Stupid Shit Christians Say/Do
Ecclesiastes 7.25: I tried to understand, examine, and comprehend the role of wisdom in the scheme of things… “but, alas, I was unable to”
For this topic, there is no reason to go to the bible for writing material; Facebook and personal experience give me more substance for the matter at hand than I could possibly put on paper. There are so many examples freely doled out by well-meaning, albeit incredibly spiritually ignorant christians, thereby making available to me a nearly endless supply. Unbeknownst to them, many christians’ posts on Facebook portray the toll and havoc that years of drinking the Kool Aid have wreaked on their sanity.
While I was a pastor, I did a sermon titled “That’s Not in the Bible”, referring to the stupid shit people say about god in relationship to bad things that happen to them. Some of those things are:
· God gives his most difficult battles to his strongest soldiers.
· God’s will/timing is perfect.
· Everything happens for a reason.
· God will never give you more than you can handle.
· God is in control.
· And finally, and my favorite… God is teaching you a lesson.
All of these are used by well-intended believers to help them get through difficult times, to help explain why they went through horrible circumstances, and to justify god’s “allowing” it to happen, and his standing by just “being there” in the first place.
I can handle this—after all, god knows me better than I know myself, and will never give me more than I can handle. Therefore, I’m going to be okay.
There is a reason, a good to come out of my being abused. God allowed it to bring good from it. Therefore, my pain and the hell I went through have purpose and meaning and are not in vain.
God’s will is perfect, and since my hell was his will for me, his plan for me, it will be okay, and I have to find a reason to be thankful for what happened, right? After all, I would never want to go against his perfect will.
I must be one tough son of a bitch, after all the battles god has given me! Please…I just can’t even go there with this ridiculous bullshit.
God is in control; therefore, what happened to me must be his doing. If he had wanted me not to go through it, he would have prevented it. Therefore, I am better off having gone through the hell I did, because it was his will for me.
And my favorite—God was teaching me a lesson in what happened to me; that’s why he caused it to happen, so that I can learn from it, from the error of my ways, so that I can grow stronger in my faith and in my christ-likeness.
In his book “Is God to Blame?”, pastor and theologian Greg Boyd writes about a married woman who had recently gone through a very traumatic experience. She had wanted to get married and be a mother since a very young age. She grew up, got married, and she and her husband set out to make her lifelong dream come true; they set out to get pregnant. After months of trying unsuccessfully, they saw a doctor. The news that they received was a crushing blow; she was not able to conceive. Devastated, they left the doctor’s office, and announced their sad news to their church. Of course, many prayers were said for her and her husband, asking god for a miracle, and for them to have a baby, despite the medical diagnosis. And to their shock and joy, she did exactly that; she became pregnant, and began looking forward to her ultimate dream. To be a mother. To have a child. Fast forward to the birth, during which, complications set in. After a difficult labor, she gave birth to her long-awaited child—who was stillborn. That’s right, this “miracle” baby she so desperately wanted, on whose behalf so many prayers went up, came into this world lifeless—the cause…the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, causing it to suffocate during the birth process.
As if this weren’t horrific enough, it gets worse—much worse, and this time, at the hands of someone you would think she could trust—her pastor. After a period of mourning, she sought out counsel and some form of relief from her pastor. The response from this man of the cloth? God did this to her to teach her a lesson—a lesson that god never made clear to her. And it goes downhill from there. This brilliant preacher then went on to inform her that if she didn’t learn her lesson (He never did help her figure out what that lesson was), god would most likely not allow her to conceive and have another child.
There is one more example of insanity in the name of god that I would be amiss if I didn’t record here. In order to appreciate the horrific nature of it, you first need a little behind the scenes insight. This incident took place in the treatment center where I used to work. They have a christian program, for which I was a pastor. At the time, we had four pastors at the in-house center, and one at the outpatient center; it is this pastor who is the culprit in this incident. We had a church service which we held every Thursday afternoon—called Drunk Church. Get it? Alcoholics, going to church. Drunk Church. The program is non-denominational, but the pastors are of varying backgrounds. Non-denominational. Baptist. Catholic. All, however, except for myself, were very strict evangelical, fundamentalist pastors. The pastor this story revolves around happened to be preaching on this particular Thursday. We were all on a preaching rotation schedule, and he was up.
