Letting Go Of God
If you haven't yet watched Julia Sweeney's monologue, "Letting Go Of God", you really should. It's hilariously funny, enlightening, and just a fascinating journey. Well, Julia has recently announced that the whole video is now available on YouTube! So find yourself a spare 2 hrs and a comfy chair, and watch it.
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Enjoying all the recent videos......especially this one.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this.
ReplyDeleteI watched it in snippets over the weekend.
Great to hear another woman talking about her journey to non belief.
So many parallels to my experience.
I especially related to being in your 40s and having to adjust to being alone in your head for the first time.
For all my life I had a dialogue with God running through my brain, and then suddenly found myself alone to think and make decisions with my own conscience.
And rather than going around being judgemental and critical of those who weren't interested in God I found that there were lots of generally good people who were able to enjoy the present, who weren't just waiting for this life to be over like we were.
And that I didn't feel compelled to commit crimes or be unkind.
If anything I felt more compassionate to others.
I felt like I had been sleepwalking through life and I'd only just arrived.
Geri, You can never be alone. There are so many of us, who since coming to our senses and leaving the Cd`s, have felt a release, a freedom from the bubble of indoctrination which encompassed us. We are with you. We feel, as so probably do you, that we can communicate and be compassionate with others. A new life. Some time coming, but, Oh so good.
DeleteAmen to that. The whole "talking to God" throughout your life business, I can relate to that. Madness and nonsense, rolled into one. And I did it myself.
DeleteHeya i'm for the first time here. I found this board and I
ReplyDeletefind It truly useful & it helped me out much. I hope to give something
back and aid others like you helped me.
Thank you for the presence of this site. It is a light in the darkness of religious "primitivism." (If my use of that word is accurate.) Albert Einstein once wrote: "My perception of all organized religion is that it is all in one sense or another a form of mysticism and superstition." In other words, he was calling it a figment of human imagination.
ReplyDeleteWe're all here only for a short period. Yes, indeed, it is sad that so many CDs and other Christians spend that time "waiting for it to be over." F*** that. Live now. Living in the present, in the reality handed to you, is the only "Truth" of any value. Everything else is smoke, mirrors, fog, groundless speculation and a waste of the limited time that you get to dance in the sunlight.
Reject consensus. If consensus had any value, we'd all be eating cow shit because trillions of flies enjoy it. All around us we hear expressions like: "Be a team player." Or "Be on the right side of history." When people keep telling you to be a team player, it often means you're about to get raped. When people keep telling you to get on the right side of history, it means eventually they're going to get around to killing you.
Live your own life and your own truth. That is the only journey worth taking.
Dramatic words "Aiden", but much to my liking! Over the last couple of months, it has amazed me just how foolish and contradictory these cultists can be. They have prayed for the "sign" that we are allegedly seeing now, and have been whining that they cannot go to their bible schools and cart their brethren in to speak to them from the far side of the planet. They have accused everybody of having "hearts failing them for fear", while closing their halls in double quick time and hiding in their houses, not relying on God to meet their needs (Luke 12:22-32), but rather sending worldly neighbors out to do their shopping and relying on the hard work of people like my friend's daughter working long night shifts to get food deliveries out. She is "worldly" too. What a lot of tosh these cultists come out with, last days my arse, at time of writing, UK 36,000 dead of the 'Rona, compared with 115,000 a year from tobacco in a typical year, but when did they last do some lurid video about that to the effect that the Angels are at work, blah, blah blah.
DeleteSpot on. Near our home is an ancient church we sometimes visit, to attend cultural and social events. Anything else we encounter there of a religious vein engages our gag reflex. They are constantly prattling about the need to "carry one another's burdens" and to "manifest Christian charity and kindness." Yet, the minute this epidemic began, the young, healthy and sturdy clergy sequestered themselves into a locked sanctuary, and spent their time live-streaming pep talks. They did nothing for anyone, beyond banging their gums together. On the outside, elderly, needy and infirm members of the congregation were left to fend entirely for themselves. We ended up doing their grocery shopping and picking up their prescriptions. I was disgusted and appalled; when push came to shove, the church's clergymen were not boots on the ground in a global pandemic. They were simply MIAs.
