This is the twentieth 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 leave the name the song in the comment section or send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is I Am Going to Hell for This One by NOFX, “an American punk rock band from Berkeley, California.”
Jesus Christ will resurrect
He’s got his BMI royalty to collect
He’s not the white
Fragile hippie
He looks and acts more like
an indignant Ice-T
Jesus Christ is coming back
He wants to kick Mel Gibsons ass
Superstar, The Passion of
He wants his money not your love
He’s been kickin 2000 years
He’s fixed a lot sports
And drank a million beers
Some x-tasy, A thin white line
He says designer drugs
Beat the hell out of wine
Jesus Christ on vacation
Spreading massive religion
“Sex and drugs, we abstain”
He thinks Christians are insane
They don’t know love,
they know fear and moral hauteur
Scare tactics I never taught
“If you’re gonna look to me,
better get rose coloured shades,
Cuz what you see is what you get”
This is the nineteenth 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 leave the name the song in the comment section or send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is First Baptist Bar and Grill by the late Tim Wilson, “an American stand-up comedian and country music artist, whose act combined stand-up comedy and original songs.
what Pentecost Baptist was gonna do
the Sunday brimstone got so dadgum hot
it burned up a church bus in the parkin’ lot
In a panic the reverend Dr. White
called up an ex-member that hadn’t lived right
he owned Joe’s beer joint right across the fence
it’s the same Joe’s he’d preached against…
He said, “I don’t really want to be a hypocrite,
but I got a Sunday school class about to have fits.
We’re all excited about revival week,
and moved by the spirit, so to speak.
With all the souls we saved and money we spent,
we thought God told us to sell that tent…
I got a famous evangelist supposed to come
and done run out of chairs, will you loan us some?”
Joe says, “Well you can just use the whole dang place…
A-9 on the jukebox is “Amazing Grace”
I ain’t supposed to open because of them ‘blue laws’
but I’ll open tonight if it’s alright with y’all.”
Preacher said, “Well, I reckon it’d be OK,
the good Lord works in mysterious ways.
I was gonna talk about Joshua, Judges and Ruth
and I reckon I could do it from the DJ booth.”
At the First Baptist Bar and Grill
it’s the only church in the bible belt
that smells like a whiskey still…
when the sinners finish one more round,
we’ll have dinner on the ground,
then go inside and pray we don’t get killed.
The evangelist came with a well-dressed choir,
they showed up around happy hour,
looked around the joint and didn’t take it real well…
said, “The White ministry has gone to hell”
Ms. Mills that taught youth Sunday school
and two deacons in the back room shootin’ pool
were sharin’ the Lord with a Jim Beam rep
who was teachin’ Ms. Mills some line dance steps…
Reverend White was readin’ from the book of Luke
to a tall, drunk trucker about to puke
he had John 3:16 memorized
tryin’ to dry him out to get him baptized…
The evangelist yelled about the lights and the beer
said, “White, you can’t save any souls in here…
this place ain’t nothin’ but a den of sin…
ain’t the kind of place Baptists ought to be in!”
Preacher said, “Well we don’t really need y’all here
You didn’t do a very good job last year,
you only saved one sinner, that’s Todd McGuire,
the little SOB that set my church on fire!”
“Joe’s beer joint has done been revived,
only been here an hour, and I done saved five.
Sure, it’s got mirrors and a big dance floor,
but I finally found the flock God called me for.”
They’re at the First Baptist Bar and Grill
it’s the only church in the bible belt that smells like a whisky still not a stained glass window anywhere in site,
just a blood-stained floor and neon lights,
and the communion wine in here is always chilled.
We’re here every Sunday; we’re livin’ large;
We’re the only church with a cover charge.
And if you don’t like our doctrine and think we ain’t devout,
we’ll have our bouncer throw your butt out …
of the First Baptist Bar and Grill
This is the eighteenth 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 leave the name the song in the comment section or send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Church League Softball Fist Fight by the late Tim Wilson, “an American stand-up comedian and country music artist, whose act combined stand-up comedy and original songs.”
