Recently, in downtown Halifax, I've received a number of what are called 'tracts'. These tracts are basically church and christian organization calling cards with their bogus hell fire and brimstone rants coupled with the saving graces of Jesus.
Thankfully, at the bottom of each of the tracts (I've now received three different ones, all from different churches) is an e-mail to contact the church to let them know you have been saved. Well, I took a different approach.
I've now sent a letter to each of these churches, breaking down their 'arguments' and asking questions about some of their...incredibly ludicrous ideas.
The First Letter of Leclair to the Preachers of Christ in Halifax goes as such:
I recently received your ‘Are You Saved?’ tract and felt it necessary to contact you to let you know of the effect it had on me, however adverse from your initial intent. Before I begin, I want you to know that in spite of anything said in commentary of your piece, I am very interested in hearing back from you as I think this is a very important discussion to be had and both sides should certainly endeavour to engage in open discussion without feeling the need to hide behind billboards or a casual indifference. In case you haven’t your tract in front of you, I have provided it below before my commentary, for easy reference purposes.
The most important question you will ever answer in your life is, ARE YOU SAVED? I don’t
mean saved from drowning or saved from financial ruin. Have you been saved from your sins?
We are born sinners. Every time we lie or lust or take God’s name in vain, and every time we
commit sexual immorality or steal, we sin. Anger, greed, selfishness, and envy are all sins that
come so natural to us. Our sins will destroy our lives and when we die they will take us to Hell.
Despite our sins, God loves us and sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to pay the
penalty for our sins. You need to admit your guilt of sin and put your faith in the Lord Jesus to
be SAVED. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) There is
salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among me by which we
must be saved (Acts 4:12). Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).
Are you saved or lost?
To start, I need to know how we can possibly be saved if we are condemned from birth? Not only are we condemned from birth, but we are expected to sin the rest of our lives as well, apparently, else why would God have made it so incredibly easy for us to lie or steal or say ‘Jesus Christ’ in exclamation, or have sex in a way that apparently isn’t proper (which I would appreciate a definition for because I’m unsure quite what you mean by ‘sexual immorality’), get angry, get greedy, act self-interested, or envy someone’s life or belongings?
I know, beyond a doubt that every one person on the face of this planet currently, any one person to have ever been on the face of this plant and every one person yet to be on the face of this planet have, are or will be angry at some point in time; will be envious of someone else; will want for things that may not be crucial; will be concerned for themselves (which, by the way, this tract endorses by asking ‘Are you saved?’ - we needn’t work to save others anymore: we need focus on ourselves to accept Jesus so that we are saved, as individuals).
If our sins will destroy our lives and take us to Hell, then why would God, who loves us so much, give us sin and make it so readily available and enticing to us? If he truly loves everyone one of us and wishes to see us with him in Heaven, then I cannot fathom why he would force upon us the notion that we are born ill and then command us to become well in order to escape an eternity in Hell. I certainly was not born with sin as you so readily say. I hadn’t the critical faculties to sin, and nor did you, nor anyone else ever to have existed, so please, for the love of whatever you wish, do not make blanket statements of people you do not and perhaps will never know.
You may think me naïve for asking why God would be so seemingly evil in order to do us, apparently, such ultimate good, but I have never heard a satisfactory answer as to why so many children die of cancer, or why so many are killed in natural disasters, and why so many people carry out atrocities in the name of Yahweh or any other ‘god’ for that matter. I hope beyond hope that your answer is not that ‘God hates fags’ or ‘Soldiers deserve to die’, for I would hate to think that you could be so childish and ignorant and stupid. I will tell you the only answer that has helped me to understand this idea in any way: God, if he exists, is, as Richard Dawkins puts it:
“arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty,
unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic,
homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
I am most certainly interested to hear your defence for God’s so seemingly evil deeds.
And in spite of ‘our sins, God loves us and sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins.’ Need I go into how absolutely ludicrous this sounds? By ludicrous, I mean to say absolutely nonsensical and well over-bordering on farcical if not completely disgusting (for people take this as a truth and still wish to follow this perverted ‘god’).
Because God loves us (I want to get this argument correct), he sent his son Jesus to Earth in order to die for the sins he created in the first place? It sounds as though God was looking for some amusement on a relatively dreary celestial day and decided “I think I’m going to make a virgin have a child, which will be great fun in itself given what everyone will think of her, but then, (it gets better) I’m going to make that child my son and he’s going to go on telling everyone about me for about thirty three years before I have the Romans nail him to a cross.” I don’t know who he would have said these thoughts to…I suppose his angels, but it seems this is the way it must have happened out. God sent his only son to ‘pay the penalty for our sins’? What of those infants who die in childbirth? Or shortly after due to complications? They are sinners, correct? Jesus was put to death by his own father to pay the price for infant sinners? It seems I cannot quite explain just how absolutely, in every aspect, silly this is.
‘You need to admit your guilt of sin and put your faith in the Lord Jesus to be SAVED’. I NEED to? To be saved? And by saved you mean to: be taken to heaven to dwell (after all of the suffering ‘God’s’ put every living being in the universe through) in eternal worship? I’m not sure I would consider that being SAVED. Perhaps you could make me understand more clearly what you mean when you say: SAVED.
At the end of the tract you quote:
•(1 Timothy 1:15)
•(Acts 4:12)
•(Acts 16:31)
Which all seem to agree that Jesus is the only person who can save us…though, as I understood the
story, he did save us already when he died on the cross for us. So now, not only are we born ill and
commanded well, but we’ve already been saved, we just need to suffer a whole lifetime in order to be saved again because Jesus couldn't get it right the first time and apparently has to come back for us.
Then you end the entire thing with ‘Are you saved or lost?’. Well, presumably all of us are lost as no one of us can yet be saved because no one of us has ever been exempt from any sin and so either we can still sin and still be saved by Jesus or we are condemned to Hell because no human being can escape sin: especially since ‘God’ made it so easy and tempting for us. It’s incredible how dizzying the ‘logic’ to all of
this seems.
Again I want to state that I sincerely wish to engage in dialogue with you and hope that you respond to me in one form or another. I think it is very important for a discussion to be had about these issues as they are so fundamentally important to the continued existence and proliferation of our species and of civilization.
I dearly hope to hear from you soon.
Peace&Love
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