A man literally ripped his eyes out in church

this stuff is common?

idk people just want to make a statement i guess, to themselves and/or others

tho, he might have just done it for the lulz
 
niffer said:
this stuff is common?
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It isn't common for people to rip their eyes out in church, but it is common for religious people to hurt themselves. A lot of people love 'Fasting' for their religion- some of them starve themselves for days because they believe that when the physical body weakens, then the spirit grows stronger.

Also, people kill themselves for god all the time, just look at the war. Suicide bombings, really?

I don't understand how this is how god shows his love.

If god exists, I would imagine that he would be all loving.
 
First of all, 'hearing voices' =/= having a religious experience / stigmata, for one thing he could be haunted by the Devil or something. >_>;
Or schizophrenia.

I think we also have to establish what is 'hurting' and what is 'sacrifice'. What might be hurt for me and you might not be hurt for them. By virtue of repetition, or by virtue of sheer willpower.... what viewed as pain may soon becoming daily annoyance. This happened in the case of fasting, mostly. Starving sounds bad but in one way of looking, it's a way of resisting temptation, both physically and emotionally. (IDEALLY.)

This is not, how God shows His love. This is how humans shows their love to God. Which probably tells something about the human then it is about the God.

About sacrifices, I admit that's kind of stupid, but in sociohistorical context, those make sense. Of course, to do it now would be conflicting with a lot of modern morality, so..yeaaaaah.
 
Trifoilum said:
This is not, how God shows His love. This is how humans shows their love to God. Which probably tells something about the human then it is about the God
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So, in other words, it's just peachy for people to starve themselves as long as it's for god? Why not show your love for god by doing good things like helping people or cleaning up the community? That's the way I would personally show my love- for humanity...
 
Spiritual Leo said:
So, in other words, it's just peachy for people to starve themselves as long as it's for god? Why not show your love for god by doing good things like helping people or cleaning up the community? That's the way I would personally show my love- for humanity...
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Some people express their love in a different way. It's all good, yours or theirs, just; well, apples and oranges. Each has its own aspects, and the difference may be seen as positive and negative. The people I described are both training 'good' characters (perseverance, resistance towards temptation) -for- God, and expressing

Of course, you were also right. To merely fast themselves without doing any good is NATO.

Think of it a bit like love between humans, only beyond that.
The above case (fasting without helping humanity) is like a sex-based relationship without intimacy or understanding or compassion. It's not a good relationship, even if some people would say 'it's a working relationship! We're doing fine!' RIGHT.
And even then the nature of 'love' itself varies, right? some people like to be supported, others like to be taught, another like to be restricted. Not the nature of love, but..the manifestation.
Some people like vanilla, others like all the kinkiness human has to offer. Of course, there's a line over there -SOMEWHERE-, but it's not exactly black and white too, no?

God(s/esses)'s love is One and Singular but facetious, thus humans take it in billions of shapes, as much as that One love has facets. And thus they give it according to what they know and have.
 
niffer said:
this stuff is common?

idk people just want to make a statement i guess, to themselves and/or others

tho, he might have just done it for the lulz
Click to expand...

We all just do it for the lulz, is there any ther point to do it?
 
Plenty of Atheists I know hurt themselves, so self harm isn't exactly restricted to belief or lack of beliefs.
I believe what happened here is that the poor guy took the scripture out of context and really it should of been the responsibility of the preacher to explain the meaning of it right at the opening of the message.

This is the danger of taking scripture literally rather than metaphorically and its a serious problem, right from Genesis to Revelations.

Now this is very important that the OP realizes this - Not all religions or faiths are the same, they differ from person to person as according to their interpretation and understanding of whatever scripture they choose to believe in.

When Jesus said what he said in Matthew 5:29, if you read it in context (which is always wisest thing to do before speculating over it) Jesus was talking about lust which was a segment of his sermon 'The sermon on the mount'. Jesus used a deliberate overstatement (on purpose) to emphasize the importance of maintaining exclusive devotion to one's spouse, which in Matthew 5:31 he further explains with his segment on divorce. Adultery at the time was considered a serious offense (7th law of the 10 commandments), sexual lust towards another other rather than your spouse was considered in Jesus's eyes to be equally just as morally wrong. In those days, the people listening to this would of interpreted as this 'Cover your eyes, walk away, confess and repent'. Should of Jesus said that instead? Not if the crowd understood what he was talking about, people back in those days recognized figurative speech when they heard it, poetry and philosophy played a large part in the Jewish community. However, it is our responsibility as Christians to study the scripture and equally just as importantly; the meaning and history behind it.

We must also note that the people of the day where living in a theocracy up until the death (and resurrection) of Jesus Christ when the new covenant was established.
 
Priest Lorenzo Tanganelli, who continued his service after the horror, said: "I've never seen so much blood."

Why not continue the service, like it's not completely inappropriate as a guy just ripped his eyeballs from his head. Seriously, continued the service? FFS you'd think the priest would would have got the message that his masses were shit, if someone decided to rip his eyeballs out!!!

But then, this is Christianity, so everythingwentbetterthanexpected.jpeg
 
Matariki said:
Does anyone actually bother reading the bible these days before coming up conclusions that are completely out of context with the messages in it?
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To be honest, not any more, I burned all my bibles. But I found most Christians ( in the pentecostal church ) are to lazy to read their bible and that they rely on their pastors interpretation and just follow what he says, oh but they do highlight their bibles passages so that they can look cool in church and pretend they are " walking closer to god "

The number of times I got into trouble when questioning my pastors authority, when biblically, he is just as accountable to God as I was, even more so if he decided to enter in to a Pastoral role.

