Who's booty you kissing?

I don't remember any what's or when's at all, but as far as arrogance, it often happens that people read into posts inferences that are not part of the writer's intent.

It's the limits of internet dialogue and people's differing styles, not arrogance, so no apologies are needed.

Arrogance:
overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors

Or perhaps toward those who are presumptuously perceived as inferiors.

Thank you, Chumly. I should have endorsed that thought when I first read it, but I neglected to do so.

:wink:

I agree with that as well. About nine on a scale of 1 to 10.

You would be freed from the belief that everyone is sinful by nature and God did us a real favor by having his son killed so that he would not have to throw us into hell. You would be free to determine morality for yourself and need not live in fear of divine punishment for minor infractions of outmoded laws. You could accept scientific explanations for the universe and everything in it, including mankind, instead of being limited by ancient myths devised by ignorant herdsmen. Best of all, you could realize that you are a strong enough to handle the worst life has to throw at you, let go of the crutch of religion, and take credit for becoming the remarkable person that you are.




Someone other than Satan said pretty much the same thing, only he said it first and included advice on what would happen if he wasn't worshipped properly:

"If you keep my laws and are careful to obey my commands, I will send the seasonal rains. The land will then yield its crops, and the trees will produce their fruit. Your threshing season will extend until the grape harvest, and your grape harvest will extend until it is time to plant grain again. You will eat your fill and live securely in your land.

"I will give you peace in the land, and you will be able to sleep without fear. I will remove the wild animals from your land and protect you from your enemies. In fact, you will chase down all your enemies and slaughter them with your swords. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand! All your enemies will fall beneath the blows of your weapons.

"I will look favorably upon you and multiply your people and fulfill my covenant with you. You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need to get rid of the leftovers from the previous year to make room for each new harvest. I will live among you, and I will not despise you. I will walk among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people.
…

"However, if you do not listen to me or obey my commands, and if you break my covenant by rejecting my laws and treating my regulations with contempt, I will punish you. You will suffer from sudden terrors, with wasting diseases, and with burning fevers, causing your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will plant your crops in vain because your enemies will eat them. I will turn against you, and you will be defeated by all your enemies. They will rule over you, and you will run even when no one is chasing you!

"And if, in spite of this, you still disobey me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break down your arrogant spirit by making the skies above as unyielding as iron and the earth beneath as hard as bronze. All your work will be for nothing, for your land will yield no crops, and your trees will bear no fruit.

"If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey, I will inflict you with seven more disasters for your sins. I will release wild animals that will kill your children and destroy your cattle, so your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted.

"And if you fail to learn a lesson from this and continue your hostility toward me, then I myself will be hostile toward you, and I will personally strike you seven times over for your sins. I will send armies against you to carry out these covenant threats. If you flee to your cities, I will send a plague to destroy you there, and you will be conquered by your enemies. I will completely destroy your food supply, so the bread from one oven will have to be stretched to feed ten families. They will ration your food by weight, and even if you have food to eat, you will not be satisfied.

"If after this you still refuse to listen and still remain hostile toward me, then I will give full vent to my hostility. I will punish you seven times over for your sins. (Leviticus 26:3-28)

It's amazing how much energy and industry some folks put into trying to get people to abandon their faith.

Amazing.

In their hasty zeal, they forget to maintain their show of being outraged against the 'big picture' large-scale harm that organized religions have wreaked on mankind. It's too hard to keep up the pretense of being some sort of halfassed cultural reformers. They go right to trying to get people to relinquish their faith, to take up their much better, much more enlightened way of exhalting self, instead of worshiping some 'God'. This is a way, they tell us, which is like "opening up to a whole new world".
L. Ron Hubbard's followers or Jehovah's Witnesses have got nothing on these agnostic/atheist hucksters.

They proseletyze, just as surely as those with whom they presumedly have so much angst. They sell the glories of godlessness, and scoff at the beliefs of those who sometimes quite humbly hold on to them.

It's entertaining, at least - sort of in the way hyenas are entertaining to watch as they circle to steal some carrion.

Then there are those who tell people they are worthless sinners, helpless to save themselves, but just do as we say (not as we do), give us 10% of everything you make, and you are assured of a place in paradise. Praise the Lord!

Our truth is free.

Yep "there are those".

Terry,

Our truth is free also. Haven't you ever head of "let the buyer beware?" That means, in case you didn't know, that the responsibility is on OURSELVES, in making decisions about one is "selling". If you want to believe you have to pay for your salvation, that's you.

Mine has been freely given to me.

You make a good point.

As an aside, I tend to flip between pop culture phrasing, articulated literalism, humorous anecdotes and wacky non sequiturs. Luckily no one else on this board falls pray to the same

[quote="hephzibah] My feet are firmly planted in what I believe. I have lived on boths sides of the fence, so to speak. I remember what it was like to be on that side. Of course there were no benefits to it during my time there.[/quote]

I would be interested in knowing a little about your time there on the other side. Why did you find it non-beneficial?

And, from me talking on the other side of the fence, what are you finding in Christianity so beneficial that you could recommend?

It's the wacky non sequiturs that are the most endearing, my friend.

Tycoon,

Here would be a good place to start if you haven't read it already. It's page 24 of this topic. I think my post is somewhere near the bottom of the page:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=70203&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=230

As far as the rest of my time on the other side of the fence well, don't mind telling my story. By the time I was in my teens I was suicidal. Well probably more attention seeking kind of suicidal but none the less, suicidal. I really saw no reason to live. I couldn't figure out why I was here. I felt loved by no one. Like a worthless speck of nothingness here on the earth just to be stepped on or something. I wrote poems about dying all the time. By the age of 16 I had an entire notebook filled with them. I burned that book in my mid 20's, but there is one poem I still remember. It is probably the best description of how I really felt inside:

Silent Cry:

A silent cry from deep within
A cry for help a cry for pain
A cry that I cannot withstand
Without another helping hand

Of someone who I know will care
Someone with whom I can share
All my pain, grief, and sorrow
All my dreams for tomorrow

My silent cry is coming out
With no one there to hear
My silent cry is soon to die
And with it... so am I.

