I was in the big college town this weekend for the rodeo fun, and noticed a sign on the front of the apartment building for older folks.
It said Judgment House. The painting on the window says "Tour your final destination! Bring the kids!"
Wait... wha?
So, haunted houses are bad because they're scary and make people scream and cry, but you can put on one of these Judgment houses and tell folks they're going to hell to try to scare them into doing more what you think they should do and that's OK??
I don't think so.
I'll tell ya what, folks. The day someone crawls inside my head and examines every decision I've ever made from MY perspective, that's the day they can judge me. Until then, unless I invite discussion of religious matters or my decision making process, keep your nose out of my business.
It aggravates the piss out of me that they've set up this thing and are running it, but there were radio spots all over the place last year (haven't been listening to local radio this year) about how your haunted house shouldn't be TOO scary because it's supposed to be fun and the children cry and then it's not fun anymore and besides it's not nice to make people cry ok now run along and play, love, City Council.
Or something like that.
Don't jump out and say boo, tell them they're going to hell, instead. Fabulous. Just fabulous. That won't scar the children for life anything like Uncle Randy jumping out of a closet with a scary mask on. Instead of being embarrassed for screaming like a girl, little Tommy is going to believe that God hates him.
Let us pray:
Dear Jesus,
Please save me from the things that people do in your name.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
A-freaking-men indeed.
I am so tired of the hypocritical "As long as we relabel it in church terms everything is nice and shiny" attitude which infects this society.
Almost justifies all those people who want to keep any public mention of religion at all from occurring...
If I was God, I'd be unbelievably pissed off at what people were doing in my name.
Really pissed off.
Funny thing is, one of the main things that permanently turned me off of religion was when one of my classmates in 2nd grade told me I was going to hell because my family didn't go to church.
Farmgirl, You probably know more than I would about this "judgement house" to know it's a "you're gonna die and go to hell" thing. I was just thinking most haunted houses I've heard about were more like somebody's idea of what hell would be like. I've never bothered to go to one. If they're using it to preach like that, I sure wouldn't go.
As I've told before, I'm disabled... have been since I was 18, but I've worked at it and seen a good bit of improvement. That said, back about 1995 when I was on crutches, I was coming out of a local church and some kid, more or less repeating what he'd heard all his first 8-10 years, said "when you meet Jesus, you'll be running!!!" I thought that was an interesting choice of words. Either he thought I had to "get saved"... as if he *just*knew* I wasn't... or he thought I had to die and be free of this earthly body. It just struck me odd. That's one of a *very*few* times I've run into that. OTOH, I have Christian friends who've never acted like that. I'm a independent Christian and one thing I learned is the whole point of religion is to help and comfort those who truly need it.
Sad but true... There is a church down in Richmond that says if you're not a member of THAT church, you're going to hell...
Well, I'm not a huge fan of organized religion to start with, and I have my own reasons for that.
I figure that my relationship with deity is between myself and said deity, and I do not require a priest, pastor, reverend or great mumbo jumbo to tell me how to handle it.
Nothing against the religious leaders who aren't trying to "out-save" each other, but I've had one too many pastors attempt to get me to come to "private counseling" with a creepy manner, or tell me that I'm living a good life but am going to go to hell anyway because I don't attend church every Sunday, etc, to be entirely comfortable with organized religion as a whole.
I have met some wonderful, devout, and downright inspiring preachers and pastors, don't get me wrong, but synchronized prayer just isn't my thing.
What offends me the most about the Judgment House is that they, like so many other offensively religious people, presume to know the state of anyone's soul.
And, not only to they presume to know that state of a person's soul, they are intent upon making the person feel so horrible about themselves that the person will suddenly decide to attend *their* church to remedy this ailment.
Religion by browbeating, belittling, scorn and shame is NOT ok.
Implying that God scorns those who do not follow the tenets of one church, while the same church grew out of the beliefs of another church, which grew out of the beliefs of yet another church, and so on and so forth all the way back to the One God and the tribes of Israel is just flat ass stupid.
If a Christian God cares about such things... every Christian on the planet is screwed anyway, because they stole him from the Jews to start with.
< /rant >
Have ya'll ever had somebody try to sell you religion by telling you "you need to come to our church; we have a shotgun team"? I had that happen once.
And I'm reminded of LawDog's writing about, as he said, "Shiite Baptists". BTW, some of my family are Southern Baptist and I don't have a problem with it.
Preach it, Farmgirl!
Post a Comment