Dead people have a tendency to vote by mail-in or absentee ballots
Just as an example...
It's harder to convince the vote counters that a resident who's been dead for 10 years is voting when he would actually have to show up and present a valid ID.
How We Can Help Men Combat Lust - Without Misplacing Responsibility or Subjecting Others to Shame
Posted : 6 Jun, 2020 07:07 PM
I feel I may have been a bit abrupt in my last response, so I ask your forgiveness for that if I came off too harsh. It wasn't my intention. If I may, I'd like to also have another go at untangling this issue of lust vs. sexual desire because it seems to be more complicated when looking beyond the mere definitions of each. Sexual desire and lust have very similar definitions, as I pointed out in my last post, such that lust can be defined as a more intense form of sexual desire. What leads some, especially us as Christians, to often draw a distinction between the two is the connotation of sinful behavior associated with lust. However, it seems that lustfulness is difficult to distinguish from sexual desire until it manifests as an action that goes against God's will (i.e. using porn, adultery, etc.).
In this way, we may think of lust as an action, and sexual desire as a feeling to distinguish them. If we run with that idea, the waters still get muddied because if one person has a relatively low sexual desire and another has a higher desire, the one with the low desire may think of the higher desire of his or her partner as "lustful," but is it? I would say not necessarily.
If we can call a certain level of sexual desire "normal" for a man or a woman, then we may have a metric to measure a sexual desire that reaches into the "lust" category. Then, if he or she marries someone with a low sexual desire relative to the "normal" level, that person may soon find that they want more sexual activity from their partner than they are willing or able to give. The mismatch in their sexual desires is a source for the problem of lust here. When dissatisfaction turns to frustration, that person may begin to act inappropriately, exhibiting behaviors similar to those with an unusually high sexual desire.
I expect that the ideal circumstances would be that we would add sexual desire to the list of things we want to have equally yoked with our partner in terms of what we each want from one another. However, this may not always be possible. In that case, communication is probably the best hedge against one partner engaging in lustful behavior, and for both to work in cooperation to make sure both partners' needs are met without resorting to sinful behavior.
How We Can Help Men Combat Lust - Without Misplacing Responsibility or Subjecting Others to Shame
Posted : 6 Jun, 2020 03:14 PM
Dictionary definition of lust: "intense sexual desire or appetite." There is the provision for it to be "uncontrolled" and "illicit" in other possible definitions which may set it apart from "sexual desire"; and since it is described in this definition as "intense," let's say that they are separate things for a moment. If either are not satisfied in the course of a marriage, the result is the same: the temptation to give in to sexual sins becomes stronger. It doesn't mean that either men or women have to give in to every whim of their partner's sexual desires. It's just a possible explanation of where the problems and sinful behaviors associated with lust come from.
Do Signs, Wonders and Miracles Turn People into Christians ?
Posted : 6 Jun, 2020 03:03 PM
Good post David. It reminds us of a couple of important parts of human nature. It has been my experience with signs and miracles that seeing the miracle take place and knowing it to be such a miracle requires a level of openness to seeing and recognizing such things on the part of the observer.
To be led to God by way of a miracle, there tends to have to be a search or hunger to reach Him in the first place. This does not diminish the significance of the sign, of course, but it is a possible reason why something you or I might identify as a clear miracle might fall on dulled senses for someone else and even be repaid with cruelty and hatred. In many ways, this points back to the fact that we tend to have to want help in order to accept it.
Gratitude is another issue we still seem to have problems with. There have apparently always been people who are ungrateful for the blessings in their lives. How many times do we treat God the way we treat a business service: only filling out a survey or filing feedback if we have a complaint? What is the structure of our prayers most days? How much of that time is spent thanking Him for blessings and how much of it is spent giving Him our proverbial Christmas wish list?
Complaints and requests come easily, like the instinct of an infant to cry when hungry or lonely. This is natural and instinctive. Gratitude must be taught. How many times do we hear a parent say "What do you say?" to their small child when someone does something nice for them? I guarantee it's not the first and only time that child has been reminded to say "thank you." In fact, I would bet that the more exasperated or stern the parent sounds when dropping that hint to their child, the more often they've had to give that reminder.
How We Can Help Men Combat Lust - Without Misplacing Responsibility or Subjecting Others to Shame
Posted : 6 Jun, 2020 01:48 PM
(Hey Marcouse, if I am missing your argument here, please feel free to jump in and correct me) Marital rape, adultery, and porn use within the context of a marriage happen precisely because there is lust, and what Marcouse is saying, I think, is that without lust, there would be no drive to marry, but I would submit that likewise, if there's no lust, then rape, adultery, and porn would not exist either.
