Let me start by saying that although I am an ex-Catholic atheist, this is not intended to be a Christian bashing post. If you would like one of those, I’m sure one can be found in the Pit. Let me also say that while there was a precipitating event to this thread, I’m leaving it out so as not to muddle the issue (If it becomes necessary, I can post it later).
I’ve seen several arguments online and in person with the general form:
Given that Organization X is a Christian Organization,
Given that Activity Y is a sin,
Therefore, people that commit activity Y are sinners
Therefore, people that commit activity Y should be excluded from Organization X.
Leaving aside that the premises of the argument may be flawed (ie, whether X is really a Christian organization or whether Y is actually a sin), I’m having a hard time making the jump from line 3 to line 4, mainly based on the following core parts of what I understand to be Christian doctrine.
Love thy neighbor
It seems a very odd type of love that says “stay the hell away from me”. The usual response I see to this is “Love the sinner but hate the sin”, which, in addition to not actually being found in the Bible, doesn’t seem to promote excluding someone from an organization. I might hate smoking but that doesn’t mean I’m going to forbid smokers from coming over to my house, just ask them not to smoke indoors.
We are all sinners
Since it seems part of doctrine that all people are sinners (hence the need for forgiveness), if being a sinner was enough to exclude someone from a Christian organization, there wouldn’t be any Christian organizations.
We are all God’s Children
Jesus himself hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes, so obviously being a social pariah doesn’t mean you should be excluded from a particular organization.
I’ve made these point elsewhere online and the response I usually get is some variation on “You’re wrong!” or “Read your Bible again” :rolleyes:
Now, I’m not talking about things like “Christian Women’s organization excludes men” where the exclusionary reason doesn’t have much, if anything to do with religion. Nor am I talking about things like “Organization X banned Bob because Bob was a total jerk during the meetings”.
Now, I am well aware that there are plenty of Christians out there that hide behind their religion to be bigots or jerks or whatever, whether there is support in the faith for that practice or not. And I’m also well aware that plenty of Christians are Christian in the sense that they go to Church twice a year but have never read a line of the bible. I’m not asking about them. I’m asking about well-versed, intelligent argument against including all (or reasonably close to all) people in a particular organization.
If nothing else, it seems like it would be good proselytizing (assuming your organization is a fun one ).
Anyway, for the board Christians (or well-educated non-Christians): Am I seeing a manifestation of faith that I don’t remember from Sunday School, or these bogus argument that hide the real reason of “I just don’t like those people?”