mattbraunlin
Member
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Time to flip some tables.
Can there be any more certain symptom of the fundamental madness of our species than the atheist's attempt to be okay with death?
This blurb is for those atheists. For you weird and perversely fascinating souls who are trying to reconcile the beauty of your life with the horror of your inevitable death. For all you tragic antagonists who actually believe that death is natural, and better yet, that this ideological crystal meth will create a better world.
My personal favourite offshoot of this idea is what I call the romanticization of decay: when we die, our bodies decompose and go back to the earth, and we become flowers and feed animals and live on as part of nature. In this way, death is actually beautiful.
It's basically a sort of refrigerated leftover from the Love Generation, and it makes me angry.
In absolutely any other imaginable context, the decay and decomposition of a human body is revolting. Horrifying. But then, when it comes to justifying and maintaining an atheistic worldview, it suddenly becomes beautiful.
DON'T… GIVE ME… THAT… CRAP.
There is NOTHING beautiful about death. Death is ugly. Death is obscene. It's a violation. It's something we were never meant to know. Don't tell me that going back to the earth is natural and beautiful until you leave your dead loved ones lying in your backyard so you can watch it happen, and if that offends you, you've proved my point.
Another good one is the idea that our loved ones live on in our dreams and memories. They don't. You can say the exact same thing about the action-figures you played with as a kid.
When I lost my dad to alcoholism, he didn't start ‘living on in my memories.’ I have memories of a dead guy. He's DEAD. And I HATE that he's dead.
Stop trying to turn the most grotesque, monolithic, absolute negative in the universe into a positive. It's asinine. It's insane. It's destroying the future and it's really weirding the rest of us out.
Nowhere in the annals of religion have humans attempted to explain death as something positive. It is a universal spiritual fact that death is an abomination, a sign that something has gone desperately wrong.
The Bible is, from beginning to end, an expression of outrage against death. A livid protest against its tyrannical grip on the reality we experience. When Naomi loses her entire family, she changes her name to Bitter. When Job loses his family, he spends forty chapters expressing his torment. When Jesus sees the tomb of his friend Lazarus, he does not give a peaceful sigh. He gets vehemently angry. Angry at the crushing weight of death which is a fact of life for every single one of his Father's children.
God despises death. He despises it so much that he sent his Son to lead a revolt against it. In 1 Corinthians 15:26, death is described as an enemy which Jesus shall destroy.
And death is your enemy. You are not at peace with death. You're terrified of it and we both know it. By the basic principle of your worldview you are being chased down by a laughing maniac. A cruel and sadistic invader who is in no particular hurry, because he knows he will catch you eventually. In fact, the longer it takes him to catch you the better! He loves to watch you grow old and feeble and dependent. He loves to drink the vain tears of your anguish at your loved ones whom he squeezes into neutral oblivion. He relishes watching time turn all of your positives into negatives. He laughs at your useless attempts to find meaning in life when the lowest common denominator of everything in it is the fact that you are a worthless byproduct of cause and effect.
That maniac is coming for you. He will chase you down. He will chase down your children. And you will be the one to tell them he is chasing them. His victory is complete.
And you can't even prove it!
Can you prove that nothing happens to you when you die? Of course you can't prove that. It's a leap of faith. It's a blatant slap in the face of your own worth as a human being. It is a one-way ticket to a world of bitterness and cynicism and despair and envy and chaos.
I follow Christ. I follow the God who loathes the curse of death we have brought upon ourselves. The God who has had the human experience, straight up to the bloodiest, most agonizing death anyone has ever endured.
I follow the God who has given me the truest hope. Who has made my life beautiful and overflowing with transcendent meaning and Joy. I follow a God who has helped me make sense of death, and who stands beside me as I stand my ground and look that maniac straight in the face, less afraid of it every day. Not because it is good, and certainly not because I am stronger than anyone else. But because my God is good and strong. He conquered death, and has given me everlasting life.
May the wisdom of God put an end to your atheism. He is calling you right now, and he loves you. He longs to remove your burdens and make you freer and more joyful than you can now imagine. Crucify the cold, antiseptic poverty of the lies you have clung to, and never give them another moment of your time on this earth. Embrace your immortality, give it to God, and quake with wonder at what you will see.
