Of all the events on the Christian calendar, there is not one so repulsive, so anti-life and so altruistic as Lent.
Lent is a 40 day celebration of suffering. While originally it was a period of religious fasting, today its participants tend to just give something up that they like - but the principle is the same.
Christianity, like all altruistic codes, is riddled with a love of suffering. The good, they will preach, is to harm yourself so that others may benefit. The belief that the pleasure of one man necessitates the pain of another leads Christians to believe it is good to go without, so that others can go with. Note how Christ, the figurehead of Christianity, is said to have died and suffered not for his own vices - but for the sins of everybody else!
Accordingly, on Lent they will find something that they enjoy, and stop enjoying it! Let's use a popular example, chocolate. They enjoy chocolate, they can (presumably) afford chocolate (both in financial and medical terms) - yet they choose to stop buying it. Subsequently, they experience less of what they like and the people they buy it from make less money - yet somehow this is good. Suffering in order to remember voluntary suffering is similar to making others suffer to remember torture. Suffering is a bad thing, any desire to make more of it is irrational, anti-man and altruistic.
I shall be indulging myself over Lent. I will produce more, make more money, work harder and enjoy myself more. Subsequently I will be a happier person, and the people I trade with will be more prosperous too: then after 40 days I can laugh at the first Christian who foolishly claims he has been more moral than me.
Lent is a 40 day celebration of suffering. While originally it was a period of religious fasting, today its participants tend to just give something up that they like - but the principle is the same.
Christianity, like all altruistic codes, is riddled with a love of suffering. The good, they will preach, is to harm yourself so that others may benefit. The belief that the pleasure of one man necessitates the pain of another leads Christians to believe it is good to go without, so that others can go with. Note how Christ, the figurehead of Christianity, is said to have died and suffered not for his own vices - but for the sins of everybody else!
Accordingly, on Lent they will find something that they enjoy, and stop enjoying it! Let's use a popular example, chocolate. They enjoy chocolate, they can (presumably) afford chocolate (both in financial and medical terms) - yet they choose to stop buying it. Subsequently, they experience less of what they like and the people they buy it from make less money - yet somehow this is good. Suffering in order to remember voluntary suffering is similar to making others suffer to remember torture. Suffering is a bad thing, any desire to make more of it is irrational, anti-man and altruistic.
I shall be indulging myself over Lent. I will produce more, make more money, work harder and enjoy myself more. Subsequently I will be a happier person, and the people I trade with will be more prosperous too: then after 40 days I can laugh at the first Christian who foolishly claims he has been more moral than me.
3 comments:
It's sort of like those silly 24 hour fasts that church youth groups sometimes do. I guess it was supposed to make us more humble, lol.
I gave up suffering for lent. Suffering hangovers that is.
Yes, I gave up alcohol [and also chips, but only as a group thing in an attempt to be more creative with potatoes]. I wouldn't say I'm suffering, as a nice J20 tastes awesome and costs the same pretty much as anything I'd have with alcohol [in some cases cheaper]. Although I am missing chips and cheese a little.
That said, anyone who knows me knows I'm not doing this for religious reasons.
Also, I think the whole "Jesus died for our sins" thing is a total cop out. I read something somewhere that basically said that if you're feeling guilty, the only way to rid yourself of that guilt is to become one with Jesus and accept that he died for all the sins you have committed and all the sins you will commit. That the ultimate punishment is death, and that Jesus was the only one who could remove our sins because he had no sins of his own. Blah blah blah.
So you feel guilty about something, so you think, "oh, but Jesus died for me." What if you then start feeling guilty that an innocent dude died because of your sins? Easy they say, you become one with him, your sins are his sins, he dies, and removes you guilt debt or whatever...
O.o Total cop out.
If you gave up alcohol for lent, and enjoyed giving it up, then you sort of didn't take part in lent.
The idea is that you make a personal sacrifice (IE: Do something that makes your life worse!)
Because suffering is the standard of value according to the Christian church.
Mother Theresa celebrated the pain of her 'patients' in the Home for the Dying, Calcutta (Watch Penn & teller's "Bullshit!" episode about her).
The church is full of contradictions, and evil.
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