This Made Me So Thankful I am No Longer A Christian

cofty

I was following some links researching something to do with my condition when I came across this article by the well known christian author John Piper called "Don't Waste Your Cancer".

If I had still been a christian when I got my diagnosis I would have been subjected to these sort of pious platitudes.

Here are a few gems, read the full article if you wish but not on a full stomach.

Cancer is not wasted when it is healed by God. He gets the glory and that is why cancer exists. So not to pray for healing may waste your cancer. But healing is not God’s plan for everyone.

If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.

The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

Cancer is meant to waken us to the reality of God.

Cancer is designed to destroy the appetite for sin

This will be your opportunity to bear witness” . So it is with cancer. This will be an opportunity to bear witness.

I am so relieved that I don't have to endure the added burden of having to "believe six impossible things before breakfast". I think that cancer would not have broken my faith by itself but being asked to believe this kind of well meaning sophistry almost certainly would have.

breakfast of champions

What a shithead! (Not you, of course COFTY!)

ziddina

Oh, my frikkin' GODDESS!!!! Whatta buncha FREAKS!!!! [they sound like Mother Theresa... ]

finally awake

BARF! No one should be subjected to such utter nonsense. I hope you are getting better

botchtowersociety

Christianity teaches us to find what is good in even the bad things we experience. Good can come even when evil is visited upon us.

Remember, the most important moment in Christian history was the execution of its first leader, Jesus. For Christians, this moment of evil and suffering visited upon an innocent man led to the triumph of good over evil.

Suffering is a constant aspect of the human condition, it touches us all, and Christiatity helps us grant it a meaning where it otherwise might have none. When we suffer we remember Christ, and unite our suffering with his.

I am a cancer survivor, and my Christian faith gave me great peace and strength during the ordeal.

Pax

BTS

Twitch

isn't that the first noble truth of the buddha, that life is suffering?

Regardless, I wonder how consoling this author's opinion is in the cancer wards.

ziddina

Ahhh, I could see using Christian principles to strengthen one's faith that one will overcome the ordeal...

But to be SUBMISSIVE to the cancer??!!?? To view it as part of some "divine plan"??!!!!!???

That's not fighting the cancer; that's rolling over and passively submitting to it... And all in the name of some Bronze-Age Middle-Eastern male volcano "god" that doesn't even exist...

cofty

Exactly ziddina.

BTS finding positive side effects of a difficult situation is fine but it doesn't require god. To claim as Piper does that cancer is deliberately designed by god as a "gift" is risible.

OnTheWayOut

In GOD's PROBLEM, Bart Ehrman mentions THE BROTHERS KARAMOZOV, saying that one brother feels that even if God explains to mankind at the end of it all, a valid reason why all suffering had to take place and how He's made it all right, the one brother won't accept it. He feels that he would rather "turn in his ticket" than accept any valid explanation from God. The suffering is too much, not worth whatever the price for whatever the reason.

Bart is not in full agreement with that brother, but I am.

botchtowersociety

To claim as Piper does that cancer is deliberately designed by god as a "gift" is risible.

Well, I don't agree with the sentiment either.

This Made Me So Thankful I am No Longer A Christian

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