A recent study published in Science suggests that religious people are no more moral or immoral than nonreligious people, which is hardly surprising. According to the dictionary, to be religious simply means you believe in a god or numerous gods and follow the rules or dogma of that particular religion. Under that definition, even Satanism qualifies as a religion.
But let’s not confuse religion with Christianity. Theologian Karl Barth wrote that “It [religion] is a feeble but defiant, an arrogant but hopeless, attempt to create something which man could do. In religion man bolts and bars himself against revelation by providing a substitute, by taking away in advance the very thing which has to be given by God. It is never the truth. It is a complete fiction, which has not only little but no relation to God.”
Religion as a creation of man can be found in many churches today. Instead of following God’s Word, these religious organizations make up their own dogma – women can’t preach, you’re headed for hell if you smoke, drink, dance, wear makeup, cut your hair, wear jewelry, get a divorce, and don’t even get me started on communion and tithes, while openly mocking God by supporting same-sex marriage, abortions, theft [redistribution], socialism, communism, etc.
With what goes on in many churches, is it any wonder that people want to get in on the game? Take Dean and Christy Parave in Florida, who want you to condone their unBiblical conduct by attempting to tie it to christianity. The Paraves are swingers – and claim this is their christian calling. After all, if so-called christian churches believe it’s okay to murder a baby before its born, or marry two people of the same sex, it has to be okay to have sex with whomever you choose as long as you’re doing to your christian duty and witnessing to them, right? Christy is certain that God wouldn’t be mad by what they’re doing because she and her husband agreed it’s okay. Of course, if it isn’t okay, she said she guessed she’d find out on Judgment Day. Her husband thinks its permissible to have sex with other couples because there are gray [?] areas in the Bible such as “it says don’t covet your neighbor’s wife, but what if your neighbor wants you to covet her?”
Then there are pastors Harry Knox and Alethea Smith-Withers, who believe christians shouldn’t oppose abortion, or oppose forcing those of us that do oppose murder from paying for it. Knox, an Episcopalian, is president and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights [RCRC] and served on Obama’s faith advisory committee. Withers is minister at the Pavilion of God Baptist Church in D.C. and is chair of the Religious Coalition board.
Smith-Withers got my attention when a Planned Parenthood clinic in Northern California teamed up with local leftist clergy to promote 40 days of prayer to celebrate the murder of innocent children. Withers called it the “American way”…. “What a wonderful idea to have faith be something that we express aloud. My sense as a clergywoman is that God never leaves us … and so prayer should be invited under all circumstances, even at the circumstance of abortion.”
RCRC is supported and funded by mainline denominations – the Episcopal Church (USA), the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church and counts the YWCA in their fold. Their basic thrust is that the decision to abort is “between a woman and her god, a deity who offers unquestioned sustenance and support in the pursuit of the best choice for her.” Women are to claim their “godlike, god-given role in creation by saying yes or no, secure in the knowledge that whatever they decide, god will bless.”
Obviously neither of these religious ministers have ever read the Christian Bible or they would know that human life is a gift from God, a sacred essence and no man has the arbitrary right to murder another. Genesis 9:6 “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”
As for the swingers and similar religious pagans, God has a warning. “Who unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter….As the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the world of the Holy One of Israel.” Isaiah 5:20-24
