Pastor Steven L. Anderson

Wow. I was over at Pharyngula just now and watched a clip of an American pastor arguing that the reason America is going wrong is because men don’t pee standing up anymore. The argument is hilarious of course, but I couldn’t help but wonder more about this pastor and his ministry. So I found his church’s website, and it turns out he’s a terrifying loon.

¬†I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I’ve commented point by point on the church’s Doctrinal Statement:

We believe that the King James Bible is the word of God without error.

I’ve heard briefly of this inerrant view of the King James Bible. Now, obviously I as an atheist don’t believe that the KJV is without error, I figure the whole damn thing is a fiction, but there are quite a few people who have documented changes that were made to this version of the bible. I don’t pretend to know which side of this theological war is “right”, which is to say whether or not the KJV is more in line with previous bibles, but it does strike me as weird that this is the version they glom onto.

We believe all Scripture was given by inspiration of God, and that God also promised to preserve his word. Divine inspiration is of no value to Christians without God’s promise of preservation.

So he’s a biblical literalist, and thus believes in child slavery, the notion that the sky is actually firmament, and that wanting something your neighbor has is the same as killing him. For all that we now know about the world (and the universe we float in), this attitude is astounding to me.

We believe that salvation is by grace through faith. Being born again by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ is the only requirement for salvation.

We believe in the eternal security of the believer (once saved, always saved).

I love this notion. It means that Ted Haggard is safe from all everlasting punishments for his homosexuality and drug use. It means that so long as you accept Jesus Christ at some point in your life, all the other stuff you do is totally fair game. So I could accept Christ in the Born Again fashion, then later join a Satanic cult and anything I do is perfectly acceptable. Why do you suppose there’s so much “thou shalt not” and morality teachings by Christ if none of it matters in the least?

We believe that the unsaved will spend eternity in torment in a literal hell.

Of course you do. That’s the reason you people get saved, to fend off the nightmare at the end of your lives. For that matter, it’s why you call it “saved”. You want to make sure that people are in perpetual fear of the recriminations of their loving father.

We believe that Jesus is God, and that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary.

All Christians believe that. Duh.

We believe only in the local church and not in a universal church.

Of course, because any large political body would see you as a psychotic. When you can’t find a universal church crazy enough to embrace you, you focus on the locals.

We reject the teaching of Calvinism and believe that God wants everyone to be saved.

Okay… Neither do I.

We are Non-dispensational.

So you really think the tone of the Bible being the word of God doesn’t change from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelations? Neat! Jesus is God, and where his teachings get in the way of previous teachings from God, you don’t see that as a problem?

We believe that life begins at conception (fertilization) and reject all forms of abortion including surgical abortion, “morning-after” pills, IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), birth control pills, and all other processes that end life after conception.

I started to write a big “you’re wrong” argument here. But why recycle what every pro-choice person before me has already said? Life does not begin at conception. Sperm are alive. They have dull lives and short lives, but so do spiders.

We believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty.

Fortunately, the same doesn’t go for judgement. Jesus never said much about that, did he?

We oppose worldliness, modernism, formalism, and liberalism.

This should come as no surprise. They embrace ignorance, and all of these things look at the world around themselves and interpret. That doesn’t mean they are correct, it simply means that the only means to interpret to these people is the King James Version, and any other method of examining the world around you is evil.

There are lots of Christians in my life. It is at this point that I should probably do the usual thing and placate them, saying that while I might not share their beliefs, they are not inherently dangerous beliefs unless spun by the scary fundies like Pastor Steve here. But I don’t believe that. I used to, and I respect people’s decision to not believe what I believe. I also accept that my beliefs are fluid enough, because I don’t know everything there is to know. But I believe that basing your world view on the limited understanding of the world that comes from 2000 years ago is just folly.

Let me relate a story from my own life. One day, my ex-wife got a call from our kids’ school. There was an issue. Our youngest daughter had deeply offended another girl by telling her she was going to burn in hell. Naturally, I wanted to know exactly what the hell my daughter had said. And it turned out it was an innocent situation. My father was talking to her about how great it is to be a Christian. She asked why, and he told her that only Christians get to go to Heaven. She asked, “But what about Jews?” and he replied that the Bible teaches that only people who believe in Jesus go to Heaven.

Now, she’s a smart girl, and she’s been taught that there are two choices, Heaven and Hell. And she has a good friend in her class who is a Jew. So if the Jews are not going to Heaven, then they’re going to Hell. And this made her sad. She didn’t want her friend to burn in Hell. So she went to her friend and told her that she had to embrace Christianity or she’d burn in Hell with all the other Jews. There was no malice in this; far from it, it was the act of a concerned and loving friend. But this is what happens when you actually try to take this great big book of fiction and apply it to life.

I will not apologize for my lack of faith. Instead, I feel like I have a number of people that I need to apologize from my thoughts and actions back when I was a person of faith. Shuffing off the¬†mental handcuffs of my faith has made me an infinitely better person, and I’m proud of myself for it. There is no Heaven to tempt me to acts of goodness and no Hell to keep me afraid. Instead, I choose to be good because it feels like the right thing. But Christians require the carrot on the end of the stick and the fear of infinite and brutal reprisal to be good. I’ll never understand it.

Jim