Quick! What do the following kinds of people have in common?
- Rebel
- Hypocrite
- Masturbator
- Atheist
- Slave
- Diva
- Fornicator
- Porn Addict
- Homosexual
Answer below the fold.
The answer is: they are all bad. If you fit into any of these categories, you should recognize your shortcomings and change.
At least, that’s what I learned from P4CM.com, website of the Passion for Christ Movement. (Via, and also.) And once you successfully have overcome your shortcomings, let the world know with these snazzy T-shirts!
Stylin’. I’m sure the kids at your high school will respect the strength of will you have demonstrated in announcing your lifestyle change through bold fashion choices. And the mental imagery will be completely welcome!
Still, there are some mixed messages here. Given the nature of the organization, we shouldn’t be surprised that “Atheist” and “Homosexual” and “Masturbator” are condemned as bad. And “Slave” isn’t something anyone wants to be, that’s for sure. But apparently you don’t want to be a “Rebel,” either. “Obey — but not too slavishly.” All of this while avoiding being a “Diva” or a “Hypocrite”! Man, religion is hard.
Ex-homosexual? Appalling! Way to go, dear Passion for Christ Movement! Stuff them back in the closet! Way to go!
May God help them when we invent chem geld. On the other hand this might diminish their numbers.
I guess you have to hand it to the people who wear the ex-masturbator shirts. Since obviously they can’t hand it to themselves.
These are the type of people who want to put me (and most everybody else) in jail or a mental institution, with THEM as the keepers. Everytime anyone is caught slammin it, a finger is cutoff: 10 amputations later, they are put to death by the state for incurable perversion.
Just cuz politically things seem to have gotten mellower, people: BEWARE. Wacko’s like this are out there, in abundance, hiding behind the guise of religon, like the hypocrites they are, playing pocket-pool under their cassocks.
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Quick! someone start making Ex-ex-maturbator shirts for after Lent.
I fit into 4 of those categories lol. Guess Christ just isn’t for me.
Ollie- right on dude. But then you get into a paradoxical situation which basically leads to their religion.
“Ex- Fornicator”, that’s just funny
If theocracy comes to the USA, then this is the list of those who will be sent to “re-education camps”.
If they’re going to be unctuosly self-righteous, they should at least get the terminology right. With addiction, you’re never “ex”, just “recovering”. Although “recovering masturbator” may imply you’re just in down time right now…
Sean,
Why the hatred? This seems petty on your part. You know, I’d love to see posts marginalizing Atheists at the other end of the spectrum as well, but I suspect we’d never get that from you. Quacks at either end don’t give people honest impressions.
Joe, there’s no hatred here, only mockery. I’m happy to engage seriously with thoughtful people with whom I disagree, but these people are just silly, and there’s nothing wrong with making fun of them. I wouldn’t bother, if the attitudes they promote were marginalized and irrelevant to the society in which we live. But that’s far from the case. Just ask anyone in California whose marriage was recently declared illegitimate by popular referendum.
The reall kicker here is, that in the history of the world there has never been a bigger hypocrite then religion! I think that they should make the pope were an ex-hypocrite shirt. Although that would be a lie…
At a minimum, I’d say your mockery sounds a bit intolerant and is quite one-sided in that you ignore silliness on the other side—and yes, the other side does exist and also promotes ideals which are relevant to the society in which we live.
I’m sure you feel your position is justifiable, but there is something to be said about the manner in which you take these issues on. I, and I suspect many others, are much more persuaded by a serious argument against a particular set of beliefs (and you have made such arguments in the past) than I am by an argument made in mockery of another group and its beliefs.
It is just plain mean-spirited, and as I hinted before, you are bringing more attention to a group which most Christians would probably think to be silly as well. In doing so, you also give a false impression that this is “typical” and, perhaps indirectly, it disingenuously discredits “less silly” groups by making people think of that all religious people are just like the silly group you just made fun of in this post.
I’m just saying that this seems below you.
I want to get one of those shirts, carefully eradicate the “Ex-” part, and wear it around town: The grocery store, church, McDonald’s. Actually, I think I’ll wear it when I go to apply for a home loan. Or to a job interview at a nursery school.
Joe– Come back after the U.S. has legalized same-sex marriages, abortion rights are secure, and “intelligent design” and “abstinence-only education” have been consigned to the dustbin of history. I’ll be a lot more sympathetic.
