Jesus Christ of the Gospels Never Existed. He's a Myth and I Can Prove It (Part 1). (married, American)
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When I go to mass and present my body as a living sacrifice to God, what am I doing then if not worshiping Jesus?
Christians have no idea how abnormal this kind of attitude is in Christian men and women when it is directed toward Jesus. What were the real hidden intentions of the Catholic Church when they concocted this con? I read once of a young girl who picked the petals of a daisy saying, "He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not" then exclaiming joyfully, "HE LOVES ME! Jesus is my husband and he loves me!". Christians have little awareness how perverse all this "husband/wife relationship with Jesus" stuff comes off to non-Christians. When someone says, "I present my body as a living sacrifice to Jesus", do they have any idea how grotesquely sick that really sounds, like a wife on her wedding night shedding all her clothes and standing naked before her husband saying, "I present my body to you as a chaste virgin." I mean it has subliminal sex written all over it.
This attitude, whether hetero-erotic in the case of women or homo-erotic in the case of men has been fostered by the Catholic Church since pre-Dark Ages with this "thing" the Church first stuck in Paul's 2nd Corinthians epistle, "I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him." in an effort to get men and women chained to Jesus spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, erotically and any other -ally you can think of. This verse from Paul is probably the most emotionally destructive verse in the entire New Testament.
Single Christians who are old and all alone in the world with no spouse, no children or loved ones are especially prone to getting chained so emotionally to Jesus that they cannot imagine a life with a real flesh-and-blood person.
They have nobody in the world they can turn to for emotional support and comfort. While normal people have spouses to give them love and support, for singles all that's left is Jesus. Jesus becomes their sole go-to for comfort and emotional sustenance. This is sad, very sad. Pathetic, really.
Some ministers are acutely aware of this problem. Here's what one pastor in the know says:
Many of the Christian singles I meet are struggling with extreme loneliness and depression but they won’t admit it because they’ve been told they don’t need a man [or woman].
Christians have no idea how abnormal this kind of attitude is in Christian men and women when it is directed toward Jesus. What were the real hidden intentions of the Catholic Church when they concocted this con? I read once of a young girl who picked the petals of a daisy saying, "He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not" then exclaiming joyfully, "HE LOVES ME! Jesus is my husband and he loves me!". Christians have little awareness how perverse all this "husband/wife relationship with Jesus" stuff comes off to non-Christians. When someone says, "I present my body as a living sacrifice to Jesus", do they have any idea how grotesquely sick that really sounds, like a wife on her wedding night shedding all her clothes and standing naked before her husband saying, "I present my body to you as a chaste virgin." I mean it has subliminal sex written all over it.
This attitude, whether hetero-erotic in the case of women or homo-erotic in the case of men has been fostered by the Catholic Church since pre-Dark Ages with this "thing" the Church first stuck in Paul's 2nd Corinthians epistle, "I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him." in an effort to get men and women chained to Jesus spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, erotically and any other -ally you can think of. This verse from Paul is probably the most emotionally destructive verse in the entire New Testament.
Single Christians who are old and all alone in the world with no spouse, no children or loved ones are especially prone to getting chained so emotionally to Jesus that they cannot imagine a life with a real flesh-and-blood person.
They have nobody in the world they can turn to for emotional support and comfort. While normal people have spouses to give them love and support, for singles all that's left is Jesus. Jesus becomes their sole go-to for comfort and emotional sustenance. This is sad, very sad. Pathetic, really.
Some ministers are acutely aware of this problem. Here's what one pastor in the know says:
Many of the Christian singles I meet are struggling with extreme loneliness and depression but they won’t admit it because they’ve been told they don’t need a man [or woman].
There ARE some churches that teach young people to have an almost romantic attachment to Jesus in a misguided attempt to channel their various drives / needs in that department away from where it, shall we say, ordinarily wants to go. I have read about it; I have no idea how widespread it is. But there are some really unseemly aspects to it that unintentionally sexualize teenage girls especially. They are told they are to hold themselves pure, not on principle or for their own sake, but for their fathers which I find creepy as heck (it's a misguided attempt at accountability I suppose). Until their Knight In Shining Armor (tm) comes and the father "gives her" to him. Almost like a transfer of ownership. This goes hand in hand with pledges of chastity and so forth. It's kind of a chaotic mix of patriarchy, paternalism, infantalization of adolescents (or really just the never-married generally) who should be transitioning to more adult responsibilities and privileges, the explicit or implicit notion that sex is this shameful dirty thing that must be handled with radioactive protection gloves and only used in very limited ways (in some sects, only for procreation; in most, only with one's properly married spouse, possibly with optional periods of mutually agreed celibacy for religious purposes -- the basic idea is that we mustn't enjoy it TOO much, with varying notions of how much is too much; also sometimes the notion that even legitimate sex can get in the way of spirituality).
All this ambivalence around sex, sexuality, and romance does a good job of making a minefield of tricky cross-currents and undertows even worse than it really is.
