Seriously, the entire point of baptism is that there's some sort of weird physical thing that you are innately born with that needs removal before you can get into heaven.
Isn't it supposed to be the Original Sin?
That...is a surprisingly good solution to such a generally unsatisfactory arrangement.
Isn't it? Fucking Jhonen Vasquez came up with that – or something like it, at any rate. I found it in a sadistic, self-indulgent blood book called Johnny the Homocidal Maniac, which the freaky psuedo-goth daughter of my Mom's boyfriend used to call her "Bible." She even proselytized it by buying several copies and passing them around the school. I'm not kidding. The world is really that strange.
But then there's no point in telling us about heaven and hell. The whole setup is a reward/punishment system based on coercing people into behaving rightly in defiance of their natural impulses. If it's the thought that matters, there's little point in telling us about religion at all - God is still going to be pissed you thought your neighbor's ass was kinda hot even if you immediately go "oh shit badthought".
I think you may have just stumbled onto the reason so many hardcore Christians are batshit insane. People who grew up with religion but later rejected it frequently express that they used to suffer from the anxiety that their stray thoughts would get them sent to Hell.
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Date: 2007-09-10 04:13 am (UTC)I'd noticed.
Seriously, the entire point of baptism is that there's some sort of weird physical thing that you are innately born with that needs removal before you can get into heaven.
Isn't it supposed to be the Original Sin?
That...is a surprisingly good solution to such a generally unsatisfactory arrangement.
Isn't it? Fucking Jhonen Vasquez came up with that – or something like it, at any rate. I found it in a sadistic, self-indulgent blood book called Johnny the Homocidal Maniac, which the freaky psuedo-goth daughter of my Mom's boyfriend used to call her "Bible." She even proselytized it by buying several copies and passing them around the school. I'm not kidding. The world is really that strange.
But then there's no point in telling us about heaven and hell. The whole setup is a reward/punishment system based on coercing people into behaving rightly in defiance of their natural impulses. If it's the thought that matters, there's little point in telling us about religion at all - God is still going to be pissed you thought your neighbor's ass was kinda hot even if you immediately go "oh shit badthought".
I think you may have just stumbled onto the reason so many hardcore Christians are batshit insane. People who grew up with religion but later rejected it frequently express that they used to suffer from the anxiety that their stray thoughts would get them sent to Hell.