I’m an atheist. P4CM hates me.
…
YESSSSSSS!!!!
So let’s see… no fornicating, no masturbating, no rebelling, no thinking for yourself and clearly in “Joe’s” case, no sense of humor! Nice.
Sean,
I’ll +1 you on removing intelligent design and abstinence-only education, but your view on same-sex marriages and abortion rights are very debatable…so have some sympathy. There is more than one solution to those problems.
And either way, I’m not sure how what you wrote now directly relates to the website you linked to. I only browsed the site, but I don’t think that they were advocating any legal/policy viewpoints. Its certainly possible that the authors or people subscribing to similar views believe that such legal action is good, but the site itself is speaking strictly to moral issues. I’m tempted to say ”strawman”.
having been young and idealistic once, i can relate to the mindset behind this website. it is indeed a willing slavery of oneself to an idealistic goal. it’s a narcissistic dream of purity amid a messy world. it is a damaging abdication of responsibility for one’s own choices and wellbeing in service to a misguided ideal. I think some studies have shown that church youth groups operate as sibling structures and keep their members in social immaturity. i say experience life, it is a gift. don’t stay in the church cocoon or you’ll never fly.
i do believe in God, but he is not a control freak or obsessed with every little mistake people make. i believe in a certain level of sexual morality but this is grotesque and cult-like behaviour.
Jesus always ripped the pharisees. He proclaimed a “higher” law that superseded the OT rules and regulations — a law written on the human heart. It’s why they killed him! This message is suppressed in communist regimes because it promotes independent thought. It’s also strangely overlooked by many churches because the people are like sheep who WANT laws to make them feel safe so they don’t have to think.
This blog on cognition, culture, and computer programming identifies two modes of thinking that I see in Christian circles; “Mapping” is akin to the visionary, reflective stream of christian thought; “Packing” is a lower-order level of simple procedure-based thinking.
Packers have a whole proceduralised culture that provides behavioural tramlines for just about everything. It’s so complete you don’t even notice it until you solve a problem perfectly effectively one day, by a method that’s not on the list. It might be trivial.. Mappers hardly ever get the upper hand on these cultural issues, but when it does happen it can be hilarious. A packer gave a dinner party and it so happened that over half of the guests were mapper types, IT workers and others. The host pulled a pile of warm plates from the oven, and started handing them to the guy on his left.”Just pass them around!”, he cried cheerfully. Everything went well until he realised he needed to shout “Stop!” [everyone was just passing plates around randomly in an endless loop!] Mappers don’t have a general cultural context to learn from, so we are almost entirely self taught.
I’m happy to say making fun of this isn’t beneath me.
Anyway, what boggles my mind even harder is the apparently unwitting self-abasement. Is this really supposed to be persuasive? A big happy grin and…THAT on your shirt? Everybody wanks but we still make fun of it. It can’t be helped. Even the most permissive will not, at a gathering of close friends, declare they had a wonderful toss last weekend. There’s something intrinsically embarrassing about self-gratification that defies all appeals to high-minded tolerance and promotion of sexual health. I should think that the natural approach to the subject, if it also brought grief to one’s conscience, is to simply refrain from discussing the act altogether. Ex-virtually anything else might get some kind of high-five from somebody for choosing to abstain, but “Ex-Masturbator” is just pathetic. I want to crawl in a hole and die just looking at these poor kids, it’s so humiliating. What on Earth were these people thinking?
I want a T-shirt that says “Lapsed Ex-masturbator”.
Low Math, Meekly Interacting Says:
‘I’m happy to say making fun of this isn’t beneath me.’
—
I should clarify: I don’t object to making fun of this, per se. I mean, yes…it can be and is quite funny to a number of people. What I object to is making fun of this in order to advance a political point—and that is exactly what Sean did. I think the difference is paramount.
I still wonder about this site though…its remind me of:
http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/
One could also ask…what were these people thinking?
Joe,
why do you expect other people to behave what you think of them to do? To me Sean is just a collection of what he said and what he did. I just adjust my opinion of him flexibly whenever I read his blogs and papers. But you are asking him to say what you might think of him to say. What’s the point?
Just tell us what you think of these pathetic people, not of what others should do or think.
I claim a perfect score.