It feels like a form of Stockholm Syndrome doesn't it?
It's insidious. God the Bastard never goes away after a significant period of believing in him. He's hiding in every Scripture and lurking behind the theological constructions you try to replace him with.
When my daughter was small, I remember her getting quite traumatised by the kids history series Horrible Histories. She was of the era when young teens were into reading about witches and zombies and vampires.
Which is just to say that you guys shouldn't beat yourselves up too much, kids are exposed to quite grim ideas from quite an early age in cartoon form. It's not exclusively from religious teaching.
For me, the things that I've heard about religious stories suggest that they're almost always not child friendly. But is it really worse than what they're hearing elsewhere in media that is directed at them? Probably not.
I think the problem is it's different to reading historical or fictional Nasty Stuff. The problem with the religious Nasty Stuff is you're supposed to approve, defend or rationalise the Nasty Stuff that your God has done, does, and is going to do.
It wasn't the gore of the crucifixion that was drubbed into me as a kid, but the terror of missing the Rapture. One of the churches of my youth played this movie, and it still causes PTSD.
"A Distant Thunder dramatically presents the Seal Judgments of Revelation, the importance of Christ's redemption, and the cost of discipleship during persecution. This second film in the classic prophecy series continues the story of Patty who is left living as a fugitive, relentlessly pursued and finally captured by the forces of UNITE, she is given a choice: either receive "the Mark" or face death."
Spoiler Alert: the closing scenes feature a guillotine. It kept me absolutely terrified for years. Amazon has it tagged correctly: Drama - Faith and Spirituality - Science Fiction.
I think I grew up kinda adjacent to this, though my own church never preached it explicitly. I think it's somewhat implicitly by the idea that Jesus reconciles us to God, since there's the shadow of a lack of reconciliation, but somehow that never got to me as a kid.
I certainly knew people who belonged to evangelical churches and heard the way they preached, shades of it might've come up in my own churches, it just never made sense to me so I never really adopted it. If God is love...that ain't love, it fails to compute and so my mind rejects it.
My biggest issue was my own conscience and shame over my own thoughts and sometimes actions, I don't think I ever felt that my going to church was somehow existentially coerced. I actually liked church, it was a place apart from the other places in life that weren't happy.
Somewhere in adulthood, partly through this forum and partly through seminary and some other experiences I think I might have actually exorcised evangelical hellfire God for good. I think, even with people who might deserve it, I'd rather if empathy could somehow cattle-prod them into becoming ethical creatures instead of doing the eternal punishment thing, because eternal punishment just doesn't make sense in a temporal world of mortals.
I often have said that if I grew up in a more evangelical church, I'd almost certainly have gone atheist by now. And there are some folks for whom I'm amazed they're still in church considering what it...heck, we have done to them. And learning to own that "we" is another learning curve.
I don't pretend to have answers or be able to fix anything anymore. I'm just here and try to be the person I ought to be. I think I do ok at it most of the time, though I can never tell if I'm setting the bar too low or too high. I guess grace is like that if you really believe in it.
Being left behind when Jesus returned was a very genuine fear for me at the age of about 9 or 10. I’d prayed the “sinner’s prayer” a few times but concluded it hadn’t “worked” as I didn’t really feel any different, and Dad always said that his life had changed very dramatically as soon as he was born again (it didn’t occur to me that he might have had a lot more scope to behave sinfully in his early 20s than I did as an anxious and law-abiding child).
I remember once coming home from school, Mum was unexpectedly not there and I had no means of getting in. By the time she got back (I think she’d gone to the shops and been delayed for some reason) I was absolutely convinced that Jesus had taken my family and everyone at church and left me behind, and was wondering where I would live, and how I was going to explain to a non-Christian what had happened. I thought our neighbour Mrs A might possibly take me in. I knew she wasn’t a Christian as Dad was always trying to find opportunities to tell her about Jesus. She was always nice to me and never shouted and used to give me old toys that her son had grown out of. I thought in some ways it would be quite nice living with Mrs A, but it would be very odd to have no church or Sunday School any more and if Jesus had gone without me, I was cut off from him forever, and that was unimaginably awful.
And then Mum came down the road and then I just felt stupid.
I think I was very fortunate as a child to go to a church that didn't emphasize judgement, or if it did the message totally passed me by. Our Sunday School was led by a woman who was a Quaker and one of the most loving people I have ever known.
To repent is not to look downward at my own shortcomings,
But to look upward towards God's love.
It is not to look backwards with self-reproach,
But forward with trustfulness.
It is not to see what I failed to be,
But what, by the grace of Christ, what I can be.
To repent is not to look downward at my own shortcomings,
But to look upward towards God's love.
