My Thoughts on Christianity

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cye7pgZZur0

Video Summary:

Introducing myself and sharing my podcast

• - David introduces himself as the host of CX Riot radio, a podcast focused on customer experience, company culture, and contact center.
• - His podcast is influenced by punk rock and video game culture, aiming to improve the lives of frontline employees who often go unappreciated.

Grew up in a punk rock scene in Maine, then moved to Los Angeles.

• - Grew up in an agnostic family, became an atheist after attending a Baptist school, and was influenced by prominent atheist figures like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
• - Considering getting baptized despite negative experiences with organized religion.

Christianity has had a net benefit for society

• - Crusades were a justified response to decimation by Islam
• - Christianity played a role in stopping human sacrifice

Addressing child abuse within Christian institutions.

• - Advocates for excommunication and legal actions against abusers.
• - Questions the focus on Catholicism over other institutions with child abuse issues.

Faith in Christianity and the existence of God

• - The speaker discusses the role of faith and the inability to prove the existence of a deity scientifically, but asserts there is enough metaphysical and observational proof.
• - The speaker also reflects on the concept of a fallen world, the uniqueness of human species, and the difficulty in believing in a six-day creation, but expresses faith in its possibility.

Christ is King and Redeemer

• - Christ is portrayed as God in human form who sacrificed for humanity's sins
• - The key is not just knowing, but living like Christ and being Christian

Straying from Christianity has negative societal impact

• - The erosion of social mores has led to a more demonic society, impacting crime and accessibility to pornography
• - The promotion of calorie-dense and addictive foods has contributed to rising obesity and declining intelligence

Choose to reject negative influences and share positive ideas

• - Opt-out of consuming media promoting negative themes
• - Don't hesitate to share your ideas for potential impact

Acknowledge Mary's importance and clarify misconceptions about her worship.

• - Encourage not letting sin into life and confessing and repenting if one does sin.
• - Address misunderstandings about Catholic and Orthodox practices regarding Mary, emphasizing veneration rather than worship.

Mainline Protestants' worship is superficial.

• - They focus on singing, talking, and hand-raising, lacking true worship.
• - They mistake Catholics' and Orthodox veneration as worship, showing their lack of understanding of true worship and humility.

Exploring church traditions and Dogma is crucial for understanding Christianity.

• - Recognizing the net benefit Christianity has had on society, whether real or not, is an important first step.
• - Accepting Christ as King and Redeemer leads to personal transformation and growth.

Focus on Christ as King and Redeemer

• - Emphasizes personal relationship with Christ and the purpose of life.
• - Expresses humility and faith in Christ's mercy despite external validation

Transcript:

