Can we get back to the King of England thing??? I’m wondering who would would grant governership to, of the the colonies in North America. (You know the ones that had their independence revoked because they could run an election, and choose a leader)
[sub]ducking and running[/sub]
I’m not as erudite as Polycarp but I can share that I many times feel like a Christian alone.
In my church, most, if not all of the people think Benny Hinn, et. al. are wonderful christians who can do NO wrong. All criticism is from non-christians.
They probably all voted for Bush simply becasue I suppose he said he is a christian and anti-abortion; the Pastor even said he couldn’t believe any real christian voted for Al Gore, as if anyone who did is responsible for unborn babies being killed, as Gore is pro-choice.
Can you beleive this?
Judge a “christian” by how they act. DO they act like Jesus?
I think a lot of folks don’t “get it”.
The trouble with Christianity and other religious systems is that they filled with all these humans. The only thing that humans can be relied on for is that they are always wrong. Christianity and other religions have been the foremost and most public method in which humans voice their ignorance.
In this way religion has been and maintains itself as an excuse. And what an excuse it is.
this however is not its only function. Other functions along socilogical phsychologial too numerous help decide whether religion is good or bad for the individuals concerned.
the problem with this is that their is no such thing as good or evil.
anyway just enjoy your spiral decent as you make death a fun and educational experience.
When I find myself hating an entire group of people I have learned that that is prejudice, unless I have met each and every individual in the theoretical group. I am prejudiced, but I happen to think that hating groups of people is a bad thing. How much, or how often I hate them only modifies how bad a thing it is, not whether or not it is a bad thing.
But, consider this. When I decide to change my heart about these prejudices what I try to change is the hating part, not the grouping part. I suppose that this approach is logically flawed. Loving a group is as prejudiced as hating a group. But it turns out to be a better thing. Perhaps the Christians you know are hate mongers, and the gays you know are pederasts, and all the Jews are stingy, and Americans are stupid and arrogant. Giving up the need to despise them for the faults you perceive won’t change the fact (or imposed categorization) that they are Christians, Jews, or gay. But it will change who you are.
The fact that I try to love Fred Phelps, Adolph Hitler, Nero, and various other politicians does not require me to agree with them, support their opinions, or withhold my objections to their actions. It just means that someone I love has told me that love itself is the answer to hate.
Tris
Well, I can understand why homosexuals would find the “love the sinner/hate the sin” bit rather dubious. Some of the same people who espouse it (or merely others belonging to the same groups, see the whole dang thread above after all) are also fighting issues that the gay community is very invested in. If various Christian groups fight gay marriage, accuse homosexuals of engaging in everything from pederasty to gay recruitment to attempting to destroy the American family, block adoptions for gay couples, and preach about the evils of homosexuality, then it isn’t hard to see why LTS/HTS seems to be disingenous sophistry to them, especially when the vocal elements of Christianity seem to be the ones on the condemnation side of things, rather than on the side of tolerance and acceptance.
I personally do find it a bit troubling. What does such a philosophy lead to? It’s certainly an attempt at reconciling the tension between loving one’s neighbor and fighting sin. (I am going at it from their point of view. I understand that not every Christian believes homosexuality to be sinful.) From what I see, and these are only my own perceptions, those that ground themselves in LTS/HTS are people who commit to neither tolerance nor condemnation. While they do not actively go out of their way to fight the scourge of homosexuality, neither do they seem to be working to counter those who do so while clothed in the garb of Christianity. This silence is seen by many, justifiably so IMHO, as tacit approval. In the eyes of many non-Christians, LTS/HTS looks like a cop-out. “I won’t personally condemn you, but really what you do is sinful, so I won’t stand up for you if somebody else in my group does it.” So I can certainly understand why some people hold the belief that a LTS/HTS Christian actually does hold prejudice against homosexuals. After all, carried within the philosophy is “your life is sinful and wicked.”
