Response to Nelda Westerlind’s letter of July 31, 2010:
My non-belief is not ridicule or anger. Call me skeptical!
The strength to survive and flourish is within us all. But what damage is done to that inner self if you are continually told that you are unacceptable, unworthy, evil, sinful? This is ridicule! “God’s Word who condemns us is the same Word that brings us our rescue” (Dennis Schutte).
If God needs a blood/death sacrifice in order to forgive, and only if you submit, it seems psychopathic, maybe a sadomasochistic relationship. Religion may have helped some people, but it has also damaged and destroyed millions. Fact!
Morality, and acts of charity predate and are independent of Christianity. Even a mother moose expresses love (Mary Ellen Ashcroft calls it the “voice of God”) but as far as I know the moose was not Christian. I find the Bible morally reprehensible with its God-ordered slavery, submission of women, abuse of children, and genocide. I have not read the new book, Christianity: TheFirst Three Thousand
Years
by Diarmaid MacCulloch, but hopefully it will describe the evolution of Christianity.
Is it charity when a victim of a natural disaster is told he is being punished by God for his sin, when a young person suffers and dies because parents choose to pray and trust God instead of seeking medical care, or when an innocent child is repeatedly told he is sinful and is threatened with a fiery hell? What is the definition of abuse?
Our constitution was grounded in the Age of Reason. “The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” President John Adams, Treaty of Tripoli, 1797
Appreciate your constitutionally granted religious freedom, and remember, it’s not just for Christians.
“I believe in going back to the magic of the earth and the lake, the sky and the universe. Thatkind of magic. I believe in that kind of religion. A religion of the rocks, the lake, the water, the sky. Yes, that’s what I believe in.” (George Morrison)
Geri Jensen
Grand Marais
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