"Praise the Lord" - Dying Fetus

This group is most definitely not Christian in any way, shape or form. I don't personally listen to them (to be honest, I detest thier lyrics and what they stand for), but I've heard them referenced plenty and knew they had some opinions about Christianity and religion as a whole in their songs, so I looked some up for the purpose of writing this. I cannot in any way, shape or form recommend this band to anyone, and even just reading their lyrics can be very, very trying. If you want to read this full song, it does happen to be one of their very few that contains no profanity. It's called "Praise The Lord (Opium Of The Masses)" by Dying Fetus. I'll have various quotes from the lyrics throughout this to show my points and suchnot.

"Organization means dilution, and results in persecution. Through it all I keep a vision, understand what I believe in." -- To me, this speaks of how we who are in chuch all the time (and even more so those of us who grew up there as well) often grow numb to the things of God. We allow ourselves to fall into a cycle of going to church and doing certain "good, Christian" with no real motivation. We allow our former desire and right motives completely fade away to be replaced by fireless obligation. Our fervor for the faith disappears, in some cases almost entirely and faith becomes just something we throw on with the suit on Sunday mornings as we go through our normal once a week "God routine".

This quickly turns into focusing on personal biases about subjects that don't matter much (or at all) in the overall, spiritual scheme of things. We then take these biases to extremes and condemn people left and right for not aligning with the way WE believe things should be. For issues that are not fundamental to Christianity at its core, this is entirely wrong. True, condemnation/loathing of sinful actions is necessary, but when it lies in a spiritual "gray area" it doesn't need to be given so much focus. We must extend the love of Christ to non-believers while balancing that with showing them how they are wrong and sinful from the Bible's perspective. It's a delicate balance--one that, when tipped to far in either direction, can change a person's eternal destiny.

When our focus for the insignificant things becomes such that it leads to us shunning or despising people over our personal biases, we drive people away from Christianity and they think that to become a better, righteous person they would do good to avoid us and Christianity all together and stick to their own personal belief system.

"God cannot be mass-projected, or beaten out through forced confessions.
It’s for all of us to ponder, not for dogma’s chains to hold us down." -- Christianity cannot be forced on someone. If that happens then it is not real Christianity or true faith. Too often we try to shove our beliefs and systems down people's throats and this drives them away from Christianity. Yes, in some instances it is the person being told that makes themselves feel this way, but in alot of cases it is truly the fault of the believer. We have to learn to be blunt when needed, but ever-tactful. If the person does not want to accept Christ, you cannot force them into it.

"Just beat them back till they are gone, ‘cause their doctrines lead to misery" -- Our doctrines lead to misery. This stems from the numerous Christians who gripe and complain about the difficulty of the Christian life. They allow the sin of the world ruin them emotionally, or complain about how their faith costs them friendships or any number of things. They let their worry for the unsaved run so rampant that it borders on depression (This isn't to say that we should not be concerned for the salvation of the unsaved, but we aren't supposed to worry. We need to take it to God. Let it break us into praying more fervently for them, yes, but don't let it break us so that others can't see the joy of Christ in us). When we allow faith-related issues to seem to cause so much pain to us that the pain overshadows the joy were are supposed to have, those on the outside of Christianity look at it and see only the source of pain and stress and depressiong, and no one would want to willingly subject themselves to that. We are to be concerned with these problems, yes, but the joy we get from Christ should outshine these concerns by far.

"The church is the reason why they’ve lost their way, Crusades and Inquisitions, holy wars, Jihad,they are the willing victims of a grand facade." -- In part, this references the perversions of Christianity, like the Inquisitions, that became something very far from what Christianity is supposed to be, but that's not what I want to cover here. Look at the first and last parts of the quote: "The church is the reason why they’ve lost their way...they are the willing victims of a grand facade." This one goes back to the "organization means dilution" point. We allow our faith to become a check the block exercise, become overconcerned with personal biases, and convince ourselves that our faith is the source of our problems--in doing this we show to the world that Christianity ruins us, which is not true! However, too often we allow this to happen, almost as if we're unconcerned about the effect it is having on people's souls, because we know that to correct our errors would mean true faith and devotion to Christ on our part, and we have too many things we want to hold onto that we allow to prevent us from going anywhere real and useful with our supposed belief and faith in Jesus Christ.
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