Thank you for your comment, David. I've been quite busy lately, and I have sadly dropped the ball and not gotten around to thanking you properly for your comments to me in some of the recent discussion threads lately, so I hope you'll accept my belated thanks.
You also bring up a couple of very important points in this discussion, David. It's definitely a dangerous time to live in a world where the mass slaughter of unborn babies is deemed an essential service. The church has a long way to go to turn this around. I agree with you that fear and panic are tactics being used to make people more vulnerable. Generally speaking, fear makes people more easily distracted and leads to less thinking and more reacting. As Christians, we need to remember that fear is a lack of trust in God's covenant with us and that fearfulness means we are envisioning a future without God in it. If we remember God is already in tomorrow, we don't fear what is to come quite so much.
Quiznos, I've not heard many people point out the parallels between what appears in movies and what happens in real life. However, I've seen a few occasions where a tactic or ideology I've seen in real life was first portrayed in a TV show or movie. It's sad because Hollywood used to produce films with good morals. They may not have been practicing good morals when the cameras weren't rolling, but at one time they at least knew enough about what was moral to portray good morals in some of their movies.
I completely understand your feelings on this, Moonlight, and I agree with your sentiments that everyone's role is essential. However, I think what Quiznos is considering on this thread is what happens when the government DEEMS someone "non-essential." It usually follows that once something is deemed essential, there is usually something deemed "non-essential," and once that happens, there's usually someone to ask the question, "Then why do we have it/them?" Now that we have an idea of what roles the government considers essential in society, what actions might the government decide to take with those who have been identified as "non-essential?"
In the fiction world, dystopian future scenarios have examined this idea of everyone having their "niche" in society and what do we do with those that don't fit. The outcome is never pretty (e.g. Huxley's "Brave New World," Lowry's "The Giver," and Orwell's "1984").
It's one thing to talk about fiction, but we've already seen the result of some of this compartmentalizing of people as useful and "not" useful in surprisingly recent history. This was part of what the eugenics movement during the Progressive Era was all about. It was all about what to do with people the State considers "useless" or what to do to prevent them from being born. (Please note that I'm talking about what GOVERNMENTS might do with those they see no use for) Enter forced sterilizations in the US (e.g. Buck vs. Bell 1929), and the death camps in Germany, Japan, and the USSR. In Germany, the atrocious methods of extermination were used to "clean out" the mental institutions and other facilities designed to care for those who could no longer "contribute" to society before Hitler's Final Solution was ever put into action.
I am not saying we are on course for a repeat of these events. However, I expect this is something you and I can agree on, Quiznos: we should be vigilant. Not vigilante, but vigilant. The church should be the conscience of society, not its executioner. We should remember history and our places in it so we don't retrace the paths of evil that have been walked before us. We should remind our governments how precious every life is to us and to God so that no one is ever deemed "non-essential." Psalm 139:13-15 "For you created my inmost being' you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." If we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made, and if our lives have such a meaning as to be written out for us in God's book from the moment of conception, we cannot deem anyone a non-essential worker, and we have to keep watching and make sure that no government does so either.
All of that having been said, if pastors and leaders continue to refrain from becoming political in the pulpit, it is by their own choice to keep the tension down in a mixed congregation. Sometimes when a church goes in a direction politically that someone (especially someone in the leadership) doesn't like, that person will leave in a huff. They will do it loudly, sometimes publicly, try to take others with them, and essentially do as much damage to the church on the way out as they can. Many pastors fear this, especially when their evaluations in the church hierarchy depends on whether the church is growing or not. We can discuss (in a different thread) whether pastors are right or wrong to hold their tongues on these issues, but at least the pressure is not necessarily coming from the government anymore.
No worries CountryIvy. This thread has about 3 discussions overlapping and is starting to get confusing. Besides, Quiznos seems to be missing this too.
Quiznos, you might want to take another look at the original poster's comments again. It's not very long and appears at the top of each of this thread's 8 pages so far. It's Moonlight's topic and she explicitely states that this is not meant to be a Biblical discussion topic. That's why it's not located in the Biblical discussion forum.
You might also want to take another look at what the president has been doing for the last 4 years that even helps what you're harping about on here. Even liberal ABC acknowledges that this political gagging of the pastors to keep their tax exempt status has been eased:
The 501c3 serves to protect volunteers against lawsuit in the event of misbehavior on the part of one of its members. In this way, a victim of abuse or someone who fails to be helped by an incorporated church or charity can only sue the person who actually did the harm or the entirety of the organization, not the individual volunteers that had nothing to do with the failure. If you could be sued individually for bad things happening in a group you're volunteering for, you'd have a hard time getting volunteers for anything.
You and Peter Kershaw are right that this also meant that churches were on some level beholden to the government, but the "Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty" helps to ease the restrictions of the Johnson Amendment, which Trump called for a repeal of in 2016. It's not the congressional repeal of the Johnson Amendment we were all hoping for, but until we can get the end goals of the two major political parties to align again on underlying values so that only our methods differ, we may be trapped in the overlapping execurive order methods of legislation.
