why do alot of evangelical(born-again) christians seem to be filled with hate

To wit - I've been told once by a Christian:
Is there no room in your life for friendship and love that aren't based on emotion?!

 

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I share thi concern aswell.

 

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Ok...shoot!

 

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Yes, thats IceAgeCivilizations behind the wicker bars in the background there...

"You shall all die...acurrrrrrrsed!!!"

 

That seems rather horrifying, especially given some of the possible contexts that was said to you.

 

Yes ...
But after my initial upset eased down a bit, I started listening more carefully to my Christian firends and teachers. Sentences like that or to that effect were pretty common. I could probably make a compilation of standardized Christian responses.

This "religious standardization" always filled me both with repulsion, as well as awe. Repulsion because it was so cold and so impersonal; awe because I suspected they must know something I don't.

 

I don't think all that many evangelical Christians are filled with hate. I think the vast majority of them are filled with love, they go about their daily lives quietly loving other. There is a perception that so many are filled with hate because as with any group they are the most vocal and are the ones most reported on.

Phelps makes the news. The group of evangelicals quietly praying for others does not.

 

do they pray for Phelps?

 

The new testament accounts, Gospels, letters etc are not revelations, they are accounts.
The Apocalypse is a revelation.


Hate is used by politicians, who find religion useful.
Christ preached the opposite.

 

I don';t know about others but I pray for everyone, even those with whom I vehemently disagree. That means I pray for Phelps. I don't pray that he continues in his hateful ways but I do pray for him.

 

And it has seemed to me the options at that point are to trust the repulsion and move back or align the mind with what repulses us and aim the new mind at the 'bad' feelings.

 

I think she was wondering if they notice how off he is and pray that he finally notices.

 

Yes. Of course, trusting the repulsion means putting up with the voice in my head, accusing me of selfishness, insisting how my repulsion only proves that the Gospel is true and so on. I susppose this is why many people don't leave Christianity - dealing with that accusatory voice can take up all the time and energy a person has.
A strange way for Christians to claim success in proselytizing.

 

And yet how much better to have only a tiny bit of the mind taken over, that to have given over your entire body and mind to that voice. Here, I am yours.

In the process of removing yourself you hear the voice more clearly because you are no longer aligned with it. Of course it was there all along hating you into every step you took along the path it made for you.

 

This is very important - to know it to be only a tiny bit of the mind.

Frustration makes myopic, so people focus only on a small portion of their mind and their experience. And then that portion appears to be all there is.

The mind is so much bigger, there is so much more to a person than the Christian teacher wants you to believe.

 

Yeah, when I was a Christian, I would have prayed that he got hit by a bus. I wasn't a very good Christian.

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But I guess I was as good a one and he is.

My grandma prayed like you do.

 

That really hit me. And of course it is not restricted to Christian or even religious pedagogy. How truly sad.

 

Perhaps it has something to do with their religous beliefs being proven wrong/impossible on, what may seem to them, a daily basis.

 

i don't see these issues restricted to evangelical Christians or even just to the religious. They present a rather pure form of it that is easy to see. Sometimes the less easy to see forms of hate or mean pedagogy are much harder to extricate oneself from.

 

My pulling one piece of Greenberg's post out for my own use.

Snake River Rufus,
I think that rationalists like to use evangelical Christians as a kind of reassurance.

Some come here - some from a science based position, others more as rational humanists - and mock the religious.

Certainly I can share much of the anger at monotheists and anyone who uses religion to bolster vicious child rearing practices, the mistreatment of women, war, homophobia, etc. (I do notice that many people seem to manage these things without religion)

But each of us is complicated. We have built up a life based on assumptions some of which we cannot prove and others we never really made an effort. So we can come and mock the more cartoonish of the religious.

Really?