Mind of a Christian

Addressing Negative Stigmas I

Again, I would like to thank @MetalHeadBoss for allowing me to write responses to her works. I'm happy to create an environment where ideas get exchanged, and I appreciate her openness to this!

The flow of this chapter follows closely to the flow of her chapter "Why Religion Is More Depressing Than Atheism" in An Atheist's View. It would be a good idea to have that open in another tab, because I jump to a different topic without much transition.

And before I start, I'd like to make it clear that a lot of the things I'll express will probably be in disagreement with a lot of things you'll believe. However, by writing these chapters, I would hope that you at least come to an understanding of my beliefs - agreement is not obligatory.

And to tidy up my response, I'll try to stick to using the word Christianity, but if I use the word religion, my intent is to talk about the Christian religion. After all, this is Mind of a Christian. I can't speak on behalf of other religions since I have not learned enough of them to be comfortable with talking about them.

So! Let's begin.

The purpose of religion does include comforting its followers. However, I don't think that one of its primary reasons is to explain things in nature that we didn't understand. That was the purpose of Greek polytheism. Jewish theism has an entirely different approach. Even though the Bible does provide explanations to things, like the origin story in Genesis, that is not it's primary purpose.

Instead, the purpose of Christian writings and teachings is to guide people into having a proper relationship with God. Christian teachings should focus on how Jesus the Messiah was sent to reunite humans with the presence of God. He is the bridge that spans across the separation between God and humans - a separation caused by our sinful nature and God's inherent intolerance to the presence of corruption.

The Bible is primarily an outline of God's will, as far as humans are concerned. It does have history, but it also has prophecy, and songs, and poems, etc. All of these different styles of writing are used to show us what God wants for us - i.e. His will.

Death is scary, and Christianity does provide comfort for its followers, but it's not so much focused on comforting them to be able to face death. Christianity comforts them with the assurance that God has saved them from the punishment of sin, and that God will bring justice to whatever injustice they've received in their earthly lives.

Now, I'd like to include your thoughts on your thoughts of heaven and hell, and then share my thoughts as well:

"The Christian Church preaches that good Christians will go to heaven and everyone else will go to hell. The latter is the option that you're meant to be terrified of; fire, the Devil, demons, eternal torture - and all created by a loving god to punish those who refuse to 'love' him back." (emphasis added).

I would like to touch up on a few things here.

Firstly, there is no single human institution that has the authority to claim itself as the Christian Church with a capital "C". The church does exist, as it is Christ's body comprised of believers, but institutions such as the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church cannot claim to be the Church.

Therefore, we cannot consider that "The Christian Church preaches that good Christians will go to heaven and everyone else will go to hell", because such implied human institution does not exist. And that's a good thing, because what this thing preaches is wrong:

Good Christians don't go to heaven, since this leaves out the bad Christians. That is contrary to God's plan of redeeming all of the people who place their faith in the Messiah. You can say that all Christians fall under this category. I'll call these people spiritual Israel - God's people. Different terminology for the same entity.

Hell wasn't made to "punish those who refuse to 'love' him back". Saying it in that tone assumes that God is an evil, non-benevolent being, which makes it difficult for people to receive Christian arguments and defenses.

Here's the thing about God: due to His nature, evil and corruption cannot be in the presence of Him, because He is perfectly and purely good and righteous. That's why Leviticus outlines so many ritualistic laws for Israelite priests, so that they can cleanse themselves and be able to stand in the presence of God. If the priest didn't follow the laws, and tried to stand before God while being unclean, God's righteousness and power inherently drives out corruption in its presence, and the priest dies on the spot (see Leviticus 10:1-2).

Think of this like the Sun: flying too close to the Sun will burn up your space ship. Your space ship is analogous to corruption.

Heaven isn't a stuffy place where conservative, gay-hating Christians walk about expressing their conservative, gay-hating agendas. The population of heaven have their spirits cleansed from their impurities so that they can be in the presence of God. That is why the Messiah gave his life for us. So, instead of having disagreeable people, you'll find that the people in heaven are loving and at peace.

Doesn't sound too depressing now, does it?

To be admitted to heaven, you have to be saved. I'm sure you've heard of the word saved a lot in Christian context. But what are we being saved from? This is also a big topic, which I'll save for another time, but I'll sum it up here:

1. Humans originally were able to be in the presence of God. Then, Adam and Eve sinned, and consequently, humans cannot be in the presence of God.

2. God taught humans that their sins result in negative consequences - as proper justice prescribes. Humans saw the price to be paid through animal, grain, and drink sacrifices. However, these sacrifices did not have enough weight to actually cleanse them from their sins (Hebrews 10).

3. So, God sent His son, Jesus (Yeshua) the Messiah, as the perfect and ultimate sacrifice that covers for all of the world's sin. Only Jesus has the power and capacity to do this. The Messiah is extending out an open invitation for humans to remove themselves from the punishment of sin, so that they can have eternal life.

Romans 11:23: "And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again." (TLV)

The ONLY thing you need to do to be SAVED is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He was sacrificed to pay for and save you from your sins, and that He rose again, conquering death.

I was hesitant to use the word only. There is much more to believing in Jesus than just saying "I believe these things, now gimme a ticket to heaven", but my point is that you don't have to follow God's laws to be saved (see "Why do Christians Keep Ignoring God's Laws?")

She makes two more points that I want to address, but each point offers itself to its own dedicated chapter. Say it with me now, "this is also a big topic". But I'll do a better job of providing a shorter statement on my stance:

Neither faith nor actions in faith are blind.

Science is not the absolute truth, and therefore cannot be called real*.

*DISCLAIMER: I love science. I encourage scientific endeavors, whether it be research or application. I'm a student of computer engineering - why would I say that science is bad? This one is going to rile everyone up if I just left it at this. Don't worry, I'll explain this in the future.

I'd like to finish off with this:

There's a difference between what Christians should be, and how we actually are. After all, we are human. But, to form negative opinions on Christianity by looking only at bad examples of Christians is to do injustice to yourself.

Source:

An Atheist's View by @MetalHeadBoss