Jesus must have been a real dick...

The BBQ Pit
1

…if some of his followers are any indication.

This past week, a few representatives from Campus Ministries U.S.A. have been on the various college campuses in Columbus. In case you aren’t familiar with this particular brand of idiot, they’re the folks that Brother Jed likes to associate himself with. Given that I work at one local college and attend another, I got to witness first-hand the fun and joy a handful of witless zealots can bring to one’s day.

First, Tuesday. They’re at Ohio State, on the Oval. I tend to ignore them, but I had to walk right past a big bunch of the sorry lot. A group of about 75 students were attempting to argue theology with about 5 rabid Bible-waving Fundies. I passed a poster of the Ten Commandments (What about THIS Big Ten?) that mentioned “Lust, Perverted Sex” as the 7th commandment. No biggie–in fact, that brought about a chuckle. It was the poster on the other end of the Oval that got me.

Picture this. Top half of an approximately 5-foot poster (It came up to my neck) says “Hitler’s Holocaust,” and shows a black-and-white picture of stacked, emaciated bodies. The bottom half says “Planned Parenthood’s Holocaust” and shows a presumably aborted (although you never know) 21-week-old fetus.

Now, there are SO many things I can say to this. For one, Planned Parenthood spends 6% of its money on abortion, and the rest on valuable public health services, including gynecological exams for low-income women and inexpensive birth control, thus reducing the need for abortions. And it’s not like they force people to get abortions–in fact, they offer all the information for all the options, not just info on abortion. If these people really want to yell at someone, they should yell at the women GETTING abortions, not the places that provide that service. And if they REALLY wanted to make a difference, they’d not yell at anyone, and instead work on HELPING people who are in those situations. And I won’t even mention the connection to Hitler–I’m sure you all can see how disgusting and false that analogy is. Needless to say, I wanted to inform the zealots that the Jews must be quite happy with that poster, but I realized that they don’t give two shits about what the Jews think. I mean, they did kill Jesus, after all.

But that’s not all. The next day, I got to go to work, and see the same assholes there! This time, I was out getting a hot dog, and there were a couple of guys with another abortion poster (this time not comparing abortion to the Holocaust, thank goodness). While I was in line
at the hot dog stand, one of the men was arguing with a very intelligent and well-spoken black guy. Eventually, the black guy got frustrated and walked off, to which the gleeful “Christian” shouted derisively, “I guess you have to go off to your Afro-American studies!”

This got me. From 50 feet away in line at the hot dog stand, I screamed, “Hey, was Christ a racist too?” A table of black women next to me stood up and cheered. I smiled, grabbed my hot dog, and left. I think the Christian dude was screaming something at me, but I didn’t bother listening–I was hungry.

And there’s more! Yesterday, the jerks end up at Otterbein, a small liberal arts school out in the 'burbs. I wasn’t there, so this is all second-hand from various news reports. Apparently, they set up shop close to the Otterbein dorms, and drew a large crowd. They had the same abortion poster that I saw on the second day. Not incredibly offensive, but with a rather gruesome picture. A female Otterbein student somehow finds a garden hose, hooks it up, and turns it on the poster. She is immediately…how shall I put this…forcibly detained by two male “Christians.” I believe the news people said she was wrestled to the ground. While the poster guardians were busy attacking the girl, another student snatched the wet poster and took it inside the dorms. Police were called, the Christians were forced to leave, and the students to disperse. No arrests were made, and one of the Christian women claimed that a) the boys who tackled the girl were obviously acting in self-defense, as they would NEVER commit an act of violence unprovoked, and b) that they “won,” because that girl would never forge the poster.

More like she would never forget that “Christians” are associated with hypocritical assholes.

I am not a Christian, but I can’t think of a single one who approves of what they do, and in fact most of them think that these people do more harm than good, and turn more people away from God than toward. So why do they even bother?

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See, the problem here is that the people you encountered were of the sort that were responsible for the Spanish Inquisition. Fanatics.

They were not Christians, they were Assholes.

Just my opinion.

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“I am not a Christian, but I can’t think of a single one who approves of what they do, and in fact most of them think that these people do more harm than good, and turn more people away from God than toward. So why do they even bother?”

