This leaves a particularly bitter taste in the mouth a day after Christians were executed in Oregon.
While requiring their candidates to ignore anything in the Bible — including much of the New Testament — that is about compassion, stewarding creation or helping the poor, fundamentalist Christians demand that their candidates oppose any regulations on gun ownership, support maintaining a brimming nuclear arsenal and oppose progressive taxation. It turns out that God takes all kinds of specific positions on current events, and it just so happens that every one of them lines up perfectly with the Club for Growth.
It isn’t the extremely remote chance of a Muslim president I worry about; it’s the very real threat of a Bible-thumping Christian one.
My bitterness comes from condolences
From gun activists who decided after Columbine that our youth is expendable
In the belief every person deserves unlimited firearms
Guns and and nuclear arsenal are fine as long as they are used to defeat evil, not for evil.
The problem in the country is lack of Christianity in the country. Those that think evil has no consequence, or worse try to re-label evil as something good.
When we have a liberal culture bent on stripping Jesus out of every human interaction, why do we act all surprised that evil flourishes?
The bible is consistent against excessive taxation. Suggest reading what happened after Solomen’s son took over Israel in Old Testament as the consequence of over taxation. In New Testament, tax collectors were detested in several places because of the randomness and unfairness of taxation, which is not too far from today’s IRS and WI DOR.
For non-Christians, interested, I’m willing to provide biblical cites if you can’t find it.
As Belling always notes, most of us in Wisconsin have grown up around guns and ammo everywhere in the house for the past 150 years. But none of this nonsense was taking place despite six boxes of 12 gauge shells sitting on the shelf in the front hall closet or grandpa’s army pistol in a box in the attic.
There is however almost a 1 to 1 correlation for all these shooters with:
Divorced household
Shooter taking some type of recently developed (last 20 years) psychiatric meds
Significant hours spent playing first person shooter video games before the age of 18
Absorbtion into online culture usually in the absence of a father or father figure.
History would tell us our answers lie in those items more than the gun itself.
So– when do we see a proposal on profiling
These troubled sorts
People die
Gun activists talk about mental health
Then nothing happens
“The problem in the country is lack of Christianity in the country.”
I have a different view. One very specific thing hurting the United States is evangelical Christianity and its influence in politics. It prevents us from making obvious social progress. It prevents us from addressing obvious environmental issues. It stands in the way of better education. It fuels fear and prevents Americans from uniting around policies beneficial to all. Most generally, it leads people away from critical thinking and rational means of problem solving.
Scott,
“It prevents us from making obvious social progress.”
Depends on what you mean by “social progress”. Christianity means to practice the Golden Rule: Love. I’ll be the first to admit that Christians do not always live up to that, that is because the world is imperfect and sinful.
Romans 8: 28 best hits this point:
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
If we live for God’s purpose, I can’t think of any better social progress possible.
“It prevents us from addressing obvious environmental issues.”
Again, depends on what you mean by “environmental issues”.
God commands us to be good stewards of the blessings entrusted to us.
Luke 16:11, Luke 16:12, Luke 19:17.
Luke 16:10 speaks against dishonesty when it comes to stewardship of God’s blessings.
“It stands in the way of better education.”
Couldn’t disagree more. Public schools are void of the most important piece of education. Educating the Spirit of the child. Public schools, thanks to the religion of secular humanism permeating the schools can only point to a cold, hopeless, existence to our youth. That has a tremendous negative effect on our youth.
It points to a life that there is no sin, (sin defined as not doing God’s will) no consequence for that sin, and worst of all, points to no redemption for that sin.
Working with teenagers for 25 years, I see the first hand, the severe, depressing consequences of sex before marriage, drug use, severe alcohol abuse, and the constant pursuit of only doing what “feels good” in the moment. Schools are not entirely at fault in this area, however, if schools did educate the Spirit, that could at least help where spiritual education is not being done in the home.
Questionas that come to my mind in latest school shooting: Had the father of the latest school shooter taken his kid to church regularly, would there have been a different outcome? What would have happened if he had he put Christ at the center of his broken marriage before it was broken?
Psalm 3:3 “But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.”
“It fuels fear and prevents Americans from uniting around policies beneficial to all.”
Again, what policies are “beneficial to all”?
Policies that help people stay on the path to Jesus would be my definition.
If you mean policies to shield people from every consequence for sinful behavior: like funding abortion on demand to rip babies apart…
Well, let’s see if we can agree which policies are “beneficial to all”.
“Most generally, it leads people away from critical thinking and rational means of problem solving.”
Depends on your goal.
If you care about someone’s eternal destination, that will invoke a certain set of “problem solving”.
If you only care about the here and now, that will invoke another set of problem solving.
Christians should be concerned about both, which is a unique synthesis of “problem solving”.
My guess is: atheist liberals are not as diverse, they would only care about the here and now.