It is not to look backwards with self-reproach,
But forward with trustfulness.
It is not to see what I failed to be,
But what, by the grace of Christ, what I can be.
To repent is not to look downward at my own shortcomings,
But to look upward towards God's love.
It is not to look backwards with self-reproach,
But forward with trustfulness.
It is not to see what I failed to be,
But what, by the grace of Christ, what I can be.
Amen. I need to do this more.
Amen indeed, especially in this Stresstive Season. 'Onward and upwards!'
Or, as CSL put it (The Last Battle, I think)
'Further in and further up'
To repent is not to look downward at my own shortcomings,
But to look upward towards God's love.
It is not to look backwards with self-reproach,
But forward with trustfulness.
It is not to see what I failed to be,
But what, by the grace of Christ, what I can be.
Amen. I need to do this more.
Amen indeed, especially in this Stresstive Season. 'Onward and upwards!'
Or, as CSL put it (The Last Battle, I think)
'Further in and further up'
I think I was very fortunate as a child to go to a church that didn't emphasize judgement, or if it did the message totally passed me by. Our Sunday School was led by a woman who was a Quaker and one of the most loving people I have ever known.
I sometimes wonder if hiding the damnation bit, if you do believe in it, isn't more damaging in the long run.
It feels like a bit of a bait and switch - the package is unconditional love, eternal salvation, toddler groups, musical traditions and parish fêtes but hiding behind it is this "by the way, you have to accept that lots of the people you love are going to Hell, but we try not to talk about that."
Same here, but I don’t recall huge emphasis on the awfulness of death by crucifixion, as such.
I have heard such awfulness described, in gory terms, to infant age children by a High Church Anglican curate. The Head (a High Church Christian herself) was not pleased and Had Words with the Rector afterwards.
Same here, but I don’t recall huge emphasis on the awfulness of death by crucifixion, as such.
I have heard such awfulness described, in gory terms, to infant age children by a High Church Anglican curate. The Head (a High Church Christian herself) was not pleased and Had Words with the Rector afterwards.
FatherInCharge gets the kids in our Youth Club to bang nails, with great gusto, into a piece of wood when they *do* the Stations of the Cross at their Lent meeting...
In my school CU days there was such an emphasis on John 3:16 that it seemed the alternatives were ',eternal life' or 'perish' -neither of course which mean much to a schoolboy.
I could not find the actual quote either, but when I asked AI who wrote it, it came back saying the quote is attributed to Charles Spurgeon, no date given.
There’s no better reason to believe it’s Charles Spurgeon than it was John of the Cross or John Climacus. Unless an actual work by the person is cited and checkable AI’s sources are no better than anyone else’s.
I could not find the actual quote either, but when I asked AI who wrote it, it came back saying the quote is attributed to Charles Spurgeon, no date given.
85% of AI answers to 'who said this quote' are false, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out.
I could not find the actual quote either, but when I asked AI who wrote it, it came back saying the quote is attributed to Charles Spurgeon, no date given.
85% of AI answers to 'who said this quote' are false, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out.
It is getting better. When AI said it was Charles Spurgeon, I went back and said I had thought it was St John of the Cross, to which it said "Could be." (in so many words).
[aside]AI is a poor way to do searches and research, it only (usually) gives one answer and doesn't provide the sources for what it reports. A traditional search will give the sources, but requires a bit of work to critically assess those sources. There may be scope for AI assistance with internet searches, but IMO introducing features found in academic search tools (eg exact phrase, boolean, proximity) into popular search engines (some of which were part of such engines a decade ago) would be a better step to take.
From what I can see from search engines, the quote in question seems to be almost universally attributed to John Climacus, but none of those quotes I've found say where he said that.[/aside]
I am curious as to whether AI would actually attribute that quote to Abraham Lincoln if you asked it who said it without prompting. But not curious enough to check myself.
Would I be a very bad boy if I pointed out how quickly that quote got attributed to various spiritual authority figures of the past and suggesting it's just possible that some bits of the Bible have experienced the same process?
It is getting better. When AI said it was Charles Spurgeon, I went back and said I had thought it was St John of the Cross, to which it said "Could be." (in so many words).
That’s an indication it’s getting better? That quote doesn’t sound anything like any writings of Charles Spurgeon I’ve ever come across.
AI is useful for some things. This kind of research ain’t one of them.
It is getting better. When AI said it was Charles Spurgeon, I went back and said I had thought it was St John of the Cross, to which it said "Could be." (in so many words).
That’s an indication it’s getting better? That quote doesn’t sound anything like any writings of Charles Spurgeon I’ve ever come across.
