How do whole religions fall away?
This is D. Babbitt's question, commenting on my previous post. It's a great question, and actually gets a lot of treatment in the Bible. I'm not going to try to do it proper justice here. If you want a book length treatment, I think I've done my best in my "Facing Antichrist Today," which you can click on over there to the right.
Here I will look into just one of these mechanisms.
In Acts 20:29-30, Paul mentions two threats - predators from outside, and people arising from within to draw disciples after themselves. These are related. The predators from outside, deceiving people and ripping them off, inspire leaders to say perverse things to draw people aside after themselves - to keep them safe from the dangerous outsiders. And these guys are the ones who, relying on man's authority, and on doctrines imposed through intimidation, protect people from pursuing the truth under God's guidance, because people will be deceived that way. They have to be deprived of freedom to keep them safe.
The Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov, who kills Jesus in order to keep Jesus from disturbing the pure religion that he is defending, is just who Paul was talking about.
The people who have lied to the American people and systematically destroyed the Constitution and republican liberties supposedly to keep us safe are also the same type. America has fallen away from its secular faith in the same way that Christianitry has fallen away from Christ. Paul said it all in Acts 20:29-30.
It turns out that the only real enemies of the US Constitution are domestic, not foreign, just as the only real enemies of the gospel are the apostate leaders of the churches and their people who love to have it so.
Here I will look into just one of these mechanisms.
In Acts 20:29-30, Paul mentions two threats - predators from outside, and people arising from within to draw disciples after themselves. These are related. The predators from outside, deceiving people and ripping them off, inspire leaders to say perverse things to draw people aside after themselves - to keep them safe from the dangerous outsiders. And these guys are the ones who, relying on man's authority, and on doctrines imposed through intimidation, protect people from pursuing the truth under God's guidance, because people will be deceived that way. They have to be deprived of freedom to keep them safe.
The Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov, who kills Jesus in order to keep Jesus from disturbing the pure religion that he is defending, is just who Paul was talking about.
The people who have lied to the American people and systematically destroyed the Constitution and republican liberties supposedly to keep us safe are also the same type. America has fallen away from its secular faith in the same way that Christianitry has fallen away from Christ. Paul said it all in Acts 20:29-30.
It turns out that the only real enemies of the US Constitution are domestic, not foreign, just as the only real enemies of the gospel are the apostate leaders of the churches and their people who love to have it so.
posted by Peter Attwood at 10/26/2012 12:22:00 AM
5 Comments:
Are you aware that no strings attached relationships are being advertised on your page? Are these ads a cover for prostitution?
Do you have any control over the content of the ads that appear?
I see no ads at all. How do I see them?
The ad that I saw yesterday I do not see today. No ad is there. I do see
an ad for a bank flashing at the top of the page though. Underneath in script that does not flash it is written. Ads by DownloadNSave.
The funny thing is is that the ad is flashing Morse code. Or at least it seems to be. I can detect letters but the letters do not make words.
At least not words in English or German. So what is the point. Who is the message going to. It is surely not meant for me. Why would anyone be so stupid to send me a message that they know that I coulkd not understand.
Why would anyone else be so stupid to send someone else a message on my computer that could expose their activities? It just does not makemuch sense.
Unless this that or something else were true.
I do not know whether or not you are familiar with the philosophical/ religious site called triangulations.wordpress.com.
Well I wrote a list of 10 positions that I consider extremist yesterday on one of the threads there.
It was, the Bible has the answer to every problem mankind faces in the world today and the answer that the bible gives is that the free market system can solve every problem that mankind has and the bishops and the cardinals of the free market tell us that those who have it made deserve what they have made and those who are not wealthy have been irresponsible.
Well what I did not say is that from my vantage point irresponsible financial behavior in the USA is very widespread. But there seems to me to be a very good reason for it. There are legions and legions of temptations to encourage us to use our money irresponsibly.
The implication of that is that systems of education and support need to be put in to place to help people act more responsibly. But how can a systems to help promote responsible financial behavior arise from an irresponsible population?
First of all I have to wonder if the population even wants to act responsibly in the first place.
Second I have to wonder who can properly define what responsible financial behavior is to start with. I saw this video recently about the national debt that showed that even if the US government canceled ALL US Federal Government
non mandatory spending there would still be a budget deficit. To me that implies that even the vast majority of those who are looked at experts on economic matter are clueless about economic matters.
A standard operating procedure among the two major political parties is to claim that the economic experts that the other party relies on for expertise are incompetent. But as a matter of fact there really is very little difference between the two groups of experts.
So I have to wonder if these failures can be replaced. If so, how can they be replaced If I had to take a guess right now I would say Voodoo. Sticking a needle in just the right spot seems to be the only alternative, however unlikely.
I could not find your private email adress so I am going to tell my story here so that I know that you will see it. I find it a very interesting story about values and also about methods.
the story takes place in Tehran Iran in the mid 1960s. It begins with a nine year old girl bringing a potted plant to school. This was not just any ordinary potted plant. It hhad the most beautiful flowers that the girl had every seen, before or since. It seems that the flower was an extremely rare breed of Orchid that only grows nears caves that are near waterfalls.
Well all of the other kids in the girls class were also stunned by the beauty of the flowers on the plant. They all wanatee such a plant. Well there was only one plant but the plant had numerous flowers so the nine year old girl decided to sell the flowers off the plant.
She was able to get really high prices from here classmates which they were willng to pay out of their allowances, as this was not some poor neighborhood school. In todays terms we would say that she got up to 25 dollars a per flower.
Well somehow word of this leaked out to the parents of the kids who bought the flowers. They called the school principle to complain.
The school principle then called the girl`s father and brought both the girl and her father in to the office for what seemed like a one hour stern lecture and a demand that the money be returned. The money was returned but that was not the end of it. The next day the nine year old girl was put in front of the entire school body and critized by the principle for her behavior.
I think that the behavior of the principle the following day was outragous. But from his background and apparently the background of his society it was proper. But more importantly is the behavior of selling the flowers themselves. One could consider what was done commendable or dispicable depending on ones views on a whole host of questions. In America a newspaper article would have been written about what great initiative the young girl displayed. I can understand how both sides would view this behavior and I am not at all sure who is correct other than the matter should have been handled privately, not publically, but I can also undertand why some people would say that making it public was proper.
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