Chorus 1:
Church League, Softball, Fist Fight
Gettin washed in the blood on a Tuesday night
What would Jesus do, lord he wouldn’t do that
Knock hell outta the preacher with a softball bat
Well the swinging Sheppard’s from the Sheep of the Savoir
were tied with the sourwood church of Christ
An example of some highly unholy behavior
in a game that had already been protested twice
Something unbiblical must have been said
for them to be aimin’ heat at the minister’s head
Clockin the clergy ain’t the thing to do
But neither’s the high hard one on the 0-2
Chorus 2:
Church League, Softball, Fist Fight
A body layin’ on the hands ‘neath the left field lights
Knockin out four teeth, gettin a busted lip
Aint exactly my idea of Christian Fellership
Church League, Softball, Fist Fight
Rollin round the pitchers mound it just don’t look right
where the nice people from the church and the Sunday school class
To trade a cup of brotherhood for a can of whoop-ass
Several weeks back, I asked readers to submit questions they would like me to answer. If you would like to ask a question, please leave your question here.
What was the thing or moment where it all started to unravel horribly, the pulling the first thread away moment, when you said ‘screw all of this’ and walked away? Was it one thing or a gradual buildup of stuff?
This is a great question, one that is not easy to answer.
My story drives Evangelicals crazy, especially those who are hardcore, never change their beliefs, fundamentalists. What they see in my story is a lifetime of theological change, and this is a sure sign to them that I never had a surefooted theological foundation. After all, the Bible does say that the double minded man is unstable in all his ways. In their mind, it’s no wonder I deconverted. Look at my ever-evolving theology.
However, I view my change of beliefs in a different light. For those of us raised in the Evangelical church, we grew up with a borrowed theology. Our theology was that of our parents, pastor, and church. When I enrolled at Midwestern Baptist College, I had a borrowed theology and when I left three years later I still had a borrowed theology. I believed what I had been taught.
Over the course of 25 years in the ministry, I diligently studied the Bible. I read over a thousand theological books and prided myself in working hard to give parishioners with exactly what the Bible taught. Over time, I encountered teachings and beliefs that were new to me, and after thoroughly studying the matter my beliefs either stayed the same or changed. Over the years, my soteriology and eschatology changed, as did my view on inerrancy the law of God, faith vs works, and Bible translations. These new beliefs led to changes in practice. I like to think that my changing beliefs were simply an intellectual response to new information.
Over this same 25 year period my politics evolved and changed. I entered the ministry as a right-wing Republican culture warrior. I left the ministry as a progressive/liberal Democrat. It is likely that my changing political beliefs affected how I read and interpreted the Bible.
I left the ministry in 2005 and left Christianity in 2008. In the three years between these two events, I went back to the Bible and restudied what I believed about God, Jesus, creation, salvation, and the Bible. I read numerous books written by authors like Bart Ehrman, Robert Price, Robert Wright, Jerry Coyne, John Loftus, Rob Bell, Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, Brian McLaren, John Shelby Spong, Henri Nouwen, Marcus Borg, Elaine Pagels, Hector Avalos, Soren Kierkegaard, John Dominic Crossan, N.T. Wright, Paul Tillich, and a number of other authors. I was doing everything I could to hang on to some sort of faith.
I went through what I call the stages of deconversion: Evangelical Christianity to Liberal/Progressive Christianity to Universalism to Agnosticism to Atheism. This path was painful, arduous, contradictory, and tiring. I spent many a day and night not only reading and studying, but having long discussions with Polly about what I had read. In November of 2008, I concluded, based on my beliefs, that I could no longer honestly call myself a Christian. Since I no longer believed the Bible was an inspired, inerrant, infallible text, nor did I believe that Jesus was God, rose again from the dead or worked miracles, there was no possible way for me to remain a Christian. At that moment, I went from believer to unbeliever. I call this my born again atheist experience.
