This is the one hundred eighty-fifth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is I’ll Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab For Cutie.
Love of mine, someday you will die
But I’ll be close behind and I’ll follow you into the dark
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark
If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied
And illuminate the no’s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me,
Son, fear is the heart of love, so I never went back
You and me we’ve seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary and the soles of your shoes
Are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
But it’s nothing to cry about
‘Cause we’ll hold each other soon in the blackest of rooms
This is the one hundred eighty-fourth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is What if God Was One of Us? by Joan Osborne.
If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with Him in all His glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?
And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin’ to make his way home?
If God had a face what would it look like?
And would you want to see if, seeing meant
That you would have to believe in things like heaven
And in Jesus and the saints, and all the prophets?
And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin’ to make his way home?
Just tryin’ to make his way home
Like back up to heaven all alone
Nobody callin’ on the phone
‘Cept for the Pope maybe in Rome
And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin’ to make his way home?
Just tryin’ to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone
Just tryin’ to make his way home
Nobody callin’ on the phone
‘Cept for the Pope maybe in Rome
This is the one hundred and eightieth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism features a video clip from the Catholic program Take 2 with Jerry & Debbie. A woman by the name of Mary called in to tell a story about giving a hospitalized woman a communion wafer. The woman ate the wafer and immediately puked it up. The sick woman evidently received spoiled meat — remember the wafer is literally the flesh of Jesus. What did Mary do? She gathered up the puke-covered Jesus and put him in a bag. Faced with an existential crisis of leaving Jesus in a plastic bag, Mary decided to the eat the puke-covered Lord of Lords and King of Kings.
Lesson of the day? Sincere religious beliefs will make some people do bat-shit crazy stuff.
Paul Sunstone blogs at Café Philos: an internet café. We have been friends for many years.
Some long time ago, I married my first wife mainly for her looks. However, I didn’t allow myself to think I was marrying her for her looks. Instead, I talked myself into the conviction I was marrying her out of love for her.
As near as I can figure out, I told myself I was marrying her for love because I didn’t want to face the reality I was shallow enough to marry someone mainly for her looks. Facing that reality would have required me to change how I thought of myself. And rather than do that — change how I thought of myself — I changed my life.
Now, I would like to say the experience taught me a lesson, and I would never again make the same mistake.
Unfortunately, I am 52 years old — which is old enough to know I have at times in life repeated a mistake, even a grievous one. There is no absolute guarantee, then, I would not do the same thing again.
It is not always easy to be mindful of how foolish one can be. But to think we cannot be fools is — in my experience at least — simply a delusion.
Of course, to be deluded is one of the few things in life nearly everyone can excel at, no matter how little talent they have for anything else. It seems delusions are not only easy to achieve, but that they are all but mandatory for our clever species of chimpanzee. In fact, I don’t think one needs to be a cynic to acknowledge that we as a species are typically delusional through-out our lives and to one extent or another.
Thus, I am not optimistic I can live my life free of delusions. I do believe, however, that I — or anyone else — can do somethings to improve the situation, and I’d like to talk about two of those things here.
The first thing we might do to improve the situation rests on the simple observation that everyone else’s delusions are typically more transparent to us than our own. For instance: It is quite easy for me to see how poorly reasoned are the various arguments against the Theory of Evolution because I myself don’t share in the delusion the Theory is false. But it is far and away more difficult for me to see how dangerous to political freedom and civil liberties in this country are some of the policies adopted by President Obama because I strongly wish to believe he will set right all that has been set wrong in the past. Of course, in this case I’m doing well to suspect I’m deluded about President Obama — for the most part, I have no inkling at all of my delusions. Yet, my delusions might be quite transparent to someone else.
Since everyone else’s delusions are typically more transparent to us than our own, it follows that other people might help us get a handle on our own delusions. The operative word there is “might”. It is not always true they can or will.
Let’s turn now to another thing we can do to help us deal with the challenge of being a species prone to delusions. Like the first thing I mentioned, this second thing also rests on a simple observation: That is, we are very much inclined to delude ourselves whenever we fail to accept ourselves as we are. Thus, to lessen our chances of self-delusion, it is ideal to as much as possible accept ourselves just as we are, without judgment — i.e. without condemnation or praise.
