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Amen, Nate. And every Christian group in America that has practiced hate has done it in the name of God.
We recognize true Christians because of their love, forgiveness, and acceptance.
We recognize false Christians by their finger-pointing, judgmental attitudes of fellow human beings, and the exclusivity of their own religious commandments.
The bold is where you get of track.
Rejection of a practice does not mean rejection of the person. We should never be OK accepting abortion or homosexuality as an approved practice.
However - when dialoging with a person, I understand that God died for their sins... I understand that without the Holy Spirit, they will continue to sin... I understand that hammering them over the head with what they shouldn't do is fruitless. It doesn't mean I want the laws of the country to reflect sin just because they don't have the means to keep themselves from stumbling in God's eyes.
Rejection of a practice does not mean rejection of the person. We should never be OK accepting abortion or homosexuality as an approved practice.
However - when dialoging with a person, I understand that God died for their sins... I understand that without the Holy Spirit, they will continue to sin... I understand that hammering them over the head with what they shouldn't do is fruitless. It doesn't mean I want the laws of the country to reflect sin just because they don't have the means to keep themselves from stumbling in God's eyes.
But that is not what the visible leaders of fundamentalists preach and tout---and what they are preaching is why fundamentalists are now beginning the inexorable decline in numbers. Those who have adopted the modern (1920's) fundamentalist view left their true calling almost forty years ago by listening to popular fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Dobson, and D. James Kennedy, Charles Stanley and others who preach(ed) fear and hate.
And they have simply LIED outright through organizations like Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council and others use data about homosexuality provided by one Paul Cameron, a discredited psychologist who was dropped from the roles of the American Psychological Association for holding himself out as a sociology expert is also a liar---and fundamentalists believe him.
In 1984 the Nebraska Psychological Association disassociated itself "from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Paul Cameron. In 1986 the national association condemned him for his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research. Dr. C. Everett Koop, President Reagan's Surgeon General and a COMMITTED evangelical Christian describes, in his autobiography, Paul Cameron as one of the country's most outspoken anti-homosexuals who perpetuated a number of myths about AIDS transmission and called for unnecessary quarantine and testing. (C. Everett Koop, KOOP: The Memories of America's Family Doctor [New York: Random House, 1991], pp.208, 230.
Cameron has even called "satanic," the "new religion of equality." It appears that many fundamentalists can be likened to the pigs in George Orwell's 1984, placing a placard over their churches that paraphrasing says, "All humans are equal, but some humans are more equal than others.
Fundamentalists focus primarily on ideas that are Biblically unclear (abortion) or on those with six or eight verses in a Bible with more than a million words to deny homosexuals the right to be as human as you are. At the same time I don't hear fundamentalists standing up for all the verses Jesus spoke of and practiced. A Christian understands who God is by closely looking at Jesus. A bibliolator must make all words in the Scripture "fit" their idea of a judgmental God.
Jesus taught that all "laws" are not equal. And He proved it with His life. Look how He dealt with "untouchables." He embraced the "untouchable" leper; praised the "untouchable" bleeding woman; drank from the bucket of an "untouchable" Samaritan wh*re; dined with the "untouchable" Jews who collected taxes for Rome; let the "untouchable" prostitute pour expensive perfume on His feet and dry them with her hair; and who healed the "untouchable" most likely homosexual companion of the "untouchable" Roman centurion (and yes, the odds are, if you study any history, that the centurion's young man was his bed partner). People were shocked when seeing Jesus explain with His actions that not all "laws" were equal--and that it was time for them to discern between what is important in God's eyes and what was not; that they should do away with cultural customs and practices (which all were in the OT) that did not measure up to the two "Great Commandments."
James Finley once wrote, "The Scriptures are one long love letter from God."
(James Finley, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God, [Harper-SanFrancisco, 2004), p.82.
I don't see many fundamentalists practicing the scriptures as love, but rather as behavior control.
