Christians:
You are not more “saved” than I am.
Christ is not doing anything to your heart.
Your chances of going to heaven are as good as your (and my) chances of going to hell. Zero.
And I gotta make this clear, because so many Christians come to me with a holier-than-thou attitude and expect me to respect it. As if I should respect the grace given to them by the imaginary friend they call God. As if I am in danger of somehow being too irreverent. As if I should assent that their imaginary friend’s ways are better than my ways. And so on.
But you gotta see it from my perspective if you want to know why I talk the way I do. God is your nonexistent imaginary friend that you created because of your inferiority complex. Now, I get that you feel so deeply inferior that you need an imaginary friend to believe in; I do. As an ex-Christian, I was there for two decades. But God is not real. I mean, you can be pissed off that I call God your imaginary friend, but don’t shoot the messenger. If God doesn’t exist that’s who he is.
I just have to admit…I’m dumbfounded by people who complain that I talk about their imaginary friend this way…who will then say, sanctimoniously, “You’re just in rebellion against my imaginary friend. Open your heart to my imaginary friend and let him come deep inside you, and you will feel his warming presence…” etc. It just feels really creepy. And it’s annoying because you then seem to see that reaction to creepiness as evidence that I’m being convinced to your position, when I’m really thinking, “ew.”
Now, if you’re in your churches, on your private time, and you wanna engage in your fantasy…I think there are problems, obviously. But I may not make as big a deal about them.
However, when you come to talk to ME…you’re not a saved person talking to someone who is not saved. Your imaginary friend is imaginary. Your heaven and hell don’t exist.
Start there. And everything you need to make up then seems…really, really, just…rude and uncalled for. Those sanctimonious statements sound odiously sanctimonious. Scripture isn’t magic — it’s a bunch of charlatans who got together to create a fundamentally flawed ideology. Like…your status as a Christian doesn’t do anything for me.
I know this may sound harsh. But I’ve had these conversations a lot of times with Christians, and have been aghast at how many of them, (especially the ones who say, “we’re nicer than those OTHER Christians”) think they’re the mythical Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai who are showing me “grace” by saying some of the rudest possible things. And everyone in their life is sugarcoating it and protecting them, saying it’s nice and polite. I know. I’ve been there.
But it’s not. It’s rude to say that someone is rebelling against your imaginary friend. Rude and arrogant. It’s rude to tell your friend, or even hint, that they will be spending eternity in hell while you spend eternity in some kind of fantasy paradise, and that you’ll be happy there while they’re roasting alive forever and ever. It’s rude to say that you’re both sinners, but your imaginary friend has “saved” you, and that I need to believe in your imaginary friend so he can “save” me too.
If you take a step back for two seconds and flip the script and think about it, you’ll see it.
How do Christians not know this? I think it’s because most people — at least in the United States — are Christian. Most of the people you interact with are probably Christian. And going to church makes you feel all good and clean and whole inside, and you can’t imagine how someone who doesn’t have that experience would feel that way, maybe. OK, I get it. Really, I do. I was there.
But if you flip the script and look at things from the other side, or just get a slightly wider perspective, you’ll see that in places where Christianity is not as prominent — like Scandinavian Europe — this attitude that such language is rude is common place and known. In fact, sometimes readers are confused that in America, I even have to make this clear.
You’re not part of a celestial country club. When you’re talking to us, you’re right here in the mud and dirt on a miniscule speck in the universe with the rest of us. You’re not “saved” and we aren’t “unsaved.” We don’t need your imaginary friend, at all, because he doesn’t exist. You know who does exist? Us human beings.
All of us are just human beings. Unsaved, not-in-need of an imaginary friend’s cultlike concept of salvation, human beings.
And if you understand that, maybe we can be better friends. But please don’t be my friend to “save” me. That’s creepy, and you’re bound to make us both disappointed. You’ll be disappointed when all your being nice results in my being as stubborn an atheist as ever, and I’ll be grossed out when I think you’re a genuinely nice person, and you turn out to be “nice” so that you could “save” me the whole time.
Just…forget all that nonsensical fairy tale garbage, and let’s just be people.
Thanks.
And thanks for reading.
PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.