The Anti-Tract

So, the story of the Anti-tract began last Friday.  Cheyenne and I were at the Post Office and there was an old couple in the parking lot handing out New Testaments.  I don't know exactly why I went over to them boredom, curiosity, something like that.  They were very nice and I didn't feel the need to explain all of the ways that I think that they are wrong or to push my junk on them at all.  The Gospel can save people who don't get it.  Just look at me.

So, on the ride home I am looking through the Bible and it has various information that fits under the category of "What must I do to be saved".  The main one is this fine tract put out by Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.  I want to emphasize that there is a lot of good in this little tract and especially in the nice people who gave it to me, but it inspired me in my own sick little way.  And the result is my creation of the Anti-tract.  Below is presented the tract with my suggested alterations in the appropriate places.  The first half of it needs no edit and so I have suggested none.

Our Response: Despise Christ

We hate and have hated Christ all of our lives.  After 25 years of being a Christian I still find new things to be pissed off at him about every day-especially Sunday.  I don't trust Him, because to be honest the things He does seem completely crazy.  Do I want to invite Him into my life?  Obviously not, He is unimaginably dangerous- a huge threat to everything I want.

What if I don't receive Jesus Christ right now, or ever?  Is the Gospel good enough and powerful enough to save a completely unrepentant jackass?

  Any day of the week - and twice on Sundays, often enough - we will labor with might and main to take the only thing that can save anyone and reduce it to a set of theological club rules designed to exclude almost everyone. -Robert Capon Kingdom, Grace, Judgment

1. When I admit my need it is really a load of bull.  I say I am a sinner because I think saying it will get me something I want or keep me from something I don't want.  But truth be told, I still think I am right.  I still think my way is gonna work out if I just try it one more time.

2. I am not willing to turn from my sins.  I like my sins.  Hell, I love them.

3. I have tried to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead.  But I have a better chance of convincing myself I can fly.  If there is one thing I am dead certain of in my heart it is that dead men don't rise.  I am tired of trying to believe something that makes no sense at all.

4. I do not want Jesus Christ to come in my life and control anything.  I don't want anybody to control me.  I don't even want to control myself.

5. Chill out with all of this salvation crud.  Jesus has got it all covered.  He isn't waiting on you to finish His work with a decision or anything else.  He already finished it.  Nothing you can add, nothing you can take away, nothing you can screw up.

In the Bible, as a matter of fact, God does so many ungodly things - like not remembering our sins, erasing the quite correct handwriting against us, and becoming sin for us - that the only safe course is to come to Scripture with as few stipulations as possible. God used his own style manual, not ours, in the promulgation of his Word. -Robert Capon Kingdom, Grace, Judgment

How to Pray:

Jesus, I don't think I am a sinner, and I don't really care if what I do upsets you, because that doesn't really affect me.  I would like to believe that you rose from the dead, but that seems like kind of a pipe dream.  I have tried all of this salvation stuff before and it didn't work.  The only thing that has changed is that I am sick of trying and sick of pretending.  I am never gonna change.  I may hate my life, but changing doesn't interest me at all.  I want to trust you but we are so much different that I don't think that that will ever happen.  But if your Gospel means anything at all, it means that none of that matters.  Your plan isn't about saving people that want to be saved, but saving people who really don't care at all.  You deliberately picked fights with all of the religious people and spent your time with drunks and hookers.  Your best friends weren't any better than me and yet you set them up on twelve thrones right below the throne of God Himself.  They didn't do any of this crap.  I am never gonna do any of the stuff you want me to.  Have you really done it all for me?  Can the Gospel be that good?  If it isn't then I have no hope at all, cause I am never gonna change.  It isn't that we want to go to Heaven and you are standing there to see if we measure up.  The truth is that we have zero interest in Heaven and you drag us there kicking and screaming, because you love us with a depth and passion that I don't get at all.  I have lost all hope.  There is nothing that I can do.  My only hope is that the world is as crazy as you.  I think I am right, but I really, really want to be wrong.  I want dead men to rise, I want your plan to not be the same old shit that everything else is, I want a Gospel that will save me just like I am.

The law of relationship between us humans and God is as follows: Major Premise: There is an infinite, radical, qualitative difference between God and humans. This means that we can achieve absolutely nothing; it is God who gives everything. It is he who brings forth a person’s faith, and so forth. This is grace, and this is Christianity’s major premise. Minor Premise: Although we can merit nothing, unconditionally nothing, we can, in faith, dare in all childlikeness to be involved with God. If the major premise is everything, then God becomes so infinitely great that there can be no relationship between God and the individual human being. The life of the single individual never gets off the ground. It can be fraud to elevate God so high. The difficulty is to have an infinite conception of God’s majesty and of Christ’s glory and then the childlike openness to become involved with them in your own personal life in a wholly childlike way. -S. Kierkegaard

God's Assurance: His Word

Even if you didn't pray this prayer, or you prayed it and it was bullshit, the Bible says...

"You have been given a gift that changes everything.  It has nothing to do with anything you do or don't do.  There is nothing you can do to get it and nothing you can do to lose it.  It is like that so that we all have to shut up and stop acting like we are something we aren't, [especially the religious jerks]." Ephesians 2:8-9  King Jon Bible -bracketed section doesn't appear in some manuscripts

To become an awesome Christian like me you should:

1. Fall asleep on the rare occasion that you actually read your Bible.
2. Only pray when you are pissed off at God and want to let Him know what you really think.
3. Be too much of a wuss to ever say anything about Jesus.
4. Hate church.  You should be kicked out of at least three or four.  Tell all the religious people how lame they are.  I should add to that generally be a smart mouth jerk who doesn't care about anybody else, especially their feelings.
5. Demonstrate your complete apathy and dislike of everyone around you.
6. Exist in a universe ruled by a God who saves people just like you and just like me, a God who smashed His own awesome Law and with it everything else that we could ever fail at, just because it wasn't on our side, who threw all the rules out the window and set us unbelievably free.


We shall have gone deeper than the deeps of heaven and grown older than the oldest angels before we feel, even in its first faint vibrations, the everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hates and loves the world. -G.K. Chesterton Manalive


 When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to preach. Among “Christian nations,” however, the situation is different. What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious illusion, the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians. So if in this situation Christianity is to be introduced, first of all the illusion must be debunked. But since this vain conceit, this illusion, is to the effect that we are all Christians, it looks indeed as if introducing Christianity amounts to taking Christianity away. Nevertheless this is precisely what must be done, for the illusion must go. -S. Kierkegaard

 


But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise! -George Macdonald Lilith