I left the faith too late in life to have much of an opinion on how my understanding of love / romance / marriage / courtship / sex would have been different without all this crufty nonsense, but I'm pretty sure I would have had a better experience. In fairness I was lucky to be in a sect with relatively less unhealthy attitudes in this department but it was still unhelpful and needlessly fraught.
Some posters here appear to be projecting their own psycho-sexual failings/regrets/insecurities/dysfunctions onto Christians who hold to traditional Christian sexual morality.
It's really not as fraught with psychological peril as you make it out to be.
Many Christians have done their best to live by Christian sexual morality their entire lives and are very sexually fulfilled adults.
Some posters here appear to be projecting their own psycho-sexual failings/regrets/insecurities/dysfunctions onto Christians who hold to traditional Christian sexual morality.
It's really not as fraught with psychological peril as you make it out to be.
Many Christians have done their best to live by Christian sexual morality their entire lives and are very sexually fulfilled adults.
I've probably carried this subject off-topic and I'd like to discuss the psycho-sexual abnormalities of Christian sexuality. It's clear I cannot do it here so for awhile I will be heading over to a different forum that is more liberal on such topics.
As for your hint I have my own issues, perhaps I did when I was a Christian. Not believing in Jesus anymore, he has no hold on me far as failings/regrets/insecurities/dysfunctions go. I'm free as a bird.
So for the time being, adieu all.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 12-01-2022 at 08:57 AM..
Here's a good one: supernatural darkness at Christ's crucifixion verified by three historians--now get this--Thallus, Phlegon, and Africanus!!!!
Thallus: Date unknown
Phlegon:
Died: Late second century AD; unknown
Africanus:
Died: 240 AD
So unless these guys could live to 200 years they would not have witnessed this darkness.
Now about the darkness:
The gospel stories also make a solar eclipse impossible: the crucifixion passover happened during a full moon, and the darkness supposedly lasted three hours (indeed, Julius Africanus claimed it covered the whole world). Such an impossible event would not fail to be recorded in the works of Seneca, Pliny, Josephus or other historians, yet it is not mentioned anywhere else outside of Christian rhetoric, so we can probably dismiss the idea of this being a real event.
Derek, the darkness simply could not have happened. Nobody who might have experienced it wrote a word about it. It's just more Christian exaggeration and frankly outright lies.
One theory is that the darkness could have been a dust storm.
If that was the case, it may not have been historically recorded.
Some posters here appear to be projecting their own psycho-sexual failings/regrets/insecurities/dysfunctions onto Christians who hold to traditional Christian sexual morality.
IDK if you thinking i'm one of those "some" but I hold to the same morality I always did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EscAlaMike
It's really not as fraught with psychological peril as you make it out to be.
Not AS? Well thanks for confirming that it is fraught with peril, even if less than you think I'm suggesting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EscAlaMike
Many Christians have done their best to live by Christian sexual morality their entire lives and are very sexually fulfilled adults.
Because of it or in spite of it?
IDK what you have in mind when you think of "Christian sexual morality" -- a morality which, as I say, I have no massive malfunction with anyway -- it is not the "be faithful to your spouse" thing so much as things like "it's the end of the world if you so much as play tonsil hockey prior to marriage", the tendency to assume the female is primarily the one at fault for any sexual activity for being somehow seductive or insufficiently rejecting advances, and conversely that men have minimal responsibility for their own sexual desires and are just hapless victims of loose women. That sex, being as it is a physical thing, is somehow (and usually, especially) contrary to spirituality, even in approved contexts.
Also just to be thorough, I do not claim that all sexual hangups can be laid at the feet of the church. People can be inhibited or conflicted around sex because of trust issues that have nothing to do with prudishness, for example.
Some posters here appear to be projecting their own psycho-sexual failings/regrets/insecurities/dysfunctions onto Christians who hold to traditional Christian sexual morality.
It's really not as fraught with psychological peril as you make it out to be.
Many Christians have done their best to live by Christian sexual morality their entire lives and are very sexually fulfilled adults.
Hence the fundy labeling. It is used as a shorthand and for whistle calling.
Well when you find their diaries, you let me know if it reconciles, with people's opinions on the Internet. btw: you might need a library card for that. If you don't know what that is, google it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ellis Bell
As for as the three hour long darkness, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, does it still make a sound. The answer is yes, obviously, because sound is real --- yet the person who recorded the sound is doubted that, the tree falling made a sound, because they were not in the vicinity of the tree when it fell.
Because an actual event, a tree falling, therefore something that was probably an invention must have been a true event? That is called the non sequitur fallacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ellis Bell
And while you search for proof of a solar eclipse, what? 7000 years ago, just know the asteroid hitting earth and wiping out all life, for science, that's still a theory, because they don't know.
I do not need to search for an impossible event, a solar eclipse occurring during Passover, which happens with a full moon.
One theory is that the darkness could have been a dust storm.
If that was the case, it may not have been historically recorded.
I experienced my first haboob here in Arizona just this year. Dust storm...a bit scary.
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as a living sacrifice to Jesus", do they have any idea how grotesquely sick that really sounds, like a wife on her wedding night shedding all her clothes and standing naked before her husband saying, "I present my body to you as a chaste virgin." I mean it has subliminal sex written all over it. 
