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Jesus and torture ( a long rant)

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undergroundpanther Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jul-18-04 12:22 PM
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Jesus and torture ( a long rant)
Christianity has always held a door open to the idea that torture is justified,just or good.( OK if God wills it)
If there is no hell,the place of eternal torture,there is no way to extort believers to be "good"' or ''obedient' to Godly authority.
Some sects downplay this,most never throw it out of the belief paradigm because the bible excuses it.
Roman emperors were not scared or cowed by god enough to refuse to edit the bible,yet churches today who are allegedly more enlightened than Roman emperors were and fancy themselves" liberal" are still scared and cowed by superstition to edit the stories about domination genocide,slavery,rape,oppression,abuse and torture out of the bible.
Why?????
Most churches don't bother to edit out the excuses the bible has in it for abuse,rape,slavery,genocide,oppression,domination and torture that Rome and Constantine allowed into the bible for political reasons..either.
WHY???
Than they get all flustered when fundies take the bible literally when the bible itself says to take the book literally,Oh, never mind it is impossible to take that frickin' book literally without bringing hell on Earth.
It's because Christians like something about the idea of hell even if they don't talk about it openly like fire and brimstone churches do ,they refuse to get rid of hell, original sin,women oppression, and such psychologically damaging teachings even when they KNOW it hurts..

WHY??? WTF?
Fundie Christianity has a big focus on obedience to God's will and likewise focus on eternal torture for all the disobedient and different than they are.It makes all the self denial,and obedience have a purpose other than a psychological con. Their doctrines on hell ARE offensive,untrue and abusive. The fundies don't see their"truth" as offending and cruel because they are choosing to identify with the abuser in the bible they are told to call good. Other people who aren't thinking that way don't see their god as "good" or torture as excusable when an allegedly good god OK 's it.Their powerful capricious,contrary,bullying very human perception of God.Their hearts are bullying them on behalf of an authoritarian church and voice in the head called God so they think it's OK to bully everyone else,and they don't see what they say and do to others as bullying while they bully.They bring hell with them...To be obedient you need a punishment and a reward system to draw the boundaries of what is obeying and not obeying ,and the bible gives the a fundie boundaries because they take it literally' which is only possible by cherry picking verses,(because the bible sometimes says 2 diametrically opposed things no person could do at the same time.)
The bible serves the bully hearts agenda when it is used by authoritarians and obedience freaks.
The bible serves the egalitarian loving heart too when it is used to curb the bullying tendencies in people..

The Bible by fundies is used as a psychological outline of what the servant thinks his chosen master(God) wants,it's a rule book for people with conduct disorders.Since the bible is contradictory it needs "interpretors"(preachers) to stand in inside a "chain of command" in a church institution to do masters will,but in fact no matter it is always the preacher's will whether or not it appears to conflict with the bible.

Heaven is an eternal childhood,as an adult.In heaven you live forever as a powerful invulnerable child,rewarded forever, never sick,sad,or alone,taken care of ,never having to decide to share with anyone,no more need to struggle,compete,survive or compromise because all your desires are Gods' desires,you have no distinct self consciousness apart from this gods..God is the loving, rich,giving,protective,super parent we never have in our human parents..

In Heaven a person is like a Borg but than again not like one. They get everything their alleged true spirit desires,a child king of god that can no longer do ANYTHING wrong .Eternally strong,young ,beautiful,incorruptible,with no more struggles over choice and accountability ..A sociopath wet dream.



You allegedly go to hell because you didn't decide to agree with a bible that contradict itself, because you cannot let yourself be controlled by authoritarians, because you are gay,a witch,a non believer ect.ect.Hell like heaven and churches are an institution of mankind's design built around a book written by people,edited heavily by Rome,claiming spiritual origins,without evidence historical or otherwise.A book we are supposed to take on "faith"' and choose to obey As kids we are forced by parents into this mind game.We have no choice.Some undo the damage of being raised in a faith sometimes it takes a lifetime to find out what is really true in your own life and heart.. even when the preachers will corrupts the church from the inside out top down, if we say no to this authoritarian,capricious,bible book god,,we get tortured forever and are denied fabulous rewards that seems to take the pain out of the here and now..

