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This Week with Evangelicals on Social Media by ObstacleChick

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A Guest Post by ObstacleChick

Many of my relatives and friends from my Evangelical days are prolific in posting their religious views on social media. I’d love to ask them how many converts they think they’ve gotten from their posts. From what I can tell, they get “likes” from those who agree with them in their echo chamber while the rest of us just roll our eyes and scroll by.

Here are some highlights from this week.

Religion:
If I obey, I’m accepted.
If I’m good, God will love me.
People: Good and bad
Focus: What I do or don’t do
Produces: Pride and despair
Motivated by fear

Gospel:
I’m accepted so I obey.
I’m bad and Jesus loves bad people.
People: Repentant or not
Focus: What Jesus did
Produces: Humility and confidence
Motivated by love

Interpretation

“I don’t follow a ‘religion’, I follow something infinitely superior — the Gospel! I’m a bad bad person and Jesus loves me anyway because I was repentant and accepted the fact that I was so incredibly bad that Jesus/God had to become human, die, and be resurrected to prevent himself/God/Jesus/Holy Spirit from damning me to eternity in hell if I humble myself and admit how utterly bad I am. Now I’m confident I won’t go to hell. Because love. Because Jesus committed suicide for us, but not really because himself/his dad could raise people from the dead. So don’t call me religious.”

We must never rest until everything inside us worships God – A.W. Tozer

“We’ve gotta worship God all the time to make sure we keep him happy. Because if God ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Yay God!”

The modern world demands that we approve what it should not dare ask us to be tolerated – Nicolas Gomez Davila

Interpretation

“My inspiration of the Holy Spirit (aka, what my pastor tells me) from the Bible assures me that gay people should not have equal rights to straight people; that women should be submissive to their husbands, fathers, pastors, etc., and should stay home and take care of babies and homes whether they want to or not; that people who do not believe the way I do are apostates and going to burn in hell for eternity; that my religious freedom demands that I be allowed to discriminate against all these apostate sinners. Why? Because Jesus! And you shouldn’t ask me to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs, because they’re wrong — Jesus/my pastor told me they are wrong.”

But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me – 2 Timothy 4:17

“I got scared and my mommy wasn’t there so I thought real real hard and remembered this Bible verse. And then I was able to go do adult stuff. Yay Lord!”

The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson, but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. He knows well. – A.W. Tozer

Interpretation

“My God is an abuser and I am his abused subject. He declares that I am weak and worthless without him. I believe that I am a worthless piece of garbage because he tells me so. But one of himself/his beings became human and committed fake suicide and rose from the dead because he can do stuff like that because he is omnimax so that he wouldn’t have to send me to eternity in hell just for existing if I repented hard enough, believed the right things, and said the right things. Yay God! Isn’t he awesome? Now I’m worth something because he said I am. And you’re a worthless piece of garbage if you don’t believe the right things.”

Satan tries to limit your praying because he knows your praying will limit him. – Toby Mac #SpeakLife

Interpretation

“I believe in a whole mess of supernatural beings that I can’t see. God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, angels, demons, Satan/Lucifer/Devil, Beast, Anti-Christ — they’re all totally real, y’all, and they are out there doing battle. It’s like Harry Potter (but not, because we all know Harry Potter is totally demonic because witchcraft) except you can’t see them and they’re totally all around us and all. And the Bad Guys try to control us and lead us astray and all, and the Good Guys just want us to follow them and do the right thing and not be led into temptation. Yay Good Guys! And I think that if I think hard enough in my head about the supernatural sphere or say words out loud to the supernatural sphere, that the Good Guys will hear me and will get their swords going even harder to defeat the evil old meanie Bad Guys!”

Feel free to craft your own creative responses or to share your own experiences from this week with Christians on Social Media!

7 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Matilda

    Not social media, but last week, sexual abuse in the RC church was mentioned in passing on the radio. I was with an elderly fundy guy who thinks he has a lot of wisdom as he has ‘walked with the lord for so many years’. He said ‘Of course the Catholic church has problems with abuse. Celibacy is the reason, young men have to be celibate for decades after entering the priesthood. Priests should be allowed to marry and it wouldn’t happen.’ I wanted to point out there are many fundy priests/pastors abusing..as evidenced on this blog. But I knew it would be useless to say that. he has a well-rehearsed fundy answer to any opposition to his views…he just ‘knows from the lord’ that his opinion is the correct one. Even if I showed him the cases reported here, he’d somehow not be able to take them in. He’d victim blame, talk about ‘hussies’ and ‘satan trying to destroy men of god’ etc….I vow to myself to try never to have such a closed mind as age addles my brain!