Evangelicals will read this post and point out what they see as a fatal flaw in my deconversion; I didn’t read any Evangelical theologians. I didn’t read any of the shallow apologetic works that are bandied about as surefire faith fixers. The reason I didn’t is because I had already read them. I can recite Christian theology, in all its forms, frontwards and backwards. Since there hasn’t been an original thought in Christianity since Moses got off the ark, I had no need of rereading Christian theological books. The few Christian authors I did read, were new authors that I hoped would tell me something I had not heard before. I read their books in hopes of getting a new perspective on Christianity, hoping that they would knot a rope and throw it to me so I could hang on. In the end, the rope had no knot, and down the slippery slope I slid until I hit bottom.
So, my deconversion took a long time, but there was also a moment in time when I went from believer to nonbeliever.
If I had to point to one thing that most affected my deconversion, it would be learning that the Bible was not an inspired, infallible, inerrant text. I suspect this is the case for many Evangelicals turned atheist. Bart Ehrman is a good example of this. The belief that the Bible was a perfect text written by God and absolute truth from the hand of God himself, was the foundation of my system of belief. Remove this foundation and the whole house comes tumbling down.
One unanswered question remains; if I had started out as a progressive/liberal Christian would I have still deconverted? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Since I have a pastor’s heart and I love help people, I might have found a home in progressive/liberal Christianity. This is one of those would of/could of/should of questions. That’s not the path I took, so here I am. Unless a deity of some sort reveals itself to us, I remain a convinced atheist.
Several weeks back, I asked readers to submit questions they would like me to answer. If you would like to ask a question, please leave your question here.
What’s the difference between superstition and religion?
The short answer is nothing, Practically, an Evangelical would view the beliefs of non-Christians as superstition. The Evangelical looks at Catholics and their prayers to Mary and the saints and sees superstition. What the Evangelical can’t see is their own superstition. The Christian narrative is every bit as wacky as any of stories and beliefs that are labelled superstition. One man’s superstition is another man’s religion.
The dictionary definition of superstition is:
An irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear.
The question I have is whether ALL religious belief arises from ignorance or fear? Most of it does, to be sure, but if someone tells me that they have some sort of deistic belief then I am inclined to say that their belief does NOT arise out of ignorance or fear. I have stated many times that I think one can look at the universe and conclude that a deity of some sort created the universe. This deity, after creating the universe, said, there ya go boys and girls, do with it what you will. Some readers of this blog hold to this view. While I can not embrace this view, I do understand it.
As far as Christianity is concerned, no matter what form one embraces, it arises from ignorance or fear. Some Evangelicals try to assert that their beliefs are rational, but I find their explanations laughable. Their explanations are little more than a class in probabilities. Let me explain. Billions of people have lived and died. Every human dies. Even the Bible admits the obvious: it is appointed unto men once to die. There are no exceptions except for Jesus and Elijah, for which we have no proof that they are still alive. The Evangelical hangs on to the notion that it is “possible” for a person to resurrect from the dead or never die because the Bible says it is possible. (circular reasoning) Since all the evidence points to when you are dead you stay dead, I consider any other belief to be one born out of ignorance, faith, or hope.
Liberal Christians are hard to nail down, belief wise. I tend to refrain from labeling their beliefs superstition because I appreciate what they are trying to accomplish. Most liberal Christians I know are de facto universalists. Atheists like me end up in heaven anyway, so there no fear factor involved. Do I think liberal Christianity is rational? No, but I do know the world would be a lot better place if every religious believer had progressive, liberal beliefs.
I am sure hard-core atheists will not appreciate my conciliatory, accommodationist approach to deism, liberal Christianity, and universalism, but I recognize that most people are going to have some sort of religious belief, and if this is so, what would I prefer for them to believe? Fundamentalism, in all of its forms, remain the enemy.
Bruce, you said “you said: “Christian orthodoxy teaches that when a person dies their body goes to the grave to await the resurrection of the just and unjust and the final judgment.” How then, could the rich man see and know Abraham and Lazarus and Abraham and Lazarus see the rich man?”
