It kind of jives with this discussion from before, but more than that, I wanted to contribute a passage that I recently came across from a sardonic travel writer who ventured into the Holy Land Experience theme park in Florida. Regarding a born-again’s story of personal salvation, the author muses:
Born-again Christianity is by far the most convincing argument we have attesting to the wicked power of drugs and alcohol. Talk to a few fake-Christians and it becomes obvious that liquor, coke, and smack are but mere gateways to the hard stuff of megachurch depravity…
… Paul pukes out the familiar convert yawner of a dissolute former existence under the spell of booze, drugs, pornography, loose women… eventually, of course, he hit rock bottom, whereupon God took him by the hand and showed him the Way…
… “Guys like you are the most self-centered conversationalists of all time,” I say, as cordially as possible. “You’re a fraud who knows nothing of Christian doctrine.”
“I never brought up doctrine,” Paul whines. “You don’t have to go to church or observe a bunch of rules to be a Christian. You just have to let God into your heart…”
… During the entire three and a half hours I’ve been in the park, not one performer, attraction or preacher has mentioned anything about traditional Christian values… what [they] do talk about—exclusively, is themselves. Their story. Their relationship with God… as though nothing else is required of the believer beyond a singular devotion to the self and an imagined connection to Greatness.
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