keltic, Zerbie, Sol,
You guys are too kind, but actually it’s a good point. The one’s I’m talking about here are on TV and radio because truth was not the goal or they are unaware they've lost sight of the goal.
There’s a few good ones I’m aware of, and to be clear, I
do know that I’m not seeing the plethora of ‘good’ ones because they’re too busy
BEING Christians.
Jennifer,
It’s not just you. One of the best things I learned how to do is to separate the message from the messenger. Every time I hear “Jesus” or the “Bible” mentioned on tv, and I do monitor the religious stations, my ears perk up like a watchdog ready for a fight. Sad to say, they usually disappoint. And it’s not necessarily what they say or believe, it’s how they do so.
They promote things like the iraq war (at least 30,000 civilians KILLED
www.iraqbodycount.org ), without so much as even fathoming how anyone might not equate that with treating others as yourself (Christianity). If you think Iraq was
THE threat, it makes sense. But if you want me to believe you know better, you need explain how and why it christian to cause 9/11 ten times over to a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 in order to prevent another 9/11. Unlike the Bible, that’s verifiable here and now information.
Just like when they condemn gay people for not accepting without reservation that we should love what repulses us most. Even if they were right, to not recognize the absurdity of what they suggest damages their testimony to God itself. They molest the very idea of Love in packaging ignorance and pride as indicative of the Designer’s Love.
I’ve learned to recognize it now, republicans do it a lot. Absolute unfiltered unfettered projection. In fact ‘conservative’/‘liberal’ is the perfect analogy.
A conservative ‘conserves’ their perspective, a liberal allows for the ‘liberation’ of their understanding. Technically a liberal could be more conservative than a conservative but never the other way around. A liberal perspective encompasses a conservative perspective.
A ‘preacher’ has conserved/confined their scope of truth to the Bible, thus the need for its inerrancy in order to stay “right” without learning anything new.
If all you know of are your own thoughts, naturally the motives of others will be seen only through the prism of your own motives. We all do it, it's just a matter of recognizing it.
Marriage equality IS a “redefinition.” Not of marriage of course but of THEIR definition of our inferiority, If you’ve decided gays are inferior because your goal is to be “superior,” of course “equal rights” are going to be seen as "special rights," and an agenda to get those rights, and forcing your belief of equality onto society, etc., because all you know and do is toward an ‘agenda’ and ‘forcing you beliefs upon society,’ and wanting the ‘special right’ to be saved to the exclusion of all others.
John Cornyn, Charles Grassley, Rick Santorum, Marsha Blackburn, and the president and his men, to mention a few, nearly every single word that comes out of their mouths means the opposite of what they are saying and they are describing themselves and their agenda openly and to a T yet don’t even realize it. Many preachers are the same way, yet I think a higher proportion of them (compared to republicans (mostly)), actually believe what they are saying.
Projection, seeing others as you are because you are unwilling to accept any truth that you are not in "control" of (Ergo, Biblical inerrancy). It is the ultimate blasphemy. They so often preach on the wiles of pride and close mindedness yet do not see the arbitrariness of what they consider to be certainty. The confinement of truth to the predetermined boundaries of their interpretation of the Bible.
They’re not “mixing” anything, they’re “redefining” God in order to secure their own personal “inerrancy.” In the effort to avoid plucking that last unflinchingly blinding root of pride, the only thing separating them from the direct knowledge of God, who is
ONLY Love.
My brother is married to an Assemblies of God Pastor’s daughter. They are so dogmatic in their beliefs, I am afraid to even share my own witness with them, yet they are convinced I am devoid of knowing God as they do. That’s the real tragedy. I have to work on that one.
I think I’ll leave it there for now.