I remember one time, my pastor went n a nice holiday to a Mediterranean country to " pray " he came back with a " lesson " about how the gecko was like a Christian. I was like WTF have you been jacking Heroin?

But I digress, so I apologise.
 
Isnt The Sun a tabloid?
 
Obviously he was mentally ill. Aside from that, however:

Everything everyone does is for two reasons:
1) to gain pleasure
2) to avoid pain

Certain aspects of religion compound negative feelings such as shame, fear of damnation, guilt, insecurity, alienation, distrust of others, etc. When these feelings are intense enough, people will often try to assuage them by engaging in equally intense --but "spiritually opposite"-- rituals or behavior that fit within the framework of their religion. Thus, people self flagellating or atoning in an acute enough way that they feel the results of their penance offset the consesequences of their 'bad' behavior.

A milder version of this is reciting the "Hail Mary" and/or "Our Father" prayer often found in Catholicism. Among other reasons for it, it's supposed to make up for sins and wrongdoing.
 
Korg said:
Obviously he was mentally ill. Aside from that, however:

Everything everyone does is for two reasons:
1) to gain pleasure
2) to avoid pain

Certain aspects of religion compound negative feelings such as shame, fear of damnation, guilt, insecurity, alienation, distrust of others, etc. When these feelings are intense enough, people will often try to assuage them by engaging in equally intense --but "spiritually opposite"-- rituals or behavior that fit within the framework of their religion. Thus, people self flagellating or atoning in an acute enough way that they feel the results of their penance offset the consesequences of their 'bad' behavior.

A milder version of this is reciting the "Hail Mary" and/or "Our Father" prayer often found in Catholicism. Among other reasons for it, it's supposed to make up for sins and wrongdoing.
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Yeah, this too. At least looking from outside the faith itself.

And some dose of cognitive dissonance, sometimes.

And the sermons continues...? WUT.
...............................

...............now I question the sanity of the rest of the people there. >_>;
 
AnimeGirl2501 said:
To be honest, not any more, I burned all my bibles. But I found most Christians ( in the pentecostal church ) are to lazy to read their bible and that they rely on their pastors interpretation and just follow what he says, oh but they do highlight their bibles passages so that they can look cool in church and pretend they are " walking closer to god "

The number of times I got into trouble when questioning my pastors authority, when biblically, he is just as accountable to God as I was, even more so if he decided to enter in to a Pastoral role.

I remember one time, my pastor went n a nice holiday to a Mediterranean country to " pray " he came back with a " lesson " about how the gecko was like a Christian. I was like WTF have you been jacking Heroin?

But I digress, so I apologise.
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The pentecostal church eh? Yes I can sympathize with what you've been through, I have had my run in's with them in the past. Although not all of them are crazy but they do have a tendency to lean towards anti-intellectualism. Funny that considering the first commandment is 'love the lord with all your heart, soul and mind'. Neglecting the pursuit of spiritual knowlegde, discernment and reasoning would be disobedience to this commandment.
 
Matariki said:
What can I say? Some people really do check out intellectually.
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I do not hate Christians, I genuinely don't, but 10 years of being in a pentecostal church and being brainwashed to the enth degree has made me extremely suspicious and extremely emotionally damaged by them, to be honest I can't see a way of ever trusting a person who claims to be a Christian, my experience of them is quite vile and bigoted, that covers CoE and Roman Catholics too. Other denominations I have no experience of, but as son as someone says " I'm a Christian " my mind goes into " for fucks sake, here we go " mode.

I mean even in the face of factual scientific evidence, the will not acknowledge it. That sect did some really demeaning things to me and publicly embarrassed me on a few occasions, horrible,horrible memories.
 
AnimeGirl2501 said:
I do not hate Christians, I genuinely don't, but 10 years of being in a pentecostal church and being brainwashed to the enth degree has made me extremely suspicious and extremely emotionally damaged by them, to be honest I can't see a way of ever trusting a person who claims to be a Christian, my experience of them is quite vile and bigoted, that covers CoE and Roman Catholics too. Other denominations I have no experience of, but as son as someone says " I'm a Christian " my mind goes into " for fucks sake, here we go " mode.

I mean even in the face of factual scientific evidence, the will not acknowledge it. That sect did some really demeaning things to me and publicly embarrassed me on a few occasions, horrible,horrible memories.
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You have my sympathies, and prehaps your time to discover and delve into the truth of the matter hasn't come yet (or in short, what the bible actually has to say and no you don't have to be a Christian to read and get a basic understanding of it either). Emotional scarring can be an extremely difficult mental roadblock to bypass. I can't think of anyone that hasn't gone through it (or at least those that I've meet).

I learnt at a very young age to discern the difference between mans interpretation of the bible from God's actual word, and decided to build my faith upon logic rather than emotional whims (or blind faith). I hasn't been easy, especially with what I've witnessed and been through in my personal life. However I believe if you are going to believe in something (or disbelieve for that matter) it has to be on the basis of evidence and reasoning otherwise you are merely digging yourself an even deeper emotional pit than the one you are already in.

To be honest, I'm more weary around those that profess to be Christian over those that don't, usually because most of the Christians I meet are modern evangelists who live by half truths (the world is 5000 years old, evolution isn't real, the bible should be read literally etc.) and because being a Christian is the hip thing to do (thanks to Rob Bell and his glasses) simply because everyone else is doing it, or it feels good (never mind whether or not it makes sense). I've been there and done that and the truth is that none of it holds water in the reality. In my book, that is what I would consider to be the 'God delusion' (although Dawkins misses the point completely by throwing everyone under the 'blind faith' umbrella).

We did go a bit off topic from the OP's original post and issues raised in it, if you want to talk flick me a PM, I would be more than happy to talk one on one.
 
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