Christianity or Bust

Note: This is a follow up post to this one sort of.

Yesterday was Easter Monday holiday and during the time I spent at home, I watched the first five minutes of The Catch-Up. The first things that came out of Zoe Sheridan’s mouth was that it was the first time she’d been to church since Christmas. She then spoke about how the minister joked that the congregation could try harder at singing because so many people were so unfamiliar with singing (ie the actual worship of God) as this was their bi-annual visit to church.

I know, I know… Going to church twice a year is very common in many Western countries, including Australia. It just ticks me off that Sheridan doesn’t just call herself a lapsed Catholic.

OK. Here’s discussion questions for anybody reading this:

1. Do you think it’s good that people make a token appearance at church even though their souls are probably damned?
2. Do you think God would be just happier that someone turn up, listen to his word and praise him bi-annually than never turn up?
3. Do you think the church benefits enough from their bi-annual tithes?
4. Am I being too harsh and unkind about Zoe Sheridan? Is it un-Christian of me to refer to her as “Ditzy”?

On Friday night, St Barnabas had a Network BBQ dinner. (Network is a group of worker age people.)

Amazingly some of us talked about topics that are conversation killers including sex, drugs and of course, politics because the state election was on the next day. Our group was a politically liberal group. Amusingly someone said her father suggested to her that if she can, to live in a Liberal seat and to vote for Labor. (Note: In Australia, the Liberal party are conservative politically and the Labor party are liberal politically.) This made me wonder which district SMBC is located in. I’m fairly sure Moore College is located in a safe Labor seat. I also think it would be cool if someone set up a Bible college in John Howard’s seat and softened it up for Labor.

Although I was disillusioned with politicians, I decided not to dummy vote. This was also the shortest distance I’ve ever travelled for an election: around the corner to St Scholastica’s College, the Catholic all-girl’s school that is also our neighbour That’s enough information for you to stalk me or any Muslims angry at my blog to whack me.

Anyway, Sc Scholastica has this very visibly on the path to the polling booth.

I’m not sure if it’s cool, typical Catholic idolatory or actually something really practical as a reminder of positive female roles in the Bible and staying pure until marriage.

Maybe I’ve spent too much of last year on CARM and it’s completely messed up my way of thinking. Anyway, now we have this post.

In my life, I think I’ve only ever known one genuine church-going Catholic. It has been suggested to me that Catholism is a badly diluted form of Christianity mixed with false rubbish and that’s why so many children of their faith lapse.

I find it peculiar how genuinely messed up Catholics in the media have been lately.

Case 1: Zoe Sheridan

Yesterday, I had the day off. In the afternoon, I watched a new program called “The Catch-Up”. It’s a panel chat program where four women chat about current events, movies they’ve seen and celebrity guests. The only genuinely famous panelist is Libby Gore (aka Elle McFeast). There is also:

• Mary Moody, a lady who looks like the old lady from the Australian Pensioners Insurance adverts
• Lisa Oldfiend, a young conservative type who is married to former One Nation founder David Oldfield
• Zoe Sheridan, a ditzy blond who used to work in radio

At one point, the panelists were talking about a seminar about Islam and how surveys were taken of how people perceived Islam before and after the seminar. With the presence of nice “normal” Muslims, the opinion had improved… then George Pell had apparently said something that upset the lovefest. The three non-ditzy women rambled on about how they were upset with Pell.

When ditzy finally said something, it was that she was a Catholic and that all this religious squabling was driving millions of Australians towards false New Age religions and Mysticism. She had a good point!

The next segment of the program had a guest: marathon swimmer Susie Maroney who had recently lost her unborn baby from ectopic pregnancy. At the end of the segment, Susie broke down in tears and the women comfort her. It was genuinely touching… then ditzy suggests that maybe Susie will find comfort from their next guest after the break… a psychic Char Margolis who will be able to tell Susie her future. Nice one, ditzy.

A lot of things disturbed by about that segment. They include:

• how ditzy said that she “genuinely believe that stuff” (ouija boards etc),
• the returning presence of the normalisation of the occult within a daytime timeslot and
• the gift of the psychic’s book to every member of the audience.

It was also live so you could really see how the psychic was relying upon cold readings and guessing a lot. She couldn’t take advantage of editing techniques that John Edward (who was coincidentally raised Catholic) uses. (If you want to read more about Char Margolism, visit http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Wolves/psychic_at_large.htm.

Anyway, something is just wrong that ditzy recommends the occult to someone who has genuinely suffered.

Case 2: Juliette Hughes

The Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Juliette Hughes: “Truth, faith can co-exist in getting of wisdom“.

The title of the article sounds really promising but everything else seems really messed up when it captures many interesting aspects of this person’s faith.

For starters, Catholicism seems to have a “it’s my tribe” mentality. That’s just as bad as the Muslims except at least the Catholics base their faith on the truth and not a religion of rape and pilaging.

This writer has a similar belief to various “New Age” “Christians” on the CARM forums. They believe in a watered down teddy bear god: a wrathless god that you can safely ignore and whenever you feel bad, you can go back to for the love you need that the world can’t provide.

God’s wrath, although unpleasant, is a necessary part of genuine Christian faith. When Hughes denies it, you can see the whole of her beliefs corrupted. God’s wrath is part of His just nature. You know: the whole “the wicked will be punished” thing. “Teddy bear god” “Christians” never seem to able to explain how a wrathless God can be just or the ramifications of a wrathless God. The ramifications of a wrathless God, besides injustice, is that there is no need for Jesus Christ and His death for our sins. Subsequently there is no need for people to be saved.

There are just so many red flags that go up when reading Hughes’ article. Another questionable part is “The Bible is a profound record of a search for wisdom and of a long struggle over many centuries to reconcile humanity with goodness.” That just seems to completely off the mark. The Bible is a profound record of God’s plan to reconcile humanity with Him through the atonement resulting from His Son.

Maybe I’m just a fundamentalist.

Anyway, noone reads this blog anymore. So I’m not expecting a flamewar.