I've occasionally been known to listen to religious radio, which can definitely be annoying, but is also an interesting window on another American culture. Just so long as they aren't playing music, because that stuff is boring as anything. Anyway, it still seems to be in common parlance about evangelical Christians that they want to convert everyone to their belief system, but I'm not sure I believe it. After all, they go about it in a profoundly ridiculous way, many of them constantly insulting people who don't share their beliefs.
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rockinlibrarian made a comment not too long ago that people have to WANT to be converted. I think that's largely true, but more than that, they have to already be somewhat attuned to that way of thinking. If you're going to come around to thinking that only Jesus saves from sin, you have to already accept that sin could be a real thing. To someone who doesn't believe in sin, you might as well be saying, "Only Jesus saves from invisible nose-eating butterflies." But it seems that many of these evangelicals are mired in the idea that everyone secretly believes in God and Jesus, and those who claim they don't are in futile teenage-style rebellion against the big guy. A common explanation for why seems to be that non-believers are totally in love with sin, which is somewhat ridiculous, as many of the actions considered to be sin wouldn't be enjoyable to anyone with a conscience. I don't need stone tablets written by the finger of a sky dweller to tell me that murder and stealing are bad ideas. That's probably why a lot of these believers focus on sins that aren't universally considered immoral, like premarital sex, extramarital sex, gay sex, protected sex, and pretty much any kind of sex that doesn't result in children who will potentially provide more money to the church. Modern conservative Christians are obsessed with the "family unit," largely defining it with rules devised in a time when women and children were considered property and no one was quite sure how reproduction worked. But it's in the Bible, so it MUST be true, sort of like the bit in Genesis 30 about how goats that conceive when looking at striped rods bear speckled kids. Oddly enough, these same people are quite often opposed to polygamy, which was accepted by the same society that made up a lot of the other sexual rules. So how come you can change your minds on that, but not any of that other stuff? For that matter, Jesus and Paul seemed to regard marriage as the lesser of two evils, so why are Christian churches so eager to promote it?
In addition to sexual sin, another major category emphasized by the radio preachers is what could be considered thought-crime. Apparently thinking about sin is just as bad as actually doing it. In fact, since Protestant denominations that accept the idea of salvation through faith alone hold belief in Jesus to be more important than anything else, aren't they essentially saying thought trumps action? To hear some preachers talk, thinking about something will automatically make you want to do it. I can't pretend I know how their minds work, but I know mine doesn't generally operate that way. In fact, isn't part of the beauty of the human brain that we can think things over before deciding whether or not to do them? Doesn't making certain thoughts off limits hinder this?
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momijizukamori
