because you need to replace the love you can have for yourself with love for God. You’re a miserable wretch who should feel terrible about your own existence, but by loving God, even someone as worthless as you can be loved. Turning your back on the Lord is impossible when when you rely on him for your own self worth; when without feeling his love you are rendered depressed and hopeless. Besides, it’s easier to love a perfect being than to love yourself, so this addiction is the easier option to doing that hard work.
but by loving God, even someone as worthless as you can be loved.
It’s worth pointing out, in my experience, most of the churches I’ve attended swapped cause and effect - that God loved humans so much that he sacrificed his son, which is a reason to love him. Most I’ve attended don’t teach to hate yourself, rather that what you experience now is the baseline of being a “sinner”. Basically, you’re already in the bad place. No need to hate yourself further. Maybe the churches I attended were just more carrot and less stick.
I haven’t practiced religion in a while, but since this seems to be a response to a genuine question, it seems prudent to offer what is typically, in my experience, preached alongside a clearly sardonic answer.
I remember during my deconstruction asking a simple question.
Why did god have to sacrifice his son?
The answer apologists give is that he just had to, that was the only way to cleanse the sins of man.
God is supposedly all powerful though, surely an all powerful being could have just waved his hand and cleansed all the sins. Our he could have just been ok with peoples sins, ever since people have kept sinning and he is somehow ok with that.
The answer apologists give to this is normally some form of
It is the Nature of God that he not be able to dwell with sin.
This of course would logically mean that this all powerful god suddenly is powerless against his own nature, and therefore not all powerful because he doesn’t have the power to change his nature.
Or he chooses not to, he just made a choice that sin is icky and then made another choice that the only way to be ok with sin was to sacrifice his son.
It’s like me coming into your house and saying “the rules are I’m going to torture you forever unless I can make you clean in my eyes, the only way I can make you clean is to cut off my foot because of a set of rules I’m fully in control of. Now thank me for cutting off my foot, I had to, it was the only way, because of the rules that I fully control”
Close, but his son is also him, so he actually had to kill himself to save us from… Himself. But it’s OK because he didn’t die, he faked his death and now bunnies lay eggs on Easter, and we’ll all still go to hell for being sinners unless we give human-made, tax-exempt institutions human money that was likely earned through some form of sin. Oh and we also have to tell on ourselves to a likely pedophile. That ensures heaven, I’m told.
It’s fun because you could have a very powerful god or a very wise god. The problem with an all powerful or all knowing god is that it just makes everything else arbitrary abusive rules.
God can’t love you if you sin. Why not, he’s ALL powerful, he can do anything he wants. God chooses not to love you if you sin, and then he chooses to torture you for all eternity
I don’t find anything worth worshipping in such an entity if it did exist
Honestly it’s even worse than that when you consider he didn’t just make the rules, he made us. And he did it with perfect foreknowledge of everything that would happen.
So it’s not just “he sacrificed himself to save us from himself”, it’s “he sacrificed himself to save us from what he’s going to do to us because of the way he made us”.
Also as far as the cutting off his foot thing, it’s more like an axolotl cutting off his foot. He’ll have in back and be in perfect condition in just a few days.
Yeah, what bothers me is the giving of free will, paired with damnation for making the wrong choice and heaven for the right ones.
If anyone set up a scenario for their pet with the intention of eternally punishing them if they make the “wrong” choice, they’d be considered an asshole.
Granted, some interpretations of hell is really just being without the love of God, but knowing how great it should feel, which makes it slightly better? Still icky though.
You touched on it, but for completeness, the official Catholic stance is actually a pretty interesting interpretation that is the result of a kind of wild assumption, and the absolute upholding of free will. Basically God is meant to be the source of all positive things, including feeling and sensation. Every person has a 2 way connection to God. Any positive feeling you’ve ever had was from him through this connection. When someone commits a Mortal Sin, they are showing they reject God, and sever their side of the connection. Truly repenting will pick the line back up, and God never drops his side so long as you live. If you die with a severed line, he accepts that you really don’t want to associate with him, and he drops his side too. And so Hell is not a place, nor a punishment, it’s a state of being. All the gnashing of teeth and lakes of fire were originally metaphors for how badly a total lack of Grace, that connection, is. Later Dante’s Inferno and other works painted it in a striking way that caught the imagination, but it is not the Church’s official stance.
The really fun part is smashing together the idea that Mortal Sin is a rejection of God, and the core concept of the Silent Christian. IE, the Bible very literally, and repeatedly, states that God is love. Like, not that he embodies it, or that he is the source of it (though it also does claim that) but that the two concepts are literally interchangeable. You basically can rewrite it using a replace tool and swap out any instance of God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost with Love. It does make some kind of philosophical strange abstractness when it talks about loving Love, not that weird, with Love loving things, pretty weird. And it kind of takes “tough love,” to a whole new level with some of the wrath he brings in the 1st Testament, but that is fairly low on the list of weirdness between the two Testaments, and the God = love stuff is mostly from the 2nd.
