Keeley’s Reviews > Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear > Status Update

For the record, Luke 14 is a wild ride through a parable about a man who prepares a great banquet, then, at the last minute, invites his friends to come *right this second* to feast with him because *he* is now ready. This man then becomes absolutely incensed that they have other plans already made and won't drop everything to hang out with him. Absolute tomfoolery.

"No man could have invented the story of Jesus. It’s too fascinating. Too rich. Too miraculous." - Come on now. This a neon sign screaming someone has zero knowledge of any of the creation/spiritual myths from religions predating Christianity. Literally any good mythological writer could have come up with a story like Jesus. This is not a good argument for faith.

She really hits the nail on the head, here, wherein she calls out the fact that a guy who never married and never had children is leading a "quiverfull" sect of Christianity. Because how, indeed, do you take rules of family life from someone who has literally never experienced anything he is demanding you endure? These are the types of questions more people should be asking in life on many subjects.

"I’m certain that if I didn’t have the Holy Spirit—if I was not a child of God who was being protected by my heavenly Father—then I would have gotten off the treadmill and never gotten back on." See, this is just an entirely egocentric statement that suggests that anyone who does "abandon Christianity" is *not* a "protected child of God" - it is this exact type of phrasing that makes superiority seem to be humility.

Since she brought him up, I would like to take this moment to remind people that all of Job's suffering and the egregious deaths of his innocent wives, children, and animals, were all due to a bet between God and Satan that was intended to boost God's ego. I know people "interpret" things to make them comfortable with God's behavior in this matter, but he didn't stutter stating his reason for it.

I get the same feeling reading these strictures from Gothard as I did when I read the foreword to Dianetics, back in the day - an immediate thought that you must really have to have a low opinion of your own mind to think any of this didn't sound like someone trying to blank you out and control you. This is why psychology is my jam, though, because people's minds are so different.