Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [RELIGION] Defining a Christian act... was Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock

["Christian M. Cepel" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Rick wrote:

I believe I already addressed this.  I think it safe to say that both Christians and Muslims believe that their God (oh  goodness.. really... the same guy....  the God of Ishmael AND Issac) has dictated certain moral absolutes.  This makes neither Christian or Islamic fanatics.  Now, you take those who are bombing innocents in the name of Allah, or those horrid people who are pushing the "God Hates Fags" agenda (or those bombing clinics), and you have the fanatic of both groups.

If it's the same God, then why the different books and the thousands of years of killing?

Good grief, did you not know that we're in the middle of a family feud?  It's examples like this that make police reluctant to answer calls to domestic disturbances... this and Troops by Kevin Rubio *grin*.

A lot of people believe that while Issac was the father of the Jewish race ( and from that a great deal of others), that his half-brother Ishmael was the father of the middle-eastern/Arabic races.  When God separated the two, he told Abram/Abraham that:  (well, he told Hagar)
    ¹² He will be a wild donkey of a man;

       his hand will be against everyone
       and everyone's hand against him,
       and he will live in hostility
       toward ^[b] all his brothers."

As far as the different books, well.  They are the same God, but in theory one book was dictated by God and the other is just a collection of nice fantasies and myths as Mike is fond of saying.  It's up to each to decide which is which.  I believe that Muslims believe the same "Creation Myth" and fantasies regarding the flood and such.  They just disagree about who's really God's chosen people are, and who really received His inspiration.  (This is my understanding).

Here's the the entire scripture on Ishmael's birth:
Genesis 16

Hagar and Ishmael

    ¹ Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; ² so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."
      Abram agreed to what Sarai said. ³ So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. ⁴ He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
      When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. ⁵ Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me."

    ⁶ "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

    ⁷ The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. ⁸ And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"
      "I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered.

    ⁹ Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." ¹⁰ The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count."

    ¹¹ The angel of the LORD also said to her:
       "You are now with child
       and you will have a son.
       You shall name him Ishmael, ^[a]
       for the LORD has heard of your misery.

    ¹² He will be a wild donkey of a man;
       his hand will be against everyone
       and everyone's hand against him,
       and he will live in hostility
       toward ^[b] all his brothers."

    ¹³ She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen ^[c] the One who sees me." ¹⁴ That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi ^[d] ; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.

    ¹⁵ So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. ¹⁶ Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

Footnotes:

Genesis 16:11 Ishmael means God hears .

Genesis 16:12 Or live to the east / of

Genesis 16:13 Or seen the back of

Genesis 16:14 Beer Lahai Roi means well of the Living One who sees me .

It is a doctrine.  It was modeled by the entire life of Christ.  As such, you could say the doctrine is WWJD.   It's a shame that WWJD has been so sorely abused that it's now almost a bad word.

Darwin fish > WWJD =)

Huh?

I'll concede that I don't really have numbers on this, and I have a vested interest in this number being a very high percentage.  The people you mention need to be lovingly reprimanded and reminded of the love of Christ for all his children.  I don't deny that they are out there, and I am saddened because these people portray a God that doesn't exist within the true faith of Christianity.  It's always the case that the lowest minorities are the most loud and vociferous and end up doing so much more damage to the perception of Christianity than can really be fixed by the majority quietly showing the love of Christ to those around them.

Well, the Christians must be doing something right, because it doesn't look like the numbers are dropping.

Yes, you should throw in the towel and join us :)  We'd welcome you with open arms :)  WWJD?  *grin*

I must say that I really believe that these "God Hates Fags" guys and the lunatic family that comes to campus once a year or so have made themselves willing tools of Satan.  Satan's priority one goal is to destroy God's following and to separate man from the love of God.  Whether they believe it to be true or not is not the issue, but rather that their behavior works to separate man from God.

I guess I'm not familiar with the lunatic family...what's that about?

I wish I could remember exactly, but it's this idiot that stands in speaker's circle and his wife and daughters and sons (some of them very young) run around with big flags and posters which all have dragon, shield, sword and similar iconography and horrible statements on them.  I think his big beef is that colleges and college educations are of Satan (again, this could be poor memory).   He stands there and has shouting matches with secularists, believers in differing religions, and even Christians who absolutely run him into the ground rhetorically, which of course he never realizes or concedes to because he's a fanatic egomaniac.  He tours all around the nation... He needs to get a job and put some decent clothes on his kids....   His behavior, if nothing else, amounts to extreme child abuse.  I'll see if I can find more info on him.

Now Rick.  If I was a fanatic, I might possibly take it upon myself to strike these people down and kill them as they are clearly preaching a false doctrine, which the new testament lists as a far greater transgression than simply keeping one's mouth shut (I.e., if you're gonna preach, it had better be correct).  However, I am not a fanatic and can only mourn the damage they do both to Christianity, but more importantly to every soul they turn away from Christ's gift of salvation.

But, here's another contradiction. If a Christian feels compelled to protest at an abortion clinic, why does that same person not feel compelled to tear down graven images or picket businesses that are open on Sunday? Are different commandments more important than others? i.e., you imperil your soul by breaking *any* of them, correct?