Hello friends welcome to the David J Powers blog amd Vlog all right so um probably a little old school for some of the uh newer people that uh watch YouTube and stuff like that um this is the kind of YouTube that I grew up with um which was just a person with a webcam talking and making their point right so I mean it i swhat it is I don't have the fancye quipment or the editing skills to make anything really really really cool but I thought I'd just introduce myself right my name is David Powers I am the podcast host of CX Riot radio which is a customer experience uh company culture and contact center focused podcast um there'll be a link to it somewhere uh if you could listen to it if you want to if that's within your wheelhouse I'd appreciate it if you're finding this through CX Riot radio then this is a little bit different content and uh different side of myself that I portray on CX Riot radio right CX Riot radio um is heavily influenced by punk rock and uh video game culture and uh honestly trying to make life better forthe Frontline employees uh that provide customer service and everything else all the time right and get little to no recognition praise or respect this is slightly different this is more of a therapeutic kind of uh video series all right and um it's still fresh and it still hurts right because it's very very fresh but my wife the woman I was with for 17 almost 18 years uh in the last week took all the money out of my account and moved with my children my two sons to a place that is um sketchy for lack of a better phrase okay um it hit me really hard tonight um after a week of uh burying myself in work and content creation and everything else like that so it is what it is um I got done talking to my son today just through like text right and completely broke down which I haven't done in decades right I'm4 3 I'm not the crying type I'm not the lose my crap type right I am pretty levelheaded when it comes to most everything so I mean it is what it is so um little about me I grew up in the main punk rock scene which if you don't know that Maine had a punk rock scene it it did and I'm assuming it does I was in a band called American Standard we used to play around the topsham Brunswick area which is like halfway between Augusta and Portland so Augusta being the capital Portland being the only uh City so um met my I guess now ex-wife um in Maine uh she was originally from California I moved to Los Angeles with her um when she was 8 months pregnant maybe nine cuz it was very very shortly after we moved moved here that my uh oldest son was born then fast forward a few years we had a second son who is now seven and they're amazing kids they love of my life it's hard to picture not seeing them everyday so now as you can probably tell by this I am Christian now I have not been baptized which I am looking into getting and the reason that I haven't is because I grew up in a mostly agnostic family uh they were token Christian I think um but I was sent to a Baptist uh school when I was in Middle School right Middle School through like first year of high school and it was so bad it was socringe that it drove me away from religion and I became one of those annoying militant atheists who well militant is kind of a wrong word for it cringe might be better but you know it was during the timeof Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and that other guy that made up The Four Horsemen of atheism and I was all about it right I would debate anybody at any time and the education that I got from that School helped me in my mind debate the surface level Christian theology right the traditional American modernday Christian theology which is mostly uh not Christian right it's more new age with a Christian tinge right or right-wing politics that happens to mention Jesus once in a while and that's not about me that's not what I'm about um I'm not leftwing I'm not right-wing I am Christ is King okay that's all that matters I feel more drawn to the Orthodox or the Catholic faith that I do anything else um Orthodox especially so and plus I like the design of their cross better than I like theother ones cuz I like this little doohickey here right just kidding right but it's the uh the vibe of Orthodoxy that gets me and going into an Orthodox Church honestly Feels Like Coming Home the icons the atmosphere everything else right the incense everything else feels like it's right feels like it uh well it calls tome now am I a good Christian like I just said my uh my wife just left me so was it my fault probably maybe I wasn't attentive enough maybe I didn't spend enough time maybe I was too busy with work or side projects or maybe just in my own head too much and maybe I drove her away I don't know I wasn't given an explanation all right but do I do I sin yes I am a sinner Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner I am evil and retarded as the meme says and that Meme resonated with me because I am a liar I don't mean to but sometimes Iie sometimes I give myself over to wrath I definitely have given into gluttony avarice lust I have never cheated on anyone Ihaven't gone that far into lust but the normal way right the normal looking at women who are attractive and then letting the mind go from there right which some people will say that's a natural thing right but is it no or it shouldn't be and yeah that's really what I have to say about that um how I came into um Christianity again and trusting Christ and believing in theTrinity is a really long story honestly it's a very long convoluted not really it just all start started to make sense and it started to make sense with one observation and that observation was that Christianity has had a net benefit for society and before people start saying that no it doesn't what about the Dark Ages what about the Crusades right you have to look into the history of things uh the Crusades initially and throughout were a response to Invasion and for uh Christendom being decimated Honestly by Islam and the Muslims right so when uh the Christians started fighting back which you know thank God they did then uh yeah if you look at the history of the Crusades it and you really de dig deep and you ignore some of the uh more activist or revisionist historians and you actually look at the history and read the accounts and everything else um the Crusades were Justified and I'm not saying violence is ever Justified right I'm not saying tha tbecause God forbid but I'll leave it at that okay but it's like when the uh conquistadors