"“But what if the
local church is more a holdout for some deeply regressive ideas about
gender and sexuality mixed in with some beautiful relationships and
lovely music and a side of toxic shame? What
if Jesus was more of a Jewish rabbi with some good ideas about the
dignity of sex workers and the unrelenting hypocrisy of religious
leaders? What if converting my neighbor into my image turns out to be
the most self-absorbed sort of idolatry I’ve ever participated in? What
if a deity who threatens hell can never be in a healthy relationship
with anyone? What if being obedient leads to emotional deadness,
intellectual numbness, and a moral Nuremberg defense?”
“C.S.
Lewis would urge me to work through his Liar, Lunatic, Lord equation.
Pascal would have me work through his wager. But both offer a myopic
lens for exploring all of this. What about Islam? What about atheists?
What about Buddha? If I wanted to crunch a modernist math equation about
whether Christ / Church / God is true, I would have to account for an
infinite number of variables.”
“I’m no more responsible for calculating whether Christianity is true than I am for calculating whether Zeus is real.”
“Leaving
the Church has allowed us to better love our neighbors, better care for
our souls, more sincerely pursue truth, more authentically receive and
offer grace.”
~ Tucker FitzGerald
Why I am no longer a Christian
Really! How does one untangle a skein that's centuries old? The best I can manage is that the divinity of Christ wasn't a given until 325 AD, possibly as a last ditch effort to unify Rome and serve as the basis of a missionary landgrab. The strategy of Constantine is still in use today! Ya gotta give the f***ers credit for having a good run!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's a skein that is a mess, and why do we have to figure it out to get anywhere or have these exact beliefs to "pass or go", it's nuts. I believe Christianity arose out of the fall of the temple in AD 70, See the book "Zealot" by Reza Aslan and then the divinity came in, built on legends and more in the 300s ad, constantine wanted to consolidate and unify Rome. With the Christian nationalism we are facing today in the USA, it's still going.....LOL about them having a good run, I agree! Studying religions before even the Mithras cult, shows how much of Christianity was basically hobbled together.
DeleteYeah, I want to read that book myself! "Life Of Brian" makes a similar point, as you know, especially with that scene at the beginning -- when they do actually represent Jesus -- and all the self-styled messiahs that Brian runs past, as he tries so desperately to duck his Roman pursuers. The moral here might well be -- great minds think alike, as well as their not so great counterparts. :-) Mr. Peep
ReplyDeleteHi Mr. Peep, Reza Aslan, says historically that the area was flooded with would be Messiahs, so the Pythons based Life of Brian on historical accuracy. Maybe one got chosen....and legends grew. The ending too, where they crucified so many probably has historical accuracy too.
DeleteI left Christian churches as soon as I learned from reading academic sources that Christians and their churches support slavery, a system of white supremacy and a system that oppresses poor people. I also learned the hard ways from talking to Christians that they endorse and accept these evils as God's plans for their lives. I talked to Christians online who told they already knew but they still attend churches and accept the system. This past year, several people I met at church unfriended me or ignored my posts.
ReplyDeleteThey usually like posts about thanking God for their suffering and something like that. They like to read posts about marriage and family, but I am not there yet. They want to read platitudes or quotes from false preachers and "positive-thinking" narcissistics.
When I learned that poor people and religious conservatives African Americans support Trump and white supremacy, I felt betrayed that Ii began to loathe Christian Churches except for few good like the ones Jonathan Harrington-White and Leroy Berber (spelling) lead as ministers who preach against shareholder religion and abuses of poor people.