It helps me from time to time to sit back and laugh at the hilarity and stupidity of what I thought to be true.
Imagine trying to explain this truth to an alien who visited earth:
There once was a woman who was tricked by a talking snake and ate an apple. God got ticked off and made them die slow painful deaths. He made all their offspring die slow, painful deaths, too. Suddenly animals started fearing humans and also started eating each other. suddenly, poof! There was bacteria, viruses and cancer.
God completely alienated himself from humans and allowed them time to prove they can rule by themselves. Mankind built a huge modern civilization and then God knocked it down. Humans spoke one language which helped them to get organized, so God confuses them and scatters them with many languages. Super intelligent demons came down and started to dominate man, so God made humans pay by unleashing a flood to kill almost all of them and their children and their babies.(oh, but the bad angels escape - like that's fair or anything). Miraculously, kangaroos and koalas made it all the way from turkey to Australia without dying of hunger (must have been secret stashes of Eucalyptus along the way). Despite a global flood (as Jesus himself stated) glaciers were uninterrupted, 5,000 year-old Bristlecone pines were unaffected, and the then thriving Egyptian empire seemed to take no notice. Shame on them. But don't worry, the Egyptians would pay for their obliviousness later when all of their first born children were massacred by the loving Hebrew God.
At this point, the flood washes away, and only the righteous survived right? God had proved his point: we need him. But no wait. God lets mankind get all clusterflucked again. Again civilizations are built from the blood of Noah. The black man, the white man, the Asian man and everything in between suddenly results. Because they all speak different languages they continuously war with one another. But behold! The Jews are special, so God sanctions them to go into the "promised lands and clean out/kill off all the heathens (along with their children and babies). Since the Jews were special, this genocide was OK.
God decides that to fix everything, we need a child sacrifice. we need his child to die a horrific, bloody agonizing death to undo the sins of the apple and to defeat the sinister talking snake. So in the desert, a child is miraculously born. He does miraculous things. He can walk on water and not get wet! He can control storms and cast out demons.
Unfortunately, because scripture is so ambiguous and vague all kinds of worshippers result. Some believe the son to be the father, some believe the son to be the son. Others believe the son is just a prophet. All fight for control over their fellow mans minds. They all hate each other and none of them can agree on anything. Things get so confusing that modern man has no idea what to believe. But eureka! The Jehovahs witness religion is born to us. Despite their ever changing doctrines and boat load of false predictions, quack science and revisionist white washing, we are supposed to believe that they have the truth! Six white men and one black guy are supposed to represent all mankind before God! Hallelujah.
Now, in our present day, we are supposed to believe in all of these things without any doubt. we are supposed to believe that a god who has played hide and seek, who has been invisible and has alienated himself from us in order to prove that we need him - that loving god - is going to send his loving son to come and lovingly destroy mankind because they don't know their right hand from their left.
Yup! It makes perfect sense! I'm sure the alien would nod its head in amazement of it all. I know I do...
