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The true threat to Christianity

Amadeus said:
And due to his immense following, people like myself have a hard time separating the good Christians from the toads. It can be done, but it takes effort that not everyone is willing to give.
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why am I left assuming this same line of logic applied to islam would have you accusing the person of bigotry ...
 
digsbe said:
Science does not deal with the supernatural/metaphysical...
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it does limit the area where the "supernatural" can exist. Take for instance our understanding of germs, psychological disease, etc. I was lucky enough to view a huge exorcism festival in a back water of india, where every mentally ill person in a 100 miles was likely being treated for malignant evil spirits.
 
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The abuses by people like Robertson certainly impugn the credibility of the religion they claim to champion. Especially when they are not universally condemned. Much the same way that terrorists make Islam look bad, so too do hate-mongers in this country make Christianity look bad. While many other members of those faiths, such as the posters here, still reject the actions of their very outspoken and sometimes violent brethren, it doesn't help the perception of their faith to the rest of the world. When I still considered myself Jewish, the support of bigoted positions by Rabbis and other Jewish leaders embarrassed me, that the same religion that was a part of my life could drive these people to such evil. That was one of the reasons I no longer consider myself Jewish.

People who think that their faith shouldn't be producing that kind of evil should work to make sure it doesn't.
 
Goshin said:
Vaguely remember hearing something about that once.


Things can readily be taken out of context and misunderstood, of course, and if Graham were really an anti-semite then it would seem odd that he's always been a strong supporter of Israel.
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Surely you realize why some Christians support Israel... it is not for purely altruistic reasons. Falwell 'supported' Israel, but he was known for making bigoted comments about Jews. And if Graham agreed with Nixon on Jews behind closed doors, he's much worse than Falwell. Nixon was outrageously anti-Semitic.
 
Dr. Chuckles said:
why am I left assuming this same line of logic applied to islam would have you accusing the person of bigotry ...
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I don't know. Why is that? Muslims have to fight just as hard to drown out the extremists. Even harder.
 
Amadeus said:
Surely you realize why some Christians support Israel... it is not for purely altruistic reasons. Falwell 'supported' Israel, but he was known for making bigoted comments about Jews. And if Graham agreed with Nixon on Jews behind closed doors, he's much worse than Falwell. Nixon was outrageously anti-Semitic.
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The Nixon era was a different time. Things were kinda crazy then, and have to be put into context. I don't have Graham's exact words in front of me, and yeah TBH I'm inclined to give him benefit of the doubt to some degree... and to bear in mind that a man's life is a long stretch of decades during which many things change.
 
Goshin said:
The Nixon era was a different time. Things were kinda crazy then, and have to be put into context. I don't have Graham's exact words in front of me, and yeah TBH I'm inclined to give him benefit of the doubt to some degree... and to bear in mind that a man's life is a long stretch of decades during which many things change.
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I'm more inclined to believe that for every rat you see, there's ten you don't. Perhaps Graham's opinions have evolved over time, but the fact that he 'forgot' his anti-Semitic comments -- on the one occasion he was caught -- doesn't give me confidence. If I was him, I'd own up to them, apologize, and perhaps claim that he was young and stupid for saying them. People are willing to forgive just about anything, as long as there is a semblance of sincerity.
 
Absolutely right OP!

False Christianity (which Jesus, Peter, Paul all spoke of in detail) is the major detriment to others accepting the faith.

As a Christian, I have to assume that the equivalent of 'Judas' is running the churches, intentionally driving people away [since they work for their father, Satan]
 
Amadeus said:
I understand. It is unfortunate that Robertson (and Graham; and previously Falwell) is not successfully drowned out by the silent majority.
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In my opinion the culprit of which you speak is the practice "competitive religion". The root of competitive religion is power and control. All religions have loud, mouthy proponents who practice competitive religion, which is of course only slightly about religion at all. Power and control is derived from money. You can't buy a microphone without money.

Quietly, and with right intentions and right actions, there are people of all faiths who do their best to practice what they believe, in spite of the harmful and ceaseless drone of the religionists who practice competitive religion for personal gain, power and control.
 
Risky Thicket said:
In my opinion the culprit of which you speak is the practice "competitive religion". The root of competitive religion is power and control. All religions have loud, mouthy proponents who practice competitive religion, which is of course only slightly about religion at all. Power and control is derived from money. You can't buy a microphone without money.

Quietly, and with right intentions and right actions, there are people of all faiths who do their best to practice what they believe, in spite of the harmful and ceaseless drone of the religionists who practice competitive religion for personal gain, power and control.
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The folly / quandary / trappings of man!

Religions, politics, school, work, sports and any other grouping of man will experience this issue.
 
SingleCellOrganism said:
The folly / quandary / trappings of man!

Religions, politics, school, work, sports and any other grouping of man will experience this issue.
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I still like "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Problem is, that's hard work and at the moment the peace on earth people are overwhelmed.
 