The proviso that Marcouse alludes to to answers why these terrible things happen even in the context of a marriage: there is a mismatch between the sexual needs and desires of the couple in question AND in whether those needs are fulfilled. If the sexual desires or needs of one partner are under-fulfilled, they may seek to fill that gap another way, leading to inappropriate behavior toward their partner directly in the case of marital rape, or going outside the relationship to fill the gap (porn and adultery). This can happen to both men and women.
I heard something recently that resonated with me and may be relevant to what we're talking about here. Someone observed that when religion and religious values are not the primary source of personal identity, inherent characteristics like race, gender, or sexual orientation become the dominant focus and source of one's identity. That then leads to the division, tribalism, hatred, fear, and finally destruction like what we are seeing in the United States right now. As we should all be Christians here, that should be our unifying identity. If race is truly an issue for someone on here, that may in some cases be an indication of how much value they place on their Christian faith as part of their identity (please note that I'm not speaking in an absolute here because we may not know the other person's reasons for their feelings).
Now, for a couple of caveats. For my own life, I've noticed that I find long distance relationships stressful when I only have a couple of hours in a car to go and see the other person. Hence, my statement in my profile that I can only be a pen pal to people from other parts of the world. I figure that if I don't like a long distance relationship across state lines, attempting an international relationship would be dead on arrival for me, regardless of the differences (or lack thereof) in race or culture.
Caveat number two: It was mentioned that some profiles identified specific countries that some people are not interested in getting messages from. One thing that I guess I would have to bring up about that is that IF their preference is purely about attraction, it should be noted that attraction can be a very fickle thing. It's not clear why someone is attracted to one characteristic about a person and not another. The other has to do with demographics. The population of this site is not even across the world and that should come as no surprise to anyone. I won't attribute specific motives, but it may be possible that specific countries are being singled out by people in their profiles because the person started receiving a lot of messages from people in those countries and they simply don't want to have to continually turn those people down.
Hi David, thank you for your reply. I appreciate being able to have a good civil discussion and I want that to be able to continue. It’s quite refreshing. Hopefully some others can now chime in and we can get a more enriched experience as we start to approach the initial question that defines your thread here. I apologize for the length of this post. I strive for brevity, but I also want to minimize misunderstanding.
I want to say first, that I’m sorry if it seemed like I was coming down on you in the early part of my last reply. You don’t need to beat yourself up over it. I’m always having to try to check my tongue and it amazes me how easy it is for me to slip into a pattern inconsistent with how God would like us to be, so I’m content to let that issue drop. I’d like to clarify a couple of things you had questions about from my last post, though, and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to adopt your method of putting my post together like a script the way you just did so that it’s easier to follow what we are each referring to.
David: But I’m not sure where I got off track with our conversation as you stated, I was only responding to the contents of your previous post. [referring to my statement that we’re starting to go off track]
RetroMillennial: Since the topic is about the question of whether to ignore false teachers or to confront them, I was worried that getting too deep into personal beliefs about other parts of the Bible might have led the conversation astray. Sometimes beliefs alone aren’t enough to make it obvious to an onlooker who, if anyone, is correct.
David: …Revelations that are inspired by the Holy Spirit and written as scripture are not made of the same type of conceptual material as human revelation. I know that you know that. But you assumed wrongly that God’s revelation can be ascertained from a sort of arbitrary human “revelation” i.e. through prayer, dreams, anything or reading the Bible. It’s true that scriptural concepts can be “revealed” but only in the sense of rational discovery and through the use of our senses…
RetroMillennial: Some of what you were referring to in your usage of the term revelation seemed a bit ambiguous to me. However, I don’t recall making any assumption about how God’s revelation comes because what I said applies no matter how revelations come. My point that I may have failed to properly convey in my last post was that we can’t escape the limited perceptions of our own minds. Studying the Bible, we are studying the revelations of other people and their experiences with God and still seeing them through the lens of our own perception, which is made up of our experiences, pains, dreams, desires, worldview, and emotional state at the time. That’s why an agnostic may reject our explanation of the Gospel. It may not be that he hates truth. His perception may simply cloud it so that he remains unconvinced. I hope that cleared up my meaning from my last post.
David: You say my prosecution analogy is an invalid straw-man argument but the burden of proof rests with you to demonstrate that. Based on your previous post you introduced the skepticism of certainty, I think my analogy is logically sound. I think it’s still relevant here as well with a bit of tweak to accommodate extra information.
