Preachers who lose their faith

[mothwentbad]

For some reason, the topic of this post bothers me very much all the way to the core. I tried to say a few things about it, but I can't seem to capture the existential horror of the thing. It's just one of those things that make me want to pound my fist on the table and make humanity splinter into nothingness on account of its being too ridiculous

Comments

[virginia_fell]

I believe that corporations shouldn't be permitted to write laws that allow them to exploit their customers and taxpayers, and I believe it strongly enough that I show up on people's doorsteps to ask them to pay for my fight and my paycheck and in general spend money to ensure I can keep doing what I'm doing.

While I see the difference between what I do and what priests do, I also see the connection there. I have information and opinions that I feel can help other people do something about the problems in their lives, and my solutions are colored strongly by what I view as a problem (lack of universal access to health care or clean water) and what I view as a solution (cutting back on corporate power over lawmaking and enforcement).

And yeah, I've staked my wellbeing on it. Again, I see the differences between preaching and canvassing, but it seemed like you might not understand why anybody would accept pay to go around explaining things that are important to them to people who're willing to give them money for it. If I'm wrong, my apologies. But... it's just a sense I got.

[mothwentbad]

I understand why you do what you do, or at least I'm not baffled and distraught at the very thought of it. The differences are huge and important.

[mothwentbad]

There's a lot that's just plain disanalogous here. Christianity is about worshipping a petty torturer deity and telling kids that if they don't bow down and submit with complete willingness and joy, then they deserve to have their genitals munched on by imps forever and ever, amen.

And it's about claiming to be a trillion times more sure of it than anyone ever could be, because being a model of confidence is always more important than sharing who you and your fellow people really are and what you really struggle with inside. It's about assuming that your flock just can't handle the truth or acknowledged ambiguity, and helping them kid themselves through it. It's about making ordinary human impulses and feelings seem unutterably loathsome and shameful because no one would ever say what they really feel instead of what their book says that they're supposed to feel in a million years.

If someone had explained to me that they weren't really sure of what they were saying, and that sometimes they actually disbelieved it entirely ("faith in faith") and that they were just there to help out those people who wanted to kid themselves, but that everyone else should just move along, it would've made things a lot less confusing for me.

Some of that might vary from church to church, but that's what I got from it.

[suegypt]

Christianity is about worshipping a petty torturer deity and telling kids that if they don't bow down and submit with complete willingness and joy, then they deserve to have their genitals munched on by imps forever and ever, amen.

Well, so much for trying to have an exchange in which my point of view, or any non-atheist's is heard and considered, as i tried to do for yours.

Really, why ask questions about the motivations of Christians or other theists if you say they are all stupid and deluded, and won't entertain that one or two might have something enlightened to say? I'm sorry I wasted my time.

[bec_87rb]

Christianity is about worshipping a petty torturer deity and telling kids that if they don't bow down and submit with complete willingness and joy, then they deserve to have their genitals munched on by imps forever and ever, amen.

Funny, I don't remember any of this from Sunday school. Genital munching? Jesus the Torturer? I must have missed that day.