My search for a shameless gospel started here. One of the first things I did after this event was to critically look at my preconceptions. To get clear on what it was about the gospel as I understood it that I found shameful. I had given up the assumption that I already knew what the Christian words were supposed to mean. I asked Christian after Christian what the gospel was. The replies were leverage words, that is words that leverage a much greater store of meaning than they actually in themselves mean. This just failed to work for me since, as I just said, I had given up pretending that I already knew what the words were supposed to mean. I eventually pieced something together, and wouldn't you know it, it pretty much sucked.
This is the popular gospel stripped to it's structure removed of its pretensions and semi-theological doublespeak. This is what it sounds like to someone doesn't already know what the Christianese is supposed to mean.
God is good and he loves us and he is really bummed that he is stuck with torturing most of humanity for all eternity in hell (unless we are of a more divinely deterministic mindset, in which case God is totally all right with torture and in fact planed it that way so that he could see how cool he was.)
However, fortunately for some of us he tortured Jesus, who is his own son, to death so that he could have the company of at least the few of us who get off the hook for hell by doing the mental gymnastics of believing this story.
Now those of us who believe this stuff need to hold out till we die, trying not to disappoint God so much that he kicks us back onto the hell hook, so that we can eventually hang out with him for ever and ever.
If you believe something like this, don't worry, the truth is so much better.
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