Today my daughter had another talk about religion, and crazy people, as we watched Amazing Grace (actually,this was more about perseverance and ethics than religion) and Jesus Camp. This is where the crazy people come in.
Frankly, after watching this documentary, I had the strong feeling there was some brainwashing of seven-year-olds going on here. It was set in the Oklahoma area and the camp this lady runs during the summer. The counterpoint was this radio host who was hammering the views these folks had. I was surprised that he hadn't had a Christian fatwa put out against him.
And while I consider myself of Christian, I think that having a six-year-old girl sobbing on the floor for her sins is just....wrong.
I also think that getting a group of kids to lay hands and pray, in tongues, over life-size cardboard cutout of George Bush is falling down a rabbit hold odd.
At the end of watching it, I turned to J. and said "see, yes I go to church, yes I believe Jesus was and is the son of God and rose from the dead. But your mom isn't nuts. And I do believe that God listens in on a party line."
After a moment's thought, she shook her head in agreement.
4 comments:
And this is the real problem with religion, isn't it? It can have such a profound and positive power in people's lives, which makes it enormously dangerous in the hands of human beings who can't seem to help themselves when it comes to twisting and manipulating that power for their own ends.
In the end, I also consider myself a Christian. But if incontrovertable proof showed that Jesus was not the son of God and he did not rise from the dead, my faith would be unshaken. Because all of that is window dressing to me for the real meaning of Christianity. Love you neighbor as yourself. Do unto others. Blessed are the peacemakers etc.
I also believe there is a special place in hell (which may just be the place where consciences get turned up) for people who use God and Jesus as a battering ram to hurt people. Especially six-year-old girls.
Well said.
By the by, did the chicken ever turn up again (you'll have to read cheryl's blog for this to make sense).
BC
Alas, Harry has flown the coop apparently for good. Harry, we hardly knew ye...
Hopefully he didn't become coyote chow.
Good grief, Huckabee winning in iowa has me thinking about "jesus camp" again.
I forgot to tell you about the scene where Jennifer and I were LOL as the camp director brought out a card board cut out of Bush, life size (I'm not making this up here) and the group prayed over the cutout, including in tongues.
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