To be furious at local church carol service

[YogaGrinch]

With our new "fundamentalist " vicar who included genesis 3 16

And other misogynistic patriarchal quotes and suggestions throughout the service -

Listening to the King's college Cambridge service tonight was a completely different service although there too there were some dated patriarchal views shared?

And basically using opportunity of a full church to preach hellfire and brimstone snd call us all hypocrites and sinners rather than preaching love kindness beauty

Never heard anything like it

Was absolutely 💔

Not only the New Testament. The Old Testament foretells what was to happen, including the birth of Christ.

I’m Catholic and we don’t care too much for the Old Testament so these weird verses aren’t familiar to me. We focus more on the Gospels and the actual teachings of Jesus. And Christmas is all about the Nativity story and the precious gift of Christ. Always a simple, lovely, happy Mass on Christmas Day.

A religion founded on this bullshit shouldn't pretend to be something else in order to fit in. I'm condemned to Hell, according to their beliefs about to my sexuality. I'd rather they didn't pretend otherwise.

It's a bit like modernising the monarchy. How do you modernise being a head of state as a birthright?

Same here. Ours this evening was all about love and peace. The light shining in the darkness.

I think Christ must have been more than just a ‘nice guy who told people to be kind to each other’ - considering that he lived two thousand years ago in an unimaginably different time and we are still talking about what he said now. His teaching was reported later of course, by different people and writers, but the powerful themes recur, phrased slightly differently each time. Some of what he says sounds radical today.

My problem is more with God and his supposed omnipotence - if He (or She) had the power to alleviate the horrific suffering in this world, how can he just stand by?
The only way I could understand that is if he was permanently engaged in a battle with an evil power (just as in human beings there is a balance between good and bad which is always tipping one way or the other).

context? Maybe he was trying to show the cost of salvation, beginning with Mary’s suffering.
The Bible is very important to many Christians and some even encourage NOT picking out just the more appealing parts.
Sorry you were unsettled when you attended a Church and found its leader doing just that

We ABSOLUTELY HAVE to believe in free will. There IS no alternative!!!

have you utterly lost it! The Bible is the word of God. All of it. Not the bits you fancy to make you feel good.

and the quote above? As accurate as it
comes.Have you been in labour?!?? It hurts!

So what is God’s role then? Apart from creating everything (!), he knows everything, sees everything, and knows what will happen. But doesn’t intervene. So his role is just as the final judge?

He had good PR. 😊

Does the bible say that god is omnipotent? Maybe it's not his job to alleviate suffering or maybe the suffering serves some sort of purpose. Or maybe like you say it's a battle between good and evil.

(I should add that I'm just hypothesising. I dont believe there actually is a god).

From a neuroscientific point of view there is no free will. I'm not sure how society and individuals would be impacted if people stopped believing in free will but still .. the concept of free will makes no sense unless of course your religion can make sense of it.

@AlgaeScratchings Yes I’m hypothesising too, I’m just trying to understand how Christians think about it. God’s omnipotence seems to present a lot of questions and problems. And if it ‘isn’t his job to alleviate suffering’, can he be considered good?

I guess if you're ok with 15 year old virgins giving birth, everything else is gravy

And basically using opportunity of a full church to preach hellfire and brimstone snd call us all hypocrites and sinners rather than preaching love kindness beauty

Personally I'm not religious, but I don't understand how you can be a Christian without believing in Hell. If there is no damnation, what does humanity need to be saved from and where would be the point of the Incarnation/the Crucifixion/the Resurrection?

Yes, God both does and endorses many things that are highly problematic or outright evil, which makes sense considering the time and place the religion was invented. (Related to that, I was reading Revelations just the other day with my teenager, in one of those little New Testaments she was given at school. Having not read it in decades, I was shocked by just how bad the writing was – so repetitive and clunky).

Interestingly, Lucifer doesn't actually do anything 'bad' in the Bible that isn't without the express endorsement/encouragement of God (Job, and testing Jesus in the desert). His only crime appears to be that he thought he could do a better job than God, and to be fair, were the religion real...considering God's track history and the current state of the world, maybe he could have 🤔

Yes, how “evil” of her to eat an apple! Fruit is generally considered to be a healthy snack. What should she have had instead, a packet of pringles? Seems odd to punish someone for making good dietary choices. Or put an apple tree around at all if apples are for some reason “forbidden”?

There is no mention of an apple in Genesis. The fruit that allegedly caused all the trouble grew on the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

That's a little nitpicky – the popular representation of the fruit has always been an apple (from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) so people refer to it as such. Regardless, I do find it interesting that the foundational premise of the religion is that knowledge is bad.

I wouldn't be bothered by this, but I was born into a religious family and read the Bible cover to cover from an early age, so none of it is exactly shocking to me. Adam is also punished by having to work the land to produce food instead of having everything just handed to him. I am honestly surprised that more people don't know the Adam and Eve story based on this thread, but maybe my background is very unusual in the UK.

I don't know, OP, it's difficult to say without being there, but it really doesn't seem that shocking to me.

The Bible verses issue is the least of it, is the best idea really to fudge things pretend they aren't there? And Christianity really isn't some sort of sentimental schmaltz about love and kindness, as much as some parts of the CoE might be contented to let it seem so.

Usually it's been interpreted not so much as bad, as dangerous if you are not in a position to use it with wisdom.

And you think such a minor transgression of manners justifies psychopathic murder of innocent people, sanctioning of rape, treating women as sub-human, ordering people to murder their own children, etc? Bizarre.

Indeed. It’s not exactly subtle in its chief aims as a means of coercion and social control and undermining scientific progress over the centuries.

Not sure why you’d dismiss love and kindness as “sentimental schmalz”. The most important virtues in my opinion are compassion and (moral) courage. Having one of these is not enough, you need both.

Sentimentality is something different: indulgent, performative, easy and shallow.

No wonder this “God” is against it then, given that despite supposed omniscience and omnipotence it has made some appalling decisions and - if the Bible is to be believed - it is the most prolific serial killer in history and has all of the classic character traits indicating psychopathy.

Love and kindness? Have you actually read the Bible (allegedly “God’s word”), which amounts to a confession of absolutely heinous crimes and a perpetrator so mentally ill that the “God” is proud of their psychopathic, sadistic and murderous behaviour and believes it should be praised for it?