This is the one hundred and fifty-first 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 is a video clip of Steven Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona explaining that he is a well-rounded Christian and NOT obsessed homosexuality (sodomy, the sodomites). This is the best comedy bit ever done by deep-in-the-closet Pastor Anderson .
This is the one hundred and fiftieth 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 is a video clip by Dennis Prager. Prager is a Jew and proponent of Judaeo-Christian objective morality. At least in theory, that is. By being thrice married, twice divorced, Prager shows that he is a hypocrite when it comes to God’s objective moral standard concerning marriage and divorce. Shocker, I know.
According to a report in the Boone Republican News, Joel Waltz, one time youth pastor of Grace Community Church in Boone, Iowa, has been charged with “sexual exploitation by a counselor of therapist, a Class D felony.” The Republican News article states:
A former Boone youth pastor, accused of having inappropriate contact with a now-20-year-old woman off-and-on since she was 16, was arrested Monday after turning himself in to Story County Jail, police said.
Joel M. Waltz, 47, is charged with sexual exploitation by a counselor of therapist, a Class D felony.
According to Ames Police Cmdr. Geoff Huff, the victim met Waltz when she was 11, and used to meet with him on a regular basis until she was 18. Huff said that the victim described Waltz as a father figure, before he confessed his love for her when she turned 16.
Huff said the two began a sexual relationship that occurred in several locations around Boone and Ames, where the victim lived.
Waltz resigned from his position at Grace Community Church in March 2016, shortly after the allegations were brought against him.
On December 6, 2017, Grayson Schmidt, a reporter for The Ames Tribune reported:
A former Boone youth pastor who pleaded guilty to having inappropriate contact with a now 20-year-old woman off-and-on since she was 16, was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday, according to Story County Attorney Jessica Reynolds.
Joel Mark Waltz, 47, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor in October, a week before he was set to go to trial.
Waltz was arrested in late March and originally charged with sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist, a Class D felony.
According to Ames Police Cmdr. Geoff Huff, the woman met Waltz when she was 11 years old, and met with him on a regular basis until she was 18. Huff said the woman described Waltz as a father figure before he confessed his love for her when she turned 16.
The mind-rape called fundy evangelical belief, leads the follower down a ritualistic path of self-harm. It begins with admitting that you are a hopeless sinner and unworthy. That is an important first step necessary to start the foundation for the royal heart-rape of Salvation. It is based, or was in my experience, on feeling the truth in things. As a child I was made to understand that I was unworthy by being human, born in sin. That became my world as it was given to me in love from my parents, in a fashion similar to their own childhoods. I knew I was evil because I knew I was evil, as it were. It was my beginning. I thought bad words in my head for no reason whatsoever than that I was clearly evil. How else could the word ‘shit’ or the evil ‘fuck’ appear to me? The path was laid out long before my time, churches were built on every corner and nobody much questioned this reality. I have thought and expressed every word Allison says above here and I have believed that I was right. Trouble is, the human body, the mortal life of a person does not just go-along like a follower. It protests with feelings and ideas, with dreams and daily LIFE! The cycle of belief always left me needing to be ‘saved’ again by Jesus, forgiven or whatever, and the cycle persisted no matter what sort of maturity I had in my faith. You know, I still remember just weeping like a helpless lump when I realized I actually had a choice in the matter. I had heard and ingested all the preaching about free choosing and so forth but I did not get it because, well, I never did have a choice, did I…. not from the get-go. It took me over a quarter of a century to realize I could choose…. Both Allison and me as young people should have been wearing warning labels so that others would know how truly we believed! When I actually realized I had a choice to say, No, it floored me. I had to practice it secretly, whisper it, keep No in a closet. But I knew I could not let No go because, you know what, I could really breathe when it came to me. I could feel my chest fill fully and the air was mine to use. I sensed freedom in my body long before my heart and mind could even see it from the church basement they lived in… I did not even dare think that one day my heart and mind would come home with me, so to speak. They never did for much of my family. We still produce many preacher teachers and missionaries for the cause…. they pray for me and I am sure would not mind at all if I agreed to wear a warning label myself: Fallen, ungrateful backslider! Beware!
Last week, aspiring model and college student Fredzania Thompson was tragically killed when a train hit her while she was standing too close to the tracks. CBS News reports:
The mother of a 19-year-old Texas woman says her daughter was killed when she was struck by a train while having photos taken of her on the tracks in a bid to launch a modeling career.