Perhaps it is intuitive that self-condemnation represents a rejection of ourselves — rather than an acceptance — but how does self-praise interfere with our accepting ourselves as we are? I know from experience that self-praise does in fact interfere with accepting ourselves, but I have only a theory as to how it does that. Praise, of course, is a form of judgment, and judgments are comparative. When you judge something, you are comparing it to something. So when we praise ourselves we are, on some level, comparing ourselves to something else and in effect saying that other thing is the more valuable. I don’t know whether or not that’s really how it works — I only know from observation that self-praise is not self-acceptance.
After pointing out a couple minor ways in which we might manage our delusions, it might be worthwhile to briefly mention that societies can be seen as vast conspiracies to prop up various delusions. I’m only half-joking here. Of course it is easier to see how a society might be thought of as a bunch of people engaged in a conspiracy to delude themselves when you are looking at someone else’s society besides your own. And it is easier to see how your own society might be thought of that way when you are not busy judging it. My purpose, though, in half-jokingly calling societies “vast conspiracies” is to point out that our species is not only prone to delusions, but that most of us are now and then engaged in helping each other maintain our delusions. At least some of our delusions.
Just consider for a moment the tremendous money, talent and energy that is each day put into perpetuating the Western myth that for each person in this world there is one — and only one — other person who is a perfect mate, a soul mate. So far as I can see, that notion is delusional. Yet, it’s among the most popular notions of our time and the resources spent on perpetuating it are nearly astronomical.
Now, against that backdrop, consider some of the challenges we face in trying to manage our delusions. I have pointed out two minor ways that might help manage them, but even if someone were to assiduously practice both of those ways, they would still be swimming in a social sea of delusions. So far as I can see, societies have always been, and always will be, something akin to vast conspiracies to prop up various delusions. Perhaps it is impossible, then, for an individual to live a relatively realistic life without to some extent being alienated from his or her society.
Human nature is prone to delusion. It seems almost all of us excel in the art of deluding ourselves. Perhaps most of our delusions are comparatively harmless. Now and then, though, some delusions might lead us to make unwise choices. It is probably for the best then that we are mindful of our capacity to be deluded and do what we can to be realistic.
— Paul Sunstone, Café Philos: an internet café, On the Art of Deluding Ourselves, August 2, 2018
We live in a highly sexualized culture. Not many young people are virgins when they marry, even those within the Church. Years ago, Ken and I mentored young couples who were engaged. The leaders of this program, who have been in charge of this ministry for 30 years, told us that when they began this ministry most of the engaged couples had not had sex before marriage but nowadays, it was difficult to find any young couples seeking premarital counseling who were still virgins. [I call bullshit because I can do math. Thirty years in the ministry takes us back to 1988. Those getting married came of age in the 1960s and 1970s — you know the FREE LOVE era. I read a British study (which I can no longer find) that looked through eighteenth century marriage and birth records (which were kept by churches). They found that the majority of women were pregnant when they got married. This should not be surprising for those of us who live in the real world — the one where it is natural for young adults to have sex. Young adults have always been having sex before marriage. Duh, right? And they are not likely to confess their fornicating to an Evangelical inquisitor. I had more than a few couples lie to me during counseling.]
….
There are many more verses related to fornication in the Bible.[How often has a Bible verse stopped someone from having sex. My guess, not very often.] It is a serious offense in God’s eyes. He wants us to be chaste and pure before marriage and become one flesh with one man. God’s commands are for our good.[Telling young adults with raging hormones NOT to have sex is most certainly not good for them.] The spread of sexually transmitted diseases is at an all time high. Yes, the sin of fornication has some serious ramifications. [And it doesn’t have to if proper precautions are taken.] It breaks the covenant of the one flesh marriage (even prior to marriage) and it is a sin against one’s one body.
Is there hope for those who have committed fornication? [Lori makes it sound like having premarital sex is some sort of serious crime. Sorry, but it’s not.] Of course, but they will deal with the regret and possibly the scars (infertility and/or disease) from it all of their days [Most people survive their unmarried years just fine. Lori is a fearmonger, plain and simple.] but there is forgiveness in the Lord Jesus Christ. “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).
