Not a true Christian: Debate Christianity and Religion's role in Politics

Apparently some Evangelicals were saying the rapture was coming today

Best Viewing for Today's Rapture: West Texas

High number of evangelicals combined with about 10,000 square miles of massive wind turbines...

Bring binoculars and a rain coat.

— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) September 22, 2023

 

Some loon talking about Nibiru. All can have a laugh about that.

 

I could walk to Mt. Hope church in about 10" -- the whole Liberty U and Air Force background have my spidey sense tingling that this guy might have an agenda.

There's a reason the Air Force Academy is in Colorado Springs.

 

Absolutely to all the above.

 

pic.twitter.com/j9WZz1zqaC

— Satan (@s8n) September 23, 2023

 

«When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me ― it still sometimes happens ― and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife.

They also frequently ask me if I think I will see… pic.twitter.com/CONCbAVkJ2

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 23, 2023

 

In a Sunday op-ed, New York Times opinion columnist David French posits that Christian nationalism may not be a "serious" threat to American democracy, but it is "very dangerous."


He argues, "It's not a serious position to argue that this diverse, secularizing country will shed liberal democracy for Catholic or Protestant religious rule. But it's exceedingly dangerous and destabilizing when millions of citizens believe that the fate of the church is bound up in the person they believe is the once and future President of the United States."

(And more)


Then sums up that:

That's why the Trump fever won't break. That's why even the most biblically based arguments against Trump fall on deaf ears. That’s why the very act of Christian opposition to Trump is often seen as a grave betrayal of Christ himself. In 2024, this nation will wrestle with Christian nationalism once again, but it won't be the nationalism of ideas. It will be a nationalism rooted more in emotion and mysticism than theology. The fever may not break until the 'prophecies' change, and that is a factor that is entirely out of our control.

 

We need his death. The sooner the better.

 

I'm an Empowered Evangelical and I'm a liberal Democrat.

 

Imagine a world without many millions of religious nutjobs

 

IMAGINE there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try.

 

Not “Quite” sure of the message here???

 

Plenty of churches do things like this.

 

Nothing like going out and killing God's creation as a form of sport and fellowship at a Vacation Bible School! After all, we have dominion over nature, we are not part of it!

 

I hate this belief. Probably more than almost any other.

 

Lemme guess - they only shoot the dark-colored animals

 

It's one of the criteria I give my students in one of their assignments when examining the impact of a culture's worldview. Having "dominion over nature", as was the belief in the ancient Near East, or being an "inherent part of nature", as was the belief in Polynesian cultures. Your values and behavior related to the environment will be greatly impacted by which one you were taught to believe. Sadly, the "dominion over nature" effectively won thanks to the missionary impetus of one or two Near Eastern religions, which is why we are so screwed now.

I love the Air New Zealand safety video that they've been using for the last year or so. It incorporates the Māori understanding of nature and how humans are supposed to interact with it, given we are an inherent part of nature and do not have "dominion" over it - it's called Tiaki and the Guardians.



Kaitiakitanga is the Māori concept of our guardianship of nature. The traditional belief is that we are part of nature, that we are related to nature. That mountain is a respected ancestor, that tree descended from the same source that gave us life, that water is part of our ancestry. As such, we should care for them all as family members.

This is so contrary to the Biblical view of how God apparently killed an animal to make clothes for Adam and Eve because the plant material they clothed themselves with wasn't apparently good enough (if you've never heard it framed that way, go back and read Genesis 2-3 and how Adam and Eve clothed themselves with plant material but God made clothing out of leather for them).

edit - This is one reason I appreciated Disney's Moana. It didn't depict Tangaroa as the "god of the ocean", as Poseidon, but rather as the ocean itself - Tangaroa is the energy, the essence of the ocean. If you throw trash into the ocean, you are throwing trash into the god. That is akin to blasphemy. When you disrespect the ocean, you are committing blasphemy. Compare that to the Western understanding based on Christian beliefs of God giving us dominion over nature. Your cultural worldview (how a society understands the social and natural world) shapes and creates values and morals. Change the worldview and you change the values and morals.

 

Georgia is known for churches and hunting.

 

No, it's not biblically based. There's nothing in the Bible about abortion being wrong. I can't think of a single verse that explicitly condemns aborting a fetus (nor is there any explicit verse condemning rape or pedophilia, for that matter). Yes, culturally the woman was blamed if she was unable to give birth, but that is a far cry from saying the Bible is against abortion.

Ecclesiastes 6:3 says better is the fetus that doesn't become a living human than the one the man who lives but doesn't receive a proper burial. English translations will often say "stillborn", but it actually includes miscarriages and aborted fetuses - it's basically any pregnancy that doesn't come to a successful completion.

 

They will deify him,

“He DiEd FoR aLL oF uS!!!!”