Christianity or Bust

I found this article really annoying. Essentially an academic states that he thinks that Moses’ experiences with God were just because Moses was on drugs. Coincidentally, the academic states that he also had similar experiences.

It’s an annoying article because it’s just a claim but the academic doesn’t bring anything else of substance (pun insteaded) to the explanation. The academic doesn’t bring in any evidence that such drugs were available during the period of Moses etc.

I just discovered GodTube (Wikipedia link). It’s a free Christian video sharing website like YouTube.

I’m kind of amused because someone has cornered the name “GodTube” and that if Muslims wanted to create a rival, they’d have to call it “AllahTube” or “HeyButMyGodIsTheRealGodTube”.

Anyhow, he’s a good but short video where John Piper discusses the “Prosperity Gospel”.

It was a pretty short talk. I turned up late and they had to finish earlier so we were only together for about 45 minutes.

Things weren’t that passionate tonight. On my side of the fence, I didn’t prepare enough. While I did read the whole chapter of the verse they asked me to read and spent time preparing an argument of how it was inconsistent with the Bible, I didn’t pray enough this week. I also should have been more punctual.

Tonight, “A” chose the hymn to sing and it was about how we can bring our whole family to church and the hope of marrying within the temple. In some ways, I’m amazed. I’m still not 100% sure what a Christian family is like, if it is meant to be closer than our biological family. So maybe the “other side” sensed that need in me for family. I’m even more concerned that the hymn focused upon marriage and was chosen by a woman. It also made me wonder if there is a role for single people within the Mormon church.

I watched a speech by one of the Mormon “apostles” on a DVD. I wasn’t that impressed because his voice was very monotonous and at first it really reminded me of the speech synthesis machine used by Stephen Hawking. He didn’t seem that emotional during his testimony of how he came to the Mormon faith, even when talking about how he felt he was the happiest boy in the world. Like many Mormons, he came to faith by praying to “God” to ask if this was the truth faith and he was filled with revelation. He also spoke a bit about the feeling of family. The bulk of his speech was about doing good works and didn’t really make a lasting impression upon my memory.

Overall, I think the Mormons focused upon the common things that we believe in tonight. I’m fairly sure this is a common Mormon tactic.

I was asked if I had prayed to God about whether the book of Mormon was true. I have and had no revelation. I wonder if people who do pray like that to any God, receive a “revelation” because they are already pre-disposed to it by other feelings. One of the Elders briefly showed me a passage from the New Testament that dealt with false prophets and Paul writes that he had direct revelation of the Gospel. The Elder said we all can have revelation. I wasn’t sure how to rebutt that.

Anyway, at the end, I said that they still haven’t explained why there is a need for more revelation than the Bible. I explained that we already have all we need about what offends God and cited pornography as an example of how we can tell God’s opinion even in new situations.

I’m not a medical expert. However, I had time to kill yesterday. On Glebe Point Road, the “church” of Scientology is running their “exhibition” Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.

I really couldn’t take it too seriously even though I know people would believe it if they saw it. I couldn’t stop chuckling at the voice-over guy’s voice - it was very American and full of the sound of propaganda.

I walked around the exhibit for about 20 minutes without watching many of the video presentations. For all the accusations that the Scientologists make, they don’t really address what I know to be true: medication actually helps people. The Scientologists will blame 399 Australian deaths on psychiatry but I shudder to think about how many more lives would be ruined if people were off their anti-depressants. Psychiatrists may not have cured any mental illnesses but have the oncologists and endocrinologists found cures? I don’t know but they sure do a fantastic job of prolonging our lives by helping us manage our illnesses.

Oh yeah, as a rock snob, on the celebrity wall of casualties, I’m disappointed they didn’t mention Roky Erickson and Daniel Johnston. However, a young cocaine-witch Stevie Nicks looked pretty hot.

Scientologists’ scence of humour is really wacky. Outside the exhibit, they had t-shirts with slogans such as “Quick! Hide your children! Psychiatrists are near!”