sailed over and yeah maybe they weren't that Christian maybe they weren't maybe they were violent thugs intent on robbing and strip mining and everything else but you know what they did do they stopped Human Sacrifice the human sacrifice will stop they said and um it did it did now I know that um Catholicism especially in the last 20 years or so has gone through some rough times um sex scandals very weird Pope right that's uh not very biblical um and I don't know if it's just bad translations or misspeaking which happens right I misspeak all the time so give him Grace there right but some of the things he says isn't very Catholic if you know what I mean but and the whole sex scandal thing well inexcusable and those priests should be excommunicated thrown into a jail cell and never see the light of day again and that's me being nice cuz I could go on and let my wrathful nature take over but I won't they should be excommunicated and jailed and tried fullest extent of the law anybody that would hurt a child anybody that would touch a child deserves deserves to be put away from society forever and that's a priest that's a school teacher that's the person down the street when you look into the numbers and the statistics it is more likely for a public public school teacher to molest a child than a Catholic priest does that does that mean that that's okay no does that lessen the severity of it no but why are they picking on Catholicism itself right as a thing and not just focusing on these pedophile priests the world may never know well it's pretty obvious why right umI forgot where I was this is going to be a rambling mess okay I'm working through some stuff right now I am uh a little depressed I am a little sad I'm a little angry but I'm also strangely at peace maybe maybe I'm still processing maybe I'm still maybe I'm autistic I don't know I am still reeling from this because there's a lot of stuff that I'm not going to get into that I found out after the fact right just by going through the things that were left behind for me to throw away or take care of right it is what it is but and I apologize for this it is what it is though I uh I don't like doing that and I haven't done it in a long time but it's better than drinking isn't it so but um I uh back to my conversion thing right um I started looking into the history finding out that Christianity had a net benefit for society and at that point it was like well it doesn't matter if it's true or not right the fact of the matter is Christianity and the church has had a net benefit to society and to humanity uh not only with uh the progress of Science and astronomy and everything else literature art all that fruity stuff right but just the way that people treated each other right and I'm not going to get into things like slavery and things like that because obviously that's an abomination right that obviously but for the most part Western Civilization has benefited greatly from Christian morals and again at that point it was like it doesn't matter if this is true it doesn't matter if Christ is God it doesn't matter if Christ was divine what he started helps people and it helps people from every Walk of Life and at the same time people like the Prosperity Gospel preachers I use preachers very Loosely they were ruining Christianity they were ruining sabotaging it from within driving people away from God and I have to say I have to think that it was on purpose that it was a psyop and it got me oh it got me so but then from there I started thinking more and I started reading more and studying the church fathers and the desert fathers and really coming to terms with this is probably true true um because there's things like there's historical recordsthat go and prove what happened in the books of Acts and the uh Paul's letters actually happened right that there were Martyrs and the line of succession from Christ to the apostles through the priesthood was true right and honestly once you once you wrap you rhead around that the apostles themselves were uh for the most part martyred for Christ for believing in Christ and spreading the news of the Resurrection well people aren't going to be martyred and allow themselves to be killed for a practical joke I mean that's just the nature of the Beast right so mean it would be a weird troll but I don't think that's the case so um I know that it has a lot to do with faith and scientifically honestly you can't prove the existence of a deity I get that I don't need that there's enough proof metaphysically and just in observing the world around you to know that there is a God and it is most likely Christ the Triune God the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit and there's enough evil in the world there's enough hate and there's enough vileness that it is a fallen world it is a world where the consequences of whatever happened in the Garden of Eden had lasting ramifications on our species our species is unique in the entire world no other species has has turned out like us right and some people would say it's because we were that Savage right and that might be true it might be now there are somethings that I do find hard to believe six day creation creation right that's hard to believe do I have faith that that could be real why not right why not um Genesis the book is an amazing story it's amazing if you read it and even if you just read it in one of the newer translations it is a beautiful story it is poetic it is even as an atheist I loved Genesis right now some of the stuff I used to belike right you know but when you come to terms with the fact that this is probably real this is probably what happened maybe there's a couple embellishments but there's probably not right not I'm not a theologian okay all I know is what I know and what I know is that Christ is King that's it and he is the Redeemer of mankind he is God put into flesh and he died for our sins and rose again on the third day now knowing that might not be enough right because even the demons even the devil know that is true the key the goal is to live like Christ to be Christlike to be Christian one of the best books I've ever read and it's an old one is the imitation of Christ and in that he uh goes on to explain why you should imitate Christ I mean it's not a hard concept to understand is it especially if you're Christian and here's the thing there are a lot of Protestants that I like right a lot of good friends from my past Protestant right or at least grew up Protestant a lot of them have