This is the one hundred eighty-third installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Craig by Stephen Lynch.
Everyone knows Jesus,
The man who healed the lame,
But I am Jesus’ brother:
Craig is my name.
Jesus is the Prince of Peace,
Jesus is the Lamb,
Jesus is the Son of God,
But Craig don’t give a damn.
Because when Craig’s in sight,
We’ll party all damn night!
I don’t turn water into wine,
But into cold Coors Light!
I’m not my brother, I know,
Don’t walk on H2O,
But I got hydroponic shit that me and Judas grow!
I hang out with lepers,
Barabas and Salome.
Jesus’ friends are called Apostles;
Those dudes are totally gay.
Jesus performs miracles
From Galilee to Rome,
But it would be a miracle
If he brought a fuckin’ lady home.
Because while Jesus is prayin’,
Fuckin’ Craig is layin’
Every lady in the Testament,
You know what I’m sayin’?
I won’t die for your sin
Like my famous kin,
But if you’ve got a little sister,
Then there’s room at this inn!
Jesus was our mother’s fave.
All her love to him she gave.
But there’s no sibling rivalry
When he’s nailed to that tree! Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
And now the question for you,
Is not “What Would Jesus Do?”,
But where will you be
When the Craig Machine comes partyin’ through?
And if the Lord will allow,
You’ve got to ask yourself how,
And who and why and when and where is your messiah now?
I recently asked readers to submit questions to me they would like me to answer. If you would like to submit a question, please follow the instructions listed here.
Troy asked, “How Was the Quality of the Education You Received From an IFB College?”
I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan from the fall of 1976 to the spring of 1979. Midwestern was a small, unaccredited Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution started by Dr. Tom Malone — who had an earned doctorate in education from Wayne State University — in the 1950s. Dr. Malone called Midwestern “a character building factory.” It existed for the express purpose of training pastors, evangelists, and missionaries (and providing them with wives). Most of the professors were either men and women with degrees (and honorary doctorates) from Midwestern or men and women with degrees from other Fundamentalist Christian institutions. Malone preferred having Midwestern men teach Midwestern students. It was quite incestuous.
Were the classes I took at Midwestern inferior? I guess I would have to ask, inferior to what? I took some classes out at the local community college, and I found that they were every bit as superficial and worthless as some of the classes I took at Midwestern. I found at both institutions that the quality and depth of a particular class depended on the professor’s commitment to excellence. My world history professor at Midwestern basically read the book to the class and had us take tests. Yawn. I had similar classes at the community college. The best teachers were men and women who loved teaching and enjoyed engaging students in raucous discussions. Such discussions were rare at Midwestern because what teachers could teach and talk about was limited by the college’s commitment to certain doctrinal beliefs. For example, ministerial students were required to take one year of Greek. Good idea, right? However, the professor was only allowed to talk about certain manuscripts — those that supported the Midwestern’s King James-only position. Discussions about minority texts, alternate translations, etc., were verboten.
Generally, Midwestern’s classes were easy (as were the classes at the local community college). Part of the reason for this was that Midwestern was unaccredited. Students received NO financial aid. Most students worked their way through college. I worked a forty-hour-a-week job while taking classes full time. I also attended church three times a week, taught Sunday School, worked on a bus route and took out my girlfriend twice on the weekends. A truly rigorous academic program would have been too much for most students, considering all they had to do outside of school. As it was, most students washed out, and by their senior year, seventy-percent of students had dropped out of college. This wash-out rate, in the eyes of the school administration, was God winnowing the chaff from the wheat. Married, with a child on the way, and laid off from work, I dropped out in the spring of my junior year. That said, Dr. Malone publicly said of me at a pastor’s conference, Bruce, we would probably have ruined you had you stayed in college. At the time, I was pastoring a fast-growing IFB church in Southeast Ohio. I was told when I left college that God would NEVER use me, yet here I was pastoring a successful church — a sure sign that God was indeed using me.
