MakeBabyJesusCryFilter

So I got pissed off, and spat a bitter little gob of snark into this Metafilter thread linking Christianity.com’s so-called Sexual Purity Fact Sheet.

Twine42 and Pollomacho both respond that the thread itself and the paste-in of the infamous Dr. Laura letter are aimed more at what I referred to as “those damn wacky homo-hating Christians,” to address the pick-and-choose Biblicalism of fundamentalist morality, and are not meant as an attack on what they call “true Christianity.” The thread goes on, however, to skeptical attacks on Paul and scriptural historicity (these “St. Paul was a misogynist revisionist bastard” statements have been popping up a lot in my attention lately) which cause me to question just what a “true Christian” is to them. While Christians may not all be the wacky homo-haters they think many of us are, we still are followers of a way of life and a world view which is becoming more and more alien to this increasingly secularized world.

Substrate drops more than one theological jewel into the thread with this comment: “So, according to this nobody is getting into the Kingdom of Heaven anyway.” Exactly right! We are fallen humans in a fallen world, and we are, each one of us — regardless of race, creed, sexuality, political affiliation, or MeFI user ID number — unable to inherit the Kingdom by the efforts of our own fallen virtue.

Who then can be saved?

(Of course, if you’re one of them secularist types, the idea of salvation and an afterlife is probably just a superstition from some unreliable old religious text anyway, right?)

Comments

  1. Rod says:

    OK. I read it all and I am still unclear on what the original issue was that you got snarky about. Please explain so I can heap derision on those who deserve it.

  2. Paulo says:

    I just get tired of the number of times Christians are mischaracterized on Metafilter as hyperfundamental Roy-Phelps characters. Seeing people paste in Jesse Ventura quotes and Dr. Laura letters only underscores the simplistic self-satisfaction with which MeFi’s more prideful atheists regard matters of theological debate. How can you ask people to respect faith when the world — and, admittedly, the behavior of some of the faithful themselves — teaches them to regard faith as a fault?

    MakeBabyJesusCryFilter refers to the propensity of a theological topic on Metafilter to turn into a “How Wittily Can You Offend Christians” contest.

  3. Rod says:

    Ah. It never occurs to them that there might people who are both Gay and Christian, who find no contradiction in this. Such people lack imagination.

    They should read this, a very unusual Old Testament passage, from Isaiah 56:

    3 Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying, The LORD hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree.

    4 For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant;

    5 Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.

    6 Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant;

    7 Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.

    8 The Lord GOD which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet will I gather others to him, beside those that are gathered unto him.