Hakamie Stevenson told The Eagle newspaper that her daughter, Fredzania Thompson, attended Blinn College in Bryan, Texas, but wanted to put her education on hold to begin modeling.
Authorities say Thompson was standing between two sets of tracks on March 10 in Navasota when a BNSF Railway train approached.
She moved out of the way of the train but was apparently unaware that a Union Pacific train was coming in the opposite direction on the other tracks and was struck.
In this post, my objective is not to focus on the nature of Thompson’s death as much as the reason given for her demise. Sambreia Glover had this to say about her 20-year-old cousin’s death:
Everyone knew the real Zanie … very free-spirited, just goofy. Everyone loved her. She never met a stranger. She was just very friendly and sweet. it’s tough, but God makes no mistakes. It was just her time, but she will be truly missed.
According to Thompson’s cousin — who is likely an Evangelical Christian — God — who supposedly makes no mistakes — killed Thompson because it was just her time to die. She’ll be missed, Glover said, but hey the Giver and Taker of Life knows what he is doing.
What reason could the Christian God possibly have for killing a bright, energetic 20-year-old girl? Does God assign death dates to every human life at birth? If so, and if, as pro-lifers say, life begins at fertilization, that means God assigns a death date to every aborted fetus. This also means that children who died of cancer did so because it was their time to die. According to many Evangelical pastors, everyone has a divine appointment with death. The Bible seems to be on their side. Hebrews 9:27 says:
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment
This verse can be interpreted several ways. One way is to say that the appointment in question is the death of all humans, not anyone in particular. After everyone is dead and the events of the book of Revelation are fulfilled, everyone will be resurrected so they can stand before God and be judged. Another way this passage is interpreted — the one most commonly used by Evangelical preachers — is that everyone has a set-in-stone death-day. In Thompson’s case, March 10, 2017, was her day to die.
Let’s assume, for a moment, that the notion of everyone having a set-by-God death-date is true. What does this say about God? Think of all the various ways humans die. Think of all the suffering, pain, and agony people go through before drawing their last breaths. Think of all the bizarre ways people die — wrong place, wrong time, BAM! you’re dead! What kind of monster is God with his macabre, psychopathic, torturing-kittens ways of strangling the life out of those whose creation was supposedly his crowning achievement? If death is a divinely ordered necessity, why not let people on their death-day die in their sleep? Surely that would be good not only for the dead people, but also their families. Instead, God — the First Cause of everything, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last — throws people off cliffs, murders them in dark alleys, blows them up in crowded bazaars, drowns them in swimming pools, fries them with lightning, and, as in Thompson’s case, hits them with trains.
Some Evangelicals will argue that God, as creator, can do whatever he wants to do. The Apostle Paul makes this very argument in Romans 9. God is the creator, Paul said, and we are the created. How dare we challenge God’s right to do whatever he wants.
Another argument made for God’s chosen methods of human-killing is that the more graphic, violent, and awful the death, the more likely it is that people will pay attention to it. Who wants to watch the Hallmark Channel when you can watch HBO, right? Since heaven or hell awaits everyone and this is determined by whether people are Christian or not, news-worthy deaths are warning signs from God. On Sundays, countless Evangelical pastors use this very approach in their sermons, giving graphic illustrations of people who died horrible, untimely (from a human perspective) deaths. The goal is to scare people into getting saved. I used countless such illustrations, hoping that congregants who consider their frail mortality, soon death, and eternal destiny. Such illustrations in the hands of skilled emotion manipulators usually lead people — with tears streaming down their faces — to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Thompson’s cousin also said that “God makes no mistakes.” I wonder if Christians, in light of the Bible, consider whether statements such as this are true. According to the Good Book, God created Adam and Eve. How did that work out? If God is the First Cause, isn’t he responsible for the fall of Adam and Eve into sin? If God knows E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G, he must have known Adam and Eve were going to eat of Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and, according to orthodox Christianity, plunge the entire human race into sin. Think of all the evil, violence, and suffering on display in this world of ours. Evangelicals trace all of these things back to our sinful nature. Surely, it is fair to say that God screwed up big time when creating Adam and Eve as he did. In other words, God made a colossal mistake.
