Ty Gibson Profile picture
Sep 28, 2020 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
1/8 At the deepest core level, peeling back the layers of all our ills as human beings, we are collectively, generationally traumatized by bad religion, through which an abusive, authoritarian, arbitrary picture of God has been imposed upon the world.
2/8 Of the 7.8 Billion people on the planet, 1.2B are Catholic, 1B are Protestant, 1.8B are Muslim. This means that 4B humans have been raised to believe that God predetermines who is saved and who is lost and that the lost will be tortured in flames for all eternity.
3/8 Approximately 800 million people are either atheist or claim no belief in God, many of whom are unbelievers as a trauma response to the above mentioned picture of God. They don't believe in God because they find God to be intellectually untenable and emotionally unattractive
4/8 One half billion people are Buddhist, which is a religious form of atheism. Buddhism does not believe in the existence of a personal God. 1.2B people are Hindu. Hinduism believes in the existence of 33 million gods ranging in character from good to evil.
5/8 What people believe about the nature of ultimate reality dictates their relational dynamics, political positions, economic practices, and the social systems they create or condone. Said another way, we all act out our picture of God or what we believe about ultimate reality.
6/8 If God is perceived to be controlling, coercive, and violent, there is no superior ontological reference point to operate as a standard for us to behave otherwise. If God is not morally and relationally beautiful, there is no rational premise or power for us to be.
7/8 And so it is that at the foundation of all our individual, interpersonal, and institutional problems, there exists an ugly picture of God dictating our ugliness toward one another while giving us the intoxicating illusion that God is with US against THEM, whoever they may be.
8/8 Jesus said it like this: "Father, the problem is that the world does not know You as You really are, but I know You and My mission is to reveal Your true character to them, so that the very love with which You and I love one another may be in them." John 17:25-26, paraphrase

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More from @tyfgibson

Dec 21, 2021
A THREAD ON THE VACCINE

1/10 If you are struggling to know whether to get the vaccine, may I offer the following line of reasoning for your consideration?
2/10 If it does not violate the moral law of God and therefore is not a matter of sin and religious liberty, and you want to be taken seriously when the real religious liberty threat arises,
3/10 if your denomination has published an official statement in favor of it and you find yourself hesitant at the prospect of running with your own opinion over the general collective option of your church,
Read 10 tweets
Oct 10, 2021
1/7 A corporation is a money-making machine. Until recently in history, corporations could only make money by manipulating matter (wood, stone, metals, minerals, etc) to extract profits. Now corporations can make money by manipulating human perceptions, feelings, and decisions.
2/7 Testifying to Congress, Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistle blower, charges that Facebook puts "astronomical profits before people... Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy...destabilize democracy.” What!?
3/7 If true, think of how frightening and historically unprecedented this is. If a corporation possesses enough power to “destabilize democracy” for its own financial profits, that corporation possesses power equal to that of sovereign nations.
Read 7 tweets
Oct 9, 2021
This does not qualify as a sonnet, but I don't have the energy to be that precise right now. Hopefully this ministers to your heavy heart. @JenniferJillS @kreyne @EliseHarboldt 1/8
ON PRESENT STAGE

Lord God Almighty, ineffably holy,
Great in weakness, immeasurably lowly,
From the corner of my eye, I see You moving,
My broken heart runs, yet still You're pursuing
2/8
Take me into Your story now,
Resisting no longer, Your will to allow,
Not mere words on ancient page,
But present Word on present stage
3/8
Read 8 tweets
Mar 13, 2021
1/6 The Bible is full of poetry. Sixteen books are composed entirely of poetry. Fourteen other books have a high percentage of poetry. Only 7 of its 66 books have no poetry.
2/6 Yet many people are unaware that much of the Bible is poetry and song, because the way teachers and preachers deliver the Bible to people is largely in the fragmented form of prooftext arguments, which is a way of thinking and communicating that is foreign to the prophets.
3/6 The prophets are more like spoken word artists and less like academic professors, more like singer-songwriters and less like fact-firing evangelists, more like practitioners of love and less like preachers of logic. They want us to act justly, not merely to argue correctly.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 19, 2021
A few thoughts on the Ravi Zacharias scandal:

1/7 One of the repeated warnings of the Bible is that bad men will use the good news of Christ as a means of preying upon vulnerable people. They are called “wolves in sheep’s clothing." #RaviZacharias
2/7 Jesus is so attractive & the gospel is so powerful, it is inevitable that predators & shysters will harness His beauty & potency for their evil aims. They are frauds. He is not. The disguise they wear is effective precisely because of the truth it represents. #RaviZacharias
3/7 I’ve actually known two very successful evangelist who said privately that they were atheists, but that preaching was a great way to win trust and make money. They didn’t believe a word they were preaching, and yet what they were preaching was the truth. #RaviZacharias
Read 7 tweets
Jan 7, 2021
1/5 A key premise of Revelation is that America, while posing as a “lamb,” actually operates by the principles of the “dragon.” That is, America is not a Christian nation, but rather a modern incarnation of Rome.
2/5 Rome was defined as a legal political system called a “Republic” and was governed by a representative body called a “Senate,” which gave the surface appearance that the government existed for the “public.” America, too, is a Republic and hence a kind of modern Rome.
3/5 But beneath the surface, Rome was characterized by political corruption, financial scandal, legal farce, and warmongering, which led to a loss of public trust. Rome was not conquered from without by a foreign power, but from within by the moral corruption of its own leaders.
Read 5 tweets

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