RetroMillennial: No problem. I was indeed referring to the skepticism of certainty, but while you chose an alternative analogy that is very close to being appropriate, I don’t think it quite fits. Your analogy carries with it an assumption that my conclusion about beliefs and certainty was, “don’t plant your flag on any hill (belief) if not 100% certain you are right.” That’s the straw man. You’re right that this would never fly in a court setting, and justice would go unserved. However, I never said we shouldn’t plant our flags on a hill and follow compelling evidence, or if I implied it I didn’t mean to. By all means, plant your flag on the belief that seems most reasonable to you. We can’t function without belief. However, my point is that since 100% certainty is not possible, we should always remain teachable, open to new revelations, and constantly be in earnest search of the truth. The second we assume we have all the answers about anything is the second we’ve started deceiving ourselves.
Okay, so maybe we’re ready to address the question in your post? Should we confront or ignore false teachers? My answer is “sometimes.” There’s a scripture that I’d like to quote to help me give my answer.
James 3:1 (KJV) says “(1) My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. (2) For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body. (3) Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. (4) Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, withersoever the governor listeth. (5) Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”
This is a good argument against being a teacher in the first place, no? But we still need them. The Message actually manages to bring out my point a little more clearly in the same verses, “(1-2) Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is a highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you’d have a perfect person, in perfect control of life. (3-4) A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything-or destroy it!”
So, according to the Bible, we are all “false teachers” from the moment we open our mouths to teach! Should we all be rebuked and silenced? I’d say not necessarily. We still need teachers, even though only one was truly qualified. How we respond to a “false teacher” depends on how wrong they get their teachings, and we can’t always assume malicious intent.
Okay, we’re starting to go off track in some of this conversation, but I may be able to help bring things back to the topic. The behaviors I’m talking about refer to how you treat other people. You alluded to it in your second response about being respectful. I’ve seen many on here use extremely condescending language in the discussion forums. I don’t wish to implicate anyone in particular in this, but I’m afraid I can’t say that you’ve stood out in the crowd as one who has risen above kind of behavior.
What do you think are the optics of two people arguing back and forth referring to one another as liars, Pinnochios, and servants of Satan, 666, and so on? Regardless of whether the truth is spoken in a retort, this language is not productive. These are “shut up” terms, similar to the way the term “white privilege” or “male privilege” are used as “shut up” terms so that another’s perspective doesn’t need to be considered. The truth is delicate, and if it’s mixed with blunt instruments such as these, it gets lost or broken.
Believing something different from what another believes is not what sets anyone apart. We can go all over this forum and find people with different perspectives. It’s what we do with those beliefs that will distinguish us as I’ve already alluded. If we’re fighting fire with fire all the time, all an observer will see is a burning inferno and if the truth is somewhere in the midst of that inferno, it’s obscured and it may even get burned too because there’s now nothing to distinguish it from the untruths anymore. Both the lie and the truth have been weaponized to harm another person. That’s all a bit metaphorical, but hopefully it gets my point across that HOW the truth is presented is at least as important as that it is presented.
I do read posts, and I try to contemplate as many possible meanings and intentions of those posts as possible before I respond so that I can be very careful in my response. While the source of a revelation is from an omniscient perspective, it is never interpreted from an omniscient perspective. Every revelation, though perfect, must pass through the filter of human understanding. It does so if you get a revelation during prayer, while reading your Bible, in a dream, anywhere. We are typically smart enough to act appropriately enough on such revelations to fulfil God’s purposes, but we cannot assume that we know or understand all that the revelation has revealed. Part of what defines us as non-omniscient beings is that there is ALWAYS more information to discover that can modify our beliefs and sometimes even upturn them. This is why scientists allow some uncertainty in their work and their beliefs and that should not be counted as a weakness any more than blind certainty can be regarded as a strength.
I do also want to say a brief word about how people can be confronted with the same info and come to different conclusions. Let’s say you and I sit down across a table from an agnostic. Evidently, there is sufficient evidence that the two of us can see to conclude that God exists and we’d like to persuade the agnostic to see what we see. We can present all of our evidence, but confronted with all the evidence may not persuade him. He has his own experiences and his own biases that lead him to draw a different conclusion, or he may want more evidence. It may even come down to how that information is presented. He may not respond to fire and brimstone (most people are numb to doom and gloom anyway), but the message of love might just make him look a second time.
“Apparently you don’t believe in the legitimacy of criminal prosecution?”
This is a straw man argument. All criminal prosecution assembles evidence to the best of its ability, but it doesn’t always guarantee a just verdict. Thus, it’s an unfortunate truth that a guilty man can walk and vice versa that an innocent man can be convicted. The criminal justice system, like personal and religious beliefs, are affected by biases. There are always gaps in the information we have in both science AND Biblical revelation.
