Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
.png)
What's the tension? Individual liberty vs boundaries? I'm not convinced valuing individual liberty is at all is needed or good, especially as we see the secular world go it's own way and become ever more degenerate. All it does is allow for Christians to be manipulated into non-action and we are paralyzed at the mere thought of having our way of life extolled because that may impact someone's liberty. For the early Christians the solution was obvious, you expel the person who prefers their individual liberty which goes against the Church community until they repent.
I mean "Christians" who do not medal Christian values in their own lives.
Biblical Values
We might hear a lot of talk about Biblical Values and how we should govern our lives and country by them. But seldom do we actually try to identify them and reflect on them. And then the biggest challenge is praxis. How do we live them our in our daily lives...www.christianforums.com
I'm not supporting Christian Nationalism as a Christian Nationalist. Rather I am challenging the assumptions many Christians have regarding Christianity and power. If you have no response to any of my points, this conversation cannot continue.
I don't think any of that is irrational. Do you believe Christianity is illogical and irrational?
For the purpose of law and order this should be a sufficient reason. Do you believe every law needs a deep philosophical justification?
What I foresee is millions of people (Jews, Muslims and other faiths) walking around like little monkeys with their hands over their mouths, afraid to speak because they might offend someone and then be sent into exile. I think earth is a training ground designed to teach us patience, compassion, love and charity towards those we don't particularly like or agree with. What you're proposing feels like a robotic society. Agree or be gone! Sheesh! I'd rather live in hut by myself. Uh Oh! I think I just blasphemed, so I'll now disappear.
No, circling the wagons, being insular and protective like a monastery and reaching out, evangelizing, going out into the world.
Sine the enlightenment and reformation individual liberty has been an ongoing conflict with authority. And yet it need not be that way.
I think they do from time to time but you have to look for them and identify them. on another thread I sought to identify "Christian Principles" and Biblical values. Biblical Values what do you see lacking? Or whet do you have in mind.
I completely agree. That is why we need to look at character in a candidate more so than proclaimed positions.
So you would like to see Christianity claim and assert more power?
You said in a previous post "Keep their opinions to themselves or be sent to a non-Christian nation... something to that affect. How domineering is that? People walking around afraid of censorship. I'm not talking pornography, nor homosexuality. You want a society devoid of any opposing thoughts other than your version of Christianity (and let's admit there are a thousand versions of Christianity - look at all the denominations). What's next? One national denomination? What you're proposing is control..... i.e., power and manipulation and you can say it 50 different ways, but that's what it is. Has our society gotten morally pathetic and degenerate? Has our society lost fundamental values? No one can deny that. But forcing people to either walk in lock-step to someone else's views or be banished doesn't work.
Being insular and protective is probably the only way to grow the Christian community at present. One should be welcoming of those who want to join but Christian communities would be far stronger if they acted like the early Church did. They would draw more people in this nihilistic society and give them purpose, rules and a community to strive to fit into. The current model of Church in the West is extraordinarily passive and weak and it's no wonder no one wants to join a community which requires little from them.
If we are going to interpret that along libertarian lines that we should all the freedom to do things which weaken the Idea of the Christian society then we will lose out. If Christians just want to be left alone, they will be dominated by the group that doesn't want to just leave them alone.
Yes because power is a natural aspect of the world, from the moment we are born power is put on us and shapes us. By parents, by teachers, by police, by laws, by governments. If Christians are going to abandon said influence and retreat into pacifism, which is what many here have argued then they cannot complain about the state of things as Christianity goes into decline. In fact they are enabling it by refusing to combat evil. Christian standards in law and society are retracting and a new non-Christian western civilization is developing. We're pretty much there at this point and the non-Christian civilization is insane.
Also irrelevant.
What specific "Christioan" laws would you like to see?
But if we follow the example of Jesus who humbled himself, gave up his "power", identified with the vulnerable, accepted maltreatment would we not be more faithful to him and his teaching?
That is why Jesus is so disturbing, radical, dangerous, subversive. He is not about Earthly power.
No, how Christians operate and consider themselves in society matters. If the early Christians had our attitudes today towards Rome, they would have been easily assimilated.
How about only recognizing man woman marriage and banning pornography? We can agree on that right?
This assumes that it is the duty of all Christians to give up their earthly power. Should the emperors of East Rome have simply surrendered their earthly power to the Sultan's when they invaded?
Are we all called to live lives exactly like our Lord's? We aren't called to be Mothers and Fathers? We aren't called to have communities? How far do we have to go? Or is it only with regards to political power? Why only the latter?
They ended up being assimilated. "Christianity" was assimilated. As it is now.
Definitely pornography as there are existing standards. We talked about that before. Marriage? or How do you feel about legal Same sex unions?
Ya, i went too far. We have a role in the secular world.
