Gospel

 According to the late comedian George Carlin, Christianity is about God (aka The Old Man Upstairs) who made these 12 rules. Anyone breaking the rules God will send to  a fiery Hell for all eternity. But remember: He loves you. (Apparently there is a Diety who forgot to take His bipolar medication. ). According to Lewis Black, God had this really big anger problem, but took an anger management course sometime between the Old and New testaments.

 I grew up in the Church of Christ. I quit going to church when I was around 14. I had several emotional problems and it seemed to me that God was part of the problem. It seemed to me that God somewhere made up this thing called “sin” and found everyone guilty of it (without due process of law, legal consul, or even a chance to tell our side of the  story), condemned everyone to Hell (whatever that was) , but offered to send people to a good place if they became His slave. Maybe a good lawyer would have helped. But again remember that God loves you, or else

 I really do not wish to condemn the Church of Christ. We have a fine tradition, which at least on paper was a denomination which attempted to remain true to scripture. Yet many of us became fanatical rule-keepers. If we had patron saint no doubt Nadab and Abihu would be the patron saints of legalistic Christianity as they are always invoked by those who insist on precise obedience to minute details.

 There are congregations I have attended that would welcome a Christianized version of the Pharisees. They constantly warned of us of the peril of instrumental music, potlucks in the church building, and women participating in the “formal worship“ , among other esoteric issues. At one time, there was a C of C congregation I knew of that was infamous for destroying families and creating emotional problems.

 Of course there is a logical consequence of the “angry God” model that isn’t usually considered. Do you really want to spend eternity with a  God that can only described as severely passive aggressive. Precisely keep all of God’s will and regulations the promises is you won’t go to hell. But do you really expect He will treat you any different in Eternity than he does now? Not my idea of Paradise.
 Yes, Jesus talked about Hell and Punishment. But you really don’t get the idea that Jesus was telling us that we were to live under constant fear that we will make some minute mistake or experience a moment of weakness and be lost forever. Quite the opposite. Its gratitude not fear that motivates the believer.

 I always liked the verse about how the sinners gathered around Jesus. Why did they do that? You would think they would run and hide when they saw Him coming. Sometime Jesus would seek people out just because they needed acceptance.

 Paul was right. The Law kills. How is it that we Christians think we can judge anyone when we ourselves still require God’s grace? Maybe we just enjoy condemning others too much or at least don’t appreciate the full extent of the consequences of Grace.