|
|
Currently no members online:)
You are an anonymous user. You can register for free by clicking here |
We have 57 guests online !
|
|
|
|
|
Articles: Church of the Poisoned Mind |
Posted by
ariadne on Saturday, September 10, 2005 - 12:45 PM PST
One Sunday my family and I were invited to attend church by one of my husband's friend's wives. This friend is a very close friend of my husband so we attended. My husband and I are both very liberal in our ideas and although we believe in Christ as a separate entity apart from Christians we agreed to attend.
When we got there and the service began there was a lot of singing and all the normal things that go on in a church. So far, so good. Then the service began and the preacher started to preach. He discussed many topics. To my wildest disbelief, the service was enjoyable because most of the time he was putting down televangelists and how they take advantage of people so he really got our attention.
My husband and I though maybe we found a church unlike others , maybe this was the one for us and then it happened. The preacher began walking though the aisles and he was really getting into what he was saying. He went on and on and then he said something that really floored us both. He said, "We are going into the gate of the New Jerusalum and none of those homosexuals are going to be able to get in". My husband and I looked at eachother. We were in shock. This had absolutely no relevance to anything he had said before now. Then the music started.
As music began my husband and I talked amongst ourselves and my husband said, "See, this is why I never go to church, this always happens. Everything is going fine then all of a sudden they have to bring up something about the homosexuals" We stood there for a minute and then I started thinking that after the service we should say something to the preacher about this. So I told my husband that I was going to say something to him. He told me not to at first but I promised to be nice about it and then he agreed.
We had to wait for people to be prayed over because that is the type of church this was. People were walking to the pulpit and letting the preacher pray over them. There was still music playing. It was now the end of the service. I waited until the last person was through and I walked up to this preacher. I said to him, " I really enjoyed the service but I don't understnad how the homosexuals had any relevance to anything you were talking about" He said that what they were doing was sin. I brought up the fact that Jesus came to Mary Magdalene's aid when she was being stoned to death, you know, "he who has not sinned cast the first stone". I asked him what gave him the idea that God didn't love the homosexuals as much as he loved everyone else. He brought up the sin thing again. I told him we were all sinners. I mentioned the fact that Jesus only hung out with sinners most of the time and that was mainly why he was hated so much. He started talking about the gay agenda. I asked him what agenda that was. Because we all know that Christians are the ones with an agenda. People started gathering around. Friends of the preacher's no doubt. They got in on the argument. They started accusing me of having an agenda. I mentioned to the preacher that he was teaching hate in his church. I said he was not doing what Christ would have done. His face turned red with anger. He broke out the Bible and started quoting from ROMANS. My husband came up then because he saw the crowd around me. This preacher was sweating. HE was tongue tied. What he read in Romans was a letter from Paul about the ROMANS lying with other men. Whatever. Still , I made a mention to the preacher that Gays in America pay taxes like everyone else and in America there is freedom of religion and that not everyone has the same religion that he does. My husband told him that all these other religions had the same universal truths about God. the preacher said "I'm not universal I am GOD".
The preacher then asked me to please let him preache the way he wanted to in his church. I wanted to tell him it wasn't his church but I walked away. Atleast I got to watch him squirm.
The thing I learned most from this experience was that by going to a preacher and questioning them about their hate. They really can't back it up. He tried to with the Bible but you can't do that when you are talking about Jesus. He couldn't do that either. It was an enjoyable experience. I loved seeing him squirm. His comment about the homosexuals in his sermon was uncalled for. It wasn't even relevant except to stir up the hate that is already there. It stirs up the fear that these people already have. They really think that by gays living their lives that it is hurting them when it is not. They have never met any gay people,most of them so how would they know? I have had a lot of gay friends over the years. One in particular who used to get beaten up all the time when we were kids. Stirring up that fear in the house of God is what gets gay people killed or hurt. I take offense in that. Then they think it is ok because it is justified by God.
It looks like my husband and I will have to believe in Jesus in our own way. That is ok because I believe Jesus went to Asia during his lost years anyhow. I believe Jesus is closer to being a Buddhist than being a fundamentalist Christian anyhow. That is just my belief based on some books I have read on the subject and by some things he does, well, some yogis, they practice the same things. A bit creepy.
My husband's friend's wife was angry at us. She got over it when I told her what happened. The end.
|
|
| |
|
|
Average Rating : 4.0
Total ratings : 1
|
|
|
|
|
|
Church of the Poisoned Mind | Login/Create an account | 5 Comments |
| Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content. |
Re: Church of the Poisoned Mind
by gothicmorman (litty_klj@hotmail.com)
on Sep 10, 2005 - 04:38 PM
(User info | Send a Message)
http://www.freewebs.com/gothicmorman
|
wow, i wish you had told him it was not his church. that would have been the candle on the icing - one thing that is highly stressed about churches is that they are houses of god and that they are given by god to be houses of worship to him. every church i have ever gone to has stressed that the church belongs not to the people but to god.
this is why i do not go to church either. i believe in christianity and its many denominations in the same way i believe in everything else. there is no "wrong" or "right" way except what is the wrong or right path for the individual. a preacher can't dictate what your path will be for you, or what you [i]should[/i] or [i]should not[/i] do. People should be able to find their own definition of God and worship and faith. i believe in christianity but i choose not to follow it because it is not right for me. many christians believe that homosexuality is wrong and thats fine, if they think that then that is their opinion and it doesn't bother me in any way. what bothers me is that they will tell me that my opinion is wrong and that i am wrong to be thinking whatever i think about the at hand issue and that i need to be healed from my ways. opinions are fine and christians are fine the only thing that bothers me about them and about church is that for the most part they feel the immense need to convert me, or change my opinion. its all fine until they start imposing thier views over other peoples. what makes them right? or anyone else wrong?
