Missionary Claims Those Killed in Cyclone Face Eternal Damnation

Good

Thanks for posting that, Chris. It is important that people know what missionaries do. A lot of people in a lot of churches in the US, Britain, elsewhere give a lot of money for things that, if they knew about, they would not support.

I've spent a lot of time among the missionaries. don't get me started.....

I am sad and disgusted. This kind of provincial mentality is heartbreaking.

This is, sadly, exactly what one encounters in the born-again Christian community, a not-so-logical extension of their belief that anyone who doesn't expressly accept Jesus is doomed to hell. I speak from my own fundamentalist upbringing. When I lost a very close (gay) friend to AIDS, and called home for comfort, my father got on the line and sadly informed me that because I'd never "witnessed" to my friend about Jesus, he was burning in hell right now. And it was ALL MY FAULT.

So that kind of insensitivity? Doesn't surprise me at all.

While I can kind of "get" the mentality of people who say that those who have been proselytized to but not converted are going to hell, it never fails to astound me that those who have never heard the gospel are also doomed. They never had a chance. What kind of God would do that?

And here we go . . . the collision of science, policy and religion . . . how I long for the days of discussions about the framing of Climate change . . . A few points to consider:

1) Fundamentalist missionaries preach a particular interpretation of the Bible as the word of God. Fundamentalist Muslims do the same regarding the Koran, etc. This interpretation rests on a tight literal reading of the Scriptures, without examining the nuances, the historical context, or heck, even the conflicts wihtin the texts. Most mainstream Christians reject such literal interpretations -we find them way to restrictive for an omnicient and benevolent God.

2) In the Christian tradition, Christ's second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as your selves. Repeatedly, He points out in all 4 Gospels both that "whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters we do to" Him, and that only God can judge and condem people. These Missionaries are forgetting these two central tenets of the faith in their attempts to conquer by preaching. No theologian, who is still accepeted in modern Christianity, would argue that innocent victims killed in a cyclone are all, automatically doomed to Hell. In particular, they would argue strenuously that the youngest victims are Heavan bound, as they could not have chosen a faith for them selves, and Christianity rests on a choice of faith.

3) Back to the love thy neighbor part, all the coverage here in the Intersection, as well as the relief that will pour into Bangladesh (hopefully) in the next few days are the best examples of "Christian behavior" one could hope for. These missionaries are not. For those of us who follow Christ's teachings, how we live is the first and best testament to His teaching. So be Christian (even if you aren't) and show those bigots by your actions what loving your neighbor really means.

To learn that there are those who really behave and think in this rather sick and hopeless manner is mind-boggling.

When I was a kid, I once told my mother that I wanted to be a missionary when I grew up. I guess I had ideas about travelling to faraway lands and "helping" people.
She hit the roof.
I will be carrying on this proud family tradition if the situation so arises.

What kind of God would do that?

Rhetorical question, I know, but..

Such things would be trivial to the god of the OT (whose name is Jealous) who often advocated rape, slavery, and genocide.

Such things would be even more trivial to the god of the NT, who had himself a kid (willingly? or was it rape?) just so that he could have the kid painfully killed in order to appease his own vindictive anger over the minor disobedience of a long-dead woman (who he was already torturing eternally for her disobedience).

Sadly, all "Christians" are lumped together as are Muslims, Jews, etc., by those that have little or no understanding of the underlying concepts of those groups.

Then, like a poor quality Emerald, breakage comes under pressure and the chips fall away with only part of the original value. Often then, the human takes that chip and attempts to modify it into a gem of great value but fails because the beauty was left behind in the original.

I don't understand Muslims. All I see and hear about them tells me that their most burning desire is the death of all Men, Women and Children who are not Muslim!

This, of course, like the generalizations regarding "christians", is a flawed concept based upon the lack of understanding of the original precepts, principals and cannons and the limited information thrown at us by the zeal of the individual extremist.

If the ignorant (those with the lack of knowledge on a subject) would study all sides of the concepts, be it religion, science or other esoterica, then one could narrow down the flames and arrows of misinformation and zero in on the specific offender without a generalized and over-all label.

Not all Baptist are Catholic.
Not all Catholics are Jewish.
Not all Jews are Muslim.

What a contrast this is to the warmth of the community-wide Thanksgiving service I went to last night in a Catholic Church. Jews, Christians of many denominations, Unitarians, Muslims, and Sikhs were formally represented.

When the Muslim speaker spoke of the tragedy in Bangladesh, we all shared in a fervent "Amen."

You don't have to be a theist to understand gratitude and sympathy, to appreciate our common humanity, and to hope for peace in the world.

That sense of gratitude for life and this world seems to be missing among the anti-theistic ranting and railing we have seen recently from Dawkins, Hutchins, etc., not to mention PZ at his most strident.

The appreciation of others who don't share your faith seems to be missing among those missionaries as well.

Extremists of faith and extremists of atheism don't seem to get it!

For Philip H. and Warren: You'll note I was careful to specify the "born-again," more fundamentalist Christian community. Certainly this doesn't encompass all persons of faith, and extremist zealouts adhere to all faiths... even atheism. Nonetheless, pretending such attitudes don't exist, or aren't important, because one's own faith isn't like that, really isn't much of a counter-argument -- and I say that as one who is sympathetic to the frustration with the "all Christians are the same" mentality.

So let me get this straight--we're praying for people to survive because we don't want them to die without first being converted?

So let me get this straight -- from the comfort of the US, we're criticizing people who are actually on the ground in Bangladesh assisting victims of the cyclone because we don't like their motivation?

Serving God is doing good to Man, but praying is thought an easier service, and therefore more generally chosen.
(Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Maxims, 1753; from Ormond Seavey, ed., Autobiography And Other Writings, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 284. )

Appalling as the logic is, one thought that occurs is this:

Given that there are more reasonable Christians who do not subscribe to the view that the unconverted, and especially the uninformed, get to go to Hell for their "failure" to accept Christ, shouldn't those more reasonable Christians be ACTIVELY REPUDIATING the stupid, cruel, illogical, insensitive assine views of the missionaries who do spread those innanities? Why should athiests/nonbelievers/secularists have to do their dirty work?

Bill asked:

Given that there are more reasonable Christians who do not subscribe to the view that the unconverted, and especially the uninformed, get to go to Hell for their "failure" to accept Christ, shouldn't those more reasonable Christians be ACTIVELY REPUDIATING the stupid, cruel, illogical, insensitive assine views of the missionaries who do spread those innanities? Why should athiests/nonbelievers/secularists have to do their dirty work?

Because, biblically speaking, "reasonable Christians," like Philip H., don't have a leg to stand on when arguing with fundies. All they can do is con a few uninterested atheists into thinking there is a more reasonable version of Christianity.

The Bible gives fundies plenty of reason to think the things they do.

Nice