Most of my theological education came post-Midwestern. I read countless religious tomes and studied the Bible for hours on end. I committed myself to being a student of the Bible, and spent two decades educating myself in the finer points of Christian belief. In one church I pastored, one of the congregants was a PhD candidate at Westminster Theological Seminary. I was able to intelligently converse with him, and I never felt educationally inferior. In my mind, it’s not the degrees that matter as much as what you know. In 2005, I saw a young family medicine doctor for treatment of Fibromyalgia. He was honest, telling me that his whole knowledge of Fibromyalgia came from one class period on the subject. He knew that I had read virtually every book on the condition, so he asked me to recommend books for him to read. He was a humble man who had sense enough to know when he didn’t know something. He quickly got up to speed and was able to meaningfully help me with my condition.
I learned very little “Bible” at Bible college. Ironic, I know, but most of my Bible classes were Sunday School level survey classes. Study the text, take a few tests, write a few papers, done. On to the next one. There were two classes that did help me tremendously as a pastor: speech class and homiletics. My speech teacher was Gary Mayberry, He taught me how to structure and deliver a speech. My homiletics teacher was a southern preacher by the name of Levi Corey. On the first day of class, he said, forget everything you learned in speech class. Corey taught me how to craft a sermon and deliver it with personality and passion. I owe much of my preaching success to him.
Evangelical colleges such as Midwestern do not exist to educate men as much as they exist to indoctrinate another generation in dogma. Unfettered intellectual inquiry is never permitted, and professors who dare to foster such a climate are summarily dismissed. The goal is purity of belief and practice. The only way to achieve this goal is to stifle teaching and discussion that challenges or contradicts the approved narrative.
Midwestern did give me one thing: Polly. Whatever my current opinion of Midwestern might be, I am indeed grateful that the college was the vehicle that brought Polly and me together. I may not have gotten a good education, but I sure got a wonderful wife, lover, and friend. I’ll take that any day!
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 61, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 40 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.
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The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Malo Victor Monteiro, former youth pastor at Faith Baptist Church in Wildomar, California and former assistant pastor at Menifee Baptist Church in Menifee, California, stands accused of sexually abusing numerous children over a twenty year period. The Press-Enterprise reports:
A youth pastor in Wildomar was arrested Friday on suspicion of sexually assaulting children over a nearly 20-year span.
Malo Victor Monteiro, 45, of Colton, was booked into Cois M. Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta on suspicion of intent to commit rape, mayhem or sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts with force on a child under 14, lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14, distributing harmful matter and sexual penetration by force, according to the Riverside County jail log.
Today, a woman publicly accused Monteiro of sexually abusing her while she attended Faith Baptist, ABC-7 reports:
A woman came forward Monday to describe being sexually abused and how her former youth pastor Victor Monteiro groomed her.
“It was little by little, but then he would tell you, ‘You’re really cool. You’re special to me,'” April Avila said. “He would punch you on the shoulder, you know, be the cool youth pastor. Then it became caressing and touching your butt.”
Monteiro was arrested last week on numerous felony charges related to sexual assault on children that spans two decades. Avila said she came to know Montiero when she and her family attended Faith Baptist Church in Wildomar.
“The more involved I was, that’s when things began to escalate at church and away from church,” she said.
Avila is just one suspected victim, and there are others. Another suspected victim of abuse is suing Faith Baptist Church, accusing church administrators of knowing about the allegations and covering up for Monteiro.
In the lawsuit, it claims the church was aware of another youth pastor, who is suspected of having an inappropriate relationship, but the entity ignored it. In doing so, it allowed Monteiro to prey on his victims.
“He knew very well what I had gone through,” Kathy Durbins said.
Durbins is Monteiro’s sister-in-law. She said she was involved in an inappropriate relationship at Faith Baptist when she was a teenager. She said her brother-in-law used his knowledge of the church’s cover up to hide his own crimes.
“I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. There was no law enforcement called. So basically it was a big cover up,” she said.
….
Faith Baptist Church is pastored by Bruce Goddard. Menifee Baptist Church is pastored by Pat Cook. Both congregations are Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches. I previously wrote a post about Bruce Goddard titled, Pastor Bruce Goddard and His Bait and Switch Tactics.