The backstory so vital to this story is the patients and their history. They are drug addicts and alcoholics, and as such, many have been through significant trauma and hell. Many seek drugs and alcohol to escape the hell that has become life, often due to abuse, abandonment, etc. The pain from the abuse becomes so overwhelming, it is as if they are forced, or driven to seek relief. And relief does come, albeit a temporary relief. In the midst of seeking that relief, they unwittingly become addicts and/or alcoholics. In turn, they themselves regularly do unspeakable things in order to continue to obtain the drugs that have taken over and are holding them hostage. Many will sell their bodies in exchange for drugs or money for drugs. Some will resort to stealing from family and loved ones. Others will resort to violence—robbing people at gunpoint, all to obtain a drug that their body has come to demand, in fact, to physically and psychologically need. Now that you have heard a little of their story, hopefully you can imagine how horrific life has been and has become for them and can appreciate how awful what they heard from this preacher was.
They come into treatment, looking for help, and along the way, make the decision to attend this crazy Drunk Church service they heard about. They’ve just finished singing worship songs, and perhaps are even beginning to feel a little better about life and about themselves. Enter the preacher. And his sermon. His sermon is, of all things, about the horrific things people have gone through, and the horrible things they currently are going through. In the course of the sermon, he states this. “Whatever you are going through is of god.” You read that correctly; whatever hell they had been through, whatever hell they were going through: having been beaten or raped as a child, having been abandoned altogether by one or even both parents, having to stoop to demeaning themselves by selling their bodies to total strangers for drug money. All of this—without exception, they have just been told, is of god. From god. God did that. He gave it to them. He was behind whatever they’ve been through. He was the cause of whatever they are going through. And all the while, totally believing it, because a preacher told them so. How utterly pathetic and unimaginably hurtful! There is one more thing you need to know, in order to fully appreciate the repulsive nature of what was said. In the treatment center at that time was a patient whose eight-month-old daughter had been murdered just three months previously—by the babysitter. Can you imagine the hell he must have been suffering, only to then be told by clergy that his daughter’s murder was of god?!
I had a conversation with that same pastor about the theme of the text in Revelation that describes the fate of certain “enemies” of God. Revelation 14.19-20: “So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and loaded the grapes into the great winepress of God’s wrath. The grapes were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress in a stream about 180 miles long and as high as a horse’s bridle.”
This scripture lays out what it will look like in the “end times” when god releases his anger towards his enemies, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. The “grapes” and the “winepress” are analogies used to describe god venting his anger towards his enemies. The grapes represent his enemies; the winepress, used to squash grapes in the wine making process, represents god’s wrath and what will happen to his enemies. The end result will be a blood flow not unlike that of a river, as described in verse 20. Think about that—blood from people god has killed; so much blood, that it flows through city streets like a river. A river of blood 180 miles long, about five feet deep, and the width of a street. Let that sink in, and reflect on the horror, as you read this next paragraph.
As that pastor and I were discussing this horrific event, the subject of god’s love come up. After some discussion regarding that river of blood, he came to this conclusion: That (river of blood) is not an example of god’s anger; that is an example of his love!
And yet another story about a pastor I worked with. This pastor once told me that if someone willfully sins after becoming a christian, god will kill you! You read that correctly—sin on purpose, and Abba father will kill you! Naturally, he claimed that he has never intentionally sinned since becoming a christian; a necessity, obviously, if you believe such nonsense.
