Here’s a promising-sounding new book: 10 Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe:
Many Christians, new and seasoned alike, tend to bank on promises that God never made, says one pastor.So when God doesn’t come through on those “promises,” some are likely to become angry at God.
And “that to me as a pastor over all my years is always one of the saddest things,” says Larry Osborne, teaching pastor at North Coast Church in Vista, Calif.
Osborne, whose church draws over 7,000 people, is hoping to spare a lot of Jesus followers from that anger. He’s also hoping Christians will peruse Scripture more and align themselves with what God really says rather than the “word on the street.”
Wait, that doesn’t sound promising at all! Does he at least have a good list of ten?
- Living God’s way will bring good fortune
- Faith can fix anything
- Forgiving means forgetting
- A godly home guarantees godly kids
- God has a blueprint for my life
- Christians shouldn’t judge
- Everything happens for a reason
- Let your conscience be your guide
- A valley means a wrong turn
- Dead people go to a better place.
Well, a number of those are stupid things. But if I were making a list of “Ten Stupid Things Smart Christians Believe,” none of those would be on it. What’s that? You want to know what would be on it? Good question!
Ten Stupid Things Smart Christians Believe
- A mistranslated book written by cave people is a reliable guide to the modern world.
- There’s an invisible man in the sky who likes to watch you while you’re showering.
- Two thousand years ago, an alter ego of this invisible man knocked up a Jewess whose husband wasn’t satisfying her.
- The progeny of this drunken coupling was both god and the son of god.
- This son of god was killed (but not really, since he’s also god, and god can’t die) and then came back to life to seek revenge, just like J.D. Walker.
- His killing was a necessary sacrifice in order that we might be forgiven for the sins of Eve, the first woman in the world, who lived 6000 years ago in a magical garden, where a talking snake convinced her to eat a forbidden apple.
- To show our thanks for this sacrifice, we should put special crackers and wine in our mouths, where they will be magically transformed into his flesh and blood, which we should then swallow despite taboos regarding cannibalism.
- If you don’t believe all the preceding items, then after you die you will be plunged into a lake of fire and tortured for all eternity.
- If you do believe all the preceding items, then after you die you’ll get to go to heaven, which is a cloud in outer space connected to the earth with a dotted line bent into a heart-shape
- Thomas Kinkade is an awesome painter.
Which book would you rather read?
Joel,
May I post this list in another blog with a link to your blog and giving you full credit? This is a masterpiece!
Go for it!
Joel,
I understand this seems completely foolish, i would have agreed with everything you said just a few years ago. Please listen to the sermon titled “The kings table” dated 12-9-2007. As a matter of fact please listen to any sermon before February of 2008 and then please email me with your thoughts. I was raised as a child of culture (in a Jewish family)and the Bible agreeably was ridiculous, but I was drawn to the Gospel and finally completely broken and destroyed so i could be made again, and now I understand. I’m 32 with 2 broken marriages and 4 kids and I believe. I would love to continue this dialogue, please listen, and try to do so with an open heart.
Peace Joel,
Jen Z
http://www.lakeshoremuskegon.com/listen.php
this is the link
Joel, you are an uneducated, ignorant and deceived fool.
Re-read John 8:58 and then Exodus 3:14, then Romans 6:23 and finally John 3:16.
There is hope for you yet. But your time is running out.
http://www.NeedGod.com
I may be uneducated, and I may be ignorant, and I may be a deceived fool, but … what was the last thing you called me?
“Joel, you are an uneducated, ignorant and deceived fool.”
…the kind of Christian vitriol that would make Jesus proud.
Technically, we don’t know it was an apple. The Book of the Cave People merely calls it “fruit”. It might have been Rock Hudson they she took a bite out of, which goes a lot further explaining God’s wrath.
I thought your links would lead to appropriate proof-texts, but I was greatly disappointed. All your article is, is a list of sarcastic assertions with nothing to back them up, a few ad homs– plus a truly humorous reference to Family Circus (which is number three on the Amateur Atheist Top 40 Hits after Chick tracts and eHarmony).
Joel, I’d like to reiterate what HPJames said, but only because I know you personally.
Joel, you are an uneducated, ignorant and deceived fool.
[...] these are more “news”-worthy than my Ten Stupid Things Smart Christians Believe or my How to Teach Kids about God and Genocide or my Religious Joke to End all Religious Jokes is a [...]
Well, that’s enough for me. Good luck Joel, I will be praying for you to truly see the light – but of course you have to want to see it. God will not make you.
Sincerely,
Kevin
trouble with “true believers”
Believes in and talks to an invisible being
Believes that worshiping invisible being will affect reality
Delusions of granduer and persecution
Warps reality data to fit predefined beliefs
Accepts doctrinal beliefs of others without critical examination
Characteristics of schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder, and more…
Get a grip
The writers of your ‘authoritative book’ thought wrongly that the earth was flat, and that the sun rotated around the earth…Not ‘inspired by’ something ‘god’ like, as the book reflects the human ignorance of the time…
There are 3 things that I love about your site. The First, is the title picture at the very top. The second is the picture on your book titled “Your religion is False”. Third, is under shirts and stickers the word FALSE spelled out in symbols. One thing I get what all of the symbols are except the L. What does the L symbol mean?
Last of all, even though these people have a false, or a Christian pagan religion doesn’t mean that there isn’t a God. They just don’t have the right deity yet. God said good Atheists go to Heaven, kicking and screaming all the way. God said that Richard Dawkins goes to Heaven. So that kind of opens the door for all of the other Atheists.
Gods messanger, Melanie
While “God” gave us carbon dating and the math supporting it to determine the age of the Earth he decided to litter the place with dinosaur bones, oil, suspicious layers of carbon…basically made the entire planet proof that it’s older than Christians believe just to “test us?” He also purposely made the ages of everyone in the bible add up to the creation year of the planet, but didn’t let anyone figure this out til a british fellow came along in the 1800’s.
Christians set the entire Western world back by hundreds of years in the dark ages when running water, sanitation, and medicine were tools of the devil because people that never heard of Jesus invented them centuries before. Allowing innocent children to die in agony because it’s god’s wish.
They burned, drowned and tortured teenage girls for having sex with the devil, thereby gaining the power to stop their neighbor’s cow from giving milk, or making other girls in the town itchy.
They oppose homosexuals to the extent of dragging them down a dirt road and leaving them to die on a fence, or publicly claiming they aren’t people with huge signs exclaiming how they don’t deserve rights….yet their esteemed representatives continue to have more then disturbing, abusive sexual relationships with male children and openly promote incest (Adam & Eve, Noah’s whole family, etc).
For some reason their God always needs money in the worst way.
They beg for money to get medical care for children in Africa but will fight to the death before the poor in their own country have free(or even affordable) medical care.
I’m so glad this religion is fading. I love that churches across the country are combining because of falling numbers. Seven churches have closed in my city in the last year and I am so happy to see this age come to an end.
Jesus = Personified Sun God
Yahweh = Personified Volcano God
Christians (whatever denomination) study comparative religion/history and free your mind from blind faith/superstition.
j
joel… y
you, sadly, truly are deceived… massively and pathetically so. not only that, but worse, you are smugly arrogant in your delusion. aside from radical humility and repentance before the God you disparage (Jesus Christ, Lord of all), you are a lost and hopeless soul; believe it!
dont know where you learned this, but its so wrong. its a lot deeper than that. i’ll be prayin. peace homie.