AI is useful for some things. This kind of research ain’t one of them.
I knew the attribution to Spurgeon was specious. But the way AI improves is if someone questions its reply, then it has to go back to try to find the correct attribution. In this case, when I questioned its reply, AI came back saying it could be St, John of the Cross, That is an improvement. True, it never came back with the correct answer, probably because the quote was not in its database.
We haven’t previously had a policy on referencing AI such as ChatGP. However, as an interim ruling (we will further discuss this further) AI programs should not be used as a source for serious discussion such as Purgatory or Epiphanies. (Used on any other forum for entertainment, please clearly indicate its use and ideally what you told it to get the output you are posting.)
The reason for this, is that the AI is simply using an algorithm to scrape the internet for content - there is no guarantee anything posted is factually accurate and we would prefer not to potentially spread misinformation
(Bold mine)
Any queries about this should go to Admins in the Styx.
Would I be a very bad boy if I pointed out how quickly that quote got attributed to various spiritual authority figures of the past and suggesting it's just possible that some bits of the Bible have experienced the same process?
I don't think you're being bad -I think that process is more than 'just possible '.
But the way AI improves is if someone questions its reply, then it has to go back to try to find the correct attribution. In this case, when I questioned its reply, AI came back saying it could be St, John of the Cross, That is an improvement. True, it never came back with the correct answer, probably because the quote was not in its database.
It's not an improvement. It's a different random guess.
An improvement would be if it admitted that it didn't know or cited its sources.
Would I be a very bad boy if I pointed out how quickly that quote got attributed to various spiritual authority figures of the past and suggesting it's just possible that some bits of the Bible have experienced the same process?
No, I don't think that's bad at all. There is a lot of debate as to whether some Pauline material is actually Pauline or Petrine material Petrine etc etc.
They could have used AI of course. Ancient Intelligence.
You do get Orthodox who get hot under the collar about questioning or challenging traditional attributions. Not all do.
Big T Tradition gives us a convenient way out on these things. Even if the traditional attribution is incorrect it's still part of Big T Tradition. So that makes it alright. 😉
Pablito1954, in my opinion, for what that's worth, the elders of your erstwhile evangelical church have hung an great millstone about their own necks and only your own prayers (if you can bring yourself to utter them) can save them from being cast into the sea. I'm sorry to place this burden on you, and may be wrong of course. The mercy of God is infinite.
Pablito1954, in my opinion, for what that's worth, the elders of your erstwhile evangelical church have hung an great millstone about their own necks and only your own prayers (if you can bring yourself to utter them) can save them from being cast into the sea. I'm sorry to place this burden on you, and may be wrong of course. The mercy of God is infinite.
Surely it is only that infinite mercy and love of God, made known to us in Jesus, that saves anyone from being cast into the (real or metaphorical) sea?
Pablito1954, in my opinion, for what that's worth, the elders of your erstwhile evangelical church have hung an great millstone about their own necks and only your own prayers (if you can bring yourself to utter them) can save them from being cast into the sea. I'm sorry to place this burden on you, and may be wrong of course. The mercy of God is infinite.
This is actually more of the same horrible burden, I'm afraid, and a great mistake (sorry, Eirenist!). Pablito1954 is under no special obligation here, and his prayers, while lovely, are not required for God to deal mercifully or otherwise with the elders. God has not locked himself into some sort of system like that. We are free, Pablito1954 is free, and we can rest in God's mercy.
To be sure, if Pablito1954 was asking for help on the subject of praying for past enemies etc. there would be stuff we could offer. But I don't think he is--and I'm certain that laying another burden on him is not what Christ wants us to do. Christ will handle the elders just fine without that.
Pablito1954, in my opinion, for what that's worth, the elders of your erstwhile evangelical church have hung an great millstone about their own necks and only your own prayers (if you can bring yourself to utter them) can save them from being cast into the sea. I'm sorry to place this burden on you, and may be wrong of course. The mercy of God is infinite.
This is actually more of the same horrible burden, I'm afraid, and a great mistake (sorry, Eirenist!). Pablito1954 is under no special obligation here, and his prayers, while lovely, are not required for God to deal mercifully or otherwise with the elders. God has not locked himself into some sort of system like that. We are free, Pablito1954 is free, and we can rest in God's mercy.
To be sure, if Pablito1954 was asking for help on the subject of praying for past enemies etc. there would be stuff we could offer. But I don't think he is--and I'm certain that laying another burden on him is not what Christ wants us to do. Christ will handle the elders just fine without that.
Which is a feature of fundamentalism of course and of religious convictions more generally. 'I believe in God the Father Almighty ...' not 'I have a vague idea that there might be a Deity of some kind ...'
