Editor's Note: The Christadelphian religion continues its descent into senility with this recent 'Letters to the Editor' which consumes over a page of the of The Christadelphian Magazine. As it is subject to copyright I have restricted our use of the original to extracted quotations, but I can assure you that the rest of the letter makes no more sense than what you can read here.
We Ex-Christadelphians were brought up being forced by our parents to listen to crap like this, week after week, sitting on hard wooden chairs, in cold draughty CD halls with threadbare carpets, listening to Bible readings telling us who "begat" whom, hearing public prayers decrying "the sinners of the Gentiles" who were our neighbours, singing two hundred year old hymns to the accompaniment of creaking pedal powered organs played by old ladies who could barely read music, listening to speakers who assured us that science was bunk; holding our noses against the stench of death that was all around us.
- And that was the young peoples' gatherings!!!!!!
WAKE UP intelligent Christadelphian young people. This is not a serious religion; it is a seniors' club. Run for your lives from these cantankerous old people seeking to pull you down to their pit of premature aging, depressive rambling and reminiscing. This is not how life is meant to be. Grasp the moment to free yourselves and make a success of your lives.
Escape the cruel fate that we Ex-Christadelphians suffered for so many long years before we finally fled the religion in disgust. Don't let them scar you like they damaged and scarred our lives and minds.
Looking back into the archives on this site, I found this. CD young people should read it. It is almost unbelievable. Flat Earthism all over again.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's a fun read...
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Jesus, but I think there's a fair chance that Paul, if he had had a chance, would have used the internet to try and advance his work. He was more the letter writer type, and more the "I need to keep track of believers in other places" type, so I'm sure would have used both email and video-conferencing.
The Mark of the Beast is like Gog & Magog - every generation figures out a way they apply to their generation, and none of them hold up to sensible analysis.
The letter writer would have been much better reading Douglas Adams than the Bible. This quote springs to mind:
“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies,
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
The letter writer is probably either unaware or doesn't care about how technology that they consider normal and everyday was condemned by previous generations of elders. But it's worth bearing in mind that, to "young people", the internet, and smartphones for that matter, are not "new technology" - they're just part of the way the world is. And a necessary part too. I'm just old enough to remember a world without them, but am well aware that there are many things I take for granted that are relatively recent innovations.
Interesting. I`m old enough to remember tv coming in. Most Cds thought it was the "work of the Devil" and wouldn`t have one. Easy to take that attitude if you can`t afford one. But they gradually changed their minds. I can remember that several CYC members, who were old enough to attend the Sunday evening lecture, myself included, were often invited back to a well-off brother`s house for supper and to watch a tv programme - in B&W, of course.
ReplyDeleteI remember in the mid seventies, one place we sometimes went for Youth Circle meetings on a Saturday night . . . this not-overly-staunch Christadelphian family (and, funnily, the less staunch the family the more we tended to enjoy a Saturday evening there) had a brand new Philips K9 COLOUR!!! tv in their lounge. We would have looked upon it with feelings of deep envy, except it was obviously only ever used as a flat surface to put magazines on, because the power cord was always ostentatiously unplugged, rolled neatly up and placed on top in full view!
DeleteMy CD relatives tend to be early adopters of new tech, in fact it seems looking at my local CD websites, they need to use the Internet to go to a meeting, since they are still using zoom. It could be that they have not updated the websites. The power in the Internet is in the access it gives to information. Even this month the Didache is quoted as a source to show CDs are like first century Christians https://www.biblefeed.org/podcast/life-in-a-1st-century-church/ but the Didache allows baptism by pouring. Any young CD could use the Internet for 5 mins an find out that CDs are wrong when they state the first century church only used immersion.
ReplyDeleteThe gist is that young people should perhaps be taught by example to avoid modern technology. The geezer is made uncomfortable by it, so he points to the need to "protect" young people from it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was excommunicated and ejected from my ecclesia, the turds pointed repeatedly to the need to protect the ecclesia's young people from bad examples. I'd married out of the church, and needed to be punished, despite the fact that others had done likewise and hadn't been expelled or excommunicated. I will admit, in some ways I'd predisposed myself to becoming a target, by expressing opinions about doctrine that other members hadn't liked.
In any event, in most contexts the excuse involving "young people" was and remains an entirely bogus one. The "young people" weren't remotely interested in such things, including who I did or didn't marry. And such thinking simply guarantees many CDs will go through life alone, since CD churches are generally tiny, and the fresh meat coming in the church doors in terms of converts is thin in supply.
Yep, "the young people" don't give a fig about such things as endogamous marriage, or church attendance, or conformity with "official" scriptural interpretations. They're usually sitting generating Alpha waves or planning their eventual departure from the prison called Christadelphianism.
As for myself, even as a young child, I thought, "This is all a massive crock of shit, delusion, rote, and brainwashing." Like a prisoner, I pretended to believe, because it was necessary to do so in order to lubricate my way toward adulthood and an eventual escape. I suspect this situation is what many of us went through. I was never a true believer. And some of the group's beliefs were too archaic and delusional and fantastical to subscribe to; you could only buy into them by virtue of erroneously subscribing to the entire fubar CD religious package.