Can you explain where this “Dual Judgement” theology comes from, who originated it, and why not all fundies espouse it—like you did not espouse it in your quote above.
First, for those who may not know my entire story, I was not a Fundamentalist towards the latter part of my time in the ministry. I left the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement in the late 1980s. I then became an Evangelical Calvinist before becoming more liberal politically and theologically. When I left the ministry in 2005, I was aligned with the emergent church, red letter Christians, and Sojourners. My move leftward cost me almost all of my IFB friends and colleagues. When I became an agnostic/atheist/humanist, I lost all but two of my remaining Christian friends.
Second, when I wrote “Christian orthodoxy teaches that when a person dies their body goes to the grave to await the resurrection of the just and unjust and the final judgment,” this was a reflection of my post-IFB theology. I held to a post-tribulational, amillennial eschatology. One resurrection, one judgment.
Third, almost all IFB churches and pastors are dispensational, pre-tribulational, and premillennial. As such, they believe in multiple judgments. Lazarus and the rich man would have been judged before the death and resurrection of Jesus. Then there is a judgment after the rapture. This judgment is often called the Judgment (BEMA) Seat of Christ. At the end of the tribulation, there will be another judgment, and after the 1,000-year millennial reign of Christ on earth, there will be one more judgment, the final judgment of all who have not yet been judged.
Make sense? Of course not. But, it is in the B-i-b-l-e. Much of dispensational teaching is implied and inferred.
In recent years, I’ve noticed more eschatological diversity in the IFB church movement. I suspect this is due to the fact that all the prophecy preaching over the past 70 years has failed to materialize. After being theologically embarrassed and made out to be fear-mongering false prophets, many IFB preachers have turned to simpler eschatological systems. I’ve even met IFB preachers who are Calvinistic and hold to a post-tribulational, amillennial eschatology. Their eschatology and soteriology have evolved, but their social Fundamentalism has not. (please read Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists? to understand the terms social and theological Fundamentalism)
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Several weeks back, I asked readers to submit questions they would like me to answer. If you would like to ask a question, please leave your question here.
Do you think the many Christian prayers for your demise will succeed?
Many Christians believe that God should get all the praise for the good things that happen and Satan and sinners should get blamed for the bad things that happen. This fact poses a conundrum for those praying for my demise. If God kills me, this means it was a good thing, right? But, if God is the giver of life, the fact that I am still alive is also a good thing. Perhaps God wants me to live so the Holy Spirit can regenerate me, effectually call me, and impart to me his wonderful irresistible grace. Or perhaps I am not one of the elect, not in the Lamb’s Book of Life; then I am an unregenerate, apostate reprobate. If I were God, I would kill someone like me, seeing that I do so much damage to the faith of others.
Some day, I will die. The way I am feeling as I write this post, it could be today. Or tomorrow. Or twenty years from now. Regardless of the date of my demise, there will a Christian somewhere who will see it as proof that their imprecatory prayer worked,;that God whacked me because they asked him to.
Ron Baity, pastor of Berean Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Ron Baity is the pastor of Berean Baptist Church, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Baity started the church in 1980. Baity thinks that the homosexual horde currently invading the United States is a sure sign that we are in the end times. And the gay man says, Pastor Baity, we always known it is the end times.
Here’s a transcript of some of what Baity said in this sermon:
So the book of the Revelation is about End Times events and what happens when this world is destroyed by fire, when the stars and the universe and the sun and the moon, like untimely figs cast from a tree, are just completely done away with and annihilated.”
“Listen, folks, it’s on, You might as well get ready for it. It’s on. It’s just a matter of time when they’re going to say to the churches… It’s just a matter of time before our constitution in our churches will be overturned like our state constitution just been overturned this week. I mean, it’s coming.”
