Pastors and Priests Say the Darndest Things

Every once in a while there comes one of those moments when, listening to a “Man of God,” you can hardly believe the words, concepts, teachings and ideas that seem to flow so easily out of their mouths. Recently I was listening to a rather rabid radio preacher discuss the problem David was having on his own roof looking down at Bathsheba taking a bath on hers. He spoke of lust and murder, desire and sin but kept using the phrase “Bathsheba was taking a bath.” It struck me that he was going to say something really stupid. He did. Finally he went Biblically Brain Dead, and said what I was hoping he would not. “In fact..” Uh oh, he’s gonna say it. “In fact, that’s why her name was BATHsheba…she was taking a bath.” Idiot. I wrote him and asked if her taking a shower would have gotten her named “SHOWERSheba,” but he didn’t respond.

While many funny and ignorant thoughts can flow out of the mouth of a man who is not thinking his presentation through, or has not done a very good job at searching out the background of it all, there are others who say freakin scary things in the name of their vision and God. It is these types that need to be at least ignored and perhaps confronted to stop the foolishness.

Tim LaHaye, author of the popular “Left Behind” books is a case in point.

Writer of Christian doomsday fiction; graduate of ultrafundamentalist Bob Jones University; founding member of the “young Earth” Institute for Creation Research; cofounder with Jerry Falwell of Moral Majority; author of slanderous books and tracts denouncing “Secular Humanism”; founder of American Coalition for Traditional Values

“I’ll tell you what is wrong with America. We don’t have enough of God’s ministers running the country.”
— Rev Tim LaHaye, address, Religious Roundtable breakfast, New York Times September 8, 1984, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Do you know what chaos this would produce? Do you understand that getting ministers and pastors to cooperate together and see the world through the same filters is like herding cats? Too many chiefs and not enough indians for this to work. Besides, I have seen how they run their churches…forget it.

“Why not admit that the words “separation” and “church” do not even appear in the US Constitution,” he added. “Instead, they do appear in Article 52 of the Constitution of the Soviet Union.”
— Rev Tim LaHaye, quoted from Guy Manchester, “The fantasy world of Tim LaHaye,” Freedom Writer, summer 2000

This one must have intrigued the President as he said himself he hoped to bridge the gap between Church and State. Boys, these two aren’t connected in our government and the ones that connect them often have execution Fridays for the unfaithful, non-believers and disobedient. Why not just admit that some things in life are none of the minister or churches business?

“Most of all, I believe God has chosen to bless this series. In doing so, he’s giving the country and maybe the world, one last, big wake-up call before the events transpire.”
— Rev Tim LaHaye, in an article in the Southern California Christian Times, quoted from Guy Manchester, “Tim LaHaye: the man behind the bestsellers,” Freedom Writer, Sept.-Oct. 2000

There have been so many “last big wake-up calls” the alarm clock has died. Bible fiction does not actually point to the truth of any one particular topic. Someone’s God also must have chosen to bless the events of 911 for them to work out beyond their wildest dreams.

This is one my favorite quotes from a minister turned pseudo-scientist so that he might defend the indefensible and explain something in a way that fits his views, but is not so.

Rev Walter Lang
Founder, Bible-Science Association

“We really have dinosaurs today, without any question. You just need the right weather conditions, as I see it, to get huge creatures. And in the ocean, of course, we have huge creatures…. this is where the plesiosauruses seem to be today, and perhaps also this fire breathing dragon is still down there — very rare, but occasionally there.”
— Rev Walter Lang, quoted from American Atheists, “From the Mouths of Creationists”

I love the “without any question,” because he knows this. The “as I see it” is a bit of a giveaway and of course the words “seem” and “perhaps” are big helps to show “we REALLY have dinosaurs today.” When you have doubts use dogmatic phrases and leave wiggle room words too. This is how one explains fiction in such as way as one does not realize they are being preached to and not taught anything that is true. Preaching and truth are not generally connected.

