Tonight I had time to watch TV for the first time in a long time. A pattern I observed in the different shows I watched, some of them reality, was the frequency at which fundamentalist Christian men are caught in pornography or buying sex from prostitutes.
I couldn’t help but think of the hundreds of Christians I know who look pious and are, by all accounts, good Christians. Yet, at some point I have heard of the skeletons in their closets: men or women having extra-marital affairs, single Christians having pre-marital sex, compulsive liars, con-people, wife beaters, child abusers, thieves, rapists, and what not?
Christians are going to jump at me here and say that I am looking at the sinners instead of keeping my eyes on Jesus. But I think they’re being too forgiving with a faith that proves again and again its ineffectiveness.
As I’ve stated in the past, what baffles me isn’t so much that their deeds fail to match their profession of faith. What bothers me is how easily they fool their Christians counterparts.
This is too revealing for me. For instance, many a time I’ve known of crooks who just a week before being found out were praised by the pastor from the pulpit.
And I never tire of saying this: Whatever happened to the holy spirit? Isn’t the spirit supposed to guide Jesus’ followers to all truth? Aren’t pastors of all people supposed to own the gift of discernment?
To me that’s a deal breaker. That Christians can’t even as much as suspect they’re dealing with blatant liars or con-people is unacceptable.
That to me means that THERE IS NO HOLY SPIRIT guiding the saints. And there is where the carefully fabricated bunch of lies devotees are told Sunday after Sunday falls apart, in my opinion.
Why are guided-by-god-himself folks so easy to fool? Why?
I have never been easy to fool. And for pointing out the crooks and liars I was harshly criticized and told off.
This is not too different from what happens to non-Christians. They fall for BS all the time as well, proving that the folks in church have no special anointing, insight, or wisdom. They are representatives of the local culture as much as everyone else.
Yes, after six years and counting of not going to church, the naïveté of the thousands of Christians I met while a believer still baffles me.
The Holy Spirit point is a good one. I think there’s a huge culture of thinking the best of others, which allows both church members and leaders to get away with obviously suspicious behaviour. It’s part of the subculture that you don’t ask difficult questions.
I knew a pious and excessively trusting couple who were fleeced by another church member who was “helping them with their accounts”. They probably wouldn’t fall for exactly the same scam again, but I think they’d still tend to instinctively trust people as a first reaction.
This is related to a lot of scandals in the church. I think the handling of the Catholic child abusers can be explained by this culture of not asking awkward questions and wanting to believe the best of priests
That’s why it’s so dangerous. This sort of naive trust hurts everyone, not just the person with a deficiency of common sense
Exactly! The trusting the members of your “tribe” is definitely cultural. And, by the way, I can’t understand why “niceness”is part of the Christian culture. Jesus wasn’t exactly nice. He doesn’t come across as nice in the gospels. Compassionate? Yeah, but that’s different.
It’s not uncommon here to read stories in the Indianapolis Star about church secretaries embezzling from the churches or about youth pastors molesting teens. It’s so disgusting to see this all the time. At our church we had thousands of dollars stolen by the custodian who was concealing a cocaine habit.
In my opinion there is little difference between Christians and non
Christians. I think the Christians are worse because they practice hypocrisy. I personally don’t maintain the fiction that a spirit radically changes personalities.
I believe we are the person our parents make of us in the first 10 years of life. From then on, spirit or not, we have very little chances of changing.
That’s why aspie or not, some folks are so hopelessly trapped in destructive behaviours.
Well said! Great argument!
Thanks, Wise!
Recovering Agnostic makes good points.
Some faith subcultures encourage blind trust and idolization of religious leaders while discouraging critical thought and difficult questions. As a result, you get abuses of power. It’s ugly, and it’s not limited to Christian communities, sadly.
Yes, the leader is often idolized. And to think those are people who believe in the 10 Commandments –> Thou shall not have other gods before me!
They are so naive because they have to be! Finding a new tribe is scary.
And besides, Christians have had hundreds of years of preachers telling them thinking is evil. Well, maybe just the Protestants. I can’t speak for the Catholics or Orthodox.
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”
Thank-you Martin Luther. You got the last one right.
OMG! I can’t believe he spoke such trash!
As an ex-Catholic, I can confirm that the Catholicism I was raised with discouraged critical thinking in favor of faith (shorthand for believing what you’re told).
His stuff on women and Jews is worse. Yes, this is the guy responsible for Protestantism. He hated thinking, women, Jews and foreigners. Sound familiar?
I can’t believe that once I thought of Martin Luther as a hero of sorts. Geez! That goes to prove that reading a 10-line, Wikipedia-like biography on someone isn’t enough to become a fan.
Hi Lorena,
This is my first time posting here. I can usually be found at the exchristian.net blog site, but I do check your page every now and then for updates as I enjoy your insights.
Anyway, I wanted to respond to this because it touches on something I observed in a fellowship I attended when I was still a Christian.
The fellowship in question was a happy-flappy Pentecostal church, and predictably, the sugary veneer was just that; underneath, the church was rife with gossip, hypocrisy and all manner of unpleasant goings on (including extramarital affairs and some of the young people sleeping with each other).
Anyway, one of the worst happened some time after I’d already left; there was a young couple who married when I was still going. They had an almost Disney-esque fairy tale wedding and were both well respected members of the church. Some years later, I hear on the grapevine (I.e. through another ex-attendee) that they were no longer together. Why? Well it turns out the husband, who worked as a school photographer was sent to prison for sexually abusing young children.
What shocked me the most about this was the fact that, as I said the couple were held in such high regard. Ironically, I was lingeringly regarded as a “dodgy bloke” (yeah, I’m British
) for no reason other than being black, yet everyone was blind-sided by this golden boy who turned out to be a paedophile! From what I heard, it shook the church community to the core and the family of the boy fled town out of shame. Apparently the pastor still used to visit him in prison.
I don’t know what happened to the girl though, but it’s her I feel sorry for (along with the kids obviously) as she really loved this guy and was a sweet girl who didn’t deserve that. She must’ve thought she was so blessed on her wedding day only to discover the man she thought “god” had sent her was a vile child molesting rat. That must’ve stung. To this day I wonder where she is, and if she’s still a Christian after that experience…
So yes, as judgemental as a lot of Christians can be, they can also be incredibly naiive as well. Great article and insightful observations as always. Keep up the good work!
Wow, unoder… thank you for putting flesh to my thoughts on this post. Yeah!
That’s exactly the way it is. Like it’s said in the writing world, don’t tell, show. You showed us.
I really enjoyed this. It reminds me of another naive thing they do which the Holy Spirit really ought to steer away from: Why do charismatics/ Pentecostals sometimes allow their revival meetings, where people are praying in tongues, shaking, and screaming, to be filmed for secular documentaries?
They believe the anointing is so strong that even if the filmmakers are cynical, the audience at home will be touched. The anointing is in their minds. The audience at home is laughing at them.