Unless god just points at you,ax murder rapist,witch homosexual..sinner destined for hell and says hey,you you get heaven.
While he tosses a guy who thought about a woman sexually once into hell.
God does this because he is capricious and unjust just like a roman emperor or sociopath king..

How one obtains salvation from eternal torture is not clear in the bible.
One spends a lifetime guessing what combination of faith and works gets you a get out of life and the human condition prison card,and what absolves you of the sentence the bible claims all humanity deserves eternal torture. And still nobody knows why we all die or even why we are alive when we are yet.

Fundies say the magic words put Jesus in your heart it's done...yet why all the obedience than,that "free gift" ain't free,you still do works(tithe,attend church,think clean thoughts,don't be gay,don't live with someone or have sex out of wedlock,) to prove you are changed.In other Christian denominations there are various combinations and amounts of of works(obedience and sacrifices) and "faith"(believe).
So Who would Jesus torture? Everyone.
Except those who OBEY his will...Whatever that really is the Bible doesn't say clearly nearly enough to be taken as seriously as it is by some people.

The bible certainly is obscure on that issue,obscure enough to give authoritarians plenty of mind fuck power over the lives and perceptions of others.I am through struggling with people who believe or don't believe over the bible,God or whatever,I don't care anymore.Let the Christians have their stupid god as long as they don't try to rationalize to others why I should be tortured or have my freedoms ,protections and human rights taken away ,or try to make me a second class citizen because I can't go along with their mind game and support their theocratic plans of kingdom now...Fuckit we are all made crazy by existence here anyway.
I did my time in that paradigm/delusional state.That time with God felt very much like hell when I look back.
But while I was a believer I didn't see it this way.Just like a battered woman can't see her husband is an abusive shit head until she can let herself see the other side of the truth,that he is abusive and she can choose to abandon him..just as she can choose to stay with him,paint the self delusion,comforting rosy picture,and try to reform him and get beaten up some more too.

Now I don't know what or if there is a god,and I don't care anymore.I dunno why paranormal things occur,but they do,and I don't need to know what happens after I die,Fuck it all. I just dunno some things and that is OK for me.I don't know why bad things happen,some of it people CAN prevent if they'd just stop clinging to authority figures,and stop trying to BE authority figures. Some of it I suspect we can't fix for a long time.But who knows? I don't know why more people aren't trying to ease the human condition for real.They'd rather fight with each other and play games to be professor right, to be correct in theory to impress their peers instead of solving what it really is causing this condition of pain in this existence.

I'm here now,I have a will,I got freedom, I can be an asshole to someone or not.I can choose to help or hurt my situation or others.and I am responsible for it all as an adult.God never saved me from my own bad choices or other people's bad choices, including the choice to follow him and get screwed by his authoritarian agents interpreting his will for me as if I can't read the bible myself and draw conclusions from it myself.
Not enough Christians read their bible,with a holistic or critical eye,They don't look outside the book unless the source favors the book and that is intellectual cowardice,serving to protect a psychological device.Christians read certain parts,they omit others in their mind,and speech..The book of Joshua is about God approved genocide of children and adults to steal land.It is imperialism.Everything so called liberal egalitarians allegedly stand up against as morally repugnant..The bible is not a sane model for any culture to model after.History proves torture comes with the blind self righteous hubris infested bullyboy crusading believers who take the bible as truth that must be believed or else face the pain of hell on earth..
Why must we know the future,be in control of others,and have people agree with us and like us and think we are wonderful? Where does that insecure urge come from and why do we listen to it if it causes so much pain in this life pursuing it?
Self consciousness feels like hell in a world that is at war with itself,a place of haves and have nots, where life feeds upon the living to live..to feel in power and secure.
So why do we play these domination games?

Our enemy is not in mysterious devils it is in the human condition,in our minds and emotions, in our tendencies to abuse each other,and the effects of abuse in us, in our tendencies to manipulate exploit,degrade,dominate..it's in the pain of inequality,and intolerance of differences...It's sickness,despair,lack of empathy,self hate,death,hierarchy.It's competition between haves and have nots.
Faith,works and God himself does not do ANYTHING to truly cure the human condition while we live in it.It just numbs it and gives us a rationalization and an excuse to deny it's damage effects.