Popes, at times, can say things that later make the masses wonder what planet they are on or in what way is this man’s religion similar to that of Jesus’

PrPope Leo XIII (1810-1903)
Roman Catholic Pope from 1878 to 1903, who wrote the first modern papal statement on social and economic theory

“The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its end when rebels act against it and disturbers of the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics and heresiarchs, cannot be restrained by any other penalty from continuing to derange the ecclesiastical order and impelling others to all sorts of crime … When the perversity of one or several is calculated to bring about the ruin of many of its children it is bound effectively to remove it, in such wise that if there be no other remedy for saving its people it can and must put these wicked men to death.”

— Pope Leo XIII, advocating death to all heretics and teachers of false doctrine — showing that the end justifies the means even in the twentieth century, in Lloyd M Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975), p. 468, quoted from Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History

Death for those that disagree has always been the spiritual counseling of choice for some men of faith. How easy it is to jumble the injuncitons of the Old Testament to kill this or that rebel for reasons rather stupid, like not resting on the Sabbath, into the governing ideas of a New Testament hierarchy. Death for not resting…sure, makes perfect sense to me. How much better just singing “You in your small corner, and I in mine,” and leave each other alone?

“All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements in daily political life in the countries where they live. They must penetrate, wherever possible, in the administration of civil affairs; must constantly exert the utmost vigilance and energy to prevent the usages of liberty from going beyond the limits fixed by God’s law. All Catholics should do all in their power to cause the constitutions of states and legislation to be modeled on the principles of the true Church.”
— Leo XIII, Encyclical, Immortale Dei, 1885, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Wow…I want to live in this world of Theocracy! Americans today are aghast at the Theocratic rule the Taliban or Islam in general seems to insist upon, but many are only upset that it is not a Christian Theocracy. The only ones who win in a Theocracy are those who run it and hold themselves above it all. Anytime a man’s answer to the question, “Well who watches over you and corrects you?” is, “God does”…run.

“If unbridled licence of speech and writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of nature, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail.
— Leo XIII, Encyclical letter of 20 June 1888, translated by John A Ryan and Francis J Boland in Catholic Principles of Politics (New York, 1948, p. 174).

Leo would have loved the internet. Speech and writing should only be granted to those that speak and write in ways to “propel the propaganda” as Mr. Bush noted. What a church calls “darkness” is really light being brought to a topic and what it calls error, is often just that which contradicts the darkness the church pushes upon the masses century after century. How many times has the Catholic Church had to retract it’s scientifically ignorant dictates and ideas? How many times has Science had to admit the Church was correct after all?

Now you gotta love this Preacher…

“One day in seven, the Sabbath was made holy unto God and set aside solely for his worship (in ancient Israel). There was no choice about it. In those first days there was no such thing as religious liberty in Israel. A man had to go to worship whether he liked it or not. The fact that he didn’t like the priests didn’t matter … The excuse that he was intellectually superior to the congregation of Israel didn’t work … Religious liberty was given no thought in Israel. I sometimes wonder if it isn’t given too much thought in our own America.”
— Rev W D Lewis, quoted from E Haldeman-Julius, “The Meaning Of Atheism” (rev. C Walker, 2001)

The only time one can give such things too much thought is when religious freedom seems to be an important concept. It is freedom of ALL religions Reverand! Perhaps a Freedom FROM Religion is also a part of that too.

[Excerpt]
“I shall never be in full sympathy with our system of compulsory education until there is set up side by side with it a system of compulsory religion.”
— Rev W D Lewis, quoted from E Haldeman-Julius, “The Meaning Of Atheism” (rev. C Walker, 2001)

How about compulsory spirituality studies instead of compulsory religion? This way there might be a chance that one God awful religion won’t emerge to smite those that just aren’t into it.

“I shall never be in full sympathy with our system of irreligious education. Why should we be compelled to attend and support our schools if there is nothing that can be done to compel us to attend and support our churches? … If education is absolutely necessary for our community life, so is religion. Or yet why should we be compelled to support the idea of government if we are at liberty to treat the idea of God with contempt? … You will never make a full success of a compulsory government or a compulsory education until you give the same dignity to religion and make it compulsory; at any rate compulsory enough to make it respected throughout the land. The nation that plays fast and loose with its idea of God will soon or late play fast and loose with its idea of education and its idea of government…. If God doesn’t matter, then nothing else matters, and all the compulsions of life might just as well be set aside.”
— Rev W D Lewis, quoted from E Haldeman-Julius, “The Meaning Of Atheism” (rev. C Walker, 2001)

Oh I don’t know…freedom of choice comes to my mind. Being programmed by others and made to conform to their memes and ignorant perspectives just does not inspire me. Perhaps I just don’t get it.

