A young woman went to her psychiatrist and told her there might something wrong with her. Even though it hasn’t been long since they got married, she doesn’t feel any love to her husband. Actually the only thing she feels about him is… fear.
The therapist asked the woman if she experienced any problems in their marriage. The woman said that her husband does love her… he keeps telling her how much he loves her and that will never leave her…
BUT…
“if you’re ever unfaithful to me or you won’t love me the way I want or just refuse to do what I tell you, I will put in in our basement, tie you up and I’ll be whipping you with my belt day by day unless you apologize and promise to do better”.
Should the therapist focus on the therapy…or just call the cops?
One more silly story… a few year old kid yelled at his dad that he hates him. Dad tied him up, kept for a few days without food or drink and tortured him by burning his body with cigarettes.
Do you have any doubts that in these two stories the ones who are in the wrong are grownups, not the kids?
I am sure you don’t! But still… if you are an orthodox Christian then…
Religion is telling you to think God is like the grown ups in these stories.
Like the abusive husband and the dad.
God loves you but… if you don’t love him back, he will cast you into hell for everlasting torture.
God forgives all of your sins… but if you mess up one little detail, let’s say fail to believe Jesus is God… bye bye heaven, welcome hell.
God accepted you into his family… but if you mess up your life too bad you will be kicked out for good.
God loves children… but there’s a problem when they reach the age of accountability, after which they must quickly make their choice… TURN OR BURN!
God – doctor Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?
Today I can barely understand how someone can believe in God who is at the same time love and a tyrant monster, throwing at people punishments that are totally blown out of proportions.
Well, I believed in such a god for decades…
When a human father does good things to his children we call it love.
When a human father hurts his children we call it pathology.
When our heavenly father does good things to his children we call it love.
When our heavenly father hurts his children we call it … still love.
Or maybe… “justice”.
But God is always love, everything he does is love, so…
Our minds can’t go on when we have an internal conflict, therefore we made a distinction between human love and God’s love.
All healthy and mature people know what love is. We don’t need it written down, we don’t need commandments. I’ve never inserted a fork in my wife’s eye even though I didn’t have any commandment not to do it.
I just knew.
And you know too.
If you saw a mother beating senselessly their children and telling them it’s out of love you will know she’s insane. But somehow everything God does is called love, no matter how insane that looks.
I just read the Bible – and have been doing this for 40 years – and I just can’t find anything there about God being the author of human suffering.
I also believe we have love written in our hearts. Of course, there are mental problems, toxic parents, bad influence of environment and lots of other reasons that can make us forget what love is and behave in the opposite direction, but given our childhood is normal – we will be able to love and to tell what love is.
Let’s take the most simple example – the way parents love babies. They’re tender, delicate, soft, and there’s nothing a baby can do to lose their love. Even a baby who “maliciously” poops their diaper 10 times a day, in the worst possible moments will still be loved and cherished and won’t even get a bad word.
And most wouldn’t disagree that anyone who’d try to punish a baby for anything would have to have their mental health checked.
Later as the child grows some things will slightly change but most shouldn’t. The more the child understands, the more parents will demand from them to teach them how to adapt to society and lead their lives in a positive direction. Certain kind of correcting actions, you may call – punishments – may be overtaken – but not as parental revenge, but to teach.
Most of these “punishments” should just be natural consequences of child’s actions. You lost your toy? You don’t have it. You rode your bike a little carelessly? You fell and got hurt.
This is such a far cry from the way religion portrays God’s ways!
God will love and accept you fully only after certain conditions and the worst thing is… we can never be sure if he really forgave us. And if we’re not forgiven… the punishment will be unbelievably cruel. And this punishment is NOT going to be a correcting action and is NOT to teach you anything as you will NOT even have a chance to come back to society.
It seems as a pure revenge.
It’s way worse than human jails.
Whose love seems better, God’s or human parents’?
Yeap, of course, human! Can we, people, love better than God?
Is it a blasphemy?
Maybe I do blasphemy indeed, but not against real God. I blasphemy against the god created and taught by religion.
GOOD NEWS – FOR WHO?
“Gospel”, in the original Bible language – euangellion (we get the word evangelical from it) literally means just “good news”.
When you stop and thing about Christian teachings, is your heart filled with joy?
When you meet someone and introduce the gospel to them… do you speak with joy? Do your listeners react with joy?
No?? How come? This is… the Good News!
