Hell.

It isn’t that Jesus wants us to be good so we can join Him in Heaven. The important thing here is that sinners must be punished. What is the point of being a good Christian if everyone gets to Heaven later?

The more I hear about these Christians, the more I prefer Hell than their version of Heaven. Besides most everyone I know and like will be in Hell so I much rather spend an eternity with people I like than with those assholes.

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A Kentucky state representative wants to put a 10 Commandments statue at the Kentucky state capitol. The idea being, I guess, that people reading the 10 commandments will have some magical effect and bring Kentucky to Jesus.

Do it. I could care less. Seriously, if the heathens of Kentucky wanted to come to Jesus there are thousands of churches in the state that will do the trick. If the churches can’t do it, I doubt seriously that a marble block at the state capital is going to have greater success.

In the meantime, let’s not waste our time on this trivial matter. This is a red flag meant to incite an utterly meaningless battle. Sadly, it will work. People on both sides will yell at each other until they are red in the face. There will be some to and froing until some decision is made that will make one side think they have won and the other side think they lost. The media will breathlessly follow because it has emotion and action which makes for great television but, alas, little else. All and all, it will be a big waste of time.

I am weary of these phony cultural battles. Ultimately, they distract from real problems. A block of marble with some words on it will have a limited effect on the people of Kentucky. Very few will bother to look at the statue and even fewer will bother to read it. On the other hand, insufficient health care will have a much greater impact on regular people. As will bad schools, bad fire departments, low wages and a long list of problems facing the people of Kentucky.

I would trade a 10 Commandments statue for universal health care any day of the week. Let’s fight battles that matter and not get sucked into losing battles about things that will cause minimal, if any, harm.

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One of the most annoying things about the Christian Right is that they try to reposition Jesus as an angry warrior for Right-Wing causes. Jesus was remarkably silent about the wrath of God although you would never know this from the Jesus these Christians describe. Sean Walsh, in TCW Defending Freedom, reacting to Bishop Budde’s inaugural church service where she reminded Trump of Jesus’ compassionate approach and urging him to consider it when he makes his decisions, says Jesus was a difficult person who would be reviled by liberal Christians because he advocated for adherence to Hebrew laws.

This is a pretty nice trick. He ties Christians to the Old Testament’s angry God, the punishing God, the God that will send you to Hell for any wrong move. But Jesus wasn’t all that much on punishment. Remember the woman who he saved from stoning. He just wanted her to sin no more. He saved her from death which, according to Hebrew law, was the appropriate end for this woman. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Is Jesus then an angry warrior for Hebrew Law when he actively worked to prevent it from happening?

The reason that Jesus urges compassion is that all humans are sinners. The men with stones. The woman being stoned. Even his own apostles, his most trusted friends, would disappoint him. Every last one of us. Jesus realized that people will sin and keep sinning. Some day, we could wind up on the wrong side of the stone thus the reason for compassion when dealing with sinners.

Walsh ignores another big problem with the Old Testament Law. Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These books are chokablock full of things that modern Christians ignore. Forgive your debts every seven years. How many Christians do that? I am betting none. Christians having been picking and choosing what they follow and what they will ignore for centuries. Jesus would want us to follow the entirety of these laws.

No better example can be found than divorce. Jesus actually talked about divorce so I imagining it was important to him while completing ignoring homosexuality which the modern Christian Right want complete adherence. Jesus had a very ancient Hebrew outlook on divorce. He didn’t like it one bit. Given that there are vastly more heterosexuals than homosexuals, divorce should be a bigger problem for Christians than homosexuality.

So, then, where is the outrage with Trump’s marriage history. Well modern Christians have come to terms with divorced Christians. Second marriages involving a divorced person can even be performed in many churches without a second thought. If Jesus is a cultural warrior for values, Jesus, being Jewish, would want adherence to all Judaic Law. This means the laws detailed in the Old Testament.

Walsh is making a big assumption about Jesus here. Jesus would be offended by immigrants and would strive to keep them out. There is little evidence that this is true. Given what we know from the New Testament, we know Jesus spoke repeatedly about compassion and forgiveness. I think it is safer to say this is what Jesus was concerned about and not the Hell and brimstone prophet that Walsh and his compatriots are so wild about.

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The other day I was getting worked up over Oklahoma requiring Bibles in every classroom. Then, I began to think why. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a bad idea and we should try to stop it. On the other hand, as bad ideas go, it is far down the list on what is important. Some religious people think that the mere presence of the Bible in the classroom will somehow magically change the children forced to sit in a room with it into Christians.

I am betting this won’t happen. If I seriously thought that these proponents of the Bible in the classroom could create an effective educational program that incorporated the Bible I might be worried. They really have no ideas beyond prayer and patriotism and if they tried to do anything more they would begin to fight among themselves. Christians, if you recall, have violently argued with one another for centuries about Christian Doctrine. Indeed, this was the main reason why the Founding Fathers wanted a religious neutral government — Christian sects have a tendency to rumble if it is possible to get an upper hand with another Christian sect.

