Church of the Damned

Welcome to the temporarily green little oasis in what has become the desert of my diary.

Yes, I’m aware it’s been over two months since I’ve written anything in here. In fact, it’s been so long that my typing is currently sucking some major ass.

It’s hard to put a finger on exactly why I haven’t been around. Part of it has to do with not having much motivation to write since there have been times I’ve thought of things I could’ve wrote, but really didn’t feel like taking the time to do it. Part of it has to do with the fact that in one of my first few diary entries I swore to not let this turn into a just a stupid list of my daily events; I promised to try and keep this diary at least a little interesting to read.

Even more than those though, I think part of my absence has been due to the fact that my life just feels a bit strange right now.

I’m a rather different person, in a good way, than I’ve been for most of my life. True, I still have some bad habits. True, I still hate church and think Christianity and God are huge jokes and frauds, respectively. True, I still work my ass off and drive my truck.

Internally though, it’s as if I’ve been born again (which I may have written about in my previous entry back in May, now that I think about it)…

And now that I went back and re-read that, this is sounding a little similar. Perhaps I should try and change gears so I don’t make twin entries back-to-back.

(Insert sound of gears changing)

A couple nights ago I had a bit of a strange dream. I was down in IL and had to go to church. Instead of going to the young-adult class for Sunday School that I usually get drug to when I’m visiting down there (yes, I HAVE to go to church when I visit my friends there) I went to the youth class.

I’ve been to that one before too, and the “youth pastor” is a bit of a wiener. He tries to be cool and be accepted and teach kids about God and shit, but it’s very apparent that the single skill he possesses it the art of repeating something (rather ineffectually) that he was taught in Bible college.

In the dream though he was talking about doubt. He was telling the kids that they should never doubt or question their “salvation” because doubt is a tool of the devil. I leaned over to Allie and whispered that he apparently hadn’t read his Bible because that’s not what the Bible says. Pastor Dip-Shit saw me though and tried to be all big-and-bad and said, “Do you have something you’d like to share with all of us?”

So I was thinking, “Ok dude, let’s throw down…”

“I was just wondering how you figure that church people shouldn’t question their ‘salvations,’” I began, “if in II Corinthians 13:5 it specifically says to ‘examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves.’ Perhaps that is a warning that people need to look honestly at themselves to see if they REALLY are saved.”

Then he spouted off some little thing about never being able to loose your salvation (since he is a Baptist pastor and that is one of the core Baptist beliefs-that salvation can’t be lost).

So I pulled out Matthew 7:21-23 where Jesus said that “many” will be about to be sent to hell and they’ll be like, “but didn’t we prophesy and cast out demons and do many wonderful works in your name?” Then Jesus says, “I never knew you, depart from me…” And away they go into hell.

I continued, “I wonder how many people sitting in churches, or here in this class, are SO saved that they’ve ever even come close to doing any of the things for God like the people Jesus was talking about did. If people who are “more saved” than you all still go to hell, why SHOULDN’T church people wonder and “examine” themselves to see if they’re really cool with God?”

We ended up going back and forth for a bit, but Peenie Boy had a bit of trouble standing with the rug being pulled from under his feet.

It was rather quiet at the end because people were sitting in silence thinking about what had just transpired. Perhaps they were actually, finally, doing what the Bible says and were doing an internal self-examination. Perhaps they were stunned by the fact that the Pastor lied to them and were wondering how many other times it had happened. Perhaps they didn’t really know what to think.

The dream ended with Allie and I getting up and walking out. I turned to her, smiled rather wickedly and said, “Well, my job here is done.”

The thing with dreams and me is that although I have quite a few that are either just totally strange or would never happen in real-life, I also sometimes dream about things that will happen. They might not be exactly detail-for-detail, but I get a good deal of dreams where things happen in my mind before they really happen.

Wouldn’t that just be funny if that this one ended up happening? Hehe, I think it would.

*
Well the tongue inside my mouth is not for sale
And the spirit within me is fading fast
Could you throw another stone to ease my pain?
Could you throw another stone to seal my fate?
*
‘Cause I don’t believe in this world
Anymore
I don’t believe in me…
*
And if I can rise above this I’ll be saved
(Can anybody save me?)
And if I can die for love then I’m enslaved
(Can anybody save me)
*
Goodbye cruel word
*
Seether

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