Nope -- that just makes God's aim even better. "There's a first-born here, no blood on the door post, kill it, there's a first-born here with blood on the door post, pass it by." Very, very exact aim.
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Respect for Marriage Act makes Congresswoman cry real tears.
- Thread starter Evangelicalhumanist
- Start date
TLK Valentine
Read the books that others would burn.
Very exact aim... As long as He has a spotter.
Meanwhile, nobody's told the evangelicals to bloody up their door posts, and they're starting to worry that nobody ever will...
I am in a position where people complain if I don't acknowledge/accept all marriages. If I could choose, I would choose to ignore some of them totally, but people don't allow me to "give a rat's tiny hiney who they marry or not". This is why I think it is ridiculously stupid to blame me for caring about it, when at the same time I am demanded to care about it.
Who demands that you "care?" If I tell you I like Pralines and Cream ice cream, can't you just accept me at my word? Do you need to care? If I tell you I enjoy classical piano music, do you need to care, or can you just accept it as a statement about myself? And if I tell you I consider myself married to my partner of 30 years -- because the Canadian government considers us "equivalent to married for tax and legal purposes -- do you need to care, or just say, "okay?"
The only other choices you really have in those instances is to say;
- You don't believe you like Pralines and Cream, or demand that I change my flavour preference to vanilla
- You don't accept that I like classical piano music, or insist that I change to enjoying heavy metal
- You don't accept that I'm married, or insist I call the Canadian government and have them change the law.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
This is something my elderly mom struggles with. Being almost 80 and a fundamentalist Christian, she obviously does not approve of same-sex marriage because she sees it as sinful.
If that's all there were to it, it wouldn't be much different than Muslims or Orthodox Jews believing it's wrong to eat pork. They think it's wrong, so they don't do it....end of story, right?
However, the difference between that and my mom's beliefs on same-sex marriage is that she can't keep her thoughts and beliefs to herself. For whatever reason, she feels compelled to say something whenever she sees a gay couple (or queer person in general) in public or on TV, which in a lot of cases generates responses from the people around her. And that causes her to get upset and start complaining about how "I guess I'm not allowed to say what I think anymore" and "They [LGBTQs] can do whatever they want, and I'm forced to accept it".
That's the same mentality you see here. They're conflating society pushing back against their comments with government forcing them to accept the queer community. I've tried explaining this to my mom, but all she can see is that she's not allowed to say what she thinks and that's just not fair, especially given how "what she thinks" comes straight from the Bible.
So for now I've settled on just letting her know that she lives in a society that will push back against judgmental and demeaning comments about LGBTQs. IOW, it's "Mom you can say what you want, but other people are just as free to say what they want right back at you".
For a lot of older folks it really does boil down to the simple fact that they used to be able to say all sorts of things about the queer community but now they can't, and they don't like it. And to that I say....oh well, maybe just don't say nasty things about other people?
There's a wonderful moment in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird in which Walter Cunningham, having been invited for dinner, pours syrup on his vegetables and meat "with a generous hand," which causes Scout to ask him, "what the Sam Hill are you doing!?" At that, the black servant Calpurnia asks for Scout's presence in the kitchen: 'There's some folks who don't eat like us,' she whispered fiercely, 'but you ain't called on to contradict 'em at the table when they don't. That boy's yo' comp'ny and if he wants to eat up the table-cloth you let him, you hear?'This is something my elderly mom struggles with. Being almost 80 and a fundamentalist Christian, she obviously does not approve of same-sex marriage because she sees it as sinful.
If that's all there were to it, it wouldn't be much different than Muslims or Orthodox Jews believing it's wrong to eat pork. They think it's wrong, so they don't do it....end of story, right?
However, the difference between that and my mom's beliefs on same-sex marriage is that she can't keep her thoughts and beliefs to herself. For whatever reason, she feels compelled to say something whenever she sees a gay couple (or queer person in general) in public or on TV, which in a lot of cases generates responses from the people around her. And that causes her to get upset and start complaining about how "I guess I'm not allowed to say what I think anymore" and "They [LGBTQs] can do whatever they want, and I'm forced to accept it".
That's the same mentality you see here. They're conflating society pushing back against their comments with government forcing them to accept the queer community. I've tried explaining this to my mom, but all she can see is that she's not allowed to say what she thinks and that's just not fair, especially given how "what she thinks" comes straight from the Bible.