The only difference in this instance is that it's being applied to an idea that is hard to bear and countenance - eternal consciousness punishment.
The elders would also have firmly believed in the corollary of that, eternal bliss for those who are 'saved'. They would have had equal certainty about both.
It feels like a form of Stockholm Syndrome doesn't it?
It's insidious. God the Bastard never goes away after a significant period of believing in him. He's hiding in every Scripture and lurking behind the theological constructions you try to replace him with.
It's interesting. I always say now that I grew up in a pretty bland mainline church, and I thank God for that because if I'd grown up evangelical, the person I am would probably be an atheist by now.
But even there, it was so much in the culture that I don't think I properly shook of God the Bastard until somewhere in college, maybe not until seminary. This place probably helped that along a bit.
Ironically I may still believe in judgment, but - in a very careful way - I'm more confident in my own faith. It's strange that seeing so many fundies and evangelicals turn into terrifying delusional monsters [apologies to anyone who might read this, I intend nothing personal] has made me find my own fundamentals and become more comfortable saying "Yep, in my own sense I'm a fundamentalist and I'm gonna say you're committing blasphemy when you confuse the president with Jesus Christ. Full stop." I'm disgusted seeing my own religion turned into a port through which politicians can just insert virulent nonsense into people's very souls. It's just not right.
It's really weird what seeing your values violated on the national stage will do for your convictions. And I'll happily admit I may be a bastard, in the figurative sense, but at this point in life, I don't think I have much choice in the matter.
Comments
It's insidious. God the Bastard never goes away after a significant period of believing in him. He's hiding in every Scripture and lurking behind the theological constructions you try to replace him with.
Which is just to say that you guys shouldn't beat yourselves up too much, kids are exposed to quite grim ideas from quite an early age in cartoon form. It's not exclusively from religious teaching.
For me, the things that I've heard about religious stories suggest that they're almost always not child friendly. But is it really worse than what they're hearing elsewhere in media that is directed at them? Probably not.
"A Distant Thunder dramatically presents the Seal Judgments of Revelation, the importance of Christ's redemption, and the cost of discipleship during persecution. This second film in the classic prophecy series continues the story of Patty who is left living as a fugitive, relentlessly pursued and finally captured by the forces of UNITE, she is given a choice: either receive "the Mark" or face death."
Spoiler Alert: the closing scenes feature a guillotine. It kept me absolutely terrified for years. Amazon has it tagged correctly: Drama - Faith and Spirituality - Science Fiction.
I certainly knew people who belonged to evangelical churches and heard the way they preached, shades of it might've come up in my own churches, it just never made sense to me so I never really adopted it. If God is love...that ain't love, it fails to compute and so my mind rejects it.
My biggest issue was my own conscience and shame over my own thoughts and sometimes actions, I don't think I ever felt that my going to church was somehow existentially coerced. I actually liked church, it was a place apart from the other places in life that weren't happy.
Somewhere in adulthood, partly through this forum and partly through seminary and some other experiences I think I might have actually exorcised evangelical hellfire God for good. I think, even with people who might deserve it, I'd rather if empathy could somehow cattle-prod them into becoming ethical creatures instead of doing the eternal punishment thing, because eternal punishment just doesn't make sense in a temporal world of mortals.
I often have said that if I grew up in a more evangelical church, I'd almost certainly have gone atheist by now. And there are some folks for whom I'm amazed they're still in church considering what it...heck, we have done to them. And learning to own that "we" is another learning curve.
I don't pretend to have answers or be able to fix anything anymore. I'm just here and try to be the person I ought to be. I think I do ok at it most of the time, though I can never tell if I'm setting the bar too low or too high. I guess grace is like that if you really believe in it.
I remember once coming home from school, Mum was unexpectedly not there and I had no means of getting in. By the time she got back (I think she’d gone to the shops and been delayed for some reason) I was absolutely convinced that Jesus had taken my family and everyone at church and left me behind, and was wondering where I would live, and how I was going to explain to a non-Christian what had happened. I thought our neighbour Mrs A might possibly take me in. I knew she wasn’t a Christian as Dad was always trying to find opportunities to tell her about Jesus. She was always nice to me and never shouted and used to give me old toys that her son had grown out of. I thought in some ways it would be quite nice living with Mrs A, but it would be very odd to have no church or Sunday School any more and if Jesus had gone without me, I was cut off from him forever, and that was unimaginably awful.
And then Mum came down the road and then I just felt stupid.
I think I was very fortunate as a child to go to a church that didn't emphasize judgement, or if it did the message totally passed me by. Our Sunday School was led by a woman who was a Quaker and one of the most loving people I have ever known.