“They were doing something that was not normal, they were doing something that was not natural, and as a result of that, like God judged this world with a flood, he judged Sodom and Gomorrah with fire!” the pastor exclaimed. “The most blasphemous thing I’ve heard in 40 years of ministry, I heard on the news last night, where rogue judges have gone against the will of the ministry and made America a country where there’s totalitarianism, where there are judges who have set themselves up as dictators to overthrow the will of the people! And they placed their sanction upon marriage that is out of the habitation of God’s creation!”
“Now, I want you to understand, there’s something about that that just don’t ring clear. There’s something about that that goes against everything that God has taught us in his word. There’s something about that that merits the judgement of God, according to the book of Jude. There’s something about that that just doesn’t work.”
“If you think for one skinny minute, God is going to stand idly by and allow this to go forward without repercussions, you better back up and rethink this situation,” he warned. “I want you to understand, that is raw, pure blasphemy.”
“I hope this message gets through the Internet. There’s another day that’s going to get called in court, there’s another session of court. And it’s higher than the federal court, and it’s higher than the Supreme Court.”
“There was never a cow going around slobbering on another cow, sending a signal that I’m in love with this cow,” he said. “And when the bull got in the pasture, we didn’t have to give them a course in bullology or cowology. They had an inborn nature, they knew exactly and precisely what they needed to do to make sure that the Baity family had cows 20 years from now.”
“I would hate to think that two skunks in the backyard was smart than a judge that supposed to have studied the laws of the land. Listen, we’re not getting wiser, we’re getting dumber! We’re not getting smarter. My friend, we are meriting, we are bringing the judgement of God on this nation as sure as Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed, don’t be surprised at the plagues. Don’t be surprised at the judgement of God.”
“You think Ebola is bad now, just wait. If it’s not that, it’s going to be something else. My friends, I want you to understand, you can’t thumb your nose at God, and God turn his head away without God getting your attention.”
Pastor David Berzins, preaching at Word of Truth Baptist Church in Prescott, Arizona.
David Berzins, pastor of Word of Truth Baptist Church in Prescott, Arizona, is calling on all True Christians® to support the stoning of homosexuals. When a fellow King James Only Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor refused to endorse Berzins and Steven Anderson’s call of death to Sodomites, Berzins went on a preaching rampage against his fellow pastor:
I love how this guy enunciates ho-mo-sexual. Kind of like me saying after watching this video, this is one stuuu-pid, dum-b-ass preacher.
Here’s some of what Berzins said in the video clip:
“I like the guy. He’s a Christian, he’s saved, he does soul-winning, he believes in a King James Bible, it’s a Baptist church. Independent Fundamental Baptist church.”
“I think it’s very clear” in the Bible,that people with same-sex attractions should be stoned to death.
“Look, God came up with the laws of the Old Testament! They’re breathed by the Lord. And if you think that you know better on how to run a country than God has ordained, you’re against the teachings of the Bible.”
“Don’t break fellowship with someone who simply believes that Leviticus 20:13 should be in application in our government today.”
“Now, you’re gonna break fellowship over fellow Christians over this issue because you’re too scared! Because you’re scared about retaliation from these perverts! Don’t be scared! They’ve vile and wicked and you need to be standing up and standing together.”
It’s a good day, brethren, when Baptist Fundamentalists are turning on each other. It’s like a snake eating its tail.
Here’s a story that perfectly illustrates being at the wrong place, at the wrong time:
A Washington couple who died when a large concrete slab fell from a highway overpass onto their pickup truck were youth ministers in their 20s and parents to a 6-month-old baby.
Josh and Vanessa Ellis and their baby, Hudson, died when a concrete barrier fell onto the cab of their truck as they drove underneath an overpass in Bonney Lake, Washington, James Ludlow, their pastor at EastPoint Foursquare Church, said.
“It’s a tragic event,” Ludlow said Tuesday. “In the blink of an eye, inhale and exhale, and they’re in the presence of God.”
Construction crews were installing a sidewalk on the state Route 410 overpass in Bonney Lake, when a chunk of concrete weighing thousands of pounds fell to the roadway below around 10:30 a.m.