Several thousand years later, humans had procreated themselves into a six-million or so species. Also roaming the earth were fallen angels. These angels were having sex with human women, resulting in the birth of angel-human hybrid children. Bizarre TV show from the SyFy channel? Nope, straight from the Bible, Genesis, chapter six:
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
Note carefully what the Bible says: And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart…. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. This sure sounds like it is saying that God is admitting that he made a mistake in creating humans, and that the only way to fix his mistake was to kill everyone (save Noah and his family, eight in number) and start over.
The most humorous part of this story is that after God flushed the earth and started over, the first thing that Noah and his sons did was commit some sort of sexual sin (Genesis 9:19-24). Poor God, he can’t seem to get it right. He should have killed Noah’s family too.
Evangelicals are fond of saying, PRAYER CHANGES THINGS! Implied in this statement is that through prayer God can be moved to act on their behalf. Need something from God? PRAY! Need a job, home, money, car, a wife? PRAY! Need deliverance from alcohol, heroin, or porn? PRAY! Pray long and hard enough, the thinking goes, and God will come through for you, giving you that which you ask for. God, then, is some sort of divine vending machine. Keep putting quarters in the slot and pulling the handle, and God will sooner or later drop a package of Peanut M&Ms from Heaven.
If prayer can indeed change things, wouldn’t this mean that God changing his mind about a matter is him admitting that his first plan of action/inaction was wrong? If God is perfect, the same yesterday, today, and forever, doesn’t the very act of answering prayers say that God is NOT any these things?
If God is all that Evangelicals say he is, shouldn’t we expect God to get it right each and every time? What does it say about a supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful God that he is neither? What it should say to anyone who is paying attention is that this God is a figment of human imagination. People desperately want to believe that there is some sort of higher power controlling the universe. They also want to believe that their life matters to God and has meaning and purpose. Life isn’t worth living, Christians say, if these things are not true.
Of course, the mere existence of atheists, agnostics, pagans, humanists, and countless other non-Christians, suggests otherwise. Earthly, godless life can be and is filled with wonder, meaning, and purpose. Evangelicals may not be able to wrap their minds around this fact, but that doesn’t mean it is not true. Millions and millions of people live in the present, acknowledging that death lurks around the next corner. Today, tomorrow, or 50 years from now, death — the great equalizer — will claim us all. The difference, of course, is that unbelievers know that to some degree they can control when and even how they die. Yes, genetics, environment, and luck play a big part, but we are NOT passive players in the drama called life.
Every day, all of us make decisions based on the evidence at hand and probabilities. Living on Earth is both wonderful and dangerous. Having lived for almost 60 years, I can say that I am lucky to be alive. Forty-five years ago, 15-year-old Bruce was walking home from the YMCA one evening with his friends when a stopped train blocked his path home. After 10 or so minutes, the daredevil boy with flaming orange hair decided he had enough and started to climb underneath the train. My friends laughed and cheered me on, but none of them was willing to following me across the tracks to the other side. Perhaps their reason for not doing so was the train lurching forward as I made it halfway to the other side. My friends’ laughs and cheers turned into screams, fearing that the train was going to crush me or cut off my legs. Fortunately, I safely made it to the other side. (And astoundingly, I waited until the tracks were clear so my friends could praise me for my bravado, forgetting that my reason for doing this was to save time.)
The story of Fredzania Thompson’s tragic death and my story of keeping my legs for another day have much in common. Both of us foolishly thought that it was okay to play on train tracks. Both of us, filled with youthful life, had no thoughts of death. Thompson just wanted a picture, and I just wanted to get home. Thompson’s roll of the dice resulted in her death, mine became a story to tell forty-five years later. The difference between the two stories? Luck. I could just as easily have been killed or turned into a legless example of youthful stupidly.
At the time, I thanked God for saving me from the train, but now I know that I was one lucky boy. Had my life ended that night, none of what I have experienced since them would have happened. Surviving many such experiences has taught me the importance of carefully considering possible outcomes. Not that I still don’t make stupid decisions. I do, and perhaps one day I will die, the result of one stupid decision too many. (Please see Death by Duck: The Photograph that Almost Killed Me.)