|
Re: Church of the Poisoned Mind by ariadne (minervous@panic.com) on Sep 10, 2005 - 06:18 PM (User info | Send a Message) http://n/a | Looking back, there was more I wished I would have said. What really got to me was how red his face had become and how much he was sweating and raising his voice. This was obviously a touchy subject. He could not defend it properly. There is no possible way to defend hating in the name of Jesus. It is so against Christ's nature. If Christ were to come down right now he would break bread with the gay guys before that preacher. I wonder if that preacher even knows this. Christ would minister love to the gays not spit on them. What Christians do though is send out the message that gays are not welcome in their churches. Perhaps that is where God might like them to hang out. Maybe God misses them. Silly I know. It is just hard for homosexuals to feel loved by God when God's religious zealots are preaching hellfire and brimstone to them in particular. I don't think it is up to any living man walking on this earth to usurp that authority and speak for God on that level. |
[ No anonymous comments ]
Re: Church of the Poisoned Mind by gothicmorman (litty_klj@hotmail.com) on Sep 11, 2005 - 11:05 AM (User info | Send a Message) http://www.freewebs.com/gothicmorman | "Hating in the name of jesus" - true, there is no way of justification but somehow it seems to have been popular throughout all ages. the entire crusades were done in the name of god right?
I think though if god, or jesus or whoever came down - given that he dines with sinners as said in your articles, maybe he would dine with the priest before the homosexuals or goths or whoever else the church is prosecuting against because they are not doing anything wrong, i've never seen anyone storm into the church and try to turn everyone into satanists or anything.
its kind of hard to say because i can't really judge what is wrong or right outside of myself. i can say christianity is wrong for me but it is indeed right for that preacher and the congregation.
really he should be able to preach whatever he wants without getting bothered for it. the people in the church choose to listen and if they don't like it they don't have to listen. neither do any of us - as long as outsiders don't go arguing with him maybe he won't impose any "morals" upon them.
even without agreeing with him it would be simple to get along but apparantly his face was very red so i suppose he was quite mad. i kind of agree with him in the sense that he should be able to preach what he wants and not get rattled for it but he prolly could have handelled the situation better and not yelled at you guys or anything, and at least be able to back up his opinion. maybe it would be easier if there were not so many interpretations of the bible, some people think that a certain passage will mean one thing while another person might think the same passage says something totally different. christians can't even agree between themselves on some things, like god for instance, some believe he is male completely and will not even begin to think about maybe he is female as well, some think that he is both and some people think only female. it seems like a very ambiguous religion though it has so many codes.
of usurping authority the bible is man speaking for god. all preaching is man speaking on god's behalf. i think it would be alright if all preachers were very in tune with god but like you were saying he begins to see it as HIS church and maybe forgets about god a bit. |
[ No anonymous comments ]
Re: Church of the Poisoned Mind by Anonymous-Coward on Sep 16, 2005 - 12:38 AM | I go to a catholic all-girls school, and it is a prerequisite that one must take religion and therefore i do. Im not anti-christian by any means, so i listen in class and do pretty well, but i have my own thoughts on the matter, as do most of us. We had a guest speaker, who i was determined to hear out. Anyway, he turned out to be an ex-priest who actually had some interesting thoughts on the 21st century religion matter. I wouldn't say it was rivited or anything, but it was rather interesting getting a new perspective on the matter. He was talking about secular schools as apposed to christian schools, and he started saying that those who are produced from secular schools are far less likely to become interested in social and moral issues concerning our society for example they probably wont become animal activists. This, in itself, is a pretty genralised veiw of youths, but not enough to make me break my vow of respectful silence. But then he started to say that this is because they are not instilled with religious doctrine and that this is the reason why they are so empathetical. Unfortunatly i could hack this, so i said that the reason why we go to school is to prepare us for life outside in the 'real world' (whatever this pertains to) and a part of this is the instilling of moral values, including things like caring for the environment etc. To this, he said 'yes you are right' and begun talking about his schooling days in Melbourne. Clearly didnt want to answer my question. From here he begun saying that the muslim religion was based on revenge and is very violent. PROPAGANDA. One of my friends is musliim and said to him, 'im a muslim and it does not teach revenge, merely not taking crap from anyone. He went from talking about interesting modern issues (catholocism in the 21st century) and turned it into a propaganda filled brainwashing session about generalised veiws on society. It drove me nuts, however, i still recieved death stares from my religion teachers. I do, however, agree with gothicmorman, what does make the catholic church right, or me right, or anyone else wrong and where do we draw the line between a talk about someone's own veiws and a biased, generalised veiw that is forced upon 'impressionable' teenagers. Personally i take everything i am told with a pinch of salt, but i am not everyone (thank goodness) and therefore there would be those umong us who would believe it...when does it become harmfull? |
[ No anonymous comments ]
Re: Church of the Poisoned Mind by gothicmorman (litty_klj@hotmail.com) on Sep 23, 2005 - 05:29 PM (User info | Send a Message) http://www.freewebs.com/gothicmorman | i guess it becomes violent when it starts teaching people hate and intolerence and violence. christians talk about loving everyone and that is a large part of their religion (Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world) so i guess when it starts to teach people to hate other religions then it is going a bit too far. i can see how loving everyone goes along with trying to convert everyone because christians see their way as the best and they want to see everyone have the best as that is a loving thing to do but it also makes sense how that can be misenterpreted to mean that other religions are BAD as opposed to simply not-as-good. maybe the line is someone in a gray area of following something so closely and getting caught up in lots of sidetracking details that one loses sight of exactly what they are following. |
[ No anonymous comments ]
|
|