But the core concept in the “invisible Christian,” is that those with no faith in a sky daddy can still be good Christians by letting God love into their hearts. Therefore, anyone that has empathy can really be taken to be a good Chrostian, and obtain all the benefits whenever the Bible says you need to beleive in and accept God. And the corollary here is that committing Mortal Sin, IE willingly committing a heinous act such as murder, is a rejection of God love in your life. Of course, the definition of what qualifies as Mortal Sin remains a contentious affair. Though the Catholics are generally more tolerant than the more hard-line sects, they are still pretty backwards here. But if you restrict it to things that cause serious harm to another person, then it becomes a comparatively reasonable model. Much more so than it is popularly presented, at any rate.
A big part that disrupted my religious beliefs was, while leading a homeless outreach ministry in college, one of the most regular attendees was in fact sikh. Did some learning about their religion, and I really dug it.
Massive respect and admiration for her to come out regularly - we weren’t that Christian when we went out, meaning we never proselytized, but we still prayed together before and after each night, and did some stuff like offer to wash the feet of folks. And she stayed with us through this stuff because she loved helping. I just couldn’t accept that someone who is driven to the same loving actions would be judged as going to hell, just because their family was born with a different culture.
Given that context, I really enjoyed the perspective you shared. Thank you!
To be fair, the I don’t think the Church has ever officially taken a stance on the idea of the Invisible Christian. But Pope Francis was a proponent of the idea.
My sticking point was similar. How jesus’ sacrifice was so noble and he died to save everyone who came before, and will come after. Like yea sure thats a big deal, but how many people would take that trade? “Literally all of humanity… or me?” If you presented mortals with that option, mortals who dont know their father is all powerful god, and who dont know theyre going to be taken to heaven for eternity, how many would still take it?
Hell, most mortals have 1 person in their life they’d sacrifice themselves for. As the number saved goes up, the individual sacrifice seems to lose value imo. It wasnt even like he sacrificed himself for an eternity of suffering. He suffered for a few days… on the scale of eternity, thats pretty insignificant
The better ones don’t focus on hating yourself, but them telling you to receive love from God is still a substitute for self love. They don’t need to beat most people’s self worth into submission, as most people naturally struggle with self love. It’s hard to accept yourself, but easier to accept others (at least on average). By loving an entity you can’t actually meet, you can indirectly receive your own love by imagining it loves you. You don’t need to love your flawed self because God will love your flawed self. Just love the one who forgives and you never need to forgive yourself.
The ones that teach what Jesus supposedly did do not substitute God’s love for self love. He was asked if the myriad Jewish laws were still in effect or if Jesus’ coming had nullifiedthem according to prophecy. Jesus basically says, “love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself. Do these 3 things, and you will never break any moral law. You don’t need a list of commandments to follow, because you won’t break them if you follow these three.”
This is exactly how the mob works. They beat you up (tell you have sin for super natural things like sex and being born), and then you have to make up for those natural things the rest of your life (guilt and give money to the church). Yes, they provide the carrots, but only after they’ve repeatedly hit you with a stick. They’ll then “save” you from the stick.
tell you have sin for super natural things like sex and being born
Idk, it doesn’t bother me to be told I’m a sinner cuz the same doctrine preaches that everyone’s a sinner. You, me, the goddamn pope. Ned Flanders himself is also a sinner. The guy yelling at people through a megaphone with the turn or burn speech? You bet your ass he’s a sinner.
It’s kinda setting a baseline - humanity itself is flawed. It def has its peaks and highpoints, but I cannot deny that it is flawed, esp amidst today’s political and environmental concerns - can you?
I’m not bothered by acknowledging we’re imperfect shitters, since that sticker is applied to humanity as a whole. Even the most pious, trying their hardest to adhere to religion person, is still preached to be a sinner. Christianity then preaches that nothing you can do can change that except to accept to accept Jesus or something.
Idk - I’m probs not not the best discussion partner for this as I’m not particularly keen on spirituality and I’m likely missing nuance.
guilt and give money to the church
There might be those, but what drew me to the churches I attended was that they also regularly served the community. Hell, I was a homeless ministry outreach leader myself for years when I was in college. Every week we’d split up into pairs walking around downtown area at night handing out food, water, and building up relationships with folks.
Pfffft, no thanks! Jesus already put in the intellectual and emotional labor for all of us, so I’m not going to spit in his face by thinking for myself, thank you very much!
because you need to replace the love you can have for yourself with love for God. You’re a miserable wretch who should feel terrible about your own existence, but by loving God, even someone as worthless as you can be loved. Turning your back on the Lord is impossible when when you rely on him for your own self worth; when without feeling his love you are rendered depressed and hopeless. Besides, it’s easier to love a perfect being than to love yourself, so this addiction is the easier option to doing that hard work.