I was recently watching a show on Netflix titled “Killer Women with Piers Morgan.” In the very first episode, a 16-year-old girl, along with the help of three others, one of whom was her boyfriend, broke into her own home. Once inside, where her mother, father, and two brothers lie sleeping, they began shooting everyone, and then set the house on fire. Only the father survived. He then discovered, while still in the hospital, the extensive nature of his daughter’s involvement in the horrific crime. Can you imagine? You have just lost your wife and both sons to a senseless, horrific crime, and then you discover, in the midst of the anguish, grief and hell that your daughter, your own flesh and blood is the one most responsible for the death of the majority of your family. As the police were telling him about his daughter’s role in the murders, and in the midst of his despair, you hear someone in the background say to him, “God is in control.” Your wife and two sons were just murdered by your daughter and god was in control? What does that say about god, if he were in control? He was in control, all powerful, standing by, just watching, doing not a damn thing to intervene or prevent such a horrific tragedy? Standing there, just being in control. How is that supposed to comfort someone? Oh, it’s okay, because god willed it; it happened under both his watchful eye and his control. According to the book of James, as mentioned earlier, this poor man should have been counting it all joy. And he should have been comforted knowing his loving Abba father had never left him during his entire ordeal.
I briefly mentioned earlier that my former boss’s “relationship” with god is motivated largely by fear. He would pray prior to preaching, “God, let me decrease so you can increase. Help me stay out of the way. God, I do not want to do or say anything apart from you. Please fill me with your holy spirit so that everything that comes out of my mouth is of you.” If he wants to stay out of the way, and for his sermon to be motivated and completely inspired by the holy spirit, why even show up in the first place? Of course, once you learn of his beliefs behind that prayer, you will understand the insanity. He first preached at the age of 17. After preaching two or three times, and doing very well, he became—in his words, overconfident, and began to operate—again, in his words, to some extent on his own power, outside of, and not completely under the leading and empowering of the holy spirit. Since god is angry, vindictive, and apparently jealous, this preaching without enough of his direct involvement pissed god off—so much so that action had to be taken. That action? A migraine. A severe, overwhelming, crippling migraine. In his words, god deliberately gave him that horrible migraine because he wasn’t relying on god enough. The migraine came the very next time he preached—during his sermon. That was 44 years ago, and to this day, he still believes god smote him with that migraine, and he is still terrified of not relying on god enough when he preaches. (He always has a bottle of Excedrin Migraine in his desk, just in case.) You can easily see why obedience and strict adherence to the rules are so important; failure to do so will get you fucked up by Abba.
One final example that I recollected while thinking about this section as I was drifting off to sleep. This again involves the Drunk Church service at the treatment center where I used to work. The pastor who had gotten the migraine was up to preach, and his topic was based on a bible verse (which one, I cannot recall), which states something to the effect that god will provide the believer with all their needs and will bless them abundantly. The scripture he was using stated very clearly that god would provide, and that they would not go hungry or without anything they needed. Of course, common sense (and watching the news for a few minutes) will tell you that this theory is complete bullshit. For instance, what about all the starving children in Africa? Good question, right? I asked him that very question, to which he replied, “God won’t bless or provide for the children of Africa because the leaders of that nation do not follow god.” What the hell? So those poor starving children are being neglected by god, and left to starve to death, because of their nation’s leader’s lack of allegiance to god. They are being punished or at the very least excluded from those promises of provision, because of leaders that they had no culpability whatsoever in their being placed in positions of leadership?
I’ve mentioned them before, but let’s take a closer look at some of those “rules” of christianity. They vary greatly from church to church, denomination to denomination, and christian to christian. Growing up, we had more rules than we could possibly know what to do with. The following are a small representative of those rules:
· TV was forbidden; apparently, watching it is a one-way ticket to hell.
· Sundays felt like being imprisoned. We had to go to church in the AM and PM. In between, we had to take a nap (After all, it was the day of rest), could not listen to sports on the radio (remember, we had no TV), could not go outside and play, could not go out to a restaurant to eat (after all, Sunday is the Lord’s day), and last, but not least, when Christmas fell on Sunday, we had to wait until Monday to celebrate it. The reason, as so brilliantly explained by my dad: “It (celebrating Christmas on Sunday) is what the world does.” They were obsessed with not looking or acting like the “world”, whatever the hell that meant. Long after leaving religion, my ex-wife and I were visiting my grandmother, and during the course of conversation, we mentioned that we had gone out to eat on a Sunday (such a worldly thing to do). The following records the conversation between my grandma and me once she learned what a terrible thing I had done.
