Love Not the World

I really love being alive. I love everything about it. I like it when I feel good and everything is going my way, and I find a certain pleasure in overcoming the various difficulties that challenge me as the years roll past. I like being a man. I think being born in the USA where my security is not threatened and where my freedoms are protected is awesome. I love the age I live in. The technological gizmos and gadgets that I enjoy fill my day with wonder and fun. You might say that I "love the world."

The Christian message touts itself as being "good news." The message is hopelessly mixed. While claiming to be a positive force, in reality it is riddled with negative pessimism.

I was a Christian for 30 years, I know the rhetoric. God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. We have eternal live through His name. We deserve the punishment of eternal damnation in Hell for our rebellion against GOD, but in his amazing love and mercy HE developed a plan to rescue us from our fate.

The gospel is positive, so the Christian says. The gospel is positive, so I also said when I counted myself among the "elect."

The core of Christianity is a story of dark foreboding. It tells us that life on earth is nothing, or less than nothing.. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." "For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world," " He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." "Teaching us that, denying ... worldly lusts,"

Family is to be abandoned if it interferes with devotion to the god. Physical pleasure is to be shunned. This life is nothing but a staging ground for eternal bliss in the afterlife. Nothing you do here on earth is of any importance is it is not somehow related to spreading the gospel or glorifying the Christian deity. Inventors, explorers, scientists, psychologists, or anyone else that attempts to understand the world with the goal of enhancing or bettering human lives on this terrestrial ball are looked on with distrust and condemned if their world view reflects a lack of belief that their lives are in the hands of an angry god.

Christians are taught to be in wonder of creation. They are taught to be grateful to the Lord above for the gifts he so freely bestows on each of them. They are told to mimic the patience of Job when adversity strikes, because GOD, in his incomprehensible wisdom, is testing them for so greater of an unexplained reason. They are also taught to be afraid, to be very afraid: heaven for the elect; hell for the damned.

While I will admit that Christianity provides a nice mental escape from some of the harsh realities of life, if your life is going good, it offers nothing but criticisms. "Woe to the rich." "Woe unto you that are full!" "Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth."

I am sitting on the porch of my house as I type this rant. My shirt is open and the heat of the sun feels magnificent. Life is grand. My wife loves me and I love her. Two of my children are on the honor roll, and I have one son serving in the Marines I never miss a day of work, and I am good at what I do. I pay my bills early and I have nearly no debt at all. I am not rich, by American standards, but I live and eat very well. My health and the health of my family is good. I am appreciative that I have such a pleasant situation. I am also an apostate and therefore worse than pond scum in Christian theology. I realize that adversity will come. My health, or the health of my loved ones will fail one day. I will die. This is reality. But to say that the life I lead now is of no value, simply because it is "mortal" is pathetic. I know I won't live forever, but I also know that my life, although short, is a wonderful thing.

Christianity tells me that life on earth sucks and then you die. If you don't believe in Jesus, life sucks and then you roast in hell forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.... Christianity also tells me that life on earth sucks, but, if you believe and obey Jesus you get to live forever, and that's the only way to keep it from sucking. That's right, believe and obey is what I said. How else will you demonstrate that you believe unless you obey? Saved by faith? Sure.. , but without obedience, there is no real evidence of belief.

Christianity claims to offer freedom, a positive outlook and a life after death, when in reality it requires bondage to a religious dogma, a functional hate of the only life we have, a terrible separation from loved ones who don't agree, and a fantasy of some sort of after life that will make real life pale to inconsequence in comparison. If you are a Christian, you will be happy forever in paradise, so the promise goes. If your loved ones don't believe, they will be tortured for eternity. Regardless of that, you will be mindlessly happy for ever and ever and ever, even with the knowledge that they are in horrible and never ending torment at the hands of your loving (angry) god.

If your life is filled with nothing but impossible poverty, disease or death, then I can understand the need to escape your reality with the promise of a future life where every tear will be wiped from your eyes, but if you love life, be assured you are making the right decision by leaving the false hope of Christianity far behind.

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