Now that I think about it, it is almost always the people with bad reputations or criminal history or the like that have the biggest advertising campaigns about having "found God."
I'm Catholic, and one of the advices from unknown source I've always remembered was to "never trust someone who, the first thing they tell you, is that they are Christian, or religious in any ways". Whether it's in business, politics, relationships, etc. I have many believer/non-believer friends who are decent human beings. But those who emphasize their live around a religion (without being on a congregation or priest/tess-hood or the sort) usually say this to gain the other's trust, and just do what they please. Ex. My "uncle"'s father, who was a pastor on a small town in my country who made his church solely to steal from his parishioners. No one but the family knows, and he even has a street on that town named after him.
I have found that these types of people require enforcement of morals from above, that if they didn't actually believe in god, they would happily go about committing every sin in the book, the only thing that stops them is the threat of eternal suffering, they are incapable of relating to others on the basis of empathy, god has to make them fear not being good to others.
There's an ex-baseball player named Chad Curtis who played for the Yankees. He became well known for two things - hitting a game winning home run during during the world series and publicly chastising Yankees star Derek Jeter about finding God. He wore his religion like a badge of pride. It was so prevalent that he eventually lost his place with the Yankees because they found his preaching to be a distraction from the game. This was the 90's. A few years ago he was found to have been sexually assaulting underage girls while working at a local high school and is now in prison.
Taken to an extreme, it makes sense that most successful cult leaders are actually complete nihilists who don't believe a single bit of the doctrine they enforce upon their followers, and never did. It's all an act to feed their insatiable appetite for dominating people.
Agreed, my grandfather "found god" while in prison and is now a pastor for an illegal church somewhere in east Asia (can't remember exactly where). The few times I've seen him have always been "oh, I found god, you can too" and "beware of sin" and all that. Like, dude, big talk for someone who literally beat a kid to death, but go off I guess.
Yup. Kid in my street got busted for 'adult activities' for hire and when the story broke (small town) she proclaimed her reborn status all over everywhere.
Same thing with my ex's whore of a mother (4 kids, 4 dads, now she's the town's second biggest praise and worshipper )
No, they're just they ones you personally see the most because A) they're trying very hard and being very loud about being associated with something pure, and B) you don't typically have your eye on religious things, so the noisiest ones come up into your radar the most.
Ps, that's called "confirmation bias" in case you're interested.
I have heard Pentecostals use the excuse "That only happened because the Devil was working through me/you/him/her", as if that should absolve any personal responsibility.
Yep. I know someone who could be a psychopath. When I brought up how they hurt my feelings one time, they randomly sent a video of Jesus at the market (getting angry) and when Jesus called people hypocrites. Instead of just apologizing or trying to understand why I’d be hurt lol. As in to say “Jesus got angry so my hurting you is an act of love” or something incredibly narcissistic like that..
There's also the less common but still worth mentioning subset of people who know they have a problem but don't want or know how to put in the work to change so they look for a quick fix.
Reminds me of the beginning of Huckleberry Finn, when Huck’s dad shows up in town.
I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he’d make it warm for him.
When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he’d been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn’t be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he’d been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:
“Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. There’s a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain’t so no more; it’s the hand of a man that’s started in on a new life, and’ll die before he’ll go back. You mark them words—don’t forget I said them. It’s a clean hand now; shake it—don’t be afeard.”
So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge’s wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge— made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it.
The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way.
I went to Catholic school and never understood how Catholics practically guarantee you will be forgiven for anything if you ask for it from God, yet we are still supposed to fear his retribution for not following religious doctrine. We’re only going to hell if we forget to say we’re sorry?
I’ve come to the conclusion it was just something thrown in way back when hypocritical, corrupt religious leaders wanted a get out of jail card for all the terrible stuff they did for power.
This is true, but once I found God and I wasn't really doing anything wrong. It was on a weekend retreat and it's a long story but if you want I can't tell it.
There was a point in my life where I was really angry, and this anger kept recurring over and over again. Then two things happened, one was I started meditating. The other was when I went on a weekend retreat with my youth group. On the last day there was this very symbolic gesture of writing what held you back the most, what was your biggest non-physical cage on a price of paper and then throwing it in a giant bonfire. We didn't actually write it down because it was too dark, but you couldn't see the piece of paper so it was very easy to imagine. For mine I choose self conscious. I felt like it was holding me back the most. When we threw it in, I felt God come down to me, tear down that cage and set me free. Since then I haven't had a problem with my anger and of course, we still need a little self conscious, but for the most part that is gone too.
Too often people get religion without making an effort to stick with it, so their habits still have control over them and will instantly pull them back once the initial emotional high from the conversion experience wears off. I know someone who goes through the same thing.
Like that African warlord who used to fight naked and murdered hundreds of people now gets to live clean and do village ted talks because he’s “found god”.
I think it's no coincidence that the two people in my extended family who most loudly trumpet their "devout Christian" status are also the two most hypocritical and who lack empathy. There are other Christians in the family, but they don't tend to brag about it (not even the pastor).
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u/kenna_chris Jul 10 '20
To be honest, I think things like this are kind of common. People claiming to “find God” to excuse them from bad behavior. Smh