I'm christian, that doesnt mean im crazy. Parts 1 and 2
I've started posting this on myspace and facebook. i'll write a new chapter every week or so. lemme know what you think:
Chapter one: Its not detrimental so why write it?
I must first preface this book with an brief rundown of my beliefs. I am a Chistian, and actually I can name the religion I belong to with more specificity but I choose not to as I am not speaking on behalf of that church. So, for the sake of full disclosure, I am not an Evangelical Christian, I am a Normal Christian. Yes, I do believe in all sorts of things that Atheists would find completely abominable like resurrection from the dead, sin, God and that great big divisive being: Jesus. I think Jesus was a real live man who walked around on the Earth, was really and truly crucified and really and truly dead. I also believe Romans poked him with a stick to make sure he was dead. Sound pretty human to me. I believe he rose from the dead and that the act of dying and resurrecting served to save the whole wide world from eternal punishment for sin. Yep, its all pretty nutty but at least I’m willing to admit it sounds crazy.
I do not believe that minuet differences in doctrine can prevent a person from going to heaven. I believe salvation is a gift from God given to all the world. To me, to say that believing that the gays are or are not saved can prevent a person from going to heaven really craps on the idea that Jesus’s death meant something. If you can overthrow it that easily then really, what was the point? He knew we were all sinful, if his salvation was that weak, I doubt he’d have gone through all the trouble. Did you see that Mel Gibson movie? That looked like it hurt! I don’t see someone going through all of that only to have it be rendered meaningless over a matter of semantics. I am pretty sure the only way you can ruin your own salvation is to blatantly turn it down. Meaning to look at the gift God gave you and say “Ya ,I get what your Son did, but I’m totally fine over here without it. Did you happen to keep the receipt?”
So then you might ask yourself: “what the point in writing something that’s apt to offend many Evangelicals?” If I don’t think their belief in the necessity to invite Jesus into your heart (more on that later) is detrimental to their salvation, why would I bother to correct them? My answer is simple: the behavior of modern Evangelicals is such a turn off to the world at large that people look at them and say “you’re crazy and your god is worthless.” As noted above I do believe that is detrimental to someone’s salvation. The Bible says it is better to have a millstone tied to your neck and get dropped into the sea than to corrupt the minds of children (Mark 9:42). Every day I see these beliefs pushed out into the world in such a fashion as to turn people with childlike faiths away from Christ. I see modern Evangelical Christianity as the greatest threat to Christianity as a whole since the Roman Catholic Church circa 1517.
So my friends I am hear to tell you that the crazy Christianity you read about is teaching some things that are either just not in the Bible or are playing up minute parts of the Bible in order to forsake the whole message. Stop looking around, there is no Kool-aide that I want you to drink. I’m just here to remind you that Christianity is about love and grace, not about gays and abortions. There are normal Christians out there. In fact, you could be friends with one right now and not even know it. I’m hear to tell you how we see it
Chatpter 2: Jesus: Everlasting God or Undead Succubus?
I was recently talking to a group of Christian friends about how its so difficult to find a decent Bible study anymore. Those of you non-Christians may not be able to relate. But for those of us who consider ourselves “normal” Christians its easy to spot a bad Bible study within the first five to ten minutes. They usually start with people going around the room to introduce themselves. If, during that introduction, you hear the phrase “I was saved on…” followed by a date, you’ve found yourself in a bad Bible study. You can either fake a 911 text from your baby sitter and get out now, or prepare yourself for several grueling hours of talking about when you dropped to your knees and prayed the sinners prayer. Usually these involve some kind of testimony about how lost their lives were and how once they invited Jesus into their hearts they turned their lives around and were saved.
Evangelicals base this off of Romans 10:9 which says “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” It is a pretty literal interpretation of the Bible. I’m not really sure where the inviting Jesus into your heart came from. My best guess is John 1:12 which talks about receiving God. I suppose that’s sort of like receiving a guest into your home, and if you have a guest who hasn’t been invited you’re probably not going to be too excited to receive them. However, the Bible does not clearly say “you must say the sinners prayer and ask Jesus into your life or you are going to hell.” By the Evangelical definition I am going to hell. This is despite my love for Jesus, my interest in acting in accordance with His word and the fact that I remember (usually) to capitalize the H in Him when referring to Jesus. I was raised in the church. My mom sent me to Sunday school all my life and only in college did I stop going to church every Sunday. I am what an Evangelical would call “religious.” This is code for “can probably out-Bible them because I was actually forced by my pastor to read the Bible, the whole Bible. Not just Revelation and Romans.”
To me, believing that one needs to invite Jesus into their heart puts Jesus on par with vampires. They, also, must be invited in in order to become a part of your life. Ironically, they also make you undead, sort of similar to giving you eternal life, yes? But I digress. To say that it’s a requirement to invite Jesus into your heart means that the converse must also be true: Jesus can’t enter your heart without invitation. Is it just me or does that not sound like an all powerful God to you? If I, with my mere human mind, can keep all powerful Christ from going wherever He chooses to go, does that not make me more powerful than Christ? The belief is flattering, to be sure, but I doubt the truth to it. It also implies that God’s ultimate goal was to put attachments on His salvation. That seems to me the total opposite of the point to having Christ die for our sin in the first place. Christ did away with the need for animal sacrifice for our sin. So, now you don’t need to kill a goat and say “Hey, Big Daddy that one was for the fornication!” Christ already died for everyone. So no one needs to give up those sacrifices anymore. God knew we were going to fail. He made the thing fool proof. God already knew the world was getting really big. He was aware how the story changes every time it gets told. God actually saw all the Evangelical insanity thousands of years before it happened. That’s why salvation is now so easy. Just don’t throw it away and you’re solid. For those of you out there who constantly say things like “what about kids in Africa who die of malaria at age ten and never heard about Christ?” I have an answer. Its pretty hard to reject something you’ve never heard of right? So I’m pretty sure that little girl is gonna be just fine. The Bible doesn’t require all of these steps and Jesus’s death didn’t happen as a way to rule out who is or is not saved. John 3:16-17 “For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That whoever believes in Him will not parish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”
This leads us to chapter three, “What about the Jews?”