My Easter message

For those in the Commonwealth, we are all familiar with the Queens Christmas message. Once a year the old bird gets on the telly and craps on about something completely irrelevant to your life, but you think maybe you should at least bother watching it as after all, she is the Queen. But then you go "Nah". I'm not even sure if she has an Easter message.

Well at the risk of this little queen being ignored in the same way, I have put together an Easter message darlings. Although it's not exactly the same brain dead anachronistic clichés of the big Queen. It's a bit confronting dearies. If you have a problem with a bit of religious criticism then please look away now.

I stumbled across this film today. I've never heard or seen of it before. I don't watch films online, as it's just such a thing to sit there for one and a half hours in front of the PC to do so. But I had the time today, and chose to watch this instead of boring Sat daytime telly. Honestly, it's only a matter of time before the internet takes over from broadcast telly for anyone like me who wants some sort of mental stimulation, instead of the mindless crap that gets served up on TV. So anyone with a spare one and a half hours, instead of sitting in front a a TV flicking through channels for 1 or 2 hours watching nothing at all really, how about watching this?

It's a movie from the early 70's, that goes into very great detail of this guy that was bought up in the Pentecostal churches in America's south. The Assemblies of God, which is pretty much the same church I was involved in for 3-4 years way back in the early 80's. I was with the United Pentecostal Church, which (wait for it) split from the Assemblies of God over doctrinal differences. The UPC was in fact even worse than what this film shows. The film takes the viewer on the last round of evangelical preaching of this guy before he leaves the church. He shows the fakery involved and the business of it all. But I also could very much relate to how he felt leaving it all, as even though I'd been in it for a comparatively short time leaving it was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. It's so sad at the end when he says he thinks he's "bad"; being the result of the church influence on him. It's the same thoughts I struggled with.

In reality good and evil are religious terms. Religion labelling what it does as either good or bad. We have now people who explore life and who they are sexually (or homosexually) labelled as bad by a misinterpreted 2,000 year old book. Good or bad depends on a list of ticks and crosses on a questionnaire, if you will. It has nothing to do with who we are or how we interact with everyone around us. A long list of does and don't s, and if you follow that you're "good". Never mind how you treat people.

Check it out:

former-fundamentalists