It’s worth pointing out, in my experience, most of the churches I’ve attended swapped cause and effect - that God loved humans so much that he sacrificed his son, which is a reason to love him. Most I’ve attended don’t teach to hate yourself, rather that what you experience now is the baseline of being a “sinner”. Basically, you’re already in the bad place. No need to hate yourself further. Maybe the churches I attended were just more carrot and less stick.
I haven’t practiced religion in a while, but since this seems to be a response to a genuine question, it seems prudent to offer what is typically, in my experience, preached alongside a clearly sardonic answer.
I remember during my deconstruction asking a simple question.
The answer apologists give is that he just had to, that was the only way to cleanse the sins of man.
God is supposedly all powerful though, surely an all powerful being could have just waved his hand and cleansed all the sins. Our he could have just been ok with peoples sins, ever since people have kept sinning and he is somehow ok with that.
The answer apologists give to this is normally some form of
This of course would logically mean that this all powerful god suddenly is powerless against his own nature, and therefore not all powerful because he doesn’t have the power to change his nature.
Or he chooses not to, he just made a choice that sin is icky and then made another choice that the only way to be ok with sin was to sacrifice his son.
It’s like me coming into your house and saying “the rules are I’m going to torture you forever unless I can make you clean in my eyes, the only way I can make you clean is to cut off my foot because of a set of rules I’m fully in control of. Now thank me for cutting off my foot, I had to, it was the only way, because of the rules that I fully control”
Close, but his son is also him, so he actually had to kill himself to save us from… Himself. But it’s OK because he didn’t die, he faked his death and now bunnies lay eggs on Easter, and we’ll all still go to hell for being sinners unless we give human-made, tax-exempt institutions human money that was likely earned through some form of sin. Oh and we also have to tell on ourselves to a likely pedophile. That ensures heaven, I’m told.
It’s fun because you could have a very powerful god or a very wise god. The problem with an all powerful or all knowing god is that it just makes everything else arbitrary abusive rules.
God can’t love you if you sin. Why not, he’s ALL powerful, he can do anything he wants. God chooses not to love you if you sin, and then he chooses to torture you for all eternity
I don’t find anything worth worshipping in such an entity if it did exist
If you haven’t already discovered DZDebates on YouTube you’ll love him. Though it sounds like you may have.
New to me, thanks for the recommendation :D
Honestly it’s even worse than that when you consider he didn’t just make the rules, he made us. And he did it with perfect foreknowledge of everything that would happen.
So it’s not just “he sacrificed himself to save us from himself”, it’s “he sacrificed himself to save us from what he’s going to do to us because of the way he made us”.
Also as far as the cutting off his foot thing, it’s more like an axolotl cutting off his foot. He’ll have in back and be in perfect condition in just a few days.
Yeah, what bothers me is the giving of free will, paired with damnation for making the wrong choice and heaven for the right ones.
If anyone set up a scenario for their pet with the intention of eternally punishing them if they make the “wrong” choice, they’d be considered an asshole.
Granted, some interpretations of hell is really just being without the love of God, but knowing how great it should feel, which makes it slightly better? Still icky though.
You touched on it, but for completeness, the official Catholic stance is actually a pretty interesting interpretation that is the result of a kind of wild assumption, and the absolute upholding of free will. Basically God is meant to be the source of all positive things, including feeling and sensation. Every person has a 2 way connection to God. Any positive feeling you’ve ever had was from him through this connection. When someone commits a Mortal Sin, they are showing they reject God, and sever their side of the connection. Truly repenting will pick the line back up, and God never drops his side so long as you live. If you die with a severed line, he accepts that you really don’t want to associate with him, and he drops his side too. And so Hell is not a place, nor a punishment, it’s a state of being. All the gnashing of teeth and lakes of fire were originally metaphors for how badly a total lack of Grace, that connection, is. Later Dante’s Inferno and other works painted it in a striking way that caught the imagination, but it is not the Church’s official stance.
The really fun part is smashing together the idea that Mortal Sin is a rejection of God, and the core concept of the Silent Christian. IE, the Bible very literally, and repeatedly, states that God is love. Like, not that he embodies it, or that he is the source of it (though it also does claim that) but that the two concepts are literally interchangeable. You basically can rewrite it using a replace tool and swap out any instance of God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost with Love. It does make some kind of philosophical strange abstractness when it talks about loving Love, not that weird, with Love loving things, pretty weird. And it kind of takes “tough love,” to a whole new level with some of the wrath he brings in the 1st Testament, but that is fairly low on the list of weirdness between the two Testaments, and the God = love stuff is mostly from the 2nd.
