I wonder what my profile seems to be when my news aggregator compiles articles of certain, surprising themes. The rugby and architecture articles make sense but every so often I get bombarded with religious freedom stories. Sixty percent of the religious freedom stories are actually the opposite, and if the item has a title involving "...due to Christianity" then the likeliness that this is a religious oppression story increases to ninety percent. Most items where someone is fired for being Christian involve the person using the bible to engage in hostile or antisocial behavior. "I was fired for offering to pray with her", when scrutinized, usually ends up being "my concern for her eternal soul compelled me to stalk and harass her."
In university, I had a well meaning classmate who struggled deeply with his grandmother's refusal to convert to Christianity and be saved. At least once a week during studio hours, I could hear him phoning the poor woman, probably in the middle of the night for her in Iran, to implore her to find God because she was going to hell. Surprisingly, grandma stopped taking his calls. He later found out that I was a Catholic and turned his attention to my conversion. Color me naive, but I made it to 21 years of age before realizing that there are a number of Christian denominations that do not believe that Catholics are Christians. It didn't matter that we referred to the same bible because the deal breaker was that I hadn't actively 'accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior' and therefore was not saved, thus I was going to hell. Imagine my surprise that I was going to hell by default because I had not truly accepted Jesus in my heart since I had not uttered those specific words.
"So according to true Christianity, all it takes to go to heaven is to utter "I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior?" "Yes, and you will be saved." "But if I live a good, Christian life yet I don't get saved, then I go to hell?" "Yes." "And I can be a psychopathic serial killer but if I say that I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, then I get to go to heaven?" "Yes."
Well, that explains a lot.
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