Grandma: “Jimmy, you know better.”
Me: “No, I don’t, grandma. What’s wrong with going out to eat on Sunday?”
Grandma: “People have to work.”
Me: “But mom works like crazy every Sunday making us dinner and then cleaning up.”
Grandma: “That’s different.”
Me: “Grandma, how is that different?”
Grandma: “I don’t know.”
~end of discussion~
· Holy haircuts: women were prohibited from cutting their hair—at all. And apparently boys had strict standards for cutting their hair. A friend of mine, who has since left that church, once told me about a meeting that he was part of, in which those present spent an entire afternoon discussing which haircut for boys was more holy—cut down the back from the top or tapered up from the bottom. A dozen or more men—leaders from the churches within that district. An entire afternoon. At stake—the eternal status of boy’s lives. Cut from the top down? Taper up from the bottom? The scary part—I never did hear which was holier; I have no idea if my style of haircut will grant or deny me access through the pearly gates.
· Drinking alcohol: This is taboo for many Christians, while many others imbibe freely and often. On the former extreme: growing up, we weren’t allowed to drink at all. No alcohol. Ever. Period. When the topic of Jesus turning water into wine came up, they would argue that it was just grape juice. Someone from that church, in response to being told Jesus drank wine, said, “I never did like that about Jesus.” On the latter extreme, the progressive church I attended briefly has no problem with drinking, or with getting drunk, for that matter. The pastor posts pictures on Facebook of him having a drink. The youth pastor and his wife have posted about going to the Kava bar and drinking Kava. When an elder of the church did a sermon in the pastor’s absence, her theme was that Jesus was fun loving, and as christians, we should be also. One of her “props” was a wine glass and a bottle of wine. During her sermon, she drank a glass of wine. The church now has a mid-week gathering, in a bar, and as an incentive, first time visitors will receive a free beer.
· Women pastors: to be or not to be? Misogyny or equals?
· The LQBTQ community and the church: Yet another topic that infuriates me. No other “sin” sets the christian apart from the “sinner” more than those within the LGBTQ community. A local church will not allow a person who is gay to volunteer to help set up chairs before the service. I know of christians who use words I will not record here to describe LGBTQ people. Often, they are not welcome in church, or at best, only if they denounce their “wicked ways”, promising to seek the straight (pun intended) and narrow. A former boss and I were discussing gay people, and he had this brilliant bit of “wisdom” to depart to me. “Being gay is not a sin; it is only a sin when they act out on their sexuality. It (being gay) is an opportunity for the person who is gay to make a sacrifice to god by being celibate all their life.” (what a crock of shit!) Of course, he is straight and married, so he doesn’t have to (or is that get to?) make that sacrifice. I wonder how quickly he’d change his tune if it were the other way around—if heterosexuality were deemed a “sin”, instead of homosexuality. Rather quickly, I would imagine! I cannot think of another people group that has been so ostracized by christianity than that of the LGBTQ community. It is a damn shame how hateful and prejudice the Christian community is to that community. I think it is ridiculous that someone’s sexuality or gender preference should determine what they can, or in all too many cases, cannot do. The way christians treated people in the LGBTQ community was yet another nail in the coffin of my faith.
This list could go on and on, but I think I’ve touched on enough to give you an idea of the insanity of the varying and senseless nature of rules that christians follow. In spite of the fact that Jesus supposedly took all their sin on himself, leaving them as innocent as the driven snow. Rules they keep, often in an attempt to appease this god who has ordered the murder of so many, who has sought revenge, even decades and centuries after the transgressions had been committed. If that is their belief about god, it begins to make some sense as to why they have such goofy rules. Better to be safe than sorry! ~continues in Part Fourteen