Anyway, here are a couple of photos from Wikipedia of the exhibition:

Oh! Scary!

It wasn’t Hitler’s fault. It was the psychiatrists’!

A few weeks ago, during one of Sydney’s unseasonally seasonal Summer rain periods, I was walking along George Street, happy with my purchasing of the latest Cat Power album when a couple of Mormons approached me.

I was pretty grumpy from the weather (and in general) and just gave them my phone number, rather than talk to them on the wet street.

The week after that, I had lunch with two of them. It was a pretty good discussion. In the past, I’ve found that it can be hard to talk to Mormons because they are trained to be able to talk all day… and I mean, all day. I just have conversations with my team leader at work about music but that’s not all day. I think food really helps because it relaxes people and people need to stop talking when eating. At the end of lunch, they asked me if I wanted to keep talking to them and I said yes.

I wasn’t actually expect them to call me back. I assumed that once they knew I was a regular church attending Christian, they’d leave me alone. They did call me back and invited me to talk to them again but at their headquarters. Last week, I met with a different set of Mormons. There were two Elders and two dressed in casual clothing, who were in Australia just to study. The two casually dressed Mormons didn’t say anything after introducing themselves. I found it a little intimidating at first that I was in this small room with the door closed.

I really enjoyed this discussion. It reminded me of things I truly believe. It also puzzled me where they brought up things that were foreign to me and were not from the Bible.

Over two hours, we talked about a lot of things. I can’t remember them all. Key areas of discussion were:

• Grace that I believe has been freely given to us and different types of faith
• Their belief that mankind has been waiting for Jesus Christ to bring salvation since Creation

They gave me another pamphlet and invited me back for the next week.

One thing I’m really amused by is a Christian friend’s comment that they started off with two people talking to me then went to four and would next bring out a lecture theatre full of Mormons to argue with me!

Well, I’m blogging this because I probably should debrief with someone (Al, we can talk about this on Sunday; Lawry, you can call me, meet up or send me a Facebook message) and it’s good to write down things as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I really can’t remember it all. I don’t actually take notes.

Tonight, the Elders from last week came but they brought a blonde nice-smelling female Mormon. That was distracting. I kept thinking that she’s so strong in her belief but they are incorrect beliefs! It’s a pity that she’s not a Christian and married to a nice Christian guy.

Tonight, I started discussion were what I see as inconsistencies between the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon.

Here’s the BOM’s 2 Nephi 2:22-23 (“And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.”)

Compare it with Genesis Chaper 1 where many things are clear about life on Earth before the Fall of Man. The Bible states seven times that what God had created was “good” (six occurrences of “it was good” and the final is “it was very good”). God also clearly created the humans, animals and plant life to be able to reproduce. What’s the point of God instructing humans to replenish the world if they didn’t have the means to? I can’t really remember their response but it was something about how can you know joy or misery if you’ve never experienced anything else.

Their belief that people existed as spirit children with God in the spirit world before we were born is bizarre. If mankind was existing with God, we must have been perfect but they say that God wanted us to experience and learn more. Furthermore, they seem very Gnostic by saying that the spirit isn’t evil but the flesh is. Yet, Gnosticism was one of the threats to the early church that St Paul had to defend against.

We briefly touched upon Grace again and how it’s never enough with them.

Anyway, it’s getting really late. I should go to bed.

This is an amazing photo which I found via Fark. (article)

I don’t know if there’s anything else I can add other than pointless joking and captions such as:

• “Jesus has a falling out with God…”
• “Maybe God wanted to jump start Jesus and bring him to life like in those Frankenstein movies…”

Feel free to warn me if you think this falls into the “inappropriate humour” category… or if I am overtagging things again.

It has been a long time since I wrote anything. In many areas, life has continued to be a struggle but in different ways.

Reading the books of Chronicles and Proverbs has been difficult. It’s also taken months.