Forever.
Time to flip some tables.
Can there be any more certain symptom of the fundamental madness of our species than the atheist's attempt to be okay with death?
This blurb is for those atheists. For you weird and perversely fascinating souls who are trying to reconcile the beauty of your life with the horror of your inevitable death. For all you tragic antagonists who actually believe that death is natural, and better yet, that this ideological crystal meth will create a better world.
My personal favourite offshoot of this idea is what I call the romanticization of decay: when we die, our bodies decompose and go back to the earth, and we become flowers and feed animals and live on as part of nature. In this way, death is actually beautiful.
It's basically a sort of refrigerated leftover from the Love Generation, and it makes me angry.
In absolutely any other imaginable context, the decay and decomposition of a human body is revolting. Horrifying. But then, when it comes to justifying and maintaining an atheistic worldview, it suddenly becomes beautiful.
DON'T… GIVE ME… THAT… CRAP.
There is NOTHING beautiful about death. Death is ugly. Death is obscene. It's a violation. It's something we were never meant to know. Don't tell me that going back to the earth is natural and beautiful until you leave your dead loved ones lying in your backyard so you can watch it happen, and if that offends you, you've proved my point.
Another good one is the idea that our loved ones live on in our dreams and memories. They don't. You can say the exact same thing about the action-figures you played with as a kid.
When I lost my dad to alcoholism, he didn't start ‘living on in my memories.’ I have memories of a dead guy. He's DEAD. And I HATE that he's dead.
Stop trying to turn the most grotesque, monolithic, absolute negative in the universe into a positive. It's asinine. It's insane. It's destroying the future and it's really weirding the rest of us out.
Nowhere in the annals of religion have humans attempted to explain death as something positive. It is a universal spiritual fact that death is an abomination, a sign that something has gone desperately wrong.
The Bible is, from beginning to end, an expression of outrage against death. A livid protest against its tyrannical grip on the reality we experience. When Naomi loses her entire family, she changes her name to Bitter. When Job loses his family, he spends forty chapters expressing his torment. When Jesus sees the tomb of his friend Lazarus, he does not give a peaceful sigh. He gets vehemently angry. Angry at the crushing weight of death which is a fact of life for every single one of his Father's children.
God despises death. He despises it so much that he sent his Son to lead a revolt against it. In 1 Corinthians 15:26, death is described as an enemy which Jesus shall destroy.
And death is your enemy. You are not at peace with death. You're terrified of it and we both know it. By the basic principle of your worldview you are being chased down by a laughing maniac. A cruel and sadistic invader who is in no particular hurry, because he knows he will catch you eventually. In fact, the longer it takes him to catch you the better! He loves to watch you grow old and feeble and dependent. He loves to drink the vain tears of your anguish at your loved ones whom he squeezes into neutral oblivion. He relishes watching time turn all of your positives into negatives. He laughs at your useless attempts to find meaning in life when the lowest common denominator of everything in it is the fact that you are a worthless byproduct of cause and effect.
That maniac is coming for you. He will chase you down. He will chase down your children. And you will be the one to tell them he is chasing them. His victory is complete.
And you can't even prove it!
Can you prove that nothing happens to you when you die? Of course you can't prove that. It's a leap of faith. It's a blatant slap in the face of your own worth as a human being. It is a one-way ticket to a world of bitterness and cynicism and despair and envy and chaos.
I follow Christ. I follow the God who loathes the curse of death we have brought upon ourselves. The God who has had the human experience, straight up to the bloodiest, most agonizing death anyone has ever endured.
I follow the God who has given me the truest hope. Who has made my life beautiful and overflowing with transcendent meaning and Joy. I follow a God who has helped me make sense of death, and who stands beside me as I stand my ground and look that maniac straight in the face, less afraid of it every day. Not because it is good, and certainly not because I am stronger than anyone else. But because my God is good and strong. He conquered death, and has given me everlasting life.
May the wisdom of God put an end to your atheism. He is calling you right now, and he loves you. He longs to remove your burdens and make you freer and more joyful than you can now imagine. Crucify the cold, antiseptic poverty of the lies you have clung to, and never give them another moment of your time on this earth. Embrace your immortality, give it to God, and quake with wonder at what you will see.
Forever.