I just read this article in The Los Angeles Times. A religion columnist for the Times questions his faith after the stories he covered deeply affected him: ex-Mormans ostracized by their friends and family for leaving the Church, the Catholic Church molestation and cover-up scandal, exploitation of the desperate by TV evangelists, etc.
Part of what drew me to Christianity were the radical teachings of Jesus — to love your enemy, to protect the vulnerable and to lovingly bring lost sheep back into the fold.
As I reported the story, I wondered how faithful Mormons — many of whom rigorously followother biblical commands such as giving 10% of their income to the church — could miss so badly on one of Jesus’ primary lessons?
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I sought solace in another belief: that a church’s heart is in the pews, not the pulpits. Certainly the people who were reading my stories would recoil and, in the end, recapture God’s house. Instead, I saw parishioners reflexively support priests who had molested children by writing glowing letters to bishops and judges, offering them jobs or even raising their bail while cursing the victims, often to their faces.
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TBN [Trinity Broadcasting Network]‘s creed is that if viewers send money to the network, God will repay them with great riches and good health. Even people deeply in debt are encouraged to put donations on credit cards.
“If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed … you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven,” Paul Crouch, co-founder of the Orange County-based network, once told viewers. Meanwhile, Crouch and his wife, Jan, live like tycoons.
I highly recommend reading it. These are issues that caused a lot of people to lose faith in their religion – or at least faith in members and leaders of their religion. Happily, many have found a home here. I find these sorts of articles way more interesting than those by atheists and the anti-religious. Anyway, read it if you have a chance.
Wow. I don’t really know what else to say about his story. Most of that happened to all of us, and then we found His Noodlyness. We now have a faith that doesn’t require too much from us. We don’t need to pay money to get a reward in heaven, or feel we have to convert to a religion because we’ll be “committing spiritual suicide” unless we don’t. That article is one helluva good read, now he just needs to find his way over here so he can be saved by the FSM.
~~Mariner
Good stuff :)
Nice to see the Xians are still doing “God’s work”!
The more we see and hear of the real behaviour of the established religions, the more obvious it is that His Noodly Greatness is the true path, by virtue of its virtuousness. No robbing, no bullying, no violence, no double standards. It’s bloody obvious; what’s taking people so long to wake up to it?
RAmen
we do have flimsy moral standards though Boarg.
Hope I can post now….
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Commodore, that’s exactly why it’s so atractive :)
i am well aware. but what is the fundies excuse for having flimsy and/or double standards?
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. – Mohandas Gandhi
I have said before that organized religion is no different than organized crime. At least the people involved in organized crime aren’t trying to deceive everyone about their intentions. And you can hardly call us (Pastafarians) organized :-)
Indeed Commodore. But flimsy moral standards never hurt anyone by themselves. I like to think they’re what separate us from the animals, except maybe the Bonobos (unsafe spelling)and they don’t really hurt anyone by screwing around.