I had a messy room, in fact I've never known anyone who didn't grow up messy. Now, all my rooms, all 14 of them are neat as a pin.
https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com...Q.mbu-g8YxzQ672Mwj-KZOBnS8tSzsYx4EMbDaAgt22uY THE FRENCH PRESS When ‘Never Again’ Becomes ‘Again and Again’ The U.S. has a responsibility to protect Afghans from the mass atrocities of the Taliban. David French Afghans displaced by the advance of the Taliban gather at a park in Kabul. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar / AFP via Getty Images) The Afghan military is in a state of collapse. The Taliban—one of the most brutal and vicious extremist movements in the world—is on the advance. And the stories of their triumph are already dreadful. Here’s the Wall Street Journal on Friday: Taliban leaders have publicly pledged to be magnanimous in victory, assuring government officials, troops and the people of Afghanistan that they have nothing to fear as ever larger swaths of the country fall under their control. But Afghans pouring into Kabul and those still in Taliban-held areas say they have witnessed unprovoked attacks on civilians and executions of captured soldiers. In addition, they say, Taliban commanders have demanded that communities turn over unmarried women to become “wives” for their fighters—a form of sexual violence, human-rights groups say. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said Thursday that it had received reports of the Taliban executing members of the Afghan military who had surrendered. “Deeply disturbing & could constitute war crimes,” the embassy said on Twitter. Right now, as I type this newsletter, America is in the process of watching a movie it’s seen before. Political leaders remove troops from a faraway country, hoping to end an unpopular war. The enemy, committed to an indefinite fight, gains new life from the American withdrawal and attacks. The consequences are splashed across world media—mass killings, child rape, and the brutal darkness of extremist religious tyranny. This is the ISIS story, and we’re watching the Taliban sequel happen in real time. To this point, much of the national conversation has focused on the strategic consequences, phrased in terms of cold national interest. Will withdrawal harm American national security? Indeed, that’s a question I’ve tried to answer in piece after piece, written year after year. To me, the answer is clear—withdrawal hurts the United States. It empowers our enemies. It grants not just victory but territory and resources to an enemy that’s already proven that it can hit us, hard, at home. But there’s also a different question in play, one concerned less with security than with morality. Does the United States have a moral obligation to protect the people of Afghanistan from the darkness that awaits? The answer is a difficult yes. As the Afghan government is proving incapable of upholding its responsibility to protect its own citizens, our concern for the fundamental humanity and worth of the Afghan people demands that we act. To understand why, a bit of history and theology is in order. First, the history. One of the consistent themes in international relations and military policy since the end of the Second World War is the question of when and/or whether world powers should intervene in the affairs of sovereign nations to prevent or stop unfolding humanitarian disasters. Lack of clarity combined with lack of will has resulted in a terrible, sad reality. The phrase “never again”—words that echo in history after the indescribable shock and horror of the Holocaust—have given way to an entirely different reality. Again and again genocide has stalked the earth. World powers have blundered and blustered in response, but rare is the truly effective intervention that has prevented mass death. In the early 2000s, in the near-term aftermath of the Rwanda genocide and the NATO intervention to stop Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo, the Canadian government established an International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The goal was to create a cohesive moral and legal framework for protecting victims from mass atrocities. The Commission produced a report called “The Responsibility to Protect.” As the Australian National University professor Luke Glanville notes, “The concept of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (RtoP) aimed to overcome what was an increasingly intractable debate about the so-called ‘right of humanitarian intervention’ by redirecting the focus away from the rights of intervening states and towards the need to protect victims of mass atrocities.” UN member states unanimously endorsed the concept at the UN’s 2005 World Summit. The responsibility to protect rests on three pillars. First, nations have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from mass atrocities. Second, the international community has a responsibility “to assist States in protecting their populations.” Third, the international community has a responsibility “to protect when a State is manifestly failing to protect its populations.” The