Any Christian that visits this site enough will realize that tons of people are pissed off. Perhaps that's an understatement. Enraged is more like it. We have all lost something because we walked down the Christian road and found it treacherous, dangerous and beset by bandits, thieves and ravenous wolves.
We sought for God and for goodness, but we found hypocrisy, dysfunction, close-mindness, guilt, shame, and a people only too willing to condemn our friends and loved ones to hell because they disagreed.
Who will give us back those years, those relationships and friendships we could have had, that time we could have spent growing and learning about ourselves more and about others? No one can, and that is what enrages us against the fools peddling false gold.
There's more. We are angry, because Christianity attacks our sense of dignity and worth.
After all of the talk about morality, Christians are forced to support a religion that condemns individuals based on one thing -- whether they believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Under these conditions, 1) a Christian is saying in effect that no human being's actions have moral value or relevance if he/she falls under another belief system and 2) that every human being who rejects a culturally-specific and limited view of who God is and how He has revealed Himself to the world is worthy of damnation.
Why wouldn't I be insulted by that? Theoretically, if a man is hung for killing a family of 5, I have no objection and will say that the state is just for executing right judgment.
But if a man is hung or tortured because his hair is red, or he prefers to drink coffee rather than tea, where is the justice in this?
The Bible is guilty of double-talk here: If I don't believe in Christ, I'm condemned regardless of my actions; my beliefs, my morals, my hopes, my dreams have no meaning -- Christians believe this, and have the nerve to say it to my face and smile while they do it.
To add insult to injury, no Christian I've encountered even acknowledges this fundamental problem. There is nothing so frustrating as speaking to a person who CANNOT understand why their position fundamentally insults your sense of worth and dignity.
So, my dear Christian, believe what you will. But don't tell me that you love me while supporting a religion that discounts me as a person able to make moral choices, deserving more than an eternity in flames just because I don't think that you have a monopoly on who God is and what he looks like.
If there is a God, he belongs to all of us. And we don't deserve hell for believing so.
from "Figuring It Out"
These letters were published between January 2001 and February 2010. To view recent posts, go to The Main Blog at ExChristian.Net
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