  2. Avatar
    ObstacleChick

    Matilda, so true that the fundy fellow would blame others. He might even suggest that these guys weren’t “real” Christians.

    • Avatar
      Matilda

      That’s often the excuse, but in my guy’s case, it’s more a habit ingrained by 50yrs of fundyism – have a go at catholics whenever you can and show how superior and correct your theology is to theirs. As someone said on Patheos/NR, fundies believe they have a bottomless stack of ‘get out of jail free cards’, an abuser just shoots off a quick prayer for forgiveness and all is well. Catholics, OTOH, seek pardon from a priest, which is ALL WRONG. And I notice a similar ingrained habit in some older male fundies, a misogyny so deep, they don’t recognise it…wimin are the tempters, based on Eve so their accounts of any event should be taken with a pinch of salt, unstable, emotional, empty-headed inferior beings that they are!

  3. Avatar
    ObstacleChick

    That is so true how many fundies are misogynistic. That Adam and Eve myth did nothing for women. It portrayed us as rebellious, beguiling, while damming us to pain and suffering.

    • Avatar
      Matilda

      Yup, my guy has several reasons that he KNOWS cause churches to decline and feminism is near the top of that list. He made me laugh when he said feminism results in vegetarianism within the church when Real Men need Red Meat. He went to a church lunch and commented he heard some ‘very bossy women in the kitchen..’ and implied their choice of Lentil Casserole (which I took to be a good choice, more inclusive and they hadn’t the space to cook two dishes, a veggie/a non-veggie) was served to assert female superiority and desire to emasculate men!

  4. Avatar
    ObstacleChick

    Lol! Nothing says “feminist” like a vegetable! Gotta be suspicious of all those beans and cucumbers out there! Jesus didn’t eat those darn veggies!

  5. Avatar
    Brian

    How doth God love me… Count the ways!
    1. God loves my mind. He reminds me I am not a strong thinker and a real peiece of crap-logic without HIM.
    2. God loves my body. He reminds me I am bad flesh, a real piece of dung without HIM.
    3. God loves my spirit. My spirit is the culmination of my humanity, all things me together and God reminds me etc.

    God, faith, the gospel, religion: Whatever you call it, it is a sweet and sick bully view of life. It is designed to undermine simple, honest being and to create sick dependency. I was a hopeless mess but the bully found me and showed me how to follow him, not me! I was an unhappy woman until the bully taught me my proper role in life! Now I’m happy serving the bully. I was a man who harmed others, slept with women because I felt like it and would have ended up in prison if the bully didn’t tell me what to do. Now I hate me and want to be the bully who saved me!

    The Lord really blessed me today because I was feeling really low (I’m a sinner and lust after new clothes and shoes, especially shoes!) and I was looking online at new sneakers and dreaming I had a pair for every day. Then I realized how terrible I am and was feeling terrible and I turned on the 700 Club and God spoke to me and I started to cry. Well, I sent that shoe money to the 700 Club and felt so much better. You see, we are evil in our hearts but God loves us anyway. When we give to HIM we are freed!

    I used to self-pleasure till God told me to cut off the hand that offends. Is it better to lose a hand or burn in hell?

    I was praying for that atheist guy who doesn’t have clue how to dress, that devil-worshipping Bruce Gerencser and I was asking the Lord to have mercy on him because he obviously has been indwelt by Satan. Is there any OTHER way to turn from the definition of Love in the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit? I was praying for him and then he posted a story about Pastor having had an affair! Can you believe the power of the Devil!!! God was testing my faith again and you know, I got down on my knees and prayed for that hateful dirt-spreader again! The power of Jesus! ETC.

    Christian social media is public self-pleasuring. It makes me feel weird to watch and listen to people doing that…. Shouldn’t that kind of thing be done more privately?

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