Now, does the above represent all Christians who espouse LTS/HTS? Of course not. I am just trying to speak about general perceptions. I am sure that there are many Christians who are personally torn over the apparent Biblical condemnation of homosexuality and their desire to follow Christ. For them, LTS/HTS may be the only way to synthesize the contradictions inherent between love and condemnation. Of course I believe that tolerance is the only proper choice, but that’s easy for me to say since I don’t actually believe in sin.
I personally wish that more Christians would oppose the fundamentalist activist factions that believe themselves justified in denying equal rights to homosexuals based on Biblical pronouncements. One thing that Triskadecamus, Polycarp, and others here continually remind me of is that Christianity is not well represented by its most vocal elements, and the stereotypes do not hold true across the board, even though they are dead-on in some cases. I find it disappointing that the Christians who espouse the philosophies I most respect don’t seem to have more of a presence in our national dialogue when compared to the fundamentalists. If they did have more of a presence, perhaps some of the less charitable Christian stereotypes would begin to fade away.
As a christian,I would have to say no. Many more christians have died as a result of hatred towards Christianity than hatred towards gays. Has there ever been a call to exterminate gays? Even Hitler didn’t venture that far. I just don’t want to see a return to an erect penis worshipping society sacrificing people sharing my beliefs to the lions.
I know Ptahlis did not mean it as a personal indictment of me, but I took it as such (though not offensively) that the rank and file of us who are not out to condemn gay people for being gay don’t get the public voice that the radical noisemakers do.
Someone saying the (really totally radical) message that you should love your fellow man as you do yourself makes page 14 of a weekly on a slow news week if it gets printed at all, unless they happen to be the Professor of Biblical Ethics at a seminary, the Lord High Archbishop of Smyrna and All Points West, or other newsworthy type. Then it gets a casual mention in the newsbriefs on whatever day that paper runs “religious news.”
If you say “God is dead” or “God hates all gays” you can be assured of public prominence if you care to make appropriate noises, just because of the “newsworthy” nature of the article. But for someone to make public prominence with the idea that being Christian and being gay are not mutually exclusive, they would have to be a devout altar boy who gets crucified for being gay. As happened.
Another personal anecdote: the job I had before this one was 3:00-11:00 PM. After work one night about two years ago, I stopped at a local club for a glass of wine before driving home. At this particular bar, in addition to the bar proper were four little tables jutting out from the wall, each with two barstools, for private conversations. Not being in the mood to make small talk with strangers, I took the last of these, which was empty, drank my wine, and left.
The following week I picked up my copy of The Independent Weekly (Durham’s answer to the Chicago Reader) and read the cover story. It was about Matthew Shepherd. The year before he went back to Wyoming, he had attended college in North Carolina, then spent some time in Raleigh. He had become friends with the writer of the story, who was trying to put together for his readers the sort of person Matthew had been. And he led off with an account of having sat at a secluded table chatting with Matthew in a bar one night.
That bar. And that table.
Reading that story is one significant piece of why I keep speaking out on gay issues. One speaks of walking in another man’s shoes, figuratively.
I sat on Matthew Shepherd’s barstool.
There but for the grace of God…
So I do what I can. I read as much as I can. We did a Sunday morning workshop on how our church can minister to gays. I was involved. I post as often as possible on the subject, here and at the Pizza Parlor, because one thing I can do well is write. When I talk friends with misconceptions about gay people, I try to clear them up.
And it isn’t enough. But it’s what I can do for now.
Time for a brush-up in history, griens - ever see a pink triangle point-down? Gay men and lesbians were considered “sexual deviants” and gassed right along with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, Catholics, and, oh yeah, Jews.
Mmmm… erect penis worshipping society… 
I swear I’m posting to this thread today…
Esprix
Oh, and by the way, in the “combat ignorance” department, misunderstanding of gays sub-task force, this progress report:
Over on the Pizza Palace, one poster reported that she had a co-worker who had fallen in love with a pre-op transsexual, and wondered what to say to him.