What makes you think their real intention is to turn people towards God? Just because they say so? Maybe they’re a secret band of (no offense) satanists, or even… atheists!

I think they’re just a bunch of insecure, squalid, power-tripping little trolls. Logic is low on their list of priorities, or skills, for that matter.

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your title is stupid & insultung. Go away, Boy, you bother me.

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Because they’re total idiots.

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Well, I am a christian, and those people probably were not.
Like the Bible says, “By their fruits, you shall know them.”
If they act like jerks, thentheyre probably jerks.
Yes, “Christian” denominations eseem to rpoduce more jerks than almost any other group, but we are not all like that.
I don’t think they even realize what they are doing is turning people off to finding Christ.
Can you get some other students to throw say marshmallows at them en masse?
Let them say they were attacked then…

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The bullshit described by Drain occurs on college campuses all over the US. I went to school in Montana, and there were extremist Christians on campus every month.

Their tactics are rude and inexcusable. Yet they continue, in the thought that any attention is good attention.

At my school, the jerks would shout as passersby saying things like “murder”, or “whore” as girls walked by. All in the interest of confrontational Christianity.

Christianity is a religion I wouldn’t touch if you paid me, for this reason and many more.

and Danielwhatthefuckever, if you don’t like the title to the OP, tough shit. We are not all here to please you.

Schmuck.

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And FYI, DanielITWD, Drain’s a woman.

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aenea you sound like you really know what your talking about, extremist christans are on every campus because they are on 2 campuses

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Nnnno, asmodean, she’s absolutely correct.

Try that link in the OP and you’ll find out just how many campuses Brother Jed’s been to.

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Peaches is absolutely correct; those people are not Christians. They can wrap themselves in the trappings, but their behavior and lives are in direct contradiction to what Christ taught.

DanielITWD: I don’t claim to speak for Drain; she’s fully capable and eloquent on her own. But FWIW I read the OP as making exactly the point that those people aren 't Christians. Maybe a way of restating it would be, “if these people are following Christ’s teaching then…”

Just for the record, I’m not a Christian either. That in no way implies disrespect for Christ’s teachings. I just can’t accept rejecting all other wisdoms. I have immense respect for faith, but very little for religion.

In my view, religion is what happens when wisdom gets codified, nitipicked, warped, exclusionary and group-ridden. It results in horrendous behavior that violates every tenet of the original faith.

A quote worth remembering, from the late Pearl Bailey, “If you have to carry a sign saying ‘I am’, you ain’t.”

Veb

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I have to say that in four years of college, I have never encountered anything of the sort. Every once in a while, the Gideons come by to hand out New Testaments, buts that’s pretty much it. I feel so left out.

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My first Fundies-On-Campus experience (hey, I’m only a Freshman)…

A bunch of people were gathered around the “Bible Study” booth. Someone had a pole at least ten feet long (but it was probably closer to twelve) with a big poster that said “Jesus Saves From Hell”.

So there I was, twenty feet from this group, laughing my ass off, 'cuz my dangerously over-active imagination had created this image in my mind of Jesus sitting at a computer, surrounded by fire and brimstone, pressing “Ctrl-S”.

Makes you wonder why people always complain about the Mormon missionaries…

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Andros: here on the SDMB, esp. in the PIT, it doesn’t really make a differnce what sex you are, all gods’ chilun got flames. And “Go, …bother me” is an expression/quote.

TV: the OP is fair & reasonable, but the TITLE is simply
rude, even for the PIT. There was no need for such a rude title, and the title meets at least one of the definitions of “trolling”. I certainly do not like or defend those rude tactics SHE mentioned, and I am not supporting them. In fact I would gleefully join in the BBQ, if it was not for that unreasonable title.

“apnea”: who cares what YOU think?

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Luckily, I don’t wear makeup or sorority-girl clothes, so I never get “whore.” I’d imagine if they screamed anything at me, they’d call me a lesbian.

I do, however, have a funny story about a guy I used to know. I met Chris in a coffee shop, and while he had long hair and piercings, he was VERY quiet and introverted. Definitely the kind of guy who went through life minding his own business. His story about Brother Jed and Sister Cindy was probably one of the longest single things I ever heard him say.

