How Christianity Gossips And Exploits Other People's Real And Rumored Tragedies
In reply to that video, one commenter said
It’s from a sermon in 1865..
Page 23 https://lincoln.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/blake-001/ -- In reply, let's really set the record straight. He never said it. That SERMON claimed it. But if you dig a little deeper, you'll find out: That preacher lied. And he lied for the same reason apologists are repeating that lie today; no matter if those apologists realize it was a lie or not. Moving forward, it is a terrible disrespect to the memory of that poor broken soul to paint him that way; as a man who was NOT nearly so moved to faith by his own best or worst lived experiences (neither the birth nor death of his own son; for example). But that he was so moved by other people's lives and deaths.
Real life doesn't work that way.
The only way that could happen is if he felt crushed by guilt for sending all those men to their deaths in the Civil War.
But he never expressed any such thing.
Nor should he have. It was a necessary war. And every soldier chose it for themselves.
So there is no good reason to think his emotional response to a military cemetery suddenly (there and there) pushed into the mental escape of religion.
Nor would he be so secretive about it, if he had suddenly changed his mind about Christianity. Nor would it be a bragging point for Christianity to point out how ANYONE EVER converts as a mental escape for pains they can't process. Because that REASON has nothing to do whether or not the religion is true. In fact, it reveals the tip of a very nasty reality about their religious-culture, because: Their culture causes as much suffering as they can, in order to drive people INTO "the arms of Jesus". -The arms of Jesus meaning: A mental state where people can be controlled and exploited. This is the real reason why Christians don't respect it when people convert to some OTHER religion; either for that reason or for any other reason. But they want you impressed when people use that reason for converting to Christianity. It's hypocritical. But that hypocrisy has a very deliberate purpose. For them, it's all about whatever is happening in other people's lives ... that they can re-direct and re-purpose for their spiritual snake-oil grift. Now, don't get me wrong. I have compassion and understanding for ANYONE who EVER takes mental refuge in ANY story ... if it helps them endure and heal from extreme tragedy. But for someone ELSE (any observer or gossiper) to USE THAT as a way to promote their religion as true? Or to promote their religious narrative as the most proven-effective or ONLY-VALID story to take refuge in? Even the imagery that content creator decided to use was the imagery specific to conservative evangelical prayer rituals. Nobody else huddles into that specific form, to lay hands on the back of someone's head that way. They're trying to create a mental projection where Lincoln attended one of their churches and humbled himself among a new generation of Christian evangelicals. But that never happened. That flavor of church didn't exist yet. A very differently flavored version of protestant evangelizers existed. But Lincoln never went to a church-group to participate in any ritual prayer. Not even the lying preacher who gave that sermon ever went that far. This is not respectable. It's manipulative. It's ugly in the way it exploits other people's tragedies for their own pursuit of societal validation and cultural power. It's all part of a larger cultural phenomenon where Christians need for well-respected famous figures to have had either deathbed conversion or late-life conversion (to some version; any version; of Christianity), as a way to use those figures for P.R./Marketing, to help them gain leverage in a larger culture war. But since they want us to consider their religion, OK. Let's consider it. If any version of Christianity were true, there would be no need, nor really any opportunity, for apologetic arguments or outreach. It would be so obvious that the mere existence of that life-transforming truth would be common knowledge. There would only be one faction. And it would be internally harmonious. Science would also bear witness to the amazing statistically-proven benefits that exceed any other demographic, for health, happiness, domestic behaviors, and societal behaviors. Those people would have (by far) the lowest rates of disease, poverty, crime, etc. They'd live the longest. They'd have such a Steller and common reputation for the kind of people they are ... everyone would personally know and admire the Christians they know. - And with some greater impression than people from any other walk of life. History wouldn't be chalked full of atrocities in their "God's" name. They wouldn't need to resort to fallacies like Whataboutism or "No True Scotsmen" to avoid owning the bloodstains. Holy Wars, inquisitions, witch burning, heresy trials, church-groups serial-killing rival church-groups, the Jewish holocaust, Manifest Destiny, slave trading, the systematic suppression of scientific advances regarding Mental Health sciences, oppression of women and minorities, racism, the wanton destruction of other cultures, as Christian colonizers spread across the globe as a deadly religious plague, the destructive demonization of human sexuality, the demonization of literally EVERYONE who thinks, speaks, lives, or loves in violation of Christianity's "totally not rules", systematic psychological and physical child abuse, taught as "what The Lord Commands", Catholic AND Protestant organizations organizing themselves into global child-sex trafficking rings, etc etc etc etc etc, motherfucking etcetera. It also wouldn't have taken them thousands of years to figure out that slavery wrong. They also wouldn't be culturally-birthing and hosting thousands upon thousands of rival apologists. Those apologists are all clamoring to climb to the top of Christianity's influencers, just to compete over which fallible humans get to TELL US what anything in their book "really means" ("don't listen to those OTHER apologists"). Although, at least they all agree on a few things; like: Their "holy book" really doesn't speak for itself. And people obviously can't rely on a holy ghost nor some prayerful methodology to set the record straight about any of it. So we need rando dudes on the internet to let us know what to think and how to live.
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