So why is this meaningless gesture getting me so worked up? Because it is headline news. The press is only interested in controversy. Controversy brings in readers which brings in ad revenue and so the press will search for controversial issues to feed to the American public. They aren’t feeding the public anything that is particularly nutritious either. It is more like a table filled with desserts that we can’t help but pile onto our plates and finish them off in one sitting. Until we make ourselves sick.

It is an easy enough bon bon to make too. Anything to do with religion in public schools was sure to piss of every secular humanist in the country while getting the full fledge support of fundamental Christians. Some editor somewhere decided to fed this particular controversy to the American public because they knew their readers would lap it up and then raise their fists ready for battle. Sadly, they were correct.

What is so annoying is that I know this is the game. Sensationalism is the only consistent menu item and I keep falling for it. There is a good chance that the Bibles in every classroom will never happen or it will be slowed down in the courts for years to come and, after a few years of squabbling over this, and realizing that it is way too difficult to make it happen, the combatants will move on to something new to argue about.

More worrisome, is it illustrates the Media’s focus on divisive topics. Anyone looking at education would think that the most important topic in American education is the treatment of Trans children because a lot of people are talking about it. In reality, there are 73,000,000 people in the USA under the age of 18.. Of those 73,000,000, 42,000 of them have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and only 4,200 of these children have started hormone therapy. This means that when people are talking about this, they are talking about .00005 % of the student population.

The treatment of Trans children in public schools and religion in the public schools need to be addressed but that it dominates any discussion regarding education in the 2024 campaign is out of all proportion to how it affects the vast majority of public school students. It is there only to instill rage and division which is all really great fun for the Press but does very little to improve public schools.

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Jesus said “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

In my youth, people rarely, if ever, talked about homosexuality. They did, however, talk a lot about divorce. Divorce was considered a big sin. Politicians who divorced risked being defeated at the next election if they divorced. Elizabeth Taylor was pilloried in the Senate for her many marriages and her seduction of married men. Divorce really meant something.  

But nary a word about homosexuality which, admittedly, was understandable. People didn’t really talk about heterosexuality much either so it makes some sense that I didn’t hear anything about homosexuality. Sexual conversations were taboo. Still, people made a point out of telling me that divorce was wrong and why it was wrong. There was no doubt where the Church stood.

The sexual revolution of the 1960’s opened up the conversation. When gay people started coming out, this new visibility caused a conversation that was largely ignored for much of history. However this doesn’t explain the rather benign treatment of divorce in 21st century Christianity. I rarely hear Christians decrying divorce with the same ferocity as they do about homosexuality. Now Christians have every right to give their opinion on what is and what is not a sin. I have no problem with that.

What is annoying, however, is that divorce, a common mortal sin, has dropped off the radar for Christians while homosexuality has become a burning issue requiring frequent condemnation and correction. Some Christians are adamantly opposed to adapting their doctrines regarding homosexuality but are remarkably flexible when it comes to divorce. Can anyone say that divorced people (henceforth known as adulterers) are subject to the same level of animosity as gay people. Some want homosexuals excluded from civil marriage. Some object to selling wedding cakes to gay people because this somehow supports the gay life style as opposed to a simple business transaction. Why are adulterers allowed to remarry? Would the righteous bakers object to selling a wedding cake to a remarrying adulterer?

The modern Christians emphasis on gay sin, which only a small number of their congregants are committing, over divorce, which makes up a much larger group of their congregants is puzzling. Sin is sin. Well, there has to be redemption in order for there to be forgiveness. The sinner has to stop committing the sin. Is this happening with adulterers? Wouldn’t redemption for an adulterer be not having sex any longer with their new spouse? I think we all know this isn’t happening. Adulterers are welcomed back into many churches with open arms despite the fact that they are continuing to have sex with their new partner. So, why then, does the homosexual have to stop having sex in order to be forgiven while the heterosexual adulterer can continue on his merry way.

Christians lost the cultural battle over divorce. Too many church members are divorced now for them to fight divorce. The churches risk alienating potential members if they were to renew their battle against divorce. Hell, in Protestant churches, the pastor could be divorced. This is how pervasive divorce is. Ministers are committing a grave sin, a sin that Jesus felt particularly important enough that he talked about as a sin, and these same ministers rage on about the sin of homosexuality. How can these people be taken seriously as fundamentalist Christians when they continue to pick and choose what parts of the Bible they want to believe.

The modern Christian seems to think if he is in a heterosexual marriage, his ticket is punched and all he has to do is to get to heaven. He no longer has to worry about divorce or, for that matter, adultery as long as it is heterosexual. Which is a sad commentary on modern Christianity. A cursory reading of the Bible will show that Jesus had other concerns other than gay sex. Off the top of my head, I can think of feeding the poor, focusing on saving souls as opposed to acquiring cash and turning the other cheek when attacked by an enemy. But, no gay sex is the problem. If that is all Christianity can offer, they are doomed.