But who is it good for?
I think it would be super good if you were…. totally sinless.
Plus… actually… let’s assume you are sinless… most Christian denominations seem to teach your sins won’t matter to God if you only believe… in a specific way… and the WAY can vary…
When I was studying at the Bible college I had once a few hours long conversation with other students and the teacher debating if we can still be saved if we don’t believe the Holy Spirit is a person.
Here’s how smoothly religion puts it:
You are a sinner. Sin separates you from God and you are on your way to hell. But salvation is free, therefore you don’t need to do anything.
Wait a second. You don’t need to do anything but… you need to believe.
Salvations if not from works, but from faith.
Isn’t faith a work?
A work is everything we do or say.
Faith is a work then.
So the fact is religions is telling us nonsense: “you don’t need to do any works to be saved – except for this one – believing”.
That’s theory, lots of denominations will also indicate certain works that must show in your life to prove that your saved.
Some denominations will also remind you your faith will work as a saving agent as long as it’s alive, active. The moment you stop believing – you’re in danger of eternal hell as well.
With hundreds of variants of what a real faith is… the Good News is the most confusing news in the history of the Universe.
It drove me crazy for many years. How to tell if I’m saved? I was a Catholic where I was taught for each “mortal” sin I will be sentenced to hell.
An example of a mortal sin? Skipping a Sunday’s mass.
Then I became a Baptist. I was taught the salvation is free, from faith, as long I have the kind of faith specified by the church.
And lots of Sundays I was read this passage in church:
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you-unless, of course, you fail the test? (2 Corinthians 13:5 )
OMG! How do I test myself? Is Paul telling me to perform some kind of test, maybe a few times a day. to check if I’m still saved?
And what if it turns out I fail? Am I doomed forever? Can I somehow… redo my faith?
Because if I can’t… HELLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!
Terrifying.
Plus… how can I know the Baptists have it right? Maybe Pentecostals? ASG? Mormons? Jehova’s Witesses?
How about… none of them has it right?
2 of the most common questions that come up in philosophical or theological disputes about God are as follows:
- How can merciful God allow so much suffering in the world?
- How come merciful God allow eternal suffering in hellfire?
I won’t come up with the answer to the first questions. I do have an idea and I think we have more free will that we think but it’s not the place for this.
I will come up with an answer to the second question though. You may like it.
If your hole life you have been thinking that there is something wrong in the picture of receiving eternal suffering from the hands of loving God…
You are right. It’s wrong.
Listen to your own logic, your critical thinking. Don’t listen to stupid explanations like “God doesn’t throw anyone in hellfire, people themselves reject Him and choose hell”. There has never been a human being that would like to sit a flame and continue doing this after a few minutes… nah, rather seconds… and is religion trying to convince me people CHOOSE it for eternity?
If logic and critical thinking is not game changer, how about the Bible itself?
It may not be a well known fact, at least not among orthodox Christians, but…
The Bible doesn’t mention hell at all.
Not even once.
Click to read more about hell – here and here.
Lots of Christians react very emotionally when you try to deny existence of hell. It may seem weird… aren’t we supposed to be happy to get a chance to debunk hell and to stop worrying about our eternity?
If the idea that there is no hell causes your anxiety… try to think hard WHY that is so.
Some of the reasons I believe are fairy common are:
- Deep down we ourselves are convinced the idea of hell makes no sense.
- We can’t fathom God forgiving all people because we paint God after our own image and we can’t forgive.
Instead of listening to religion, take a moment and look at the world! We have been created after God’s image! Look at a mother hugging a baby! Look at a pair of love birds who have seen each other after a long break! Watch the loving, full of amazement, gaze of a proud parent who is witnessing their child’s first steps!
Or check these 80 year olds who take a morning walk, holding hands, looking at each other with such love as if they were teenagers!
What you see is just a mere shadow of the kind of love God has towards us.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:10.19)
US doesn’t mean Christians or Catholics or Protestants. US means also unbelievers, cult members, and also… murderers… all the “baddest kinds” of people we can imagine.
His love means one crucial thing.
We don’t need to worry expecting a punishment.
If you have doubts that God has problems with forgiving us… look at the best example.
Jesus.
One day He was brought a paralyzed man (Mark 2:5).
Jesus didn’t not tell the man to confess or promise to be better or to become a Christian.
He forgave without even being asked to.
And this is what God’s love is like.