ThePlayDrive said:
I don't agree. In fact, I don't think any one thing could be called the "true threat" to Christianity. Christianity is threatened by a number of things: science, secular education, the increase of secularism in general, the democratization of information through the internet, the development of cities as population centers and many other things. Pat Robertson and people like him are also a threat to Christianity, but only because the aforementioned influences among others have made people realize that the kind of crap they spout is nonsense. In other words, Robertson wouldn't be a threat if things like science, secular education and the like weren't threats already.
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More people have driving people from Christianity by hypocritical "religious leaders" and people who cherry pick scripture to peddle hate and oppression, than secularism ever has and ever will.

Well, my point is that Robertson's comments wouldn't appear absurd if secularism and science hadn't already undermined them. They are only absurd because secularism and science among other things have already won.
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Absolutely they would, looking at them simply from new testament scripture makes them absurd.
 
cpwill said:
Actually, he spoke directly to that:
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His point was that these disasters are NOT the result of sin, it's as ecclesiastes 9:11 puts it ... time and unforseen occurance, Jesus' point is EXACTLY the opposite of what Pat Robertsen does.

He's saying that those 18 that died are not less or no more sinful than others living in Jerusalem, and the same with the Galileans.

and that EVERYONE with sin dies .... in the end, and we all have sin, these disasters have nothing to do with someone being more or less sinful.

Pat Robertson is saying the exact opposite.
 
RGacky3 said:
His point was that these disasters are NOT the result of sin, it's as ecclesiastes 9:11 puts it ... time and unforseen occurance, Jesus' point is EXACTLY the opposite of what Pat Robertsen does.

He's saying that those 18 that died are not less or no more sinful than others living in Jerusalem, and the same with the Galileans.

and that EVERYONE with sin dies .... in the end, and we all have sin, these disasters have nothing to do with someone being more or less sinful.

Pat Robertson is saying the exact opposite.
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Yup. I'd pretty much agree with that. If God was in the business of sending hurricanes et.al. to chase sinners, none of us would ever have a house :p
 
Amadeus said:
I submit that the true threat to Christianity is Pat Robertson. Or, in a broader sense, people who use scripture in the ugliest, most demagogy of ways. From stating that 9/11 was the fault of liberals and homosexuals, and that Haitians made a pact with Satan, to suggesting that husbands should move to Saudi Arabia so that they can abuse their wives -- the guy is a goblin. He alone is far more harmful to Christianity than a million atheists/secularists. And due to his immense following, people like myself have a hard time separating the good Christians from the toads. It can be done, but it takes effort that not everyone is willing to give.
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Totally and completely agree. And I'm a Christian. He's a heretic and should be excommunicated. No Christian should eat with the man.
 
Amadeus said:
I understand. It is unfortunate that Robertson (and Graham; and previously Falwell) is not successfully drowned out by the silent majority.
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I think that's the major problem, the far right "christians" that use their supposed faith as an excuse for bigotry, disdain and oppression are loud, obnoxious, proud and yell and scream.

The actual sincere christians that take the gospel seriously tend to be more meek and humble, and tend not to be as loud or obnoxious. If you look at the polls you see that in the christian community the right wing is not the majority, many christians take social justice seriously, take "love your neighbor" seriously, many of them oppose war and so on, and many of them are simply not political, or simply don't engage in the wider social issues, but those ones don't yell and scream on TV.

You do have a few, Jim Wallis, Cornel West, Chris Hedges (who I think many people would question calling a christian, I'm not in that game, but even I would be a little uncomfortable calling him a christian, in this case me from a more conservative side, he's essencailly a deist that likes the philosophy of Jesus and the message of the prophetic tradition, yet doesn't believe in a personal God, or the ressurection.), and you then have the Occupy Priests and the buss Nuns, you have in the UK european christian socialist parties, which have historically been very strong (and which I would say the social-democracies in europe owe A LOT to, which some refuse to aknowladge) and which are different from the US where Christians either tend to be all left/liberal or all right/conservative, many tend to be more socially conservative yet economically leftist, which I would say is somewhat more consistant with a straightforward reading of the gospel and paul, in that line I have great respect for some in the UK CHristian peoples alliance, that campain hard on social justice issues that are not flashy or get headlines, but are really inline with the social gospel, such as housing for the poor, trying to allow more rights for immigrant families to stay together and not be split up (If American conservative christians cared about family values, the thing they would be fighting is deportation of undocumented immigrants that SPLIT UP FAMILIES, but they don't because that doesn't fulfill their hypocritical need to hate, and it would require actual compassion from them), stopping police discrimination in inner cities, and so on, but that doesn't get the headlines, neither do soup kitchens serving the homeless, neither do churches trying to get affordible housing ordinances done, neither do churches doing things to strengthen families, what gets the headlines is some asshole on TV saying outrageous stuff, and getting away with it because he has a cross in the background.

You also have many more christians, even hardline evangelical, that simply stay out of political discussions.

The point is dicks are loud and the meek are .... meek.
 
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And that "cheap discipleship," to borrow from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is exactly that.
 
How tragic it is that this incredible creation has such peoplethat believe it their "calling" to dictate to others how they should live and by laws they claim come from The Creator of all the universe. The absurdity of it was born in me. My folks took me to church to see if it would touch me and it did not and so they never went back as neither of them bought in to it either. I believe there must be a creator of some type. However we are not to define it. A book does not tell the author how and what to write. To me something like the ten commandments should be enough of a guideline to follow forever.
 
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