One of Christianity’s chief offenses is not that it has enlisted the services of bad men, but that it has misdirected the energies of good ones. The kindly, the sensitive, the thoughtful, those who are striving to do their best under its influence, are troubled, and consequently often develop a more or less morbid frame of mind. The biographies of the best men in Christian history offer many melancholy examples of the extent to which they have falsely accused themselves of sins during their “unconverted” state, and the manner in which harmless actions are magnified into deadly offenses.

Chapman Cohen, Essays in Freethinking

ON “REVIVALS”
In the days of my youth, ministers depended on revivals to save souls and reform the world. The emotional sermons, the sad singing, the hysterical “Amens,” the hope of heaven, the fear of hell, caused many to lose what little sense they had. In this condition they flocked to the “mourner’s bench”–asked for prayers of the faithful–had strange feelings, prayed, and wept and thought they had been “born again.” Then they would tell their experiences–how wicked they had been, how evil had been their thoughts, their desires, and how good they had suddenly become.

They used to tell the story of an old woman who, in telling her experience, said, “Before I was converted, before I gave my heart to God, I used to lie and steal, but now, thanks to the grace and blood of Jesus Christ, I have quit ‘em both, in a great measure.”

Well, while the cold winter lasted, while the snows fell, the revival went on, but when the winter was over, the boats moved in the harbor again, the wagons rolled, and business started again, most of the converts “backslid” and fell again into their old ways. But the next winter they were on hand again, read to be “born again.” They formed a kind of stock company, playing the same parts every winter and backsliding every spring.

I regard revivals as essentially barbaric. The fire that has to be blown all the time is a poor thing to get warm by. I think they do no good but much harm; they make innocent people think they are guilty, and very mean people think they are good.

Robert Ingersoll, “Why I am An Agnostic”
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I had what I consider a “spiritual epiphany” regarding “evangelicalism” in high school when a group of friends and I drove to an evangelistic rally and heard the preacher rail on and on against the evils of drinking, smoking, and other things. The evangelist was a spectacular showman and implored the audience to take heed, come forward, let go of any liquor bottles or packs of cigarettes in their possession, repent, and sin no more with God’s power. Each word of the evangelist blazed with the certainty that God would heal His people’s sinful ways and a choir was singing with trumpets blaring and the audience grew very excited. My friends all deposited their packs of cigarettes on the growing pile in the center of the rally and prayed with the ushers and pleaded with me to do so as well for the good of my soul.

I refused.

No sooner had the emotion-filled rally ended, no sooner had we traveled a few blocks in our car, than my friends bummed cigarettes off me.

Dr. Charles B. (as told to E.T.B. 7/18/06)
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HOW DIFFERENT ARE MOST “CONVERTED” PEOPLE?
Were it true that a converted man as such is of an entirely different kind from a natural man, there surely ought to be some distinctive radiance. But notoriously there is no such radiance. Converted men as a class are indistinguishable from normal men.

By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial “carnal” man would be in the same situation.

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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HOW TO SPOT CHRISTIANS
One Sunday afternoon my cousin and I were eating at a restaurant. He paused, and started pointing at people. “He’s a Christian… He’s a Christian… So is she, and she, and that other guy.”

I asked how he was so sure.

His reply? “I was a hard-core Evangelical Christian for a few years, remember? It’s not hard to see once you know what to look for. Look for someone who looks like they’re wearing clothes just a little bit nicer than they’re comfortable in, that have a smile on their face. It won’t look like a happy smile, it’ll look kind of contrived and forced, like they’re trying to convince themselves they’re happy and rich.”

Justice McPherson
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Many of the most cordial Christians either hum hymns or listen to contemporary Christian music, or repeat Scripture in their heads, and wonder what they can do next to make someone think that they’re a “good little Christian.”

I used to do the same thing, and now people wonder why I do not shower them with praise and gifts to make them think that I am a “good little Christian.” I used to go to people’s houses and work and they would try to pay me, But No! I would not take a dime, because I wanted to emblazon on their brains the idea that I was a “good little Christian.” (The “people-pleasing-for-Christ” part of my life ended over 15 years ago.) That’s what many Christians are, people pleasers, God pleasers, Jesus pleasers, preacher pleasers.

Jesus was a people pleaser, that’s why he was so willing to die, either to please God or his ignorant followers.

Ben at http://www.exchristian.net/ [edited by E.T.B.]
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CONVERTED OR ADDICTED?
Psychotherapists will tell you that in dealing with an addict, you have to understand that the person’s primary relationship is with the drug. The drug has the ability to control the addict’s thinking to a remarkable degree, and you must understand that any relationship you may feel with the addict is a distant second to the one they have with their drug. The most devout Evangelical Christians are open and unabashed about this. Their “relationship with Jesus” as they use the term, is the primary relationship in their lives. There is even a scripture that goes something like, “Not unless you hate your mother and father can you be my disciple,” and, “Who are my mother and father? But he who hears and words of God and does them.” Jesus even suggested to one disciple that he ought not return home to help bury a dead family member, instead he ought to “Let the dead bury the dead.” In other words, Evangelicals stress that one’s love for Jesus ought to be so strong that relatively speaking, one’s love for even close family members, must not compare. You may love your mother but you should love Jesus so much more that in comparison it’s like you hate her. Doesn’t this sound an awful lot like a drunk’s love for the bottle?

It may be helpful when trying to have a relationship with a believer to remember that you and their relationship with you means very little to them compared to their need to continue in their thought addiction. In fact “true believers” may happily sacrifice a relationship with their own spouses or children should those family members refuse to convert, or become “unbelievers.” In such cases the “true believer” feels they are making the ultimate sacrifice in “serving God rather than man.”

