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It astonishes me that Christians can say that our finite human lifetimes don’t matter–that they are meaningless, even!–but that eternity matters infinitely. They tell whoever listens that if we are not intended to have eternal life, that nothing we really do on Earth during our lifetimes matters at all, that life is “meaningless” without the promise of Heaven behind it. I touched on this idea a long time ago with one of this blog’s most popular posts, “Captain Cassidy and the Cosmic Purpose”, but at the time I was talking more about how preposterous the idea of a divinely-granted purpose really is. Today I want to delve more deeply into the common Christian concept that a finite lifetime is less meaningful than an eternal one.

It astonishes me that Christians can say that our finite human lifetimes don’t matter–that they are meaningless, even!–but that eternity matters infinitely. They tell whoever listens that if we are not intended to have eternal life, that nothing we really do on Earth during our lifetimes matters at all, that life is “meaningless” without the promise of Heaven behind it. I touched on this idea a long time ago with one of this blog’s most popular posts, “Captain Cassidy and the Cosmic Purpose”, but at the time I was talking more about how preposterous the idea of a divinely-granted purpose really is. Today I want to delve more deeply into the common Christian concept that a finite lifetime is less meaningful than an eternal one.

I recently watched a documentary that said some stuff that really touched a chord in me. Thanks to it, I’m noticing some very uncomfortable parallels between the ideas it’s discussing and what I see happening in society itself: that Christians today are trying to manage other people’s morality the same way they tried to do it in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and failing for the exact same reasons that they failed back then.

Fred’s written an excellent piece at Slacktivist about how Lifeway has discovered that a third of evangelicals are pro-choice, meaning they think abortion should be legal. As you can imagine, evangelical leaders are freaking out about this finding and trying to think up ways to rationalize the results of the survey, with many of them deciding that pro-choice evangelicals aren’t TRUE EVANGELICALS™. They’ve been on a kick lately to define who is in the tribe and who’s out, so their new line in the sand isn’t a big surprise to see. But they’re wrong about their tribe’s monolithic opposition to abortion–just like they’re wrong about all the other ways they’re trying to police the use of Christian terms–like “Christian” itself.

There is a “reason for the season.” It’s just not the one that Christians imagine.

There is a “reason for the season.” It’s just not the one that Christians imagine.

Someone needs to remind Republican voters and Christians alike that their leaders are trying to appeal to women, young people, LGBTQ people, and non-white folks, not insult and drive them away.

My even broke earlier today. I can’t even. Be sure you brace yours before you read this, because this is just bizarre. The Religious Right has made yet another misstep in its self-created, self-maintained war on gay people–but in a weird kind of way, though, this story makes the perfect Sunday Happy Thought.

In the same exact way, when Christians treat non-believers like children, they are showing us where their “money” is kept–what the rewards are that they actually seek and treasure so much that they’d rather have that than whatever their stated goal is. Today we’re going to examine whether or not their behavior actually results in the “money” they say they want.

Someone asked if I’d please post this part by itself and the idea seemed to be attractive to other readers, so here you go. I don’t pretend that the following speaks for every non-Christian in the world, but I know it speaks for a lot of us. I hope it’s of use to someone.