As a young boy, I was a big fan of actress Stefanie Powers. In particular, I loved her movie Die! Die! My Darling! Polly had not seen this movie before, so last year we watched it together. I’m still in love with Powers.
Yesterday, I received a short email from a Christian woman claiming her name was Cynthia Love. As I read Love’s comment, I thought about the movie Die! Die! My Darling! Based on the site server logs, Love only read one post on this site, Jesus Loves the Little Children, All the Children of the World, before sending me the following email. Afterward, Love was served up the front page. Whether she read any of the posts on the front page is uncertain.
What is certain is that something I wrote offended Love. Instead of walking in the fruit of the Spirit and emulating the life and teaching of Jesus, Love decided to show me some “Christian love”:
Spreading your blatant generalized hatered about people only makes you a worse person. I am glad you are sick, there are many people suffering needlessly. You deserve it.
Spreading blatant hatred? Where? Certainly not in the post Love read. Maybe she is one of those kinds of Christians offended by anything and everything critical of her precious Jesus and religion. Regardless, Love says my “hatred” has turned me into a “worse” person. What, exactly, is a “worse” person? Worse than a woman telling a sick, dying man that she’s glad he’s sick, and she hopes he suffers and dies? Worse than telling a man that he deserves the pain and suffering from gastroparesis, fibromyalgia, and osteoarthritis he battles every day of his life? Worse than being so callous and indifferent towards the suffering of an alleged “hateful” atheist that you hope he gets sicker and dies (that’s the practical implication of her kind, thoughtful, loving words)?
To my fellow atheists and agnostics, can you imagine going into a cancer ward and telling sick, dying patients that you are glad they are sick; that they deserve being sick? Of course not. We have morals and ethics. We care about others, even if they believe differently from us. No, it is a special kind of Christianity that causes Cynthia Love to wish on me more pain and suffering. No doubt, in the Dark Ages, Love would have loved torturing heretics.
Is it any wonder that Evangelicals-turned-atheists don’t want anything to do with God/Jesus/Christianity?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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We all know how full of love and goodwill these Christians are. https://techland.time.com/2011/08/09/fox-news-facebook-page-overrun-by-death-threats/
While I was out in the garden earlier this evening, I was puzzling over the odd wording of Cynthia’s e-mail. After attempting to parse the phrase “Spreading your blatant generalized hatered [sic] about people…” it occurred to me that she’s quite possibly a friend or relative of someone profiled in the “Black-Collar Crime” feature.
Ach !! That Cynthia person. So typical of their ilk. They’re totally oblivious to the fact that their everyday actions can inspire hatred of Christians, and even worse, they don’t care. Because as far as they are concerned, all that matters is THEY go to Heaven, and screw you ! That’s always been their attitude. This is how they can justify ( to themselves) the genocide and slavery, land theft that started America. Or beating babies and older children. What her, or that Townsend follower says should surprise no one, because they’re morbid people anyway. That Southern Gothic stuff.
Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: – Philippians 2:4-5
Why do all these Christians NOT have the mind of Jesus…. Could it be that it’s just a dusty old story on sandy Middle Eastern paths?
And…not a one of your fundie critics seem to know about the “love your neighbor as yourself” and “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law” verses. They don’t care about honoring Jesus’ admonition to care about their fellow man. Although I guess we’d all be stricken dumb and blind if one of these fundies actually loved their fellow man. I’m so sorry for how hateful she was, Bruce.
In response to x-tian trolls who’ve spewed hatred on atheist blogs, I’ve sometimes asked them how they squared their unpleasant comments with Gal:5v22. Their version should include, ‘the fruit of the spirit is gratuitous rudeness, personal insults and yes, even the odd death threat is permissible, thus saith the lawd.’ I sell my crafts online, maybe I should make my version as a picture, plaque or car sticker….betcha some fundies would blindly think it was the Word Of The Lawd….they certainly live by that model don’t they?
Hopefully it’s the wise – or at least moderate – heads that are still in the majority in the US. At one I really did worry that when Trump finally went, and all his people realised that none of the Qanon idiocy was going to come to pass, then you really could have found yourself with a well-armed fundamentalist Christian version of Syria/Iraq’s Daesh trying to take over by force and set up a Christian State with a biblical-based system of law (like Sharia). At least in some parts of the country.
You couldn’t slide a cigarette paper into the space between the thinking of IFB-types and that of the supporters of ISIS/Daesh. The only difference between them is geography of their birth and therefore their subsequent cultural upbringing.
“You couldn’t slide a cigarette paper into the space between the thinking of IFB-types and that of the supporters of ISIS/Daesh. The only difference between them is geography of their birth and therefore their subsequent cultural upbringing.”
Very well put.
All around you Cynthia are people who don’t believe like you. When you come to the end of your life, perhaps in hospice care the nurse caring for you might be an atheist. Your favourite cashier at your favourite convenience store, an agnostic. Your surgeon removing a cancerous mass, a Muslim. The nicest person in your neighbourhood raised not knowing any religion &/or spiritual practice. Do you condemn all of them too Cynthia?
This is exactly why I fear absolutist religious groups in what every clothing. They cannot stand anyone who is different.
Dave–You really hit the nail on the head. Religions are products of culture.
I’m not perfect: I’ve wished pain and suffering on people who’ve done bad things to me. I was angry, for a time, that the priest who sexually abused me as a child died long before I was able to talk about it with anyone: He got off scot-free and didn’t have to suffer the consequences of his actions. (I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid he so exploited.) I’ve also wished for vengeance against those who’ve bullied and beaten me because of my gender identity, or for no reason at all.
While I don’t claim that my anger and other urges are righteous, they are nothing more or less than a response for what people did to me personally. What I don’t understand is someone wishing pestilence and worse on people who simply look, act or believe differently than they do. I mean, how exactly was this Cynthia Love (surely she is without irony) harmed by Bruce?