Evangelical beliefs may promise you comfort, security and power just like the ads for alcohol link its consumption with sexiness, sports activities, and a rippin’ good time, but the promises in both cases often grow sour as the addict grows more hardened and insistent.

Some people have an instant “conversion” to alcoholism. They take their first drink, or have their first good drunk and understand (in the words of a very young alcoholic client I once had) “This (drinking) is what I was put on this world to do.”

For some people their religion is an illness they are trying to recover from and the recovery process is more difficult than recovering from alcoholism.

Saint Vilis at the Yahoo Group, ExitFundyism
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You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that WE are the ones who “need help?”

Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
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EVANGELICAL EGO-GAMES
An evangelical Christian once told me, “Only Jesus Christ can save man and restore him to his lost state of peace with God, himself and others.” Yeah, sure, and only new Pepsi can make you feel really happy, and only our brand is better than the competition, and only our country is the best country. It is truly amazing to me that people can utter such arrogant nonsense with no humor, no sense of how offensive they are to others, no doubt or trepidation, and no suspicion that they sound exactly like advertisers, con-men and other swindlers. It is really hard to understand such child-like prattling. If I were especially conceited about something (a state I try to avoid, but if I fell into it…), if for instance I decided I had the best garden or the handsomest face in Ireland, I would still retain enough common sense to suspect that I would sound like a conceited fool if I went around telling everybody those opinions. I would have enough tact left, I hope, to satisfy my conceit by dreaming that other people would notice on their own that my garden and/or my face were especially lovely. People who go around innocently and blithely announcing that they belong to the Master Race or the Best Country Club or have the One True Religion seem to have never gotten beyond the kindergarten level of ego-display. Do they have no modesty, no tact, no shame, no adult common sense at all? Do they have any suspicion how silly their conceit sounds to the majority of the nonwhite non-Christian men and women of the world? To me, they seem like little children wearing daddy’s clothes and going around shouting, “Look how grown-up I am! Look at me, me, me!”

There are more amusing things than ego-games, conceit and one-upmanship.Really, there are. I suspect that people stay on that childish level because they have never discovered how interesting and exciting the adult world is.

If one must play ego-games, I still think it would be more polite, and more adult, to play them in the privacy of one’s head. In fact, despite my efforts to be a kind of Buddhist, I do relapse into such ego-games on occasion; but I have enough respect for human intelligence to keep such thoughts to myself. I don’t go around announcing that I have painted the greatest painting of our time; I hope that people will notice that by themselves. Why do the people whose ego-games consist of day-dreaming about being part of the Master Race or the One True Religion not keep that precious secret to themselves, also, and wait for the rest of the human race to notice their blinding superiority?

Robert Anton Wilson
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Many Christians who can’t even get members of their own family to agree with them on trifling matters are currently seeking to evangelize the world and tell everyone “what’s what.”

E.T.B.

But I can still identify with a feeling of inadequacy, wanting to communicate better, make people feel happier or more at ease, wondering if I’ve said the wrong word at times.

Same goes for being called into a superior’s office. You never know what they might say, and I tend to fear the worst at times when it’s not like that at all.

I suspect that most people with a job and a supervisor feel that way.

Though when one’s innermost faith IS one’s job, I imagine the feeling is magnified.

No longer being a Christian I now look at Christianity and its practices as many Christians look at cults and cult leaders, though without fearing that the cult leader is leading people to “eternal hell.” Christianity and its practices now seem less real, more contrived, than living life without Christianity. I see Christians putting on airs for Christ, exclaiming Christ with every breath while claiming they are acting humbly, but
their egos are so connected with Christ and passing along their own beleifs in Christ that they don’t even realize they are acting out of ego. They blame family and friends for not believing as they do, always sticking in some warning, or plea, or telling people to their face, “I’m praying for you,” instead of keeping such information to themselves.

Or they remind people how much “Christians” have suffered, while people are suffering all around the world for a wide variety of reasons, some due to nature, some due to government persecution of rival political and religious views, some due to inter-religious rivalries.

Christians proclaim they have done things “for Christ” thus advancing their own egos which are so tied up with “the kingdom of Christ.”

This identification of one’s soul with “Christ” seems to provide the ultimate excuse to boast about one’s beliefs while at the same time claiming you’re only boasting out of “humble service to your Lord.”

And all of that has got to lead to some surprising mental gymnastics that can exacerbate feelings of inadequacy among other emotional reactions.

Personally, I suspect that atheism as a movement doesn’t have the strength a lot of Christian groups do as a movement is because most atheists, agnostics, doubters, etc., do not truly identify themselves with their beliefs or with a label or with a symbol, and hence don’t feel obliged to have to boast about it to others out of “humility.” A lot of non-Christians want to learn, love and live life, not listen to “atheist music” or go to “atheist churches,” and “atheist rallies.” But in any society in which one group takes heated control of the verbal podium, such as Christians do with radio stations, TV stations, churches on every block, billboards, Sunday ministerial columns, and only a single Congressperson in Washington admitting they are an “atheist,” then in such a society, a backlash seems inevitable, especially in a country with freedom of belief. So some atheist bestsellers have appeared and atheists are meeting at coffee houses via meetup.com, and atheistic campus groups are forming. But such people are more interested in rationally discussing the issues of the day than in calling themselves by any particular name, and I’ve seen everything from liberal Christians, process theologians, deists, and agnostics at “atheist” groups.

A book I have enjoyed along these lines is Leading with a Limp by Dan Allender.

Jeannie