There are numerous augments to explain the difference, but the easiest and most pragmatic argument is that those other things are not ending the lives of millions of babies a year worldwide.  Another reason is that while we are not supposed to be "of it", we as Christian's are "in it", and violating laws by tearing down graven images and other such antisocial behaviors are hopefully relegated to and limited to the fanatics.   Again, this behavior shows none of the compassion of Christ, but a more militant confrontational kind of paradigm.  Of course we do get together on alternate Saturdays to physically cast the money-changers from the temple, but that's viewed more as a calisthenic exercise to keep in shape.

I cannot speak for others, but to my mind the best 'picketing' that could be done of a place like PP would be a small discrete group of 2 or 3 people who say nothing more than, "we can offer you alternatives and love".

Yeah, I'd like to more of this and less screaming and hollering.

The folks we've talked to here in Columbia meet my  preference exactly.  They are quiet and discrete.  They do nothing that would cause them to be removed, as that would destroy their ability to try to spread their good influence.  They are quiet, loving and kind.  Open arms is the most wonderful organization and it almost brings me to tears whenever I think about what they do for mothers and children.  They bring hope to the hopeless and comfort to the hurting, options to those who feel they have none, and life where there would otherwise be death.

My objection to them being funded by public funds is not something I would ever picket outside of the clinic where it would cause discomfort to the women visiting.  There are other forums to oppose this that are more appropriate.

I wasn't aware that PP was publicly funded...

Oh yes.   almost entirely.  They are seen as a 'government funded "free clinic"' of sorts because otherwise women don't have the option from private companies to go into a non-judgmental environment where their privacy will be protected and honored and their wallet not drained... At least that's the reasoning.  If it was once true, it's true no longer.

Did you know that PP was really created (to some degree) as a eugenics project to eliminate the inferior black race?  You should read the writings of Margaret Sanger.  She was the founder of ABCL which later became PP  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger).  She was a horrible racist demon of a woman.  Here's a quote from that wiki article on the subject:

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Eugenics and Euthanasia

Sanger was a proponent of eugenics, a social philosophy claiming that human hereditary traits can be improved through social intervention. Methods of social intervention (targeted at those seen as "genetically unfit") advocated by eugenicists have included selective breeding, sterilization, and euthanasia. In 1932, for example, Sanger argued for:

A stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.^[4]

With advances in biology and genetics, it has become clear that the policies Sanger advocated to prevent the disabled from reproducing would in practice be ineffective.^{[citation needed]} However, in the early 20th century, the eugenics movement, in which Sanger was prominently involved, gained strong support in the United States. As a result of the efforts of American eugenists, "eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in 'colonies,' and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning."^[5]

It has also been argued that the work of the American eugenics movement was directly responsible for the rise of the Nazi eugenics programs (such as the T-4 Euthanasia Program) and the Holocaust.^[6] Edwin Black writes:

Eventually, America’s eugenic movement spread to Germany as well, where it caught the fascination of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement... in 1934 the Richmond Times-Dispatch quoted a prominent American eugenicist as saying, "The Germans are beating us at our own game." ^[6]

Hitler's attempts at creating a "Master Race" through eugenic policies were rooted in white supremacy, a concept associated with (but not synonymous with) eugenics in general. Sanger promoted the idea of "race hygiene" through negative eugenics, though her writings do not indicate that she believed that any particular (ethnic) race as a whole was more eugenic or dysgenic than any other, and she condemned the anti-Semitic Nazi program as "sad & horrible."^[3] Black continues:

Where did Hitler develop his racist and anti-Semitic views? Certainly not from anything he read or heard from America. Hitler became a mad racist dictator based solely on his own inner monstrosity, with no assistance from anything written or spoken in English. But like many rabid racists ... Hitler preferred to legitimize his race hatred by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in a more palatable pseudoscientific facade – eugenics.^[7]

Sanger saw birth control as a means to prevent "dysgenic" children from being born and living a disadvantaged life, and dismissed "positive eugenics" (which promoted greater fertility for the "fitter" upper classes) as impractical. Though many leaders in the eugenics movement were calling for active euthanasia of the "unfit," Sanger spoke out against such methods. Edwin Black writes:

In [William] Robinson's book, Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control (Practical Eugenics), he advocated gassing the children of the unfit. In plain words, Robinson insisted: 'The best thing would be to gently chloroform these children or give them a dose of potassium cyanide.' Margaret Sanger was well aware that her fellow birth control advocates were promoting lethal chambers, but she herself rejected the idea completely. 'Nor do we believe,' wrote Sanger in Pivot of Civilization, 'that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding.'^[8]

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I don't really understand how anybody can so readily try to group those who believe in absolute moral truth with fanatics.  I can believe in moral relativism and act fanatical about it.  The two have no real correlation.

Because those same absolute truths are the mantra of the fanatical...

Yes, but they still represent a very small subset of a large positive and peaceable body.  Every group has crazies that will twist and turn the group doctrine into insanity.

Rick

I'm enjoying this conversation with you.

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