fairy tales and lies

[drfuzzy]

As some of you know by now, playing Mass on Sunday always leaves me with posting fodder.  

Do you make enough money playing for a mass that you can't quit the job.  Why continue to punish yourself?
             I desperately needed as many Masses as I could get up until a few months ago.  I cut down my hours, but the choir director made me promise to stay until Xmas, at the very least.  (I'm sure she'll start lobbying "until Easter" any day now, I will have to make a decision.)  I do need to find something to take its place.  Thanks for asking.

So I went into the choir loft with "we have outgrown our fairy tales, and secular sources understand this".

  
We haven't outgrown fairy tales at all.  Kids and adults love them.  Many "chick flicks" are fairy tales.  
    Oh, very true, we still love our fantasies.  It's the pure "good vs. evil" view of the world that Mr. Cunningham was talking about.  

Then I hear a reading from 1 Kings 17.  

It is a story about about a woman who received from God through her faith in him.  Believers starving has nothing to do with the theme of these passages.  Jesus told us we would suffer in this life.  We all suffer, believers and non-believers alike.  If God promised us we wouldn't, it would be a different matter.     Yes, I have heard and read all sorts of apologetics about how this was a reward for real faith.  I just don't buy it any longer. 

Psalm 146 (excerpts):  "the Lord gives food to the hungry; gives sight to the blind; the Lord loves the just, but the way of the wicked he thwarts"
      The believers are not saved from starvation.  The blind stay blind.  The "just" are often persecuted.  And the wicked have the most money and power everywhere on the planet.  

Also, in a true sense, revealing himself to people who don't believe is giving sight to the blind.  Giving spiritual insight is giving food.  The Lord does love both the just and the unjust alike.  And he does thwart the way of the wicked, who will be punished for their wickedness, and so to will the just be rewarded for their being just.  You and christians alike should listen to the readings with an open mind.

I have heard that over and over, since I was a little girl. "Giving spiritual insight is giving food."  "Revealing himself is giving sight." "They'll be punished after they die."  Well, I see no evidence of god.  I know decades of unanswered prayer. Spiritual insight isn't helping the children who don't have enough to eat.  "He'll be punished" doesn't help billions of innocent victims.  I'm done with "reading with an open mind", which translates as assume that this is the word of GAWD, and if you believe, a preacher give you a spin on what you just read that will enrich you.  

   Nope, Lek.  Not for me.  I spent decades breaking free of this stuff.  I have most of the Bible memorized, and I find the book offensive - - I wish my brain had an "erase" button.  I'm not going to try to talk you out of your interpretation, but I don't buy it.  For someone who doesn't believe god exists, it's all lies - - it can't be anything else! So I stand behind the statements in blue.  But I wish you well.  Thank you for your concern.