I have seen such expressions of Christianity at close hand and whilst they can be internally consistent and compelling, their external (and, often, internal) effects are plainly self or group focussed and un-loving in their treatment of others.

To have a problem with such forms of Christianity is not to reject all others or Christ.

It’s easy to simply claim something is a misrepresentation. How does the analogy differ from evangelical theology?

The only thing that comes to mind is the distinction between “you will be tortured if you don’t accept the gift” and “you will be tortured if you don’t love him back.” But this difference gets smaller still because many theologies teach that the evidence of salvation is the fruit of the spirit. “By their fruits you shall know them.” Thus there is reason to doubt someone’s salvation without fruit. Now the distinction becomes “if you aren’t behaving in a certain way you might end up being tortured” versus “you will be tortured if you don’t love him back.” Suppose the abusive husband weakened his threat so that the torture was possible and not certain. He’s still abusive.

It’s not exactly the same, in that “love me or be tortured” differs from “develop the following attitudes over time – you have room to make mistakes, but if you aren’t progressing, you need to start worrying about the possibility that I’ll start torturing you.” But this isn’t the kind of difference that makes a difference. I don’t see any significant difference that could justify one being abuse without the other being abuse.

Might i also add that i read through some of your own writings on dealing with P/C members and their weirdnessed.

Your article on “Signs I’m Weary of Weird Christians” echoed many of the concerns that bothered me, particularly during my time in the foursquare church in LA (although i dont have anything bad to say about Mr Hayford)

Although i never felt drawn towards your own brand of evangelicalism ( i got wrapped up in the charismatic fellowship thing of the 80s in the UK ) i share so many of your views.

I particularly cannot stand Benny Hinn ites and to your comments about uncritical devotion to “anointed” leadership i add my atheist “amen”.

However of course unlike you i ended up rejecting it all.

Like ms winell i too got sucked into creationism for a while – but i did this while mourning the loss of the wonder of the “science with question marks” that i used to revel in in my youth until i became a xtian.

i now have that wonder back and i find the combination of reason , empiricism and naturalism to give me a much richer and to my mind more compassionate world view than the one i had as a believer.

Anyway – thanks for a good interview.

The evidence that she gives here suggesting that it is in opposition to Christianity is exactly the kind of evidence that I use to say that every person is “created in the image of God” (Genesis) and is created with a conscience (Romans 2). This may not have been a significant part of her theological teaching during her formative years, and certainly, for many of us in evangelicalism, we have to admit that we have done a poor job describing and communicating that all people are created with a whole set of common characteristics that are simply part of the human race, and therefore emerge in every religion. This actually reinforces the biblical message for me. My recommendation for the doctor is to go back to the gospels and take a long, long look at Jesus instead of basing her world view on what she sees in human institutions and family dynamics.

We must protect children from real abuse, especially physical abuse, a lack of medical care, and yes education as well. But parents do love their children more than strangers do. Once we cross the road and attempt to enforce our belief structure onto others we disagree with by using the power of the state then we are no longer free.

> evangelical Christian orthodoxy is unacceptable
The same applies to you, you probably think that my parents educating me as an orthodox jew (I hate this name, lets use the hebrew word for it: dati) was also unacceptable (christianity is partly based on the view that judaism is unacceptable, just read the pauline epistles and the church fathers with theirs faulty hermeneutics of judaism to confirm that). The same goes on for muslim parents, sikhs, hindus, atheists and even the nature worshiping guy somewhere in Siberia, this is why some christian sustains that they have a moral monopoly in the universe, if that’s not the case there’s no need to spread the “good news”. What’s the problem with this? I think that a totally acceptable view, it’s part of being christian, jewish, atheist, muslim or whatever else, to think that other worldviews are unacceptable, problem arises when someone thinks that it’s unacceptable to think that his worldview is unacceptable, and I personally know a great number of christians in this situation (for me this is because christianity is a religion with a great emphasis on proselytism, Islam is similar with its penalization of apostasy), this raises things like creationism, the difference between jewish and christian creationism is that jews knows that it’s not right to force a non-jew to accept the jewish creationism and try to force its teaching in public schools.

As for the reason that I became atheist, I think abhorrent that someone can believe that my great-uncle that lived in a shtetl in the middle of nowhere in Poland and died at 17 in Treblinka will face “His justice in the punishment of unrepentant sinners” even if he never was exposed to christianity in his lifetime, a corollary of this is that he and a german that was a soldier in the camp are on the same moral ground, the lowest, except that the german could convert to christianity later in life and enjoy an everlasting life in the company of God, many people that he helped to kill no, for the majority of christians they are guilt where the german soldier is not of something, for me this raised the question of why a God would reveal himself to Paul and not to my great-uncle, even worse, why to Moshe instead of a girl in 4th century Scandinavia or a guy in 10th century BC India, if you believe in some sort of election then it comes naturally why Paul and Moshe, they where chosen by a sovereign God, otherwise there are not a good answer and as for me there’s no good motives to believe that there exists a God.

I personally feel that as Christians or just as humans we need to have a tangibility to our faith at some point-especially at the point of severe trauma in our lives or the lives of others. As the apostle said “faith without works is dead”- well who can hang on to a faith with no seeming intervention from God?