“We were just heading down the street … and I could hear three snaps and down it went on top of the truck,” witness Dawn Nelson, who was riding in a car behind the pickup, told KING-TV of Seattle. “There was nothing anyone could do. It was just surreal.”
It was not immediately known what caused the “very heavy” concrete structure to fall. Bonney Lake police, the state Department of Transportation and representatives from contractor WHH Nisqually are investigating.
City spokesman Woody Edvalson said the material that fell was part of the original span, which was built in 1992 and has a sufficiency rating of 95.3 out of 100.
Bonney Lake is about 30 miles southeast of Seattle.
Flowers, a cross and a teddy bear have been placed near the overpass. Both the span and road underneath reopened. Debris from the concrete slab is still on the ground, however.
Ludlow described the Ellis family as “great people” who were loved by kids in the church’s congregation….
What a tragedy, a poignant reminder of how quickly one’s life can be snuffed out.
The Ellis family attended Eastpointe Foursquare Church in Buckely, Washington, where Josh and Vanessa were youth leaders.
I am always hesitant to use tragedies like this to make a point, but there is an aspect of this story that I think is important to discuss.
Shane Lance, the worship leader at Eastpointe, had this to say about the accident:
“It’s just crazy as a friend. I just can’t wrap my head around it, and that does have to do with how random and how freakish the accident was.”
“It feels unbelievable because a split second on either side the cement slab would have fallen right in front of them and they would have been fine or behind them and they would have been fine. What I do know is that there’s no answer to the logic of it and there’s no answer to the question why.”
“We do know God is good; He’s just so good. He’s going to pull goodness out of this situation somehow, even though right now that just feels illogical. And there’s also comfort knowing that they’re with Jesus and they’re comforted and they’re covered by His grace and power now.”
The One News Now report goes to say “The worship pastor adds they know God is sovereign even when it doesn’t make sense.”
According to Lance and Eastpointe Foursquare Church, the Ellis family was smashed to death because the Christian God decreed it to be so. God is the giver and taker of life and he determined it was time for Ellis’s to die. Not content to quietly kill them in their sleep, he dropped a concrete barrier weighing thousands of pounds on top of them as they drove near an overpass. What should we say about a God who behaves in such a horrific manner?
Lance, seeking for answers as to WHY God killed his friends, believes that the sovereign God he loves and worships only does good and he will surely use this tragedy for a greater purpose. What Godly purpose requires the sacrifice of a young father, mother, and their child? How is this any different from the Aztec Indians sacrificing humans to their God?
Lance’s comments betray the mental and emotional battle that rages in his mind. He wants to believe God is sovereign, God is love, God only does good, yet his dear friends are dead. In the aforementioned article, Lance stated that the accident “just feels illogical.” When viewed in a religious context, he is right. How can someone say God is love and God only does good, knowing that the death of the Ellis’s is anything but loving and good? I am sure that cognitive dissonance afflicts many of those trying to make sense of this tragedy.
As a humanist, I don’t think the accident was illogical. The Ellis family was at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Such things happen every day in every country of the world. 13 years ago, a Southern Baptist pastor, his wife, and three young children, were driving along an Indiana road when a tree toppled over smashing their car. The father, mother, and two children were killed. Baptist Press reported:
A small-town Southern Baptist pastor, his wife, and two small children were killed Jan. 1 when a dead tree fell on top of their car, crushing the passenger compartment.
Stanley Paul Jones, 46, pastor of Buck Creek Baptist Church in Cumberland, was killed along with his wife, Beth Ann Hobbs Jones, 39, and two of their children, Lauren, 6, and Tyler, 10.
Another daughter, Emily, 4, survived and was listed in fair condition at an Indianapolis-area hospital.
There appeared to have been no wind or other circumstances that caused the tree to fall just as Jones’ car was passing underneath on the two-lane road.
How do you explain the deaths that came a few hours into the new year?