Unless you reason outside the box of human reason, you can forget about understanding the Jesus of the Bible. Only those willing and able to break the constraints of common experience and human rationalism can hope to make any sense of Jesus’ life and ministry. [In other words, the Biblical narrative of the life of Jesus is irrational.]
The birth narrative of Jesus demands that we think outside the box. We have no conceptual or experiential category for a woman conceiving a child without sperm from a man. But the biblical authors announce that Jesus was conceived in the womb of a virgin named Mary by a direct act of God. We are to understand that although fully human, Jesus had no earthly, biological father—a reality Mary found no easier to grasp than we do.
In addition to avoiding gazing at people no one really wants to see naked anyway, one of the things I believe I absolutely have to do in my quest for godly obedience is to give up my bad habit of occasionally scanning atheist blogs just to see what the pseudo-intellectual blowhards are up to and, as rare as the instances are these days, I need to stop interacting with them.
In my opinion, their drivel is not much better than looking at porn. Yes, there are distinctions between the two but they have a huge common denominator in the sense that they are both poison to your mind.
Atheists believe that everything in life has a purely material basis. They completely deny the existence of anything spiritual. They believe that all our thoughts, dreams, passions, loves, hates, hopes, ambitions, virtues, sins, and sufferings are driven solely by atomic activity. They believe that all our philosophies, politics, cultures, art, literature, music, history, as well as our deepest desire for eternal life and all that is transcendent in the world—that is, the good, the true, and the beautiful—that all of this is purely the result of biochemical reactions and the random movement of molecules in an empty and lifeless ether. This is not science—it’s faith.
What’s more, it’s an irrational faith that serves as the foundation for all superstition. Indeed, atheism is a whole system of beliefs—a system that has its own philosophy (materialism), morality (relativism), politics (social Darwinism), and culture (secularism). It even has its own sacraments (abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia). And this system of beliefs has been responsible for more death, carnage, persecution, and misery than any system of beliefs the world has ever known.
Face it folks, atheism is horrible thinking. No matter how logical it may appear, when it is stripped of its pompous proclamations and arrogant allegations, its naked soul is seen for what it really is: weak, illogical, unscientific, and worthless.
Like a train wreck, I understand that it’s hard to look away sometimes but, exposing yourself to it too often is a dangerous and, for lack of a better word, stupid practice.
Atheists who read this, and there are some who troll this blog just to use what they read here as fodder for their own blog posts and in their conversations, will see my admission that atheism is dangerous and to be avoided as a win for their side and a lame cop out from me.
They will say I can’t handle the truth of their claims or hold a candle to their their extensive intellects, educations, or life experiences.
They will say I’m afraid of admitting I’m wrong about faith because doing so will virtually ensure that I will be shunned by my church, community, employer, or something.
Or they will claim I am warning the “duped and gullible” to stay clear of the “forbidden fruit” atheists offer because just one taste and the walls any sensible person’s faith will immediately begin to crumble.
Nonsense, all of it! [ this Christian doth protest too much, methinks.]
— Isaiah 53:5, The Isaiah 53:5 Project, Naked and Afraid of Atheists, July 27, 2018
This is the one hundred eighty-fifth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
We live in a highly sexualized culture. Not many young people are virgins when they marry, even those within the Church. Years ago, Ken and I mentored young couples who were engaged. The leaders of this program, who have been in charge of this ministry for 30 years, told us that when they began this ministry most of the engaged couples had not had sex before marriage but nowadays, it was difficult to find any young couples seeking premarital counseling who were still virgins. [I call bullshit because I can do math. Thirty years in the ministry takes us back to 1988. Those getting married came of age in the 1960s and 1970s — you know the FREE LOVE era. I read a British study (which I can no longer find) that looked through eighteenth century marriage and birth records (which were kept by churches). They found that the majority of women were pregnant when they got married. This should not be surprising for those of us who live in the real world — the one where it is natural for young adults to have sex. Young adults have always been having sex before marriage. Duh, right? And they are not likely to confess their fornicating to an Evangelical inquisitor. I had more than a few couples lie to me during counseling.]