To repent is not to look downward at my own shortcomings,
But to look upward towards God's love.
It is not to look backwards with self-reproach,
But forward with trustfulness.
It is not to see what I failed to be,
But what, by the grace of Christ, what I can be.
More flippantly, I remember a character in a book commenting that they were not a "miserable sinner" but were quite happy about it.
Yes, it is. I wish I had that quote when I did a sermon on the teachings of John the Baptist a couple of weeks ago.
You are welcome @Huia
Amen. I need to do this more.
Amen indeed, especially in this Stresstive Season. 'Onward and upwards!'
Or, as CSL put it (The Last Battle, I think)
'Further in and further up'
Yes, and amen to that too! ❤️
I sometimes wonder if hiding the damnation bit, if you do believe in it, isn't more damaging in the long run.
It feels like a bit of a bait and switch - the package is unconditional love, eternal salvation, toddler groups, musical traditions and parish fêtes but hiding behind it is this "by the way, you have to accept that lots of the people you love are going to Hell, but we try not to talk about that."
FatherInCharge gets the kids in our Youth Club to bang nails, with great gusto, into a piece of wood when they *do* the Stations of the Cross at their Lent meeting...
I could not find the actual quote either, but when I asked AI who wrote it, it came back saying the quote is attributed to Charles Spurgeon, no date given.
It is getting better. When AI said it was Charles Spurgeon, I went back and said I had thought it was St John of the Cross, to which it said "Could be." (in so many words).
From what I can see from search engines, the quote in question seems to be almost universally attributed to John Climacus, but none of those quotes I've found say where he said that.[/aside]
(Research by HI* and Duck duck go)
(*Human Intelligence)
AI is useful for some things. This kind of research ain’t one of them.
I knew the attribution to Spurgeon was specious. But the way AI improves is if someone questions its reply, then it has to go back to try to find the correct attribution. In this case, when I questioned its reply, AI came back saying it could be St, John of the Cross, That is an improvement. True, it never came back with the correct answer, probably because the quote was not in its database.
https://forums.shipoffools.com/discussion/comment/681582/#Comment_681582
(Bold mine)
Any queries about this should go to Admins in the Styx.
Many thanks!
Louise
Epiphanies Host
I don't think you're being bad -I think that process is more than 'just possible '.
An improvement would be if it admitted that it didn't know or cited its sources.
No, I don't think that's bad at all. There is a lot of debate as to whether some Pauline material is actually Pauline or Petrine material Petrine etc etc.
They could have used AI of course. Ancient Intelligence.
You do get Orthodox who get hot under the collar about questioning or challenging traditional attributions. Not all do.
Big T Tradition gives us a convenient way out on these things. Even if the traditional attribution is incorrect it's still part of Big T Tradition. So that makes it alright. 😉
This is actually more of the same horrible burden, I'm afraid, and a great mistake (sorry, Eirenist!). Pablito1954 is under no special obligation here, and his prayers, while lovely, are not required for God to deal mercifully or otherwise with the elders. God has not locked himself into some sort of system like that. We are free, Pablito1954 is free, and we can rest in God's mercy.
To be sure, if Pablito1954 was asking for help on the subject of praying for past enemies etc. there would be stuff we could offer. But I don't think he is--and I'm certain that laying another burden on him is not what Christ wants us to do. Christ will handle the elders just fine without that.
Amen.
The only difference in this instance is that it's being applied to an idea that is hard to bear and countenance - eternal consciousness punishment.
The elders would also have firmly believed in the corollary of that, eternal bliss for those who are 'saved'. They would have had equal certainty about both.
It's interesting. I always say now that I grew up in a pretty bland mainline church, and I thank God for that because if I'd grown up evangelical, the person I am would probably be an atheist by now.
But even there, it was so much in the culture that I don't think I properly shook of God the Bastard until somewhere in college, maybe not until seminary. This place probably helped that along a bit.
Ironically I may still believe in judgment, but - in a very careful way - I'm more confident in my own faith. It's strange that seeing so many fundies and evangelicals turn into terrifying delusional monsters [apologies to anyone who might read this, I intend nothing personal] has made me find my own fundamentals and become more comfortable saying "Yep, in my own sense I'm a fundamentalist and I'm gonna say you're committing blasphemy when you confuse the president with Jesus Christ. Full stop." I'm disgusted seeing my own religion turned into a port through which politicians can just insert virulent nonsense into people's very souls. It's just not right.
It's really weird what seeing your values violated on the national stage will do for your convictions. And I'll happily admit I may be a bastard, in the figurative sense, but at this point in life, I don't think I have much choice in the matter.