I certainly empathize with Thompson’s family. Her death came way too soon, long before it should have. She should have had a full life ahead of her, including a modeling career and perhaps a husband and family. So much potential, snuffed out in an instant because of a thoughtless choice to have her photograph taken on busy railroad tracks. God is not to blame (or credit), because he doesn’t exist. The blame squarely rests on Thompson, and to some degree, the photographer — who should have assessed the risk involved in taking the photograph. All of us know that train tracks are dangerous, yet every year hundreds of Americans are killed by trains. We KNOW, yet we allow the thrill of the moment or lateness to override our thinking, resulting in death and serious injury. One thing is for certain, future Thompsons will be warned about the danger that railroad tracks present to them. This is how we survive as a species. Not by attributing everything to God, but by learning from our ignorant, foolish, ill-advised decisions. Much of life and death rests with us. If we want to live long, fulfilling lives, we must learn to assess danger, weigh probabilities, and act accordingly. We still might end up dead, but it won’t be because we threw caution to the wind and put ourselves in harm’s way.
Jose Aboytes, assistant pastor of Palabra Miel Hispanic Church in Decatur, Illinois was charged yesterday with “seven felony counts for allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulting and abusing a girl younger than 13 during a period of seven months.”
Jose Luis Aboytes, a former pastor of a church on the city’s east side, was charged Thursday in Macon County Circuit Court with seven felony counts for allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulting and abusing a girl younger than 13 during a period of seven months.
Aboytes, 58, who is being held in the Macon County Jail on $250,000 bond, is facing one count of predatory criminal sexual assault, punishable by six to 60 years in prison, two counts of criminal sexual assault and four counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.
The victim told police she attended the Palabra Miel Hispanic Church, 3434 E. Wabash Ave., where Aboytes “began to sexually abuse her in an office in the church” about Sept. 16, 2015, said a request for an arrest warrant by Decatur Police detective Erik Ethell.
….
The victim said the abuse “began with Jose touching her leg and progressed to sexual intercourse,” said the court document. The victim said that during choir practice “Jose would call her into his office,” where he would fondle and abuse her. She reported that the abusive conduct occurred during a period of several months. The adolescent girl told police she “took numerous cellphone photographs of her naked body and sent them to Jose’s phone.”
Detectives received more than 10 letters from the girl, in which Aboytes “expressed his love” for the victim, “in addition to knowing her age,” Ethell wrote in the court document. Aboytes “frequently asked (the victim) to destroy the letters after reading them.”
An intellectually disabled teen girl also reported to police that she had been abused by Aboytes, said the warrant request. She said that Aboytes would call her into his office, hug her and fondle her on top of her clothes. She told detectives that “Jose told her not to tell her parents about the conduct.”
Trevon Gross, pastor of Hope Cathedral in Jackson, New Jersey was convicted in federal court today of conspiracy and bribery. Reuters reports:
A New Jersey pastor and a Florida software engineer were convicted on Friday of scheming to help an illegal bitcoin exchange avoid having banks and regulators look into its activities.
The bitcoin exchange, Coin.mx, was linked to an investigation of a data breach at JPMorgan Chase & Co, revealed in 2014, that exposed more than 83 million accounts.
Pastor Trevon Gross, 47, and programer Yuri Lebedev, 39, were convicted of conspiracy and bribery charges by a jury in Manhattan federal court after a week of deliberations, according to a spokesman for federal prosecutors. Lebedev was also convicted of wire fraud and bank fraud.
….
Prosecutors charged that Lebedev helped arrange bribes to Gross, including $150,000 in donations to his church. In exchange, they say, Gross helped the operator of Coin.mx, Anthony Murgio, take over a small credit union Gross ran from his church.
Murgio used the credit union to evade scrutiny of banks wary of processing payments involving the virtual currency, prosecutors say. Lebedev was accused of working for Coin.mx through a front called “Collectables Club.”
Hope Cathedral’s website still lists Gross as its pastor.
Mark Stafford, founder and pastor of New Birth Power Plex Ministries in North St. Louis, Missouri, pleaded guilty to federal charges, admitting that he defrauded thirty-one people of $1 million. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
An investment adviser and former St. Louis pastor pleaded guilty to federal charges Wednesday and admitted defrauding 31 victims of $1.08 million.
Mark Q. Stafford, 52, of O’Fallon, Mo., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to mail fraud and filing a false tax return.
Stafford admitted that from at least March 2007 to July 2016 he misrepresented investments to clients of the Stafford Financial Firm. Stafford claimed to have opened accounts when he either didn’t deposit the money at all or deposited it in his own account, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Finneran said in court.
Stafford had falsely promised returns of up to 20 percent, as well as bonuses upon investment, Finneran said. Stafford created false financial statements to dupe investors into believing his claims, and even used a false name in correspondence claiming to come from those firms, Finneran said.
He also used money from some clients to pay others, the prosecutor said.
