This past Saturday, a few friends and I attended the Family Worship Center's presentation of "Judgment: Death Row" in Murfreesboro.The presentation was a variation of a traditional Hell House - a haunted house with a Christian theme designed to lead viewers to a relationship with Jesus in order to save their eternal souls from the fires of hell.
The concept for the original Hell House was "Scaremare" and was pioneered by Jerry Falwell in the 1970s. Scaremare still runs to this day.
Since its development, multiple churches, usually denoting themselves as fundamentalists, have emulated this Halloween pastime, including Trinity Church of Cedar Hill, Texas - whose hellish production was documented by director George Ratliff in the movie Hell House.
It was very obvious that the Family Worship Center spent top dollar on its faithful interpretation of salvation through the intricacy of its set, the man-power it took to run the production and the oh-so-subtle advertisement spots on Comcast.
But even with a decently- sized budget, the overall message delivered by the church left much to be desired - specifically accountability.
The play is set up to take the audience through the lives of several death row inmates, including murderers, rapists and child abusers. It displays scenes of drug use, domestic abuse, suicide, assault, molestation, drinking and death.
Each prisoner has a different backstory.
One was molested as a child. This led him to become addicted to pornography and eventually kidnap, rape and kill children.
Another was unprepared for the burden of motherhood, what with her addiction to an unnamed drug demon. Her baby wouldn't stop crying so she shook it to death.
The crimes of the inmates can go on and on, but the one running commonality among them was their lack of faith in the Family Worship Center's opinion of God.
I say the Family Worship Center's opinion of God because not every sect of Christianity believes exactly what this specific church does. However, through its hell house presentation, the FWC made perfectly clear what will and will not get you into its Heaven.
Suicide and the rejection of God is an automatic admission ticket to become Satan's little errand boy.
The only way to get into Heaven - or have your name recorded in the "Book of Life" - was to ask Jesus to forgive you of all your Earthly sins. But unawareness with the Christian faith was not covered. If you are not aware of the concept of Christianity, do you also go to Hell?
The biggest problem with their version of ultimate forgiveness was there is no accountability for Earthly actions.
For example, the aforementioned child-shaking mother asked the religious figure present at her lethal injection if God could forgive her. He replied the mandatory "yes," because really, let's face it, he doesn't know for sure. She then asked Jesus to forgive her, they injected her with a dose of deadly narcotics, and she dies but then awakens moments later - in Heaven.
Every other non-murderous individual should be outraged at this. This woman is allotted the same reward for living a terrible life that a person who works very hard to remain virtuous gets.
It is true that forgiveness is not fair. But forgiveness should not come without retribution. People should be made to be accountable for their actions and not receive a free ride to a blissful eternity.
In a technical sense, Person A and Person B are both given the same opportunity - life.
Person A spends his life obeying laws, caring for others and trying his hardest to be an overall good person.
Person B, given the same opportunity of life, squanders his life selfishly, harming other people.
Both people ask Jesus to forgive their sins. According to the FWC, both will get into Heaven.
Person A should be pissed. Luckily for him, he gets to spend eternity enjoying being pissed off.
The fact of the matter is the Family Worship Center has no idea what the requirements are for entry into either Heaven or Hell. Like many other sects of Christianity and other religions, they think they know, but they don't.
And that, above all else, is the concept that terrifies us as humans. The answer to all the "big" questions is very simple - we don't know.
The FWC would like to think that, after we die, we go to either Heaven or Hell. They like to think that the requirement for entry into Heaven is to "confess Christ openly, follow Christ in baptism, be faithful in going to a Bible-believing church, read the Bible, pray daily, give your time, talent and tithes, and be a witness for Christ."
Those are all very nice goals and decent standards to live by. But once again, these are just theories - not guarantees.
Yes, the answer is scary. We will all die one day. Not knowing what will happen to us after we die is absolutely petrifying.
But it isn't a bad thing. We have the fear, so we should use it. The only thing we can do is blindly prepare for what lies after life.
So we help out others in need, love our fellow humans, whether we agree with them or not, and try to maintain a progressive, safe world for ourselves and our posterity. Doing these things is not always easy, and many people mess up. But it's okay because, after all, we are only human.
The FWC message that left much to be desired was that we need to stay out of Hell.
Swing and a miss.
What their message should have been is that we should be good people because it is the right thing to do.
Andy Harper is a senior journalism major
Originally posted on 10/27/08 at www.mtsusidelines.com
No comments:
Post a Comment