Hey Barnowl, it's been a couple days since you posted, but I hope you get to see this. It's got to be hard being in a place that has your beliefs so badly outnumbered. However, there have been some things I've heard that give me some hope that California might surprise a lot of people this year at the polls, so don't give up. Even when you're outnumbered, you remain the reminder that other ideals need to be considered, other points of view need to be heard. Unlike Hollywood that would like to believe they are the conscience of the nation, it's the followers of Christ that are the real conscience of the country. The Founders of this nation considered voting to not just be a right, but a responsibility, that through the prayerful decisions of all involved, the proper leaders would be selected. CA may stay blue in November, but there have been times when it has gone red. I think there is room for you and other Californians that feel they live in a state that never represents their values to have hope that their voices will be heard this year loud and clear!
Okay, so I have a few thoughts about this. First of all, the title begs a couple of questions. If learning from women is too hard for SOME men, then we need to ask the question of "WHICH men?" Why do they have difficulty with it? Is it a personal ego issue? Were they abused by a woman? We have to ask the same questions about these men that we would ask about women who have broad spectrum issues about men.
Second: Let's be completely fair about women spreading the Gospel. There was a time when the gospel message was carried EXCLUSIVELY by women. It was a few women who had the courage, dedication, and love for Jesus to go to the tomb after the crucifixion and find the tomb empty with the message that Jesus had arisen. Where were the Disciples? Judas had hung himself, and the other 11 were in hiding. These men may have faced execution themselves if they were found lurking about and their connection to Jesus were known, so there may have been some justification for their fear, but the fact remains that the Gospel message in that moment relied upon the women's courage and ability to spread it, so clearly women hold a special place in God's plans to bring His Kingdom to Earth.
Finally, 90% (probably more) colleges in the US and abroad are places where women are not just encouraged, but pushed to go into fields that have been traditionally dominated by men, so if this is a transcript of a real conversation about a professor, I've never seen a collegiate setting where it would actually take place. It may have taken place a long time ago, but I've never heard anything like it during my education. If the author has heard the conversation personally, there should have been background information giving the context of the conversation. If he had to make it up, his writing is foolish because it is a fiction that places enmity in the hearts of men and women that becomes an obstacle both sides have to overcome. It sets men and women against each other who would otherwise be supportive of one another's goals. It's very hard to be supportive of someone who sees you as an enemy to be defeated.
The only fair way to look at issues of gender and race is at the level of the individual. What are the reasons the individual man in this blog has a problem with female professors? What are the personality traits and skills that make someone best suited to being a professor or do another job? Rather than focusing on whether men or women should be doing that job, we must all simply look at ourselves and ask, "Do I possess traits or skills that would make me suitable to do the job?"
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to recall any one liner Christian jokes. I've got some good clean secular ones though.
What do you call a blind buck?
No-eyed-deer
What do you call a blind buck with no legs?
Still no-eyed-deer.
I do recall a story joke, though that I always liked:
Moses, Jesus, and an old man go golfing. Moses was up first. He hit the ball, it looked fair, but landed in the water trap. Moses can part water, though. He parted the pond and retrieved his ball and took an extra stroke.
Jesus was next. His hit was better than Moses', but it still landed in the water. So, Jesus walked on the water, reached in and retrieved his ball and took an extra stroke.
finally, the old man was up. The ball immediately headed straight for the water trap, but before it landed in the water, a fish jumped out of the water and caught the ball in its mouth; and before the fish got back in the water, an eagle swooped in out of nowhere, caught the fish in its talons and flew up over the green. Lightning struck the eagle, the eagle dropped the fish, the fish plopped onto the green, the ball popped out of its mouth and landed in the cup for a hole-in-one. Moses looked at Jesus and said, "Please tell me this is the last time we're golfing with your Dad."
Trying to perfect the voting system to close gaps in security doesn’t mean a lack of trust in God. It’s a lack of trust in the morals of other people, for the same reason we lock our doors when we leave home to go to work. Putting our trust in God doesn’t mean leaving ourselves completely vulnerable to attacks and having our elections stolen or hijacked. Most of the founding fathers were avid Christians and felt that voting was a solemn responsibility to help to thoughtfully and prayerfully choose the leaders of the fledgling United States.
Speaking of attacks, referring to your fellow Christians as ‘Christians’ implies the phrase pseudo-Christians. It’s a thinly veiled insult, and throwing it around indiscriminately hurts people who are in a sincere pursuit of God. It’s also very rude. If it’s not your intent to be offensive and a pain in everyone’s backside, please knock it off.
The tax free status has been used to help churches keep afloat during hard times and leave them with more resources to reach out to the community or undertake more mission projects. However, you’re not wrong that tax exempt status has also been a way for the government to influence church politics and positions, perhaps even moving the church’s positions on key issues to places more in line with the prevailing secular views. However, insulting people who don’t completely share your views doesn’t help your argument.
So because we may not be able to eliminate some of the tiny loopholes to minimize cheating, we should just leave a gaping hole that enables a unscrupulous political groups to steal the election?
Many in the Democratic Party went absolutely ballistic when they believed that the reason they lost the 2016 election was because Russia meddled in the numbers to give President Trump an advantage, but they seem to be perfectly complient with a system in a largely blue state like Washington that permits massive loopholes that makes it possible for an unscrupulous political group to completely steal elections. It's time to plant our flags on a hill: our elections either need to be protected against fraud or they don't.