Stafford failed to file tax returns for 2011 and 2013 and understated his 2011 income by $150,000, causing tax losses to the government of almost $100,000, Finneran said.
Stafford was the founder and pastor of New Birth Power Plex Ministries in the Baden area of north St. Louis, prosecutors said.
The Better Business Bureau of St. Louis issued a warning about Stafford and The Stafford Financial Firm last week, citing a Florissant railroad retiree and his daughter who said they’d lost their life savings.
The BBB said that Stafford steered investors to internet-based investment funds that were later targeted by regulators and law enforcement.
A Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting another priest in a church rectory has been ordered to trial in Northern Michigan.
A judge found enough evidence against the Rev. Sylvestre Obwaka, pastor at St. Ignatius Church in Rogers City.
Obwaka is charged with first-degree and third-degree criminal sexual conduct against another priest within the Diocese of Gaylord, who testified Tuesday in 89th District Court in Rogers City. Police say the alleged crimes occurred on Feb. 1 while the man was sleeping.
….
Obwaka, a native of Kenya, has been a priest since 2010. He became pastor at St. Ignatius in July 2013. He is in the Presque Isle County Jail without bond, which was denied during a preliminary hearing Monday.
“I am heartbroken over the events that have unfolded in recent days,” Bishop Steven Raica, leader of the Diocese of Gaylord, which includes St. Ignatius, previously said in a statement. “Our faith calls us to ensure the dignity of each human person is upheld in every circumstance. We must respond with compassion when anyone is harmed. We must also remember than in our system of justice, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
“These are difficult days … I ask for your prayers for all those affected by this situation.”
Father Sylvestre Obwaka has been charged with first degree criminal sexual conduct using force causing personal injury and third degree criminal sexual conduct using force. If convicted, Obwaka faces up to life in prison.
The incident allegedly happened Feb. 1 while a 28-year-old man was staying at Obwaka’s house in Rogers City.
According to the Michigan State Police, the 28-year-old man alleges that Obwaka sexually assaulted him while he was sleeping.
On Tuesday during a preliminary hearing, the alleged victim testified and said he knew Father Obwaka.
He says the sexual assault happened following a night that also involved alcohol, and that he woke up to Father Obwaka inappropriately touching him.
“He used his hand to force my shoulder back down on the bed and he started saying things like, ‘do you love me? Say that you love me,'” the victim said in court.
The man says he tried to roll over.
At some point in the conversation, he says he said ‘no’ to the priest, but it wasn’t clear in court Tuesday what exactly the man was saying no to.
The defense says that Father Obwaka is innocent. Their case involves proving that the two engaged in consensual sex but that the alleged victim later felt guilty about it and reported the situation to police.
“You spent 15 days shedding your guilt and piling it and piling it on my client didn’t you,” Attorney Dan White asked the alleged victim.
“No,” the man replied.
The courtroom was filled with many of Father Obwaka’s supporters.
Maybe you’ve been longing for this day. Or maybe it’s a surprise! Maybe it wasn’t the news you wanted to hear! Whatever the reason, I want to remind you that it is a MIRACLE FROM GOD. God is the author of this life. He destined this child. He has plans and purposes for this precious one. Let’s contemplate on the MIRACLE.
God chose you to be the MOTHER of His child. God is INTERESTED in every minute detail of your baby, from creating every part of his/her body in the womb to His plans for his/her life in the future
If, as Nancy Campbell believes, the Bible is a Christian-God-inspired and inerrant text, and everything found within its pages is true, what can we can conclude about God and his supposed interest in every minute detail of the lives of infants? What conclusions can we come to about God’s love for children? Is God who Campbell says he is? Is God really pro-life? Is he really L-O-V-E?
I agree with Campbell in one respect: women becoming pregnant is quite an event. One might wonder, though, if the God who created this process failed human engineering class. Surely, there are better ways to bring new little humans into the world. God impregnated Mary without Joseph’s sperm and the messy act of sexual intercourse. Why couldn’t God do that for all women? And while he’s at it, why can’t God make sure every fertilized egg implants in the endometrium. Campbell and other Evangelicals rail against abortion, yet God’s inability — he is the First Cause, he who opens and closes the womb, right? — to ensure implantation make him the number one abortionist in the universe. It seems, based on the evidence, that God is one shitty miracle worker.
