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 💔

Especially as, considering God 'knows what we're going to do before we do it', he already knew that they were going to fail his 'test'. It really doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

And if Adam and Eve were innocents, unaware of any possible repercussions, and God was their 'father', then it's a little like putting two toddlers in a room with an open flame and telling them, 'whatever you do, don't touch the flame'. A responsible parent would never do such a thing, as we all know what the outcome would be!

Absolutely! And given the Bible is just (allegedly) God’s version of events it is bound to try to present itself in the best possible light as the “goodie” and yet still comes out of its own “testimony” looking vindictive, cruel, malicious and murderous, certainly far worse than Satan, whose only crime seems to have been standing up to the abusive bully. 🤷🏻‍♀️ In a courtroom it’d be found guilty and given a number of concurrent life sentences even if we did believe what it (supposedly) is saying about itself in its “testimony” in the Bible; even a jury of mere humans would see that such a being is clearly a danger to society due to repeated offences of heinous crimes.

In the grandiose style typical of abusive psychopaths it then declares that it will provide no evidence to support its claims that we should ignore its actions and accept that it is benevolent simply because it says it is (!) and “its word is LAW”, so it demands that we should believe its implausible version of events unquestioningly otherwise it will “punish us”… Never has a LTB been more deserved!

Haha yes… all awaiting and praying for the zombie apocalypse!

Wrong. I’ve read the whole thing end to end three times as well as being forced to study various sections of it in detail as a child (hence my dislike of the selective cherry picking of parts Christians want to bang on about while glossing over what the book actually says).

Then, unfortunately (?) me using the curious brain that (allegedly) God chose to endow me with - and therefore asking questions - incensed the clergy so much that they banned me from Sunday school as I didn’t possess the requisite blind faith in and desire to worship the deity which confesses to horrific crimes in its autobiography.

Why are you telling us this? I clicked this thread to read about OP’s church carol service and was not remotely prepared to come across a very specific description of child molestation. If you say he was a paedophile, we’ll take your word for it. We don’t need an explicit description on a thread about a non-abuse-related topic.

If you don’t pick and choose you have to live outside during your period, and if you’re a man you’re not allowed to shave or eat fish on a Friday or some such nonsense.

I can remember that with a certain priest when I was small, between 8 and 11 years of age, 60 odd years ago. Confession was a nightmare, so I and my elder sister by nearly 2 years would go and i usually had to go in first and if he was yelling and calling me a Heathen "and your Mother's a Heathen (she was Protestant actually) and your father's a Heathen too.". I would cut it short and when I came out of the confessional I would wipe my brow to let my sister know it was going to be tough so she could decide what sins to hold back. We would then go back another day when a nicer priest was on. The scary one also shouted from the pulpit all the time. I loved Church except when he was serving Mass.

to be fair, childbirth is painful.

It's a weird thing to be furious about. This reading was included in my kid's carol service and I rolled my eyes inwardly and made a wry comment to the person I was sitting next to. But then I went on with my day. It would not have occurred to me to create a post on mumsnet about it.

@YearOfTheDrizzle
I wasn’t actually talking about the Bible, I was answering another poster who seemed to be dismissing compassion as sentimental. I’ve only read bits of the Bible and like a lot of people found it a mixed bag: brutal, poetic, harshly uncompromising, and occasionally beautiful and inspiring. I’m not a practicing Christian, I’m just interested in how Christians think.

What the world needs now

Is love love love ❤️

Re Carols from Kings, are you supposed to make out the words they are singing? cos I cant for most of it. I even put on the subtitles but they were no help as I could not match the sung words to the words on screen.

They could have been singing in swahili for all you make out

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

Remember to cc God.

I think that room is precisely the room that most people would go into. Telling people about a single restricted forbidden room (or fruit) is the best way to ensure they disobey and enter it - it’s basic human curiosity, basic psychology. It’s not a bad thing, it’s about human imagination and intelligence.

What’s more, why did God impose that arbitrary restriction? Being Adam and Eve’s all-knowing creator, he must have known how they would react. So was it some sort of test? If so, it seems a bit petty.

From most of your responses, it's cleat you dislike Christianity so I'm a bit confused as to why you attend church.

Why?
Supposedly knows everything … 🤔

A segment from the Old Testament is read in Mass almost every single day. The four Gospels are in response to the Old Testament and would be completely meaningless without it. The Catholic Church believes that the Old Testament is sacred so I've not idea why you're saying 'we don't care much for the Old Testament'. All of Christianity is built on the OT. Jesus was the summation of the ancient Scriptures and is completely foreshadowed throughout it. My favourite piece of Christmas Scripture is from Isaiah, for example. You might have heard it at Mass :-)

actually "Lucifer" is mentioned only once in the bible (only in Isaiah 14), and referred to a real person - the king of babylon.
Other fallacies:
"satan" was not a person, but a title meaning "adversary" - someone who acted as a prosecutor in the court of the gods - the "divine council". So "Satan" was a person appointed by god to act in accord with his wishes by making a case. So "satan" and "Lucifer" are separate people/roles, neither of which really correspond to the (pop-culture) devil.
There was no concept of hell or of divine judgement for most of the old testament - everyone went to "Sheol" together. Hell had to be imported relatively late from greco-roman mythology (Hades).
The “number of the beast” has nothing to do with the devil - it was a coded reference to emperor Nero, using ancient Hebrew numerology.
Most of the modern imagery of hell and the devil come from Dante's inferno (14th century), Milton's Paradise lost (17th century), and medieval folklore.
As for the whole comforting "if we're good, we will be re-united with our loved ones in heaven" - the bible never says that.

I went to our carol service and they had the lights off and it was lit with candles, all very festive and lovely. Except there were no hymn books and I couldn’t see the screens due to tall men, so found it quite frustrating.

As an evangelical Christian, I've found many of the comments from those saying they are not Christians to be very insightful and curious. So many also misunderstanding the point of church services - they are not there to leave you with a fluffy feeling. Jesus' teaching is radical, it moved people to action and angered the authorities. He called for women to be treated better, for people to look after the foreigner, the prisoner, the hungry, that was radical. If this thread has angered you, maybe go back and have a read of the gospels (Matthew Mark Luke or John, easy to download on an app).

Correct.

I could debate some of your claims - Lucifer is often used as an alternate title for Satan for a variety of reasons, including the passage in Isaiah potentially being allegorical and referring to his fall from heaven, and around the fact that in Christianity, Satan is repeatedly referred to as an actual, individual being who stands in opposition to God - most likely a fallen angel.

But regardless of those quibbles, my point stands - the only non-human behaving badly in the Bible is God himself!

That's probably why the new testament was written to be all fluffy and loving.
Peeps were ignoring the original stuff. Honey to catch wasps and all that.