Arminians Suck Too

Now that I mustered up the courage to share my blog with some friends one critique is that I bash Calvinism too much. I have been affected in my life by Arminanism gone wrong so time for me to trash this theology too.

My mom grew up in a small town in Missouri and my Grandma attended a very pietistic Methodist church. Even yo this day my mom still worries about what people think and as a kid I think they sought out the evangelical church because the legalism there felt more like home to her. So Wesleyan pietism gets a big thumbs down from me.

During my youth group days at every conference and rally they would have the guilt trip night where you came forward and rededicated your life. Or worse yet you had to go out and evangelize because you could help somebody make a decision for Christ. So the altar calls, tent revivals and acting a certain way to attract others to the faith gets a big "gassface" from me. To quote the rap group 3rd Bass.

Really, all badly practiced Christianity have the same markers that piss me off now that I think about it. So maybe I am too rough on Calvinism but Arminians are no picnic either. Even now that I am home in a Lutheran church, I know you can have problems with pietism there as well. My fandom of comedy allows for me to pick a subject and focus on it and pick it apart for a laugh.

All of this doctrine based Christian theology is for the birds when mysticism is stripped out. That is one huge thing I like about Catholicism and Orthodoxy. I think my biggest problem with protestant Christianity as a whole is the disconnect from nature. As I have studied pagan and tribal religions there is a connect with nature that I think is b missing from the church as a whole.

From all my studies if you limit yourself to only post Luther theology, then you aren't seeing the faith in full color. I have watched documentaries and read books about the mystics from the pre-reformation church and found people who practiced a faith that I can identify with. One example is Hildegard Von Bingen,  she was connected with nature and learned the medicinal use of plants.  This one facet of a very interesting saint of the church and showed to me how disconnected from nature a city dweller like me is.

Not sure what my point is any longer and I will wrap this post up.