In his Case for Orthodox Theology, Edward John Carnell explains the difference between the true evangelical view of scripture and the fundamentalist view:
Quote:
When [evangelical] orthodoxy says that the Bible is the only rule of faith and practice, the fundamentalist promptly concludes that everything worth knowing is in the Bible. The result is a withdrawal from the dialogue of man as man. Nothing can be learned from general wisdom, says the fundamentalist, for the natural man is wrong in starting point, method, and conclusion---Classical [evangelical] orthodoxy says that God is revealed in general as well as in special revelation. The bible completes the witness of god in nature; it does not negate it.
E. John Carnell, The Case for Orthodox Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959), chapter VII, "Perils," p.5.
The problem with fundamentalists is they are unable to keep looking around them and learning and growing. They are stuck between the covers of the Bible (often KJV only) and are far too comfortable to "seek and ye shall find."
But that is not what the visible leaders of fundamentalists preach and tout---and what they are preaching is why fundamentalists are now beginning the inexorable decline in numbers. Those who have adopted the modern (1920's) fundamentalist view left their true calling almost forty years ago by listening to popular fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Dobson, and D. James Kennedy, Charles Stanley and others who preach(ed) fear and hate.
...
If what you see from Christians is fear, and hate, and attempts to control behavior - then your perspective lines up with the unbelievers on this site.
If what you see from Christians is fear, and hate, and attempts to control behavior - then your perspective lines up with the unbelievers on this site.
Yes, the fact that some are unbalanced cannot be used to rejety everything they or others believe. It is really a strawman argument.
Then if you "fundamentalists" are not out to deny the rights and privileges of other people---clearly state it. If you are, then you are a classic religionist that represents the very worst kind of "faithful" people that came to America in the colonial days, as in, "control your behavior, even if it only affects you, or we will control it for you--one way or another.
That's not a straw man argument. That's the facts of fundamentalism whether any of you wish to face it or not. It is the American version of the Taliban which teaches the exact same "principles."
Then if you "fundamentalists" are not out to deny the rights and privileges of other people---clearly state it. If you are, then you are a classic religionist that represents the very worst kind of "faithful" people that came to America in the colonial days, as in, "control your behavior, even if it only affects you, or we will control it for you--one way or another.
That's not a straw man argument. That's the facts of fundamentalism whether any of you wish to face it or not. It is the American version of the Taliban which teaches the exact same "principles."
Then if you "fundamentalists" are not out to deny the rights and privileges of other people---clearly state it. If you are, then you are a classic religionist that represents the very worst kind of "faithful" people that came to America in the colonial days, as in, "control your behavior, even if it only affects you, or we will control it for you--one way or another.
That's not a straw man argument. That's the facts of fundamentalism whether any of you wish to face it or not. It is the American version of the Taliban which teaches the exact same "principles."
Deny what rights?
Genuine "fundamentalists" believe in the fundametals found in scripture and try to follow them in their own lives. Like Love God, Love your neighbors, do good, tell others about the hope in Christ, reform their own life style and similar.The fundamentals of being a follower of Christ.
Those who may try to legislate or otherwise change the world and its practices are simply not fundamentalists, rather those who are ignoring what Christ said a believer should do. In other words wanna be Christians with no real belief or love. Followers of men.
Then if you "fundamentalists" are not out to deny the rights and privileges of other people---clearly state it. If you are, then you are a classic religionist that represents the very worst kind of "faithful" people that came to America in the colonial days, as in, "control your behavior, even if it only affects you, or we will control it for you--one way or another.
That's not a straw man argument. That's the facts of fundamentalism whether any of you wish to face it or not. It is the American version of the Taliban which teaches the exact same "principles."
Genuine "fundamentalists" believe in the fundametals found in scripture and try to follow them in their own lives. Like Love God, Love your neighbors, do good, tell others about the hope in Christ, reform their own life style and similar.The fundamentals of being a follower of Christ.
Those who may try to legislate or otherwise change the world and its practices are simply not fundamentalists, rather those who are ignoring what Christ said a believer should do. In other words wanna be Christians with no real belief or love. Followers of men.
