I Am Proud to be 'Of This World.' POTW.

[Taverner]

Anyone here ever see the "NOTW" stickers on the backs of cars, usually with some kind of crown of thorns or cross motif?

Fundie slogan: it stands for "Not of this World."

They believe something mystical happens when they dedicate their life to Jesus, walk down the sawdust trail, and - PRAISE THE LORD! - they are now an official member of True Christianity. Born again. If they're Pentecostal, they have to speak in tongues (babble incoherently) aka baptized in the spirit - but I digress.

They are then one of the elect, and are 'not of this world,' because the world is really evil, and Satan's Place (kind of like Peyton Place, but with a lot more sin) and they are not of here.

Christianity is, after all, at it's core a misanthropic philosophy. And it's the pitfall in thinking of every religion. That there is, out there, a reality that is more real than the one we are experiencing. And as long as you do everything decided in some very old books, when no one had photography, or a reliable method of recording data, or any knowledge of anything other than what they could see and hear. Run on sentence, I know.

But I am Proud of this World!

I am ALIVE - NOW - HERE

As they say any day above ground is better than one under it.

And I am immensely lucky to be here.

Of course, if I weren't here I wouldn't be anywhere would I ?

[Curmudgeoness]

1. If you weren't here, you would be in hell.

Sorry, I just have to do that every once in a while.

I love this comment: "That there is, out there, a reality that is more real than the one we are experiencing."

There is a lot of truth in that. To some people, this is just a waiting game for that eternal paradise at the side of their god. I guess that reality is in the eye of the beholder.

BTW, before I opened this OP, I had guess your POTW meant People Of This World, but Proud works well.

[pokerfan]

2. I am reminded of a line from Contact (1997)

David: I know you must think this is all very unfair. Maybe that's an understatement. What you don't know is I agree. I wish the world was a place where fair was the bottom line, where the kind of idealism you showed at the hearing was rewarded, not taken advantage of. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world.
Ellie: Funny, I've always believed that the world is what we make of it.

and Bertrand Russell:

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

[Codeine]

3. I saw a response to those stickers

with the cross inverted and the phrase replaced with "No One To Worship."

[GliderGuider]

4. Amen!

[iris27]

5. I always found that a weird mindset, even when I belonged to the faith that espoused it.

So, what, we're all just biding our time waiting to die? Why did God even bother creating Earth then? Why not just have everyone hang out in Heaven?