responsibility to protect isn’t a binding treaty obligation. It represents a declaration of intent, one grounded in a deep understanding of our shared humanity and the worth and dignity of the individual. What about theology? If you’ve got some spare time and some spare cash, I’d urge you to read Glanville’s paywalled 2012 paper, simply titled “Christians and the Responsibility to Protect.” It’s an outstanding, relatively short, and readable explanation of how the responsibility to protect “can actually be understood as echoing claims found in Scripture, and developed further by early Church Fathers, Catholic scholastics, and Protestant natural law theorists, that the protection of strangers and foreigners is a sacred duty or obligation.” Glanville begins with scripture, including scriptures you’ve seen me quote in this newsletter, that explain the universal worth of human beings—each of us created in the image of God—and the duty of men to act justly, including to rescue the oppressed. He cites, for example, the “stern warning” of Proverbs 24:11-12: “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?” Critically, however, the recognition of our shared humanity and the equal worth of all citizens doesn’t mean that we have equal responsibilities to all people. The best view, from church fathers, does indeed permit allocating priorities. Again, here’s Glanville, this time referencing Thomas Aquinas: Aquinas accepted the idea of Cicero, Ambrose and others that we should give priority to those ‘more closely united to us’ when performing our duties. This was articulated as the ‘order of charity’ or the ‘order of love’. However, like Ambrose, he insisted that the most important criterion for determining the requirements of justice and charity is the degree of need. He cited with approval Ambrose’s dictum: ‘Feed him that dies of hunger: if thou hast not fed him, thou hast slain him.’ And he asserted that individuals have a strict duty of justice to give from their superfluous goods and perhaps even from their own necessities in order to assist those in extreme need.” Thus, the reasonable framework rejects the extreme idea that national borders and national obligations are meaningless. There is an “order of charity.” But it also rejects the competing extreme idea that we have no moral obligation to those who reside outside our land—that so long as we are safe and secure we can fiddle while the world burns. I like the way Glanville phrases it. “Sovereign boundaries are morally relevant and it is right that states give some priority to the care of the vulnerable within their borders,” he writes, “nevertheless, states are bound also to care for the vulnerable beyond their borders in cases of extreme persecution and suffering if they can do so without excessive cost to themselves.” This is a much easier formulation to adopt when discussing diplomatic engagement, humanitarian aid, and welcoming refugees fleeing horrific oppression (though it’s worth noting that even that level of support for people facing mass atrocities is increasingly controversial in American politics). It’s much more difficult to ponder when considering the use of military force. Armed conflict is a last resort. Not only is it vital to consider whether military action will achieve the desired ends at acceptable costs, just war doctrine must also apply. Fortunately, just war doctrine is deeply connected with the responsibility to protect. Writing in Providence Magazine, the Heritage Foundation’s Joseph Loconte made a Christian conceptual case for humanitarian intervention. Speaking of the responsibility to protect, he says this: Here is a universal norm, morally binding on all member states. And it draws its intellectual strength from the Christian just war tradition. That tradition begins with the God-given worth of every human life, and then insists on the state’s obligation to defend that life against harm—using force if necessary. Indeed, the UN’s criteria for military engagement follow precisely those articulated by Christian theologians beginning with Augustine: the motive must be to prevent human suffering (right intention); means short of force must be judged as unlikely to stop the aggressor (last resort); the military option must be proportional to the threat (proportionality); and the consequences of action must not be worse than inaction (reasonable prospects). “This,” Loconte argues, “is classic Christian just war theory.” Indeed it is. Fighting to save Afghanistan from the Taliban would be just. We have a right under American law and international law to remain in place and engage in battle. But do we have the obligation? Under Glanville’s formulation, does staying impose an “excessive cost” to ourselves? I’m not going to pretend the answer here is easy. People I respect greatly come to a different conclusion. But I still believe the difficult, true answer is that we must stay. We have proven for the better part of a decade that we are able to prevent a mass atrocity with minimal American casualties and a minimal exertion of America’s vast military and economic might. We are long past the days