In my news feed on Facebook I will be served a daily dose of Christian affirmations from friends. In this series of posts, which I call “Facebook Affirmations™,” I will post and discuss some of these gems. Here’s the affirmation for today:
When u carry a Bible, the devil gets a headache. When u open it, he collapses. When he see’s u reading it, he faints. When he see’s u living it, he flees. And just when ur about 2 re-post this, he will try & discourage u. I just defeated him. Like, Copy & paste this if ur in God’s Army
There are a number of problems with this affirmation so I’ll list them out as I see them and give my reasoning for each:
- First and foremost (as will be the case with any Facebook Affirmation™), there really isn’t a point to re-posting these things. As far as anybody knows, you don’t get brownie points with god for copying and pasting status messages on Facebook. In fact, copypasta is one of the most annoying bits of effortless tripe in which one could possibly participate. Does anybody expect god to meet you at the pearly gates and say, “Awww, you copied that status message on your Facebook profile just for me? How sweet!”
- Asserting that the devil behaves in any way whatsoever is dishonest. The devil isn’t even described well enough in the Bible to really understand his actions or feelings one way or the other. How arrogant of a Christian to think that in doing anything they can personally affect the feelings and actions of an ethereal being who is obviously more powerful and given more free reign than any human alive! What’s the basis for these statements? How does a Christian justify their self-importance in cases like this?
- Is there really a substantial difference between the devil collapsing and fainting? Is somebody just trying to be witty? What’s the basis for a stack of papers which has been written, copied, translated, edited, copied again, translated again, interpreted over and over, and cherry-picked to death causing the devil distress? I’ll bet he gets a kick out of it. I’d venture to guess that if there were a devil he’d know the Bible better than any Christian who ever lived. In fact, he could probably recite it from memory in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin! After all, he quoted scripture to Jesus, didn’t he? Does any Christian actually believe that the devil (if he exists) cares in the slightest whether or not you carry, open, or read a bastardized version of an incomplete Bible? Come on.
- So when you re-posted this status you defeated the devil? Like, he’s dead and there’s no more evil in the world? You are so freaking awesome!!!! Thank you! Oh, wait. The devil is still alive and kicking until after Armageddon? Well then why the heck did you re-post this stupid spam message on your Facebook wall?
- I’ve already discussed how horrible I think it is to assert that you’re in “God’s Army.”
- Please start using proper grammar, everybody! For the love of…Odin…could somebody at some point please break the stereotype of the uneducated Christian and start using proper spelling, capitalization, and punctuation? Why do Christians keep doing this and then complain when non-believers call them ignorant? You really don’t have any room to complain if you’re validating the stereotype.
If you’re religious and you’re reading this I’d love to hear your rebuttals. If you’re irreligious and you’ve seen some gems and would like to pass them along, please send them to me and I’ll discuss them in future installments. Until next time, this has been Facebook Affirmations™!