I felt so alone. You ever heard that saying about being in a crowd and feeling completely alone? That was me in every aspect of my life. I tried to get help. No one ever took me seriously. I wrote a letter to a guy at school telling him I wanted to die. He wrote me back and said that God loved me and was reaching out his hand to me. I never spoke to him again after that letter. I thought he was so full of poop it was coming out his ears. When I was 18 I got raped by the son of my mom and stepdad's best friends. I kept silent because I feared no one would believe me. They hadn't believed me about the babysitters beating us, why would they believe me about this?

I was steadily going down hill and my parents were desperate to find out what was wrong with me. They sent me to a shrink. I wouldn't talk. I trusted no one. Then one day my mom came and told me that they'd figured out what was wrong with me because they had been reading books. She said they'd realized I was a drug addict and alcoholic. I had never touched the stuff. I left that day and disappeared for three months. Never even bothered to call them. At work three days after I had moved out of my parents house I met a girl who was "saved". I actually, until that point, had avoided all contact with her. She was entirely to "happy" for me. She approached me, took me in, found me a place to live (I'd been living in my car for three days), and just wanted to be my friend.

It took me a long time to trust her, but eventually she won me over. She started asking me to go to church. Eventually I did. It took even longer for me to get "saved". I don't know how it happened really, it just did. I just knew I needed it. Two months after this I got accused by these christian people I was hanging out with of being demon possessed and they wanted to cast them out. I knew I wasn't possessed but I also knew that if I didn't let them do it they wouldn't be my friends anymore. So I faked my way through it and actually used it to take out my anger on them. After all they didn't think it was "me", they thought it was a bunch of demons. When it was all said and done I didn't want to be "saved" anymore. I thought, "If this is what "God" is all about I want no part of it."

I fell head first into alcoholism. I was drunk for four years strait. Of those four years I remember probably only about two. I couldn't keep a job, or a place to live. I was homeless a couple of times. I got raped again when I was 20 and two more times when I was 22. I almost got raped a 5th time when I was 22, but a friend was there and made him stop. So I started drinking alone. Back tracking just a little bit the first time I got raped when I was 20 I was living with my best friend from high school who's boyfriend lived with us. He hated me. For two weeks strait after this happened to me he told me everything was my fault. Everything from being raped to the fact that there was no world peace. No joke.

I decided he must be right and the world would be much better off without me so I did the unthinkable. I took 3/4 a bottle of extra strength tylenol and laid down on my bed and waited to die. After about 45 minutes I realized death was permanent. There was no changing your mind once it was over. I didn't want to die. As miserable as my life was, I just didn't want to die. I was rushed to the hospital and spent four days in there with a friggin tube down my throat. The doctor said had I waited any longer I would have died because I had ingested so much tylenol. I had to have a babysitter 24 hours a day.

One of these sitters came in and pulled out a bible and said, "I don't know why you did what you did, but I know that God still loves you. No matter what's happened. How far you think you've gone. He still loves you. He hasn't given up on you. Don't give up on yourself." I came home from the hospital, got my own place, and got raped again six months later by my landlord's best friend. I had decided to try attending church again just before all that happened, and in the midst of all this I was getting condemned by these "christians" because I smoked and I didn't speak in tongues. I swear... it was never ending...

I left that church, wandered aimlessly from church to church for two years and eventually found another. One I stuck with for eight years. Now don't take all the rest of this too personal please, but this is what really happened. Call it coincidence or whatever you want, but this is where things began to change. I was still drinking pretty heavy when I had started this church, but was slowly pulling back from it. After about two years of attending during the worship one sunday the guy playing the piano suddenly stopped and said, "There is someone here who has been living their whole life with a profound sense of aloneness. God wants to heal you. If you come to the alter we will pray for you right now."

I sat and waited, hoping they were talking about someone else. No one stood up and so I did because deep inside I knew it was me. I started crying that day and didn't stop crying for three months strait. Not every second of the day, mind you, but it sure felt like it. I cried so hard for the first couple of months that I broke blood vessels under my eyes. The more I cried the more free I felt. It was like all the junk from the day I was born was being pulled out of me. Things started turning around in my life. I started to see things different. See people different. See myself different. The more I read the bible the more I understood about myself, my life, everything. And here I am now. Here I am.

I may not be much to some people. Shoot, now I may even seem a little loopy... but that's what happened, that's what got me there and what got me here. I didn't ask for God's help. For the most part I didn't want it based on how His "helpers" were presenting themselves, but it was there when I needed it most with out me asking. Without me seeking. Without any great proclamations of faith on my part. Without giving anyone my money. Without even liking God really most of the time. I can't explain it really, I can just tell you how it happened and hope that it makes some kind of sense. If it doesn't, well... I'm sorry. I can't change how it all happened. *shrugs* I hope if anything saying all this helped at least give a little better understanding of me and where I am coming from.

It appears your troubles began in earnest when you embraced christianity.

My troubles with people who claim to be "christians". Yes. My troubles in general no. I believe those actually began when I was five and went on a downward spiral from there.

I'd like to give you a hug, heph.

Thank you Jason.

Edit:



That was suppose to say:

I got raped twice when I was 20 and almost a 5th time when I was 22...

hephzibah,

you have a pm

Chumly, just got it. Thank you for sharing that and I am so sorry.