If you’re ever a little bored, I would suggest you take a look at digital cable channel 231 (Corvallis/Albany area cable). This is ILIFE, The Inspirational Life Television Network. I often turn to this channel for inspiration....for my columns.
One of my favorite things on ILIFE is the commercials. As I turned to the channel today I was greeted with a commercial where a family was packing things up into a moving van. The narrator says “Things haven’t really changed much since the time of Noah.” WHAT?! Well, I guess this person must live in a deep dark cave somewhere near the Arctic Circle. Other commercials guilt you into donating to charities such as Roman Catholic Human Development Fund. I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds kind of scary to me. Is that where they grow Roman Catholics in petri dishes?
They have wonderful films from Bob Jones University (I kid you not!) that teach you how you are a sinner and only Jesus can show you the way. These are movies funded by the university and made by the Student Film Department. It only takes about a minute into the movie before they start talking about Jesus and the Lord. Is there any way to stop such evil?!
I recently watched In His Steps, a movie filmed in 1964. The film centers around two girls. I forget their names, we’ll just call them Mary and Sally. Mary is a true born again Christian who tells her mother that people like her aren’t real Christians. They need to be more like Mary who has truly given herself to Christ. In an attempt to be more Christ-like Mary becomes friends with Sally. Sally is your typical Atheist who considers herself a slut because she had premarital sex with Joe, her hooligan boyfriend. When Joe goes off to jail, Sally discovers Jesus and wants to be pure for Jesus. Problems arise when Joe gets out of jail. Sally goes to Mary for advice on what to do about Joe, who will surely start beating her for refusing to have sex. All Mary can tell her is “just say no”. Gee, I guess hiding her away from Joe was just to much for Mary to bother with. As expected, Joe kills Sally. Mary, who is upset about Sally’s death, suddenly understand why Sally had to die. Mary tells how God had Sally killed so Mary could understand the importance of following the Lord and living your life for Christ. Well, isn’t that nice — God killed Sally just to teach Mary a lesson. I’m not sure that’s the sort of God I’d want to follow.
That’s something that has always bothered me about many Christians. They always have to find meaning in everything. They can’t accept that sometimes things just happen. Sometimes the world does not revolve around them personally. I find it rather arrogant to think that God personally stepped in and killed another human being just so a lesson could be learned. Things don’t always have to happen “for a reason”. I think that’s why Atheists tend to be happier people — we can accept the world as it is.
Hello. My name is Angela Christine Byers (yes, my mother actually named me “Angel of Christ”), and I am an atheist.
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