The Greatest Story Never Told

A little while ago I received an awesome comment at the end of the Entrance Exam to A Christian Seminary; it was from an old friend of mine. I wanted to publish my response for everyone to read in the hopes that something might be learned from it. Maybe reading my position on religion might open a door for someone else. Note the names have been changed to protect futurerev for retaliation from the fundamentalist whachos he works with.

Futurerev,

I appreciate your email and I have read you responses. The problem is I don’t really want to respond if you think criticizing your religion is a personal criticism of you. I respect you and do not want to hurt you that way.

I learned a long time ago to keep my emotions separate from my ideas because, if I didn’t, business and other factors would crucify me. If you toss your ideas into an arena but do not separate your emotions from them, you cannot objectively argue or learn anything. This is the exact reason why the religion argument has eluded mankind in the past. When religions are under fired, zealots often throw their emotions up as a smoke screen to shield them from the irrational and illogical ideas they support. This is how a constructive conversation about religion often turns into a tenth grade name calling contest.

I enjoy a great debate, especially one highlighting religion. But if I am going to hurt you with my responses then I would rather not even go there. Although I do not think very highly about Christianity, I still respect you and your feelings.

I do have to retract something from my response to you which you pointed out to me. You are correct in that god never told Moses to go and rape, he told the people of Benjamin to go and rape to get wives. But it was Moses who carved unborn babies from the wombs of pagan women and then threw these innocents from a cliff or smashed them on a rock. I guess today’s Christians base their abortion argument on that chapter in the Bible? The only reason I included this, was I believe Moses to be more like Saddam Hussein or any of the other terrible titans throughout history, rather than a holy man. I did not make this up; it is written in the Bible.

When I worked for my former employer, I did “try on” Christianity for a short time. But when I read the Bible and read passages like what Moses just did, how could I support that? I am not a man of war nor am I man who demands or understands others who demand blood. In answer to your question about our justice system, I would forgive somebody who wronged me. At least I hope I would. You are confusing justice with revenge. Justice is NOT revenge; these are two separate terms and ideologies.

We humans are very fallible so I understand why we fail to see the difference, but I would expect an all-knowing, all-loving god to understand this but clearly the Christian god does not. I would expect this all-loving god to teach us the difference between justice and revenge and then show us an example, like forgiving us for sins without expecting bloodshed.

The Bible would in fact be the greatest story ever told if god would have intervened right before the crucifixion and said, “Stop this madness!! All is forgiven; please accept my son to teach you the ways of love, toleration and forgiveness.” Then Jesus could have lived among us and taught us the ways of an all-knowing, all-loving god. No more hocus pocus. No more blind faith or people flying to heaven or death or blood. Wow what an ending!! Instead, we get a brutalized torture and murder sequence that people apply some twisted ideology to be for our forgiveness, and then mankind echoes god’s thirst for blood with 2,000 years of war, murder and mayhem. Now how can that possibly make any logical sense to anyone?

I have been wronged many times in my past but have chosen to forgive those who did me wrong. I have already forgiven my former employer for my wrongful termination. I wasn’t always like that; in my youth I was quite a hellcat. I’m not proud of every aspect of my youth, but it took me many years to come to this enlightened thinking. I understand that bad people need to punished or rehabilitated or whatever you want to call it. But nobody and certainly no government have the right to extinguish life; it is far too precious. I would expect a just and loving god to understand this principle.

Please understand I am not trying to change your beliefs; I am just trying to give you insight into mine. I hope this email does not offend you and if it does then I apologize for saying this to you but I could never apologize for thinking this way.

Your friend,

DarthImmortal