My View Of The World
I don’t like labels but there is a “but” in that statement for me. We need to understand just why the major conflicts arise in our world and then be able to see who is causing them. We can no longer afford a general “Us vs Them” mentality. If that keeps up it will eventually destroy us. Without knowing who “Them” is or what percentage of the population they represent we may just go down in ashes. That is what this post is all about.
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Prejudice is an ugly part of humanity.
The ugliest is saying your enemy isn’t human.
He is an animal without your qualities
How could it be otherwise.
It just struck me in the shower recently that we seem to be living in two distinctively different worlds today that are weirdly occupying the same space in time. That phenomenon is not terribly unusual in the overall scheme of things, but the intensity of it is almost freakish now. The “Us vs Them” mentality seems to have caused a VERY deep chasm between too many of us. That is what this unusually long post a about.
This phenomenon has several different faces. Let’s look at some of them.
Read moreMy new blogging friend John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina is certainly not afraid to call out Evangelicals for their discrimination against others. That is one of the primary things I admire him for and why read him daily. Here are some words from a recent post. I encourage you to click on the link to read the entire story.
[And please, my Evangelical friend,] don’t give me that hackneyed, tired nonsense, that you are loving LGBTQ people by doing the things you do to them, because that’s an insult to all of us.
If you’re going to tell me with a straight face, that ridiculing them in the streets and excluding them from your churches and passing legislation to take away their civil rights and prohibiting them from being fully authentic—is loving them—I’m respectfully calling bullshit. The day you convinced yourself that this was love, you lost the plot completely.
Source: Stuff That Needs To Be Said
I hope at least a few Evangelicals will read his post and realize that they are poisoning Christianity by their hateful words and actions. There is far too much judging among Evangelicals if you ask me but I readily admit that I judge others more than I should. The difference between them and me is that I recognize it as a personal fault and is contrary to my Live and Let Live pillar of life, and for some weird reason they see their prejudices as following Jesus.
As the title of John’s blog says “Stuff That Needs To Be Said”, maybe he can get through to that guy who works in an oval office. But I kinda doubt ANYONE can get through to him except maybe Meuller. 🥺 But, maybe he could convince a few of his loyal base that they have attached their dreams to a con artist. That’s stuff that really needs to be said…
When I was a member of an Evangelical church the most often phrase I heard when its members couldn’t reconcile something recently happened with their beliefs in the bible was that “God works in mysterious ways, we just have to trust Him”. I always thought that was more of a cop-out than an explanation of the situation. But that is not the topic of this post.
It seems that these same Evangelicals put that phrase onto unexplainable actions of #CO3! They say that he just needs to be trusted and we should disregard all the lies and gross exaggerations that come from this mouth in order to get the greater good that his presidency will provide. Again this is a humongous cop-out as far as I am concerned.
I was personally exposed to an extreme narcissist for a good part of my life and see the same things in #CO3. He emphatically believes that he is capable of doing anything and doesn’t have to put in the work to do it. He proudly boasts that he basically sleeps through his daily briefing and he simply operates at a gut level and doesn’t need anything else. That is not a person I would put ANY trust in. How can the Evangelicals put total trust in this very untrustful person is beyond my comprehension. That belief is doing as much harm to their religion as it is to our democracy.
#CO3 = Current Oval Office Occupant
Sadly, one of the things I believe the church has become very good at is to take some particular words from the bible and twist them around to more conform to their way of thinking. That is what today’s post is going to be about.
Sometimes small alterations make a great deal of difference. For instance, we have about 90 percent of the same genes as cats and more than 98 percent of the same genes as chimpanzees. But those little differences matter a lot.
This is also true when it comes to faith. I have been doing some reading in A Church Undone: Documents from the German Christian Faith Movement, 1932-1940. The German Christian Movement was Germanized Christianity, supportive of Nazism. The church leaders involved in this movement believed that the church should be “relevant” to contemporary German experience….
In a Germanized “translation” of the beatitudes of Jesus, one of the prominent ministers in this movement rendered our Lord’s, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9), using these words: “Happy are those who are at peace with their fellow Germans; they do God’s will.” Not quite the same!…
Like those in the German Christian Movement, American Christian nationalists often speak in terms very similar to the ways Christians have always spoken. They take up themes that have been heard in churches throughout the centuries. But the “little” differences make a huge difference, just like the alteration of a few genes can result in a whole new species.
Source: The Little Big Differences in Christian Nationalism – Red Letter Christians
I don’t know much about how the Lutheran church in Germany dealt with Hitler but I am not surprised that they, like American Evangelicals, politized their religion to support the regime. Just twist a few words around to make it seem like you are following Jesus when in fact you have totally ignored his teachings.
I wonder what books written after the church eventually returns to its roots will say about our times? I suspect it will be pretty similar to “A Church Undone” as mentioned above. Jesus’ messages and teachings are good for the ages, they don’t need to be re-interpreted to meet the times. Love God & Love each other is the message for us as it was for the early Christians.
I am beginning to think that the phrase “Ignorance is Bliss” is a very appropriate condition in trying to keep informed in the political world today. There is just so much phoniness and lies floating around that world now as to make it uninhabitable.
But in most areas of life knowing more about a topic results in better-informed decisions and lifestyles. Being proudly ignorant is well… ignorant! Let’s clear something up here before you jump to any unnecessary conclusions. Ignorance and stupidity are two very different things. Stupidity is a life-long condition whereas as ignorance can be eliminated with some informed study. Being afraid of knowing too much is a scary thing to me. But that seems to be the preferred state for too many who call themselves Evangelicals. Here is a quote about that:
“People are scared that if they come to know too much, they’ll be like the Pharisees and will just become haughty and judgmental to others, thus weakening their love for God; or they’re afraid that they’ll learn too much and go off the deep end of liberalism and swim in the risky waters of universalism and other heresies.”…
Renoe goes on to say that nowadays anyone can start a church, and “as long as it’s engaging and entertaining enough, people will show up. Nevermind if it’s true or not.” He refers to Pastor Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, and remarks that Osteen “doesn’t even have a bachelor’s degree, much less a seminary degree and look where that leads…”
Source: Evangelical Christians Fear Knowledge, Are Dumbing Down Their Faith, Christian Author Claims
I too am very put off by Joel Osteen’s version of Christianity. He seems to have perverted the messages of Jesus to something that is quite the opposite. Yet, every week he gets thousands of Texan Evangelicals to sit in his lavish palace and give him their money? But I am getting off track here.
Knowing too much is not a condition we should be concerned about. God gave us free will, he also gave us a brain to learn the best way to do his will. To ignorantly follow someone because they spout a few bible verses here or there is not what God intended us to use up space in our brains. Instead, it was to find ways to take care of each other as he commanded. As far as I am concerned ignorance spurns ignorance but that doesn’t have to be a lasting condition…