I guess I can’t resist the comments of Joseph Lieberman.
US Senator, Vice-Presidential candidate (2000).

“The Constitution promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. We are, after all not just another nation, but “one nation under God.”
— Joseph Lieberman, campaign speech at Notre Dame University on October 24, 2000, quoted from American Atheists, “Lieberman Again Claims ‘No Freedom from Religion’ in Notre Dame Address: Cites Judeo-Christian Roots of America”

Hmmmm, sounds like there is a religion out there he might have in mind that we are not free from should it be imposed. We’d have the freedom to practice that one, but to be free of it. Or is it just me?

“We know that the Constitution wisely separates church from state, but remember: the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.”
— Joseph Lieberman, campaign speech at Fellowship Chapel, Detroit, August 27, 2000, quoted from AANEWS #808 by American Atheists, August 28, 2000

I don’t think Mr. Lieberman knows anything about this wise separation of church and state. Still sounds like there is a religion out there we are not free from when it selected as best for us.

“We shouldn’t] indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.”
— Joseph Lieberman, quoted in Natalie Angier, “Confessions of a Lonely Atheist,” New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2001; Angier called this “atheism baiting,” for which Lieberman received “the lightest possible slap on the wrist from his more secularized Jewish counterparts”

The idea that morality only springs from the practice of religion is erroneous. The “morality” of the Old Testament for Judaism, and much of the “morality” of the New Testament for Christians is suspect and often pathetic in it’s application.

While time and space would fail to show just how deranged and perhaps mentally ill Martin Luther was, for all his Christian influence, one has to love this way spreading the truth according to Luther.

Martin Luther, after admonishing Philip of Hesse to tell a “good stout lie,” defends his advice in the following words: “What would it matter if, for the sake of the Christian Church, one were to tell a big lie?”
— Martin Luther, quoted by Moehlman The Story of the Ten Commandments (p. 269); narrative from Joseph Lewis The Ten Commandments (p. 558)

Women take a horrible beating under fundamentalist religion and this attitude, while Mormon here, is typical of many if not most Baptist and Fundamentalist ministers.
Bruce McConkie
Mormon Leader; former member of The First Council of The Seventy

“Woman’s primary place is in the home, where she is to rear children and abide by the righteous counsel of her husband.”
— Bruce McConkie, quoted from, John Johnson, “Why I Am Not a Mormon”

It never dawns on anyone to ask what the woman is to do if her husband is an idiot or she is obviously more intelligent than he is.

Popular Christian fundamentalist, yet somewhat boring of speech and grim of delivery, Joyce Meyer notes…”The notion of separating church and state with such policies as disallowing prayer in public schools] is a deception from Satan.”
— Joyce Meyer, at the Christian Coalition’s 2002 Rally for Solidarity with [the modern nation of] Israel, quoted from Laurie Kellman, “Christian Coalition Hosts Rally to Boost Its Profile” (Associated Press: October 12, 2002)

Now forget that the actual Bible tells Christians that when they pray they are to pray privately in a closet and not be seen of men, so that the “God that sees in secret will reward them openly.” Never mind that the ones Jesus bashed for public prayer were the Pharisees, though I think in real historical fact, they were a likeable group and not as portrayed in the New Testament. I always got teary eyed when the football team said the Lord’s Prayer in 5 seconds and gave that big grunt at the end. 🙂

Well, I believe we get the point. It is important that, if we listen to what is said in Church, or by those that speak for God, we don’t find ourselves agreeing with the disagreeable and promoting ignorance and foolish science, politics and ways that we simply must be according to the Pastor or Priest, as if he really knew. Our country is full of Christian Whipper Uppers. These are men, mostly, who yell and tell us all just what God is thinking and what the times in which we live really mean. They are most likely wrong, again, as the many before them, but the money is good. Pay attention and never say “amen” when you don’t mean it or you find yourself wincing at what was just said.