I started to prepare a typically Polycarp piece that focused on the positive, God-loves-you-no-matter-who-you-are sort of thing that would speak to where she had said he was and yet would not compromise her values.
Friend of God beat me to it.
[brief hijack to apologize]
jenkinsfan, my mistake. You were not, in fact, the poster I was thinking of - in fact, the incident I was thinking of didn’t even happen on this board! Mea maxima culpa - I guess I should really watch where I’m flinging that tar, hm?
[/hijack]
You mean you don’t have a chapter of the Priests of Priapus at your church, Esprix?
Sheesh, these rationalist UUs have no respect for tradition! :rolleyes:
::: ducks and runs, envisioning Esprix singing “Gimme That Ol’ Time Religion” :::
Hey, last time I did that I got a nice pit thread out of the deal. I don’t recall you running to my aid when I said standing by while someone condemns another for their sinfulness was a bad thing.
What thread was this? I’m just curious.
Reading more of this thread, now I’m really seeing the absolute lack of understanding on this issue.
I can’t see how one can avoid disliking a group and yet still like the individuals who make up that group. Now, that isn’t to say you can’t like a person, then find out they are a mamber of said group, then you have to hate them by mere implication; but I would say that the effort involved in befriending any members of a group that can in some ways be considered hostile toward your beliefs/lifestyle/etc isn’t entirely crazy. To say otherwise is to already assume that all people agree with “turning the other cheek,” which many assuredly do not. As well, it is difficult to put forward an argument that the gays, for example, should look beyond the tresspasses of a “few” (I hesitate to use that) christians when the “good” christians who aren’t “fundies” can’t look beyond their shunning in the first place. I’ll stick with asmodean’s assessment on the last page: we’re fucked, as a race, until we all accept one religion or we all abandon all religion (to overly paraphrase and throw in personal opinion in an otherwise general case of how to argue a topic of absolutes).
How positively negative.
PTAHLIS said:
Like POLYCARP, this is a problem I encounter and am not certain what to do with. Love is not as hot a seller, news-wise, as hate. For me, it gets to be exhausting to continually say “I’m a Christian and I don’t believe that,” “I’M a Christian and I don’t believe that!” “I’M A CHRISTIAN AND I DON’T BELIEVE THAT!”
It is the radical elemet of any religion that gets the attention. How much does the average American know about moderate Islam as opposed to militant Islam? Or moderate Judaism as opposed to ultra-conservative Judaism? I understand why the uniformed would stereotype an entire religion based on what they see on T.V. But it bothers me when I find people I think should know better – that is, know about moderate Christianity or Islam or Judaism – who still engage in such stereotyping. Especially when the people doing so ought to know how damaging and exhausting such stereotyping can be.
Sometimes I think people don’t realize that by stereotyping – by effectively giving a whole religion over to its more radical elements – they too help to empower those more radical elements, and make it that much harder to diminish the very things they object to.
So I think at this point, given that we all seem to agree that any stereotyping, however difficult to avoid, is a Bad Thing[tm], what we need to figure out is how to avoid the situation in Jodi’s last paragraph.
I’m not sure I have an answer, either, because good news doesn’t sell, and isn’t likely to get covered unless it’s an exceptionally slow news day. Maybe Poly, Jodi, matt_mcl and Esprix need to take over a major network for a while, and try to get people to hear this message of tolerance for everyone that way. Hey, at least it would get covered!
::: visualizes self dressed in my St. Polycarp of Smyrna Hallowe’en outfit, Jodi in Sandra Day O’Connor robes flinging writs left and right, flanked by Esprix and Matt_mcl in matching A+F outfits, bursting into a network control booth shouting “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not gonna take it anymore!!!” :::
We could have Eve do the entertainment news, Manhattan cover the stock market analysis, AHunter on sports, and JMullaney handling the breaking story from the Vatican.
Sounds like fun!
If Joe_Cool brings the guns, I’ll make a few bribes to get on their trial’s jury
jmullaney:
No no no – Judicial robes make you look fat.
WARDROBE!