But the core concept in the “invisible Christian,” is that those with no faith in a sky daddy can still be good Christians by letting
Godlove into their hearts. Therefore, anyone that has empathy can really be taken to be a good Chrostian, and obtain all the benefits whenever the Bible says you need to beleive in and accept God. And the corollary here is that committing Mortal Sin, IE willingly committing a heinous act such as murder, is a rejection ofGodlove in your life. Of course, the definition of what qualifies as Mortal Sin remains a contentious affair. Though the Catholics are generally more tolerant than the more hard-line sects, they are still pretty backwards here. But if you restrict it to things that cause serious harm to another person, then it becomes a comparatively reasonable model. Much more so than it is popularly presented, at any rate.That’s actually pretty wild.
A big part that disrupted my religious beliefs was, while leading a homeless outreach ministry in college, one of the most regular attendees was in fact sikh. Did some learning about their religion, and I really dug it.
Massive respect and admiration for her to come out regularly - we weren’t that Christian when we went out, meaning we never proselytized, but we still prayed together before and after each night, and did some stuff like offer to wash the feet of folks. And she stayed with us through this stuff because she loved helping. I just couldn’t accept that someone who is driven to the same loving actions would be judged as going to hell, just because their family was born with a different culture.
Given that context, I really enjoyed the perspective you shared. Thank you!
To be fair, the I don’t think the Church has ever officially taken a stance on the idea of the Invisible Christian. But Pope Francis was a proponent of the idea.
My sticking point was similar. How jesus’ sacrifice was so noble and he died to save everyone who came before, and will come after. Like yea sure thats a big deal, but how many people would take that trade? “Literally all of humanity… or me?” If you presented mortals with that option, mortals who dont know their father is all powerful god, and who dont know theyre going to be taken to heaven for eternity, how many would still take it?
Hell, most mortals have 1 person in their life they’d sacrifice themselves for. As the number saved goes up, the individual sacrifice seems to lose value imo. It wasnt even like he sacrificed himself for an eternity of suffering. He suffered for a few days… on the scale of eternity, thats pretty insignificant
The better ones don’t focus on hating yourself, but them telling you to receive love from God is still a substitute for self love. They don’t need to beat most people’s self worth into submission, as most people naturally struggle with self love. It’s hard to accept yourself, but easier to accept others (at least on average). By loving an entity you can’t actually meet, you can indirectly receive your own love by imagining it loves you. You don’t need to love your flawed self because God will love your flawed self. Just love the one who forgives and you never need to forgive yourself.
BELIEVE IN THE ME THAT BELIEVES IN YOU
The ones that teach what Jesus supposedly did do not substitute God’s love for self love. He was asked if the myriad Jewish laws were still in effect or if Jesus’ coming had nullifiedthem according to prophecy. Jesus basically says, “love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself. Do these 3 things, and you will never break any moral law. You don’t need a list of commandments to follow, because you won’t break them if you follow these three.”
and yet, many Christians are great at ignoring everything based Jesus ever said.
This is exactly how the mob works. They beat you up (tell you have sin for super natural things like sex and being born), and then you have to make up for those natural things the rest of your life (guilt and give money to the church). Yes, they provide the carrots, but only after they’ve repeatedly hit you with a stick. They’ll then “save” you from the stick.
Idk, it doesn’t bother me to be told I’m a sinner cuz the same doctrine preaches that everyone’s a sinner. You, me, the goddamn pope. Ned Flanders himself is also a sinner. The guy yelling at people through a megaphone with the turn or burn speech? You bet your ass he’s a sinner.
It’s kinda setting a baseline - humanity itself is flawed. It def has its peaks and highpoints, but I cannot deny that it is flawed, esp amidst today’s political and environmental concerns - can you?
I’m not bothered by acknowledging we’re imperfect shitters, since that sticker is applied to humanity as a whole. Even the most pious, trying their hardest to adhere to religion person, is still preached to be a sinner. Christianity then preaches that nothing you can do can change that except to accept to accept Jesus or something.
Idk - I’m probs not not the best discussion partner for this as I’m not particularly keen on spirituality and I’m likely missing nuance.
There might be those, but what drew me to the churches I attended was that they also regularly served the community. Hell, I was a homeless ministry outreach leader myself for years when I was in college. Every week we’d split up into pairs walking around downtown area at night handing out food, water, and building up relationships with folks.
There are some good churches out there, it sounds like you were lucky enough to find one.
100%. I fully recognize that this is solely what I’ve experienced and not what’s taught across the board (especially maybe in Republican states).
It’s quite something that you’re supposed to see that as positive and not as “fucking hell, that’s psychopathic”
Yeah man I get confused due to the holy Trinity thing so like… Is it more like giving up his son or cutting off a leg? Idk.
Pfffft, no thanks! Jesus already put in the intellectual and emotional labor for all of us, so I’m not going to spit in his face by thinking for myself, thank you very much!