of President Obama’s Afghan Surge. Writing in The Dispatch, Paul Miller—the former director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the national security council staff for Presidents Bush and Obama—put it this way: The U.S. presence in Afghanistan the last few years was tiny—just 2,500 troops before the start of the final withdrawal. It was indefinitely sustainable. There is no significant antiwar movement to speak of, there is no domestic political pressure to withdraw, and no election will hinge on U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. U.S. troops faced low risks in Afghanistan, and the low casualty rate is not a function of the 2020 peace deal. Just 66 U.S. personnel have been killed in action since 2014, less than one per month for nearly seven years. That is not to make light of the loss of individual soldiers, but it is to recognize, in historical perspective, that the conflict in Afghanistan is very small and U.S. ground troops have not been involved in direct combat in large numbers for years. Yes, it is deeply disappointing to watch large numbers of Afghan troops melt away in the face of the Taliban onslaught. We can lament our failures to adequately train the Afghan Army, and we can and must understand whether the failure to anticipate and prepare for the Taliban offensive represents an intelligence failure on a massive scale. But recent history gives us some degree of hope that even now it is not too late to reverse the Taliban’s gains and save millions from the nightmare to come. In 2014 we watched as American-trained Iraqi divisions collapsed when ISIS attacked. But beginning in 2015 and beyond, we watched many of those same troops fight heroically and at great cost as they went house-to-house and block-by-block destroying the Caliphate and reclaiming Iraqi land. What made the difference? Not mass numbers of American troops but rather a renewed American commitment. Even small numbers of American soldiers and Marines, backed by the might of allied air forces, decisively tipped the balance of power. For allied troops, there is an immense psychological difference between fighting after America has abandoned the field and fighting when America is committed to victory. While I disagreed with President Obama’s decision to abandon Iraq in 2011, it was to his immense credit that he had the wisdom to reverse course to stop the ISIS genocide, and it was to President Trump’s credit that he continued the fight Obama started. But then Trump made a deal with Afghanistan’s equivalent of ISIS, and it is President Biden’s mistake to complete the blunder that Trump began. It is easy to allocate blame for the Afghan collapse. Already the internet is filling with poignant postmortems of our 20-year war abroad. But we know who is not to blame for the Afghan Army’s failures, and it’s the women and girls who face the return of medieval oppression. It’s the men and women who laid down their lives to support American troops in the field. It’s the tiny, beleaguered Christian community in Afghanistan. On Friday evening, World Magazine’s Mindy Belz tweeted this: Mindy Belz @mcbelz A person who works with house church networks in Afghanistan reports its leaders received letters last night from the #Taliban warning them that they know where they are and what they are doing. The leaders say they aren't going anywhere. So it begins. August 13th 2021 So it begins indeed. As Belz reports, there are 18,000 Afghans who qualify for Special Immigrant Visas because they worked with American forces. Only about 1,250 have been evacuated to safety. At the very least, do we not have an obligation to those who risked their lives in our employ? There is a responsibility to protect the people of Afghanistan from the evil to come. The government of Afghanistan is failing. We don’t know if a genocide like that committed by ISIS awaits, but we do know we can stop a mass atrocity with a minimal exertion of our vast national might. A moral pillar of our international order is crumbling before our eyes. Never again? It may happen again, and we are choosing to stand aside.
David French ALWAYS brings the goods! https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com...Q.aMTGeJb67ll9aF0iQj6QMHP6I7Bg1XVwTMDaNYCwu78 It’s Time to Stop Rationalizing and Enabling Evangelical Vaccine Rejection There is no religious liberty interest in refusing the COVID vaccine. As the coronavirus's Delta variant rips through (mainly) the Southeastern United States, two things are becoming clear at once. First, amidst the dark clouds of continued disease, there is the silver lining of an increased number of vaccines. After hitting a weekly low in early July, the pace has picked up to an average of almost 900,000 vaccinations a day. Through persuasion and mandates, America is chipping away at vaccine reluctance. At the same time, however, the remaining vaccine holdouts are growing more extreme, and significant parts of the Christian Right are enabling, excusing, and validating Evangelical behavior that is gravely wrong and dangerous to the lives and health of their fellow citizens.......(CONT.)