One day, he was walking through campus, and the fundies were out in force, screaming names at people who walked by. Of course, there was a huge crowd watching (and heckling) the spectacle. Chris ducked his head down and walked past them, fervently hoping that he would get by without incident. As he went past Sister Cindy, she pointed at him and screamed at the top of her lungs…
“MASTURBATOR!!!”

I could just picture poor shy Chris being singled out like that in front of a giant mob of people. When he told the story, he could appreciate the humor, but he said it took him a long time before he wasn’t terribly embarrassed by it.

Oh, and Daniel? You’ll notice I qualified that title by continuing it in the first line of my OP. I suspect, however, that you didn’t bother to read what I had to say, and simply jumped the gun on this one. That’s okay, I forgive you. Just be a more careful reader next time.

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When I was 18, I went to a protest with a group of friends at an abortion clinic. It wasn’t just an abortion protest; that particular clinic had botched several abortions and wound up killing three of the women who’d gone there within a year. We were dressed in black, carrying RIP signs, etc.

The person who headed this up was the head of some sort of anti-abortion organization; I don’t remember which. She was a bitch beyond proportions (and since has been an advisor/rep. of Paula Jones). When we were leaving, a large black woman who’d been there to protest the anti-abortion people was crossing the road. She joked she’d hit the lady–“One less jungle bunny on the street!” she said. I was appalled beyond words. When she saw my somewhat horrified reaction, she called me a prude.

However, the pro-choice people were pretty ugly themselves. They attacked pro-life people for their hair color, clothing choices, masturbatory practices (they came up to a 13yro and started calling him a hypocrite because he masturbated, and that was the same thing as an abortion), etc. I did try one conversation to clarify that masturbation was not the same as abortion, as one killed haploid cells and the other a zygote, and got a huffed finger in my face before they walked away.

I wouldn’t protest abortion now, please keep that in mind. I only agreed to go to that one because it had such poor medical services that it wound up killing some of the women who went there. Turns out, they’d wanted me there because I was eye-catching and articulate–they were hoping I’d get TV time. I didn’t know that until I got there; fortunately, it never came to fruition. Afterwards, I let them know I was never going on one of these “adventures” again.

My education from that experience was that people of any extreme–pro-life or pro-choice–are usually assholes. Unfortunately, extreme asshole Christians are the worst kind. DB, sounds like you met the ugliest ones. Suck and a half.

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“Offences come, and wrongs have been done, even killing in Jesus’ name. But if you’ve been burned, here’s what I’ve learned. the Lord’s not the one to blame” Keith Green

“Not everyone who says to me Lord,Lord will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven” paraphrased quote of Jesus Christ

Please understand that Jesus is not responsible for the hatred that some people show. That was not the way He lived nor is it the way he told his followers to live.

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I’m sure that Jesus is not thrilled with a lot of the people who subscribe to His fan club. Unfortunately, His approval isn’t a prerequisite for joining.

I’d love to walk through downtown Cincinnati without being accosted by homeless people begging for change. But when you guarantee the right to free speech, it’s pretty much a guarantee that someone’s going to say something that will piss you off. Happily there’s no right to be listened to.

Like PETA, it’s not pro-lifers’ cause that I necessarily object to (surely there are fewer things more deserving of debate than the legal right to kill your offspring), it’s their manner of delivery.

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drain: No, I DID read your post before posting. Your title is crude, and unnessesary, and is as rude as those you complain about. I admited that your THREAD was none of those things, but the title was trolling. (Note, I am not calling YOU a troll, or your post, or this thread, JUST the title of the thread).

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Okay, I already did this in another thread, but it seems appropriate here.

There are good and bad people in every profession, every race, every faith. It is not up to us to make a judgement on any other person’s relationship to Jesus, or God. There is a verse in the Bible which states “Judge not that you be not judged.” Only God is qualified to judge anyone in the Christian faith, as I understand and practice it. Just the same as we should not judge a person by his or her race, it is not fair to make assumptions about a faith merely by running into a jerk who professes that faith.

I am sorry that you all seem to have run into some sorry excuses for Christians. They exist. They are wrong. They are a blot on the landscape and I wish they would either listen to the teachings of the Bible, or go away.

Please don’t condemn a whole faith because you ran into some people who seem to have missed the point.

Scotti