{"id":5334,"date":"2017-01-06T19:02:32","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T00:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5334"},"modified":"2017-01-06T19:03:56","modified_gmt":"2017-01-07T00:03:56","slug":"upheld-yall-are-no-damn-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5334","title":{"rendered":"Upheld: Y&#8217;all are no damn good"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Probably intending to criticize those annoying, hyper-enthusiastic preachers who strain so diligently to be your best friend &#8212; Is <i>everything<\/i> &#8216;awesome&#8217;? Really? &#8212; the <i>Babylon Bee<\/i> inadvertently upholds a criticism I&#8217;ve made of Christian teaching for years: If you don&#8217;t accept Original Sin, if you don&#8217;t believe you were born no damn good and deserving eternal punishment, Christianity has nothing on offer.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Woman Unsure Why She Needs Jesus After Preacher Spends 30 Minutes Telling Her How Amazing She Is <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/9FoIBf8w1r\">https:\/\/t.co\/9FoIBf8w1r<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/saFunPLHFj\">pic.twitter.com\/saFunPLHFj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheBabylonBee\/status\/817077771377774592\">January 5, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Wilson, who hasn\u2019t attended church since she was a child, further reported she was \u201ca little hurt\u201d that the pastor would segue into an invitation to add Jesus to her life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">It really undermined my confidence in myself<\/span>,\u201d she said, adding she wouldn\u2019t be back anytime soon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hear this, Ms. Wilson: Your pastor <i>needs<\/i> for you to be insecure; his livelihood <i>requires<\/i> the annihilation of your self-confidence.  If you don&#8217;t believe you&#8217;re no damn good, he&#8217;s got nothing on offer.<\/p>\n<p>You can deny-deny-deny, you can stamp your feet and howl that it isn&#8217;t so &#8212; but there is no escaping it: Christianity is degrading at the root, and the pastor&#8217;s well-being relies on his ability to degrade you and then feed on you.  Enough.  It is time, time past, that we all be done once for all with those predators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Probably intending to criticize those annoying, hyper-enthusiastic preachers who strain so diligently to be your best friend &#8212; Is everything &#8216;awesome&#8217;? Really? &#8212; the Babylon Bee inadvertently upholds a criticism I&#8217;ve made of Christian teaching for years: If you don&#8217;t &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5334\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5334"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5334"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5340,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5334\/revisions\/5340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}