The American Crisis of Selective Empathy And how it reaches into the church. David French Sep 12 689 (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images.) I’m going to tell you a true-life story, one of many virtually identical stories I’ve heard these past few weeks. Be honest with yourself as you consider how you feel. Brian (not his real name) was a kind Christian man. He and his wife were always there to help a friend in need, and in the local business community, he was known for his relentlessly cheerful disposition. He was Republican—like virtually everyone else in his church and community—but he wasn’t defined by his politics. Then the pandemic hit. Brian hated the lockdowns, and he also hated masks and especially mask mandates. He hated them so much that he boycotted services until the church allowed unmasked people to worship. Brian also refused the vaccine. It’s not that he thought that COVID was a hoax, but he didn’t view it as a meaningful risk. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t quite at retirement age either. His health was good. He was willing to risk the disease and unwilling to take a vaccine that felt rushed. You can guess the rest of the story. Brian caught COVID. Soon he was in the hospital. Days later he was in the ICU. Death came quickly. The disease he discounted had taken his life. Most readers know that I live in Tennessee, and the Delta variant is rampant. We’re experiencing a renewed surge of death that’s hitting us differently from the huge peaks in December and January. Then it felt more like a natural disaster. While there were people who were more careful than others (I know many quite careful folks who caught the disease), COVID washed over us like a tsunami, and who blames the victims of a tidal wave? Now it’s different. First by the dozens, now by the hundreds, we are burying neighbors who would almost certainly be alive today if they’d done one, simple thing—taken the vaccine. It’s breaking people’s hearts. A dear friend of mine posted this on Facebook a few days ago: Can you imagine the grief if a member of your family falls to COVID in this way? Can you imagine the realization that an imminent death was entirely, easily preventable? Can you imagine how that understanding would tear at your heart and soul? Yet I’m seeing trends that are deeply unsettling. I see schadenfreude. I sometimes see obscene references to “thinning the herd.” Elizabeth Bruenig wrote powerfully in The Atlantic to decry what she rightly called “death shaming.” There is a profound lack of empathy for these terrible losses, an unwillingness to “weep with those who weep,” and a stubborn refusal to even try to place oneself in the shoes of the grieving. Why? The answer is that America is experiencing an empathy crisis. But it’s not quite the crisis you might think. Our empathy can overflow for the people we love, for the people within our tribe—even when they make grave errors. But what about our empathy for “them,” the people we distrust? Then empathy is in short supply. Indeed, in some cases, the very concept of empathy is under fire. You may not know this, but empathy is under fire even within the church itself. Parts of American Christianity are in a fight over the idea of empathy, and the outcome of that dispute will resonate beyond the borders of Evangelical belief. To understand the context, on May 31, 2019, Joe Rigney, the influential pastor of Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota and the president of Bethlehem College and Seminary wrote an essay called the “Enticing Sin of Empathy.” It was written in the style of C.S. Lewis’s book, The Screwtape Letters, as a letter from one demon to another, describing how to tempt Christians into sin. The problem of empathy, as he described it, is that it’s a satanic alternative to the virtue of compassion. In Rigney’s definition, compassion focuses on a sufferer’s good, whereas empathy focuses on a sufferer’s feelings. “We teach humans,” Rigney writes, “that unless they subordinate their feelings entirely to the misery, pain, sorrow, and even sin and unbelief of the afflicted, they are not loving them.” Rigney says compassion suffers “with” someone, while empathy suffers “in” them. That’s a hard distinction to grasp, but in a later conversation with controversial pastor and theologian Douglas Wilson, Rigney further defined what he meant. First, Wilson says that “empathy is the … conduit by which relativism is pouring into counseling.” Then Rigney describes the difference between empathy and compassion like this: Rigney: Empathy is the sort of thing that you’ve got someone drowning, or they’re in quicksand, and they’re sinking. And what empathy wants to do is jump into the quicksand with them, both feet, and-and it feels like that’s going to be more loving, because they’re going to feel like, I’m glad that you’re here with me in the quicksand. Problem is you’re both now sinking. Wilson: Right. Rigney: Right. Whereas, if you do, I’m going to keep one foot on the shore, and I’m actually gonna grab onto this big branch, and then I’ll step one foot in there with you and try to pull you out. That’s sympathy, and that’s—that’s actually helpful. But to the person who’s in there, it can feel like you’re judging me. Wilson: So sympathy’s clearly hierarchical. Rigney: Right. It implies that one person is the hurting, and one person is the helper. So why bring this up? After all, I’m referring to a years-old essay and discussions involving pastors and theologians many (most?) readers don’t know. Well, two reasons. First, the dispute is now breaking out into the American church in a more concrete and tangible way. And second, the dispute can help us understand America’s real empathy problem—not that it’s excessive, but rather that it’s far too selective. Last week, Kate Shellnut at Christianity Today published a long and comprehensively reported piece about profound differences at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and Bethlehem College and Seminary. Pastors and professors have resigned from the church and the seminary. Dozens of members have left the church. Bethlehem Baptist is most prominent for being the home of John Piper, an extraordinarily influential reformed pastor and theologian. I’ve quoted him countless times in my Sunday essays. I can’t even begin to summarize all the complexities behind the controversy, but as Shellnut tells the story, a central factor involved disputes over so-called “untethered empathy.” Here’s Shellnut: More than 25 people spoke to CT at length about