I wish someone told me earlier to try to read Kings at the same time as Chronicles. They do cover a lot of the same period of the Israelite’s history. Much of this isn’t that exciting to read. The parts that I found boring were genealogy (like usual) and a recap of the history of Israel. I’m assuming that details such as army sizes were important historical information at the time.

I think one reason that reading Kings and Chronicles at the same time would be better than reading them consecutively would be to compare the different accounts. Some of the sins that David and Solomon committed aren’t mentioned, for example.

Yet, it still records Israel’s history of turning away from God and returning to Him. As in Kings, it’s also exciting how at various stages, the King of Judah repent and God blesses them again, particularly the story of Josiah, their rediscovery of the Book of Law and determination to obey God. Yet, amongst these, there are cases of a king’s pride and arrogance causing downfall.

I found 2nd Chronicles easier to read. It seems to deal less with genealogy and there is much more flow in reading about just the kings. Best of all, the book ends on a high note: the exile is over and the Israelites are allowed to return home to build the second temple.

Side note: Someone mentioned something really interesting last week during a performance of selections from 1 Samuel by The Backyard Bard. That Samuel has some really interesting parallels with the Gospel of Luke. Off the top of my head, these would include:

• an upset barren woman praying to God for a child and the child being an important prophet of God
• the Israelites demanding a king like the other nations, being warned that the king would mistreat them and receiving the king
• the people of Earth receiving a king unlike the other nations - a king that would be a perfect servant and leader and who the Jews would reject

Proverbs is book that needs to be read gradually, in my opinion.

There is a lot of wisdom in Proverbs (I know I am stating the obvious). However, it’s a bit too much to take in at once and feels dense with wisdom. At times, things feel repetitive in the topics and that common phrases appear throughout.

Well, if you bother reading my blog, you’ll see that I am not returning to fine form at all!

Anyway, this fine article has a man’s claims that he’s found an image of Jesus in a log. It could be anyone! Where’s the quality control on these stories?

The Sydney Morning Herald today has two stories that can best be summed up as “Wow! Malekind has really fallen short of the way God wanted us to live and relate to women”.

Story 1: Man marries dog (article

This story has everything except discussion of bestiality (it’s got false religions, dodgy religious advice and questionable relationships between man and beast). In summary, an Indian man stoned two dogs to death 15 years ago and is convinced his disabilities have been punishment for that. So he consults an astrology who tells him to marry a female dog. The man marries the dog in a traditional Hindu ceremony.

Sadly, the article also doesn’t mention the astrology’s “logic” for this.

For some reason, I couldn’t help but think of the New Testament story of the woman who had been bleeding for many years and tried everything.(Mark 5:25-34) I bet this guy isn’t healed.

Story 2: Mormon men strip for faith (article)

In summary, a group of Mormon men have stripped for a beefcake calendar.

According to Chad Hardy, the producer and co-founder of Mormons Exposed who created the calendar, it “is intended to help debunk common misperceptions and dispel some myths about the Mormon religion - encouraging people of every belief system to be more tolerant of one another.”

“Tollerance”. Strange words from a faith that declared that all other churches were false teachers.

Anyway, what the hell is going on here? It’s pretty clear in the New Testament about Jesus’ opinion on lust. (Matthew 5:28)… So what makes them think that reverse sexism/objectification is okay?

The Sydney Morning Herald has a bit of a puff piece on Russell Crow getting baptised along with his new son in the chapel that he built on his property for his wedding. (See article)

Gee… How convenient would it be to have your own church? This way, you don’t need to meet all those annoying congregation members (because we all know how boring Christians are) and inevitably, there would be less lawsuits from flying telephones and fists! It’s so much easier than changing your character to be more patient and learing to deal with difficult people!

There’s a real notable absense of information in this puff piece. None of the deeper questions are asked such as what beliefs this family share. Does Russ know the significance of baptism?

Coincidentally, Christianity Works has recently had a series on Dealing with Difficult People.