gone agnostic or atheist some just like some of the Catholics I know or Orthodox there's not many of them out there right that number is growing but that they're mostly Ortho Bros and uh online converts right which I'm not saying anything bad about that I mean everyone comes to God in their own way it is okay so but some of them are just uh maybe doing it for the shock value or the or being contrarians right especially in the world that we live in now which is very atheistic just 30 years ago 25 years ago everything was overbearingly Evangelical everything the EV the evangelicals had all the power right they could censor things they could boycott and actually affect people right right they were blaming school shootings on video games and Marilyn Manson and all this Jazz right um but they didn't have any solutions other than putting the Ten Commandments in public schools so and then no wany way um or even then right they were always very very very Pro-Israel like some of them were even putting Israel over their own religion and I don't think any of them would admit that but from the outside looking in that's exactly what it looked like because everything was judeo-Christian judeo-christian I'm not saying anything bad about Jews at all I ain't one of those people right but there's a huge difference between Jews and Christians first of all Christians have Christ Jews don't right Israel and it's not anti-semitic to say this Israel is um an apartheid state and that has been proven recently everyone knew it before well most people knew it before but now with recent events it has100% been proven correct so and pray for them pray for them pray for Israel pray for Palestine pray for the Middle East pray for America pray for the world so America itself which I can that's the only country I have experience with that's the only country that I've lived in but we are a very atheistic Society we are it's like a uh there's like a demonic infiltration into American culture if you just look at Pop Pop cultpop cultureyou can see it right everything is aboutsex everything's aboutviolence everything's aboutgreed everything isaboutgluttony right and these are sins Istrugglewith but these sins are prevalent inculture that and they've always beenthere pop culture has always pushed theedge as itwere sobut now more than ever um some of thosesocial mores have eroded away and whatwe have now is um like I saiddemonic and do I mean that literally ormetaphoricallyprobablyboth so the more that America hasstrayed fromChristianity and strayed from thechurch the worse it hasgotten and I know people can point tostatistics and say violent crime isdowncool there's now porography availablefor 10-year-olds on theirsmartphone there's no age verificationyou don't have to go into a CDstore to buy pornanymore it's available in your pocketit'savailable on your phone it's availableon yourlaptop I'd be surprised if it wasn't uhavailable on yourSmartwatchsothen the the foodright all the food that is advertisedall the food that is pushed all the foodthat isuh out there right isall incredibly caloriedenseincredibly like addicting with fat sugarandsalt and Americans are fatter than everhow do I know that because I'm one ofthem and I see it and I can read thestats rightobesity has risen year over year for thelast couple of decades Americans aregettingfatter Americans are gettingdumber and Americans are becoming moresinful and it does seem like it is aplannedincursion a planned invasion of thesenses I might be wrong with that itmight just be the Natural Evolution of afallingEmpirebut it is what it is and there are waysto rectify it one isrejecting all thattrash rightrejecting pornrejecting junkfoodrejecting the ways of the world and theway the culture is going you don't haveto listen to songs about sex andviolence you just don't you can turn itoff you don't have to turn the radio onyou can choose to listen to somethingelse and I'm not saying listen solely tolike Christian rock or Christian musicbecause frankly a lot of Christian musicsucksand you're going to miss out on a lot ofstuff if you do that right but you don'thave to listen to songs about sex orsongs about adultery and how cool it isright you don't have to uh you don'thave to watch things that have thosesame things in them um like most popularTVshows so you just don't and that is oneway of fighting back you can fight backby not giving them your attention oryourmoney and that might be the best way offighting back you canalso put your ideas out there even ifonly one two five people watch thoseideas are being put outthere rightso why wouldn't you want thatbecause if your ideas are out theresomeone's going to see themeventually again even if it's lownumbers those ideas are out there andmaybe someone willresonate with that idea or that conceptor that thought that youhad so there thatisum so like Isaid umOrthodoxy is calling me but so isCatholicism honestly and maybe that'sbecause Catholicism is a lot more umavailable right um it's a lot moreUniversal it's not asumculturally clickybut the Catholic church I readabout and looking through history doesnot seem to be the same Catholic Churchthat there istodayand Imeanthe neverchanging church the church that Christfounded seems to have changed a lot likeused to be Catholics didn't eat meet onWednesdays andFridaysnow then then it switched over to justFridays then it switched over to youknow just give somethingup I have a little bit ofpenance like you can see this moreclearly withlent right you can see this more clearlywith Lentand lent used tobe back in the day back in yester year along timeago used tobewell very austere and the Orthodox stillpractice lent as it should be practicedby allChristians and that isabstaining from from meat from fish fromalcoholeggs even oliveoil for 40days why because it's Penance it's a wayof cleansingyourself up to the resurrection ofChrist solent is an important time of year in theChristian faith and Protestants by andlarge and by Protestants I mean themainline Protestants right I don't meanthe more traditional rightmore Catholic honestly kind ofProtestants right but the ones that haveuh rock bands or their warship Servicesright um they don't do lent at all theycelebrate atEaster they celebrate GoodFridaymaybebut they don't do 40 days of fastinglike Christ did in thedesert which is the reason for Lent theimitation ofChristso and that's uh that's sad and I thinkeverybody well not maybe not everybodybut every Christianshould at least do their best to do thatright I don't mean wearing