Here in one sentence we have the cognitive dissonance of religion and not just Christianity, but all theocratic religions.

Tony Gonzales admits to having an affair with an aide who later took her own life. He said he'd asked god for forgiveness and god forgave him.

How fucking ridiculous is that? If we assume god exists and is able to hear Tony's prayer amongst 8 billion other people, some of whom are praying. Why 8 billion when there are actually 2.5 billion Christians? Well, there is only one god, so everyone praying must actually be praying to the same god regardless of their professed religion. Obviously, god can hear these prayers because he's omnipresent and omnipotent. But because these prayers are offered up to a false god, they are simply discarded: how dare you pray to a god that isn't me! But kind of is...kind of must be...

These prayers are discarded because the wrong prayer "handshake" was given or their minds were probed by god and found to be attached to a FAKE book!

And this is ignoring the fact that there are 46 major variations of Christianity and multiple thousands of smaller and finer denominations. Why? Because religion is man-made and when a group doesn't like something about their current group, they start a new one. It's man made.

So, god is out there sitting on a celestial throne, a white man with a flowing beard and robes, floating around with his son, who's actually part of him - even tho he was a real dude for a while - and some weird holy ghost dude? Of course not! He can't be a physical being, he's an ethereal presence, with 3 personalities or whatever...so how can man be created in god's image when he can't possibly have one? Simple: god is created in man's image, especially when you consider that homo sapiens didn't even exist until 300,000 years ago - a tiny fraction on the timescale of the universe. But the Bible doesn't believe in the big bang or evolution.

If Tony really was forgiven what is the point of asking for it in the first place? Is it just a rubber stamp exercise? Is it just an act of fealty? Pretty stupid right?

OR Tony is lying and god actually told him to go fuck himself? Why not just strike him down? Too obvious?

OR Tony had some internal dialogue with himself and forgave himself?

OR Tony doesn't give a fuck about anything, didn't even forgive himself, doesn't care about this poor young girl and will say any old shit to take the spotlight away.

I'm not saying this to offend anyone but I just can't take this shit anymore and I mean all theocratic religions - altho Hinduism does seem to have a better set of core values and is more inclusive.

And if you're offended, I'm sorry, but if you have complete faith, nothing should shake your belief or hurt you in any way.

It should be between you and your god and you should be comfortable in the fact that I will spend eternity in a fiery hell - which is a wonderful thing for any religion to include. What's a bit of eternal suffering between friends?

Take the red pill and stop propagating this nonense which does more harm than good. It's not all bad of course, but more often than not, religion is used for politcal ends or worse.

Whatever you're doing that's good with your church, you could do massively more by not wasting your time on bible classes, boring services and pontificating priests. Start up community centers and shelters in your churches instead. Focus on humaity not religious cant.

And think about this: the bible and all the other holy books were books written by ordinary men. They don't have provenance. They weren't handed down from heaven. There's not even a cover story for where it all comes from. Hell, the books aren't even that good! God is not even that nice an entity.