Jones was westbound on Hancock County Road 100 South, approaching the intersection with County Road 200 West, about seven miles east of the church he served. There are woods in the area. A dead tree, said to have been 5 feet in diameter, fell just as Jones’ vehicle was passing underneath, according to Hancock County deputies.
“Being a Christian doesn’t mean you’re exempt from tragedy,” said William Smith of Cumberland Christian Church, who knew Jones and helped his church. “There’s no explanation for it, but we believe that an all-knowing God is in control of everything.”…
There’s that sovereign God again, the God who is all-knowing and controls everything. Again, like the Ellis family, the Jones family was at the wrong place, at the wrong time. But, in both cases, there are humans who are culpable for what happened. While the concrete barrier falling was an accident, someone was operating the machinery that resulted in the fall. Same goes for the Jones family. The dead tree that killed them was on someone’s property. They likely knew it was dead and could topple over, yet they did nothing about it. The state of Indiana is also culpable. It is their responsibility to make sure that trees along the right-of-way are sound. If they are not, they should be removed lest they topple over and hit a passerby.
Rare is the circumstance where no culpability can be found. I have had several near brushes with death, and in every instance a human was to blame. We recognize that we live in a danger-filled world, where living to old age is as much about luck as it is genetics. For the Ellis and Jones families, their luck ran out and three children and four adults died.
Imagine these families tooling down the road without a care in the world. Maybe they were like Polly and I years ago. We’d spend hours in the car singing hymns and praise and worship songs. Sometimes, we sang along with a cassette tape or a CD. Just praising Jesus, worshiping the wonderful, loving God of the universe. And then, BAM, the sovereign God of Christianity drops a cement barrier or a tree on top of the car. What kind of God behaves like this? Perhaps Christians need to tell God to please leave them alone; that they are fine without his love, care, and protection.
The Ellis family, according to Shane Lance, is in the presence of Jesus. Theoretically, isn’t this what many Christians live for? Whether by rapture or death, the Christian is free from the world controlled by the prince and power of the air, Satan. Life is little more than preparation for heaven. The Bible says, prepare to meet the Lord thy God. Since the present life is transitory and fleeting, the Christian focuses on laying up treasures in heaven. Testimonies are given, expressing the desire to absent from the body and present with the Lord. If heaven and being in the presence of Jesus is the end game, shouldn’t Christians rejoice upon hearing the stories mentioned in this post? Why all the sadness, grief, and despair? Perhaps, even the Christian has their doubts about what lies beyond the grave. They know what the Bible says, what their pastor says, and what their “heart” tells them, but reality tells them something far different.
I am not certain whether the atheistic/humanistic way of looking at tragedies and death is better, but it is brutally honest. I fully understand the appeal of religion in times of tragedy. People want to desperately believe that their life matters, both now and beyond the grave. While there is no rational proof for such claims, faith allows the believer to set reason aside and cling to hope. The atheist and the humanist must embrace life as it is. Sometimes, life can be harsh and ugly, as in the case of the Ellis family. No thoughtful atheist would ever wish such a tragedy on anyone, but we know that things like this do happen and they may some day happen to us.
Many Christians believe that God should get all the praise for the good things that happen and Satan and sinners should get blamed for the bad things that happen. This fact poses a conundrum for those praying for my demise. If God kills me, this means it was a good thing, right? But, if God is the giver of life, the fact that I am still alive is also a good thing. Perhaps God wants me to live so the Holy Spirit can regenerate me, effectually call me, and impart to me his wonderful irresistible grace. Or perhaps I am not one of the elect, not in the Lamb’s Book of Life; then I am an unregenerate, apostate reprobate. If I were God, I would kill someone like me, seeing that I do so much damage to the faith of others.
Some day, I will die. The way I am feeling as I write this post, it could be today. Or tomorrow. Or twenty years from now. Regardless of the date of my demise, there will a Christian somewhere who will see it as proof that their imprecatory prayer worked,;that God whacked me because they asked him to.