hair shirtsor selfflatulation right I mean really doingyour best to imitateChristto walk the walk and not just talk thetalk right to not let sin into theirlife as much as they can can help it andif they do sin to confess and repent andI know a lot of Protestants don't likethe idea ofconfession right they also don't likethe idea of the Eucharist orum thinking well of the Holy virgin thetheotokosthe mother of GodMary right a lot ofProtestants Really Don't Care About Maryand that's sad cuz she was blessed amongwomen and is honestly a role model foreveryone and it's sad that she haslittle to no thought from the majorityof Christians inAmerica and whenand that's their constantlike weapon against Catholics andOrthodox right is that the CatholicsworshipMary which is the furthest from thetruth and this is coming from someonewho's not Catholic right the Catholicsdon't worship Mary the Orthodox don'tworship Mary theyvenerate they give prayers to and askher to pray on their behalf that's notworship worship is what we do to Christwe worshipChrist we worshipGod and I don't mean we because I'm I amneither Catholic norOrthodox I have not fully converted tothose yet forall intents and purposes I am aProtestant right but I am a Protestantwho has studiedhistory and thiswhole thing this whole new wave ofdisrespecting the mother ofGod iscrazy and it is wrong and it is sinfuland one of the reasons that a lot ofthese Protestants not all but a lot saythisstuff about Catholics and Orthodoxworshiping Maryor being likeuh or practicing like worshiping Idolsor icons things like that is becausethey don't know how to worshiptheir worship issuperficial and I I say that fromexperience I'm saying that fromobservation that I've had with a lot ofuh MainlineProtestants their worship issuperficial it sing a fewsongs talkgood rightand that's it right they'll do thelittle hand raising like this thingwhich I mean it is what it is it's alittle cringe but there's no realwarship they don'tbow toChrist they wouldn'twash the feet of people they consideredbeneaththem or above them there's no humilityright and again I'm not sayingall I would never say all I'm just goingoff of my ownobservations they don't know what trueworship is which is why them theymistake Catholics andOrthodox veneration of Barry and theSaintsas worship because the way thatCatholics and Orthodoxvenerate Mary theSaintsrightismore I it's hard to articulate thismostly because it's like 10:30 at nightand I've been awake since like 4 a.m. sobutuh the way that Catholicsvenerate is moreprofound moreheartfelt morereal than the way these people worshipGod and that'ssad that is reallysad and I don't thinkthat they know I I don't think they knowwhat true worshipis I don't think I know what trueworshipis I don't think most people would giveup theirlife forChrist I'm sure a lot of people wouldsay they would but when the gun is toyour head or you're in the guillotineI think a lot of people would denyChrist and you know what I don't thinkI'm strong enough to resist thateither and that is something I'm workingon Christ is King he is the Redeemer ofmankindand it is ourduty to imitateChrist is iteasyno is it the most difficult thing todoyesespecially if you don't have a goodsupport network if you don't have peopleto talk to if you don't have a spiritualfather yessmooth so I don't know it's Peach flavorI don't knowum looks a little queer but it is whatit isum most people don't right most peopledon't have that supportnetwork I don'tyou know how many Christians I know inreallife well and I mean that I can talk toreligion about a handful right and Iknow a lot ofpeople mostpeople give lip service to Christianitynow I can't see into the heart of heartsI can't read their minds but theiractions I can seeright some people thatprofess that they areChristianaremotivated by the Love ofMoney by the worship ofMamon these are the people that followthe Prosperity Gospelpreachers whichis disgusting it is aheresy of the foulest nature it isdemonic or they're uh Christian in thesense that they go to one of the verymodernistchurches and the progressiveChristians there is nothingProgressive aboutChristianity and I'm not sayingthat as the political movementProgressive rightChristianity is an old religion it is areligion oftraditions of traditional thoughts oftraditional actions and just traditionalhowever you want to describeit it is old it is passed down by Christand you canread about the oldchurches not just in the Bible but inother sourcestoo and I think that we all should maybeuh look into the Dogma look into thetraditions of the Church ofChristianity and um go from there now ifif you're still watching this after 48minutes then thank you butalso if you can recognize thatChristianity has had a net benefit forsociety while acknowledging that itdoesn't need to be real ornot that is the first step atacknowledging that Christ his king andthe Redeemer ofmankind that's the first step I tookcoming back intoChristianity it was a hardstep it was hard because part of myidentity which was stupid was being thatobnoxious atheist the borderlinehedonist that I was being drunk almostevery nightsmoking three packs of cigarettes a dayeating a lot and nothing that was goodfor me candy chips right Chicken FriedChicken not chicken chicken friedchickenum those microwaveburritos things like that love themstilldo rightbut when when you give your life toChrist when you give your heart toChrist when you have Christ in yoursoul things start tochangeslowly disgustinglyslowly at least for me it took the along time to crawl out of that darkhole and you know what thathole that darkness is appealing everysingleday especially with what just happenedto me it isthere it is looking at me in the facetelling me to come backbut Christ isstronger Christ is stronger than thatdarkness that Darkness might becomforting it might befun it is a lot of fun to get nearblackout drunk with yourfriends and see where the night takesyoubut it's notright and it's notgood and it's not what you were madefor and I apologize there was nostructure to this video there was noscript this is me turning on the cameraandtalking and you know whatI'm okay with that will this get a lotof views and likes probably not andagain I'm okay withthat am I putting this out there fornobodyprobably but you know what that doesn'tmatter what mattersis Christ is King and the Redeemer ofmankind that's all thatmatters Lord Jesus Christ Son of Godhave mercy on me a sinner oh Lord havemercy oh Lord have mercy oh Lord havemercyamen I'll see you next time