their experiences navigating conflict at Bethlehem for this article. Many brought up the “untethered empathy” concept as a factor that they believe shaped leaders’ responses when confronted with claims of bullying, institutional protection, and spiritual abuse. Here’s how a fight over empathy can play out. One of the departing pastors, Ming-Jinn Tong, “wore traditional Chinese attire” when he preached after the Atlanta massage parlor shootings, in which six of the eight victims were Asian women. He and another pastor were reportedly critiqued by a fellow leader for “bringing up race” as a “component” of the murders. In both Rigney’s commentary and in the real-world applications, those who critique empathy don’t want demands for empathy to prevent them from exercising judgment. In other words, they place a priority on retaining the ability to tell a suffering person that they’re wrong, for their own good. Or, perhaps put more gently, critics don't want empathy to be a barrier to inquiry. “I don’t want your feelings to stop me from thinking.” This is a Christianized version of the famous secular conservative statement that “facts don’t care about your feelings.” There are multiple problems with this approach, especially for Christians. First, as a practical matter, the prioritizing of our own judgments often implies wisdom and knowledge we don’t possess. Take, for example, the argument that “untethered empathy” is dangerous in the context of racism and abuse, that it prevents solid fact-finding and sound judgment. But what I’ve seen with my own eyes is that it is remarkable how often there is an inverse relationship between knowledge and certainty. We think we know more than we do. We think we’re more wise than we are. Or, to take Pastor Rigney’s analogy, we might think we’ve got one foot on solid ground and one foot in the quicksand, but we don’t. Our other foot is in a different pool of quicksand, and in our mistaken confidence we dig everyone deeper into the morass. This happens all the time in conversations about race and abuse. I’ve been guilty of it myself. But becoming empathetic does not mean that we forsake the search for truth. In fact, it can often empower us and motivate us to seek greater knowledge and insight. It means, however, that we shouldn’t prioritize our fallible and frequently-mistaken perception of the truth over the humanity and experience of the person before us. Even if we’re dealing with something as simple as “vaccines work,” or “a vaccine likely would have saved his life,” the person who lacks empathy is often stunningly ignorant of another person’s heart or motivations or the full context of their lives. There is so much they don’t know. Second, as I noted above, I’ve found that empathy is almost always warped by tribalism and partisanship. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that conversations around the “sin of empathy” have arisen from the more self-described “conservative” quarters of religious America, and the alarms have been raised about empathy in connection with causes that are often perceived as “progressive.” The instant the tables are turned, however, there is a great call for empathy. Walk a mile in our shoes. White Evangelicals, for example, are disproportionately likely to be anti-mask and anti-vaccine in the midst of a deadly pandemic. “But you have to understand us,” we cry. “There are reasons for these beliefs, and there is great goodness in the church.” I also see a tremendous hardness of heart in parts of the left as well. I began this essay with the example most likely to trigger rage and contempt from others, even in the face of great suffering. No one can deny the venom spilled out on the dead and dying. Entire lives are remembered only for their final, fatal mistake. Third, and most importantly, Christians of all people should understand the ultimate empathy of the incarnation itself. As the book of Hebrews declares, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” In Philippians, Paul says, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” The Son of God himself dove into the quicksand. He experienced it all. Birth and death. Hunger and temptation. Friendship and betrayal, and it culminated in oppression and torture. He can empathize with the worst human experience. Here’s the critical thing: He did not wait for any of us to be worthy of his empathy. He didn’t wait for us to change, to wave the white flag of surrender on our obstinance and defiance. Read Paul again, this time in Romans, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ’s version of empathy doesn’t excuse our sin, but it certainly did not wait for our virtue. Our public discourse is full of religious zeal, but it’s spiritually impoverished. People who need grace receive condemnation. Genuine friendship is replaced by factional alliances. And too many of us withhold empathy so that we can be sure that you receive our judgment. Yet each of us has a desperate desire, a need, for people not just to understand us, but to know us, in full. You can see this when people are objects of hatred, even when they do things wrong. There is a cry from the heart that says, “There is more to me than the thing you hate.” Last week I went to Immanuel Nashville to watch a discussion between Russell Moore and Beth Moore (no relation), perhaps the two most prominent Southern Baptists to leave the denomination. They’d been subjected to an immense amount of cruelty as they dissented from the Christian embrace of Trump, battled white nationalism, and sought to expose sexual abuse in the church. The conversation, however, was free of rancor and bitterness. And there’s one part that stands out. It’s directly relevant to this essay today. A member of the audience asked a question on so many lips. “How,” they asked, “do we have difficult conversations with a person we believe has dangerous ideas?” Russell responded with a fascinating thought, one that requires empathy. Before the talk, he said, rehearse the conversation with a friend or a spouse, except play the role of the person you believe is wrong. Do your best to inhabit their perspective and advocate their idea. Nothing about this concept requires rationalizing or excusing acts that are truly wrong. Did Christ rationalize or excuse sin? But empathy ultimately doesn’t pontificate, it participates—it participates in your neighbor’s life, and it doesn’t condition your participation on your neighbor’s perfection. In short, don’t wait for a person to be right before you dive into their life with sacrificial love.