Campbell says that God has a destiny and a plan for every child — what that plan and destiny is, Campbell does not say. So, we must let the Bible and history tell us God’s wonderful, awesome plan for every miracle child. Can anyone reasonably conclude that God means good for children, that he loves them, and as he does for the sparrow, cares for their every need? In Genesis 6-9, we find the story of Noah and the flood. By Noah’s day, millions of humans lived on planet earth. All of them were the descendants of Adam and Eve and their children’s incestuous relationships. These descendants began having sexual relationships with fallen angels, producing what the Bible calls giants. God became so incensed over this (Why didn’t God kill off the angels instead of killing everyone?) that he decided to kill everyone save Noah, his wife, sons, and their wives. (No children?) Out of the millions of living people, God chose to save only eight. Left to drown were millions of dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, hamsters, guinea pigs, and lots of children and pregnant mothers. If God is pro-life and deeply interested in the welfare of babies, why did he drown countless babies and fetuses in the flood?
How about the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt? Let my people go, Moses said to Pharaoh. Using ten plagues to make his point, God:
Caused the waters of Egypt into blood
Caused frogs to inundate Egypt, including their cooking ovens and beds
Caused a plague of lice
Caused flies to swarm the land of Egypt
Caused the cattle to become diseased
Caused the Egyptians to be infected with boils
Caused large hail to fall on Egypt, killing countless people
Caused a swarm of locusts to destroy Egypt’s crops
Caused three days of darkness to fall on Egypt
and — drum roll please — number 10: God killed the first-born child of every Egyptian family (and any Israelites who didn’t put blood above the doorposts of their home).
Who killed these babies and children? God did. The very same God that Campbell says is pro-life and the very same God who has a destiny planned for every baby. I guess being murdered in your home is a “destiny” of sorts, but I suspect Campbell is using the word “destiny” in a positive sense. Wanting to pump pregnant women full of Jesus, Campbell wants these women to know that the awesome God of the universe has a wonderful, super-duper plan for their fetuses.
Everywhere you look in the Old Testament, you see God smiting and killing people for their sins. Some of those who got on God’s bad side were non-combatants and innocent civilians. Did God give them a pass, punishing instead those who actually pissed him off? Nope. On multiple occasions, God commanded men, women, children, and fetuses be killed, regardless of their culpability. Can it really be said that God is interested in the minute details of the lives of babies — or anyone else for that matter?
Well that’s the Old Testament, Bruce. Fine, let’s talk about the slaughter of all the children under the age of two by Herod at the time of Jesus’ birth. Herod did it, not God, Campbell might say. What a minute. I thought God has a divine plan for every baby? Was his plan for these children to be born to loving parents only to have them hacked to death a year or two later?
And what can I say about the book of Revelation, one of the most anti-human, anti-children, anti-babies books in the Bible. Campbell, a Bible literalist, believes that Jesus will one day judge and destroy the human race — except for those who are Christians, of course. Revelation is the script for God’s upcoming horror show. Will pregnant women or children get a pass and escape God’s violent, bloody temper tantrum? Not according to the Bible. Again, how can an honest reader of the Bible conclude that God is the least bit interested in babies and children?
Consider modern history for a moment. Think of all the wars, genocides, famines, and plagues. If the Christian God holds the world in the palm of his hand, and nothing happens apart from his purpose and plan, what conclusion must we come to about God’s actions throughout human history? Does the evidence at hand suggest that God is loving and kind, and, as Campbell implies, has an awesome plan for EVERY baby? I wonder what Nancy Campbell would say to this mother and child:
Pray tell, exactly what is God’s wonderful plan for this woman and her child? This child had only known suffering and pain. Where is Campbell’s wonderful, action-figure God?
I urge mothers to steer clear of the Nancy Campbells of the world. They are snake-oil salesmen, selling a God that does not exist. There is no God who has a plan for your children. There is no God who has a wonderful destiny for your children. Your children’s futures depend on you and your fellow humans. It’s up to us. We are the only gods who can love and care for children. Surely, this is good news, yes? Imagine how it would be for mothers and their children if Campbell’s God is real? Imagine how awful it would be if the “kind, loving” God of the Bible acted today as he did in the Bible and throughout past human history. Thanks be to the gods, he is not real. We, collectively, hold the future of our progeny in our hands. It is up to us to build a world where love, kindness, and peace provide a foundation for children to grow and mature. The God-sellers have had their day, Time for us to, as John Lennon so wonderfully wrote:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today… Aha-ah…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace… You…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world… You…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
