A friend's words.....
Strangely, in a “religion” whose sacred text is a most oft-repeated command to “fear not”, Christianity has come to rely almost wholly upon fear in order to keep the pews warm and the faithful, well… faithful. Fear of hell, fear of deception, of the end-times, of missing the “rapture”, disappointing God, losing one’s salvation, having God’s hand of protection lifted, etc…, are all ideas regularly used to keep believers walking the straight and narrow, and ensuring that “King James’ ” thin and crinkly pages keep ‘a turnin’.
It seems everywhere you look in Christianity, you find fear. It’s what brings us into the fold, and typically what keeps us there. We’re told that we need to come to Christ in order to have our fear of death lifted, but once we join the club we’re presented with a shiny new list of phobias to assimilate into our psyches. While they’re terrifying, unhealthy, and, oftentimes, irrational, we somehow learn to live with them, and, in manifesting a sort of spiritual Stockholm syndrome, we actually learn to love them. They torment us, but we grow so accustomed to them that we begin to enjoy their company.
Is he right, or wrong?
Strangely, in a “religion” whose sacred text is a most oft-repeated command to “fear not”, Christianity has come to rely almost wholly upon fear in order to keep the pews warm and the faithful, well… faithful. Fear of hell, fear of deception, of the end-times, of missing the “rapture”, disappointing God, losing one’s salvation, having God’s hand of protection lifted, etc…, are all ideas regularly used to keep believers walking the straight and narrow, and ensuring that “King James’ ” thin and crinkly pages keep ‘a turnin’.
It seems everywhere you look in Christianity, you find fear. It’s what brings us into the fold, and typically what keeps us there. We’re told that we need to come to Christ in order to have our fear of death lifted, but once we join the club we’re presented with a shiny new list of phobias to assimilate into our psyches. While they’re terrifying, unhealthy, and, oftentimes, irrational, we somehow learn to live with them, and, in manifesting a sort of spiritual Stockholm syndrome, we actually learn to love them. They torment us, but we grow so accustomed to them that we begin to enjoy their company.
Is he right, or wrong?