If you deny a woman the "right" to an abortion when half the nation does NOT see it as "murder," then you are a fundamentalist forcing that woman to have a child which in many cases will not receive the care it deserves because "fundamentalists" are more concerned about voting in politicians with their same religious "values" than in following in the footsteps of Christ and showing concern for the poor, the destitute, or the fatherless--because it COSTS TOO MUCH MONEY to have the nation serve people as Christ did.
If you deny homosexuals the right to marriage or even the right to shop wherever they wish, in some cases even to hold a decent job, then you are a fundamentalist forcing on other people your own philosophy of life which entails treating them as second class people. The very act is sociologically idiotic because "marriage" increases faithful dedication from one partner to another--except of course among "born-again" Christians. In 1999 George Barna of Barna Research Group did a study of 3,854 adults from 48 states and reported that conservative Christian couples are even more likely to divorce than couples from other faith groups, atheists, or agnostics.
Barna stated:
Quote:
While it may be alarming to discover that born-again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time. Even more disturbing, perhaps, is that when those individuals experience a divorce many of them feel their community of faith provides rejection rather than support and healing.
"Christians are more likely to experience divorce than are non-Christians," Barna Research Group, December 21, 1999 (I think this can still be found at http://www.barna.org/cgi-bin )
Why do Christians tell us to focus on "family values" when they are unable to practice those "values" themselves? And how can letting homosexuals commit to marriage make divorce among Christians any worse than it already is? How can homosexual marriage be at the top of the fundamentalist "enemies of the nation" list when Christians have been so very poor about being faithful to an institution that they give lip service to?
Fundamentalists always speak about core "values" and look back at the Ward and June Cleaver family on TV as if it reflected real life at one time and now we have gotten away from it. In The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Stephanie Coontz warns us that the strategies and vlues of the traditional family "offer no solution to the discontents that underlie the contemporary romanticization of the 'good old days.' The reality of these families was far more painful and complex than situation-comedy reruns or the expurgated memories of the nostalgic would suggest."
(Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, online at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/046...books&v=glance (I hope I got all those numbers in there correctly, if not just look it up)
Fundamentalists constantly claim that God has absolute standards for right and wrong yet they are unable to demonstrate those with the witness of their own lives.
It is absolutely ironic that the Pilgrims, the fundamentalists of their own day in terms of intolerance toward other beliefs, landed near Provincetown, Massachusetts, perhaps the gayest beach town in all of the United States. There are even gay-friendly churches in the town.
The problem for fundamentalists who make everything right or wrong, black or white, in support of the American nation or an enemy of it is that if any of their idols fail--the Bible, the Nation, the Family--it leaves their lives in chaos.
Paul Tillich, the theologian who watched his own native country idolize Hitler and the Third Reich, recognized the tragic consequences when idols fail. He wrote
Quote:
There is a risk if what was considered as a matter of ultimate concern proves to be a matter of preliminary and transitory concern---as, for example, the nation. The risk to faith in one's ultimate concern is indeed the greatest risk man can run. For if it proves to be a failure, the meaning of one's life breaks down; one surrenders oneself, including truth and justice, to something which is not worth it.
Paul Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith (New York: Perennial Classics, Harper-Collins, 1989) p.20
And there you have it. Faith without flexibility is not faith--it is blindness. That is why fundamentalists fight every scientific discovery, cringe in horror at other than the Ward and June Cleaver families, and wave the American flag over the deaths of those brought on by a desire for vengeance.
It goes right back to the earliest Christians to arrive in America. They still have a need to control not only their own lives but the lives of others--and if they cannot, they use any tactic at all to demonize the "enemy."
A far cry from Jesus the Christ who said we should "love our enemies" because anyone can love their family and friends. Fundamentalists are not out to spread the gospel of Christ but out to transform every living being into one of themselves, thereby taking away the very free will God gave us beginning in the Garden of Eden.
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