Ok I admit it

[Wyrd of Gawd]

But he still let's them make the choice. He still let's them experience life, and it's their fault that when God laid the conditions out they choose hell.
And they choose hell by rejecting God. Seriously, when you're being judged by God and he says "All you had to do was believe", won't it be so painful to know how little it could have took. Please be saved before it's too late, I BEG of you!

OK, kid, I'll try a different tack.

Note that my handle is "xpastor" which stands for ex-pastor, which means in terms of the Christian gig, Been There, Done That

quite possibly with more zeal and conviction and self-sacrifice than you and your dad combined

(Don't worry. St. Paul says it's OK to brag sometimes. )

The reasons I changed my beliefs are complex, and I was 42 when I bailed out of the ministry and it was another four or five years before I recognized that I was definitely not a Christian anymore. I don't want to give you a half-century worth of autobiography, so I'll just mention one factor that was significant in my deconversion.

I have my failings. I skim boring material without taking it in until I hit an interesting part or something that might be on the exam.

So technically I had read the entire bible before I went to seminary, but I hadn't really read it, especially not the Old Testament. Like you probably do, I was just grooving on the texts about how Jesus loves me.

Once I was in the ministry, my reading slowed down. I would read each passage with commentaries. And in seminary I had learned New Testament Greek and a little bit of Hebrew, so I would try to puzzle things out in the original languages. There is some seriously bad shit in the Old Testament. It looks like the ancient Jews invented the whole concept of genocide.

The verses that kept running through my mind were from 1 Samuel 15

Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one whom the Lord sent to anoint you king of his people Israel. Now listen to what the Lord Almighty says. He is going to punish the people of Amalek because their ancestors opposed the Israelites when they were coming from Egypt. Go and attack the Amalekites and completely destroy everything they have. Don't leave a thing; kill all the men, women, children, and babies; the cattle, sheep, camels, and donkeys.

I don't know about you, but I don't have much reverence for anyone, Supreme Being or not, who orders people to murder babies, along with the other non-combatants, women, old people, etc.

There are lots more verses like that. Try Numbers 31, or Deuteronomy 25, the bit about chopping off a woman's hand. The Chosen People and their god sound an awful lot like the religious ideas of the Taliban.

The Lord Almighty was an Assyrian or Babylonian Emperor. Samuel was his emissary. Celestial spirit gods, if there is such a thing, don't speak to anyone.

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I've had enough of this hostility for the time being. But I'll be praying for you all.

If you're praying for me your prayers aren't working.