The bible has no real answers to this human dilemma in it.If you read it,test it,live it enough,you find like all other religious texts it's empty.It has some platitudes that seem to help,but does nothing to teach people what to do about situations of abuse,when others do not care that you suffer, don't empathize or will not let you be you.
If you seek they say you will see the truth,And what is truth? Is it in the meme,in the lies,in the human condition? It all HURTS..It is painful to give up illusory certainty especially when it's a comfort to the mind and a vulnerable ,limited body living in a limited existence that is without much certainty ,control or security at all.

And the truth of this condition does not set you free,of hardships and the struggles of existence. It just shows you where you are shackled by your own,your parents, or your culture's mind games delusions and lies.So like always, it's up to you to take the fetters off your own mind and refuse to give in to the comfort of following an authority figure.Even with the fetters off you will still be responsible,face pain,fail,suffer and die.Existentialism and cognitive dissonance hurts a person's heart. But eventually you find it is revealing about why people do things because you can see yourself doing it..even when you know it is stupid.

Choices become easier to do because if you question yourself deeply ,you know why you are the way you are inside yourself and why you want to make the choices you make.And then other choices look untrue because they are,for you,because you know yourself and reason within.
Wisdom. Wisdom doesn't get you into heaven,but it does get you aware of how things could be if wisdom had a bigger voice in the public sphere.And it hurts..Wisdom can be dangerous, with a little bit of wisdom,a new set of traps are laid open for me to step into and drag others in with me. Hopefully this time I know not to step into them and the memes they carry will not take the inner locus of control out of me again..and warp my sense of right in wrong in favor of in the service of ??? bully???

Life sucks,it's short and most things you dream of in life never happen or they get crushed.
That is why heaven has such an appeal.It's a second chance forever .It has an appeal after living in a world where time gives no second chances.
Heaven is all the great life you never got to live,lived in the way you want it lived forever...That's why hell also has such an appeal,

It's for screwing back all the things that makes your life suck.
Even if you made it suck all by yourself.

Who would Jesus torture?
Anyone that made your life suck, anything God says deserves it(the voice in your head( your polyego),Anything the bible the Rome edited texts say is not like God. i.e. original sin means all of humanity.)
And when you give your decision away to God,you get a little bit of heaven, a bit of freedom from accountability,a little freedom your conscience .By giving over of your own inner locus of control you can avoid responsibility and not answer to those you hurt .This makes life for everyone else a bit more hellish on this Earth..And the self righteous don't have to see the emotional/social damage they do if they can convince themselves and anyone else they are doing it for the greater "Good". Bullies need a bullying rationalizing/tolerant culture for their company to get away with their abuses. Churches and holy texts are perfect for this exploiting ,so are companies, markets and governments,mental hospitals,schools, jails and the military. fuck it why not call it all civilization?


Who would Jesus torture? I think he'd torture anyone who is torture able,anyone who wasn't aware of the problem of power..
Wisdom and apathy are antidotes to torture.It does not make a productive citizen of you. It makes you rebellious,resistant,slow to believe,unwilling to follow and unwilling to sell yourself without something in it for yourself.
And apathetic wisdom offers no escape from the pain of this our human condition. It just makes you useless to authoritarians dominator's and power seekers to exploit. It doesn't make you safe from them anymore than anyone else is..

Seeking wisdom makes for questions with no answers(yet) and because of my apathy about it, I don't care about all this shit and peoples opinions about my opinions enough to create a pet theory from my own thoughts and call it true.and I don't care about hooking the world on my ideas so they'll agree that I was right or wrong.Who gives a shit.
Maybe if we stopped giving a shit what others think,the boss thinks,about what "god" thinks we will find what makes us feel content and at peace with each other even if it's only temporary.

At least I ain't yet another bully with a bible bringing hell on Earth to people around me everywhere I go..because hell is busting my brain.









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realisticphish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jul-18-04 12:35 PM
Response to Original message
1. delete
Edited on Sun Jul-18-04 12:37 PM by realisticphish
didnt read the whole post before responding



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