ReplyDeleteAiden, maybe they should have given more practical help, though I'm not sure it's that uncommon for people's officially held principles to differ from their practices. But I'm assuming that in live-streaming talks they are doing the job they are paid to do, or at least part of it. And I'm also assuming that some at least of their congregation want them to be doing that part of their job. I'm also assuming that they are trying to comply with government guidelines which are intending to slow the spread of Covid-19. To me that's better than, say, the preachers who try to encourage their congregations to meet in person to defend "religious freedom" in defiance of government guidelines and increase the risk of spread.
DeleteAiden, the Christadelphians have been well and truly caught out. The meeting near where I am staying has had a massive "cancelled" sticker across their board since March 20th. They have been in hiding, terrified, ever since. Their leadership has offered nothing but bizarre explanations of the cause being bad dietary habits of certain areas of the world, which has caused a virus which strangely seems to affect certain races and ages unequally. But then attributing it to God being involved in some kind of punishment or warning.
DeleteMeanwhile, the local co-op is selling food, the postman keeps working, and others go about their business with no sign at all of "fainting from fear", in fact they seem to be enjoying the fine weather.
They will, of course, use all of those rationales as their excuses. I guess it beats having to engage in activities that actually resemble "work." It has always been pretty much a mystery what most paid clergy do to fill their work hours; the pastor of the church in question makes over 100K a year in salary, in return for a twenty minute sermon each Sunday. Most of the rest of his time appears to be spent jogging around the neighborhood (literally).
ReplyDeleteWhile I obviously can't make any comment about your particular pastor, I've talked to a number of ex-pastors (as well as preparing some of my own sermons while Christadelphian - yes, while working full-time at my regular day job), and I don't think it's as easy as you make out. For many it seems to be a job that is both poorly paid and demanding.
DeleteEven with that background I was surprised to read some of the statistics a (anti-religious) blogger I follow quoted recently about stress and workload and burnout of pastors. In her words, it's a rough profession: Pastoral Suicide: A Sad Dealbreaker for Evangelicals.
Aidan, someone else's job is always the easiest. My brother was an Anglican minister from 1985 to 1995 ( still registered, look him up if you know where and how). He left for a raft of reasons, amongst which where spending many hours fund raising and dealing with buildings, and also, at the time working as an invisible social worker, day and night, as I witnessed when spending my time off with him. The religion is ( I think) worthless, but don't imagine that it's just a sermon a week.
DeleteHe has since 1995 done a different job, but still does holiday cover as a minister, and does a few funerals.
Only about 100 people are members of the church in question. It is huge, but dying, like many houses of worship in the West. So the minister I'm mentioning is making about $1,000 a year for each member. Could he not call to see if we are still alive, trapped in our houses as we are? It would take him the lesser part of a day to do so. Perhaps he's busy working with charities or maintaining the buildings....but I doubt it. I've seen no evidence of such activities. Ever.
ReplyDeleteWhen push comes to shove, most such clergy take the path of least resistance (like their fellow mortals). He could have been boots on the ground in this emergency. Instead he's live-streaming pep talks, with stuffed animals in the background.
Aidan, we have gone slightly off the thread topic here, but I do find it odd that you would expect a minister of religion (that you do not believe in) to turn up at your home and check if you have a pulse. To be blunt, whatever his salary is, it is nothing to do with you and should not concern you, if his employer is not happy with his performance, then surely they will intervene?
DeletePerhaps you should join his church and listen to his sermons, and then request a visit.
For what it is worth, you are very unlikely to get a welfare visit from the Christadelphians, even if you are a member. If you go missing for a few weeks, you are more likely to get a posted letter asking why you haven't been, followed by one telling you that they have cut you off from their "fellowship".
Most of us are too polite to write back and tell them that we just got fed up of being exploited, manipulated and controlled by a group of self appointed halfwits.
You will need to reconsider all you say and do so the worst isn't said to you by Jesus who alone will be able to judge the secrets of me. May it be your blessing to have a contrite humble heart Jesus showed us how to have and thus fellowship and not tearing down are our most precious aim-interesting your certificate ends 7/22/23 maybe Jesus comes to greet us to set up his Father's kingdom on earth then
ReplyDeleteJesus must be nearly 2,000 years overdue, and you're not providing any reason for us to believe in his current existence or future judgement. How much time have you spent reconsidering your life in the light of the future rising of Cthulhu?
DeleteNo one is coming, sweetness. No princes, except the one called Menopause, followed by the one called Death. Your only palace will be a rectangular box. Your only view will be your eternal gaze at the bottom of a coffin lid. All you have is here and now. Live it. It's worth living.
Delete