So………..God gave us the right to be stupid, don’t judge us for exercising that right (and dying), and a good Christian would understand and forgive us for helping spread the disease and prolong the pandemic (and we don’t care what non Christians think). We’re just freedom loving and misunderstood. Please don’t judge us. No wonder this country is in the shitter.
Not to parce semantics but they were included. However counted only as 3/5ths. Still disgusting. Possibly even more so than just not acknowledging them.
One who actually follows Christ’s teachings….and his example. Duh! NOT those who pay Him lip service and then use Him to rationalize their own selfish behavior. What an absolutely silly question. Got any more??
Sooo.....you believe there may be good Christians, mediocre Christians, bad Christians, or whatever Christians as if there will be a check-off list at heaven's gate. Got it. BTW, even Jesus said there's none good except for God.
Isn’t that what we’re basically taught? St. Peter at the gate with his check list and everyone having to ‘splain themselves to get in and all that? And yes, I believe there are “good” Christians…..and even provided you with my opinion of what one is. Try to keep up. “Bad” Christian is a contradiction in terms. Such a thing cannot exist. Just because someone calls themselves a Christian doesn’t make them one. Christianity is about your actions, not your words.
You differentiated when you mentioned "good" Christians. There is no such term. You're either a Christian, or you're not. Period. But, I digress. The bottom line is, to be heaven-bound, there's not anything we've done nor earned on our own, but our relationship with Christ. Does He know you, or not? That's it. If you have no relationship with Him, you have nothing at all - no matter what good works you've done. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ ~Matthew 7;21-23
Now you’re making my argument for me. My point is that all those “evangelical Christians” who support violating the God given (argue THAT one) rights to make personal choices that hurt no one but themselves (if even that); who support taking away Constitutional rights from other Americans (while keeping….and protecting….their own); who attempt to impose their misunderstanding of health and science on others (often with fatal results) are NOT Christians in ANYONE’S universe, regardless of how they may adamantly they claim otherwise. And anyone who coddles and supports them is just as bad. If someone wants to be a recalcitrant, racist and ignorant asshole, then be honest about it. Quit trying to cloak it in the so called respectability of Christianity. It demeans “real” Christians. I suspect that the “evangelicals” and their agendas are in for a rude awakening when their time comes to be held accountable……
For some reason, I'm reminded of a few passages: John 3:8-11 3 As he (Jesus) was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. 4 “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” 6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. 9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” 11 “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew 7:3-5 3 “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?4 How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?5 Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ John 13;35 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
Well that just settles it completely! Give me a few minutes to quote scripture to “prove” MY points…….there are as many interpretations of the scripture as there are readers. And use all of the Bible you want, it does not excuse or rationalize those who shit on others through their own ignorance and selfishness. And THAT is my whole point. Too many people in this country who use the Bible and “Christianity” to run rough shod in a secular world……and live exactly opposite of the Christian values they espouse. THOSE are the hypocrites. If you want to call me a hypocrite for pointing out the blatantly obvious, that’s on you. Whatever helps you sleep at night…..
Then why are you arguing for and rationalizing selfish behaviors by others??? I’d hate to take a road trip with you. With all the detours, backroads and dead ends you’d take us on, we’d never get to our intended destination…….just sayin’……..
I'm not a Trump guy anymore, if that's what you're asking. The jury's out with DeSantis considering his cavalier approach to covid, vaccines, and such. Who else?