So for now I've settled on just letting her know that she lives in a society that will push back against judgmental and demeaning comments about LGBTQs. IOW, it's "Mom you can say what you want, but other people are just as free to say what they want right back at you".
For a lot of older folks it really does boil down to the simple fact that they used to be able to say all sorts of things about the queer community but now they can't, and they don't like it. And to that I say....oh well, maybe just don't say nasty things about other people?
A little something we should all have learned by the time we become adults.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
Just recently my mom saw a gay couple on TV and of course just had to make a comment. I looked at her and said, "If you think it's wrong to be gay, then you probably shouldn't be gay. But you don't get to ban anyone else from being gay any more than Muslims and Jews get to ban us from eating pork."
Her reply was basically "But I have the Bible and God's word, so I'm right."
One thing I noticed years ago was that a lot of fundamentalists seem to lack the ability to put themselves in someone else's shoes and see things from a different POV. They only know their perspective and they expect everyone else to fall in line with it.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Perhaps a kind reminder that not all Bible believers share her belief and that even Jesus did not take some parts of the Bible literally would have helped. Also sometimes a person can be made to understand that when one uses the Bible to excuses one's bad behavior one is only making the Bible look bad.
Heyo
Veteran Member
The word you are looking for is "psychopath".
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
LOL....oh heck no, that would've made it worse! Her church teaches that pretty much every other denomination are not True Christians (TM).
Like I said, she's almost 80, so by now I doubt she's all that interested in what other people think about much of anything.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
I prefer "narrow minded" or "of limited perspective".
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
Lack of empathy is a major indicator of a sociopath.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
LOL...she isn't lacking in empathy dude. She's just rather judgmental when it comes to people that her religion teaches are "sinners". I mean, surely you're not arguing that every conservative religious person is a sociopath, right? Or that everyone who says things like "that's just not right" about behaviors they don't agree with is a sociopath?
stvdv
Veteran Member
That is simple from Spiritual POV:
Criticizing faith (beliefs, thoughts) of others is clearly mental craziness. Because almost nobody fully controls his or her thought (maybe for an hour or two at most), and provable those criticizing faith of others don't control their thoughts at all
Further, they prove by their "criticism of others their beliefs" that they suffer from the disease called arrogance, thinking to know best what is best for others, even better than the persons themselves
Also they prove that they belittle others, which is one of the worst of sins from Spiritual POV.
Also they sit on God's chair, claiming they know what God wants for everyone. This is called Blasphemy, also falls under major sins
Finally, their arrogance is not normal arrogance, as it falls in the worst category called Spiritual arrogance, which is almost incurable, according to the Scriptures, and even God can't cure such a sin
This even falls under narcissistic behavior.
Their crazy claim "it's robbing me of my Religious freedom" only means in reality "it's robbing me of my narcissistic freedom"
And not least of all, they trample on the souls of others, telling them that their feelings and beliefs are wrong
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
So you were referring to fundamentalists other than your mother?
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
Huh? You lost me.
There's a much easier way to say all this: "The more people there are who don't believe what I believe makes me afraid that I could possibly be wrong -- and I can't (can I?)."
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
Or with a very slight twist...
"It used to be that me and my fellow fundamentalists could condemn gays and society would be on our side. But the tables have turned so that now, when we fundies condemn gays, society stands with them and condemns us!"
And as society moves farther away from Christianity, that sort of thing is happening in more and more areas. Must be the end times!!
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
Never mind.
Ella S.
Well-Known Member
Or with a very slight twist...
"It used to be that me and my fellow fundamentalists could condemn gays and society would be on our side. But the tables have turned so that now, when we fundies condemn gays, society stands with them and condemns us!"
And as society moves farther away from Christianity, that sort of thing is happening in more and more areas. Must be the end times!!
When I was a kid, going to Catholic school on the weekdays, Baptist church on Sunday, and gorging on Christian entertainment in my off-time, I used to think the Biblical apocalypse where everyone turned away from God was unrealistic.
Why would so many people choose to reject God's love and mercy? Surely they knew that, even if they disagreed or didn't understand God's plan, God has infinite wisdom and is infinitely good, so it's better to just have faith in him.
Even if they were truly wicked, they had to know that they couldn't hope to fight back against God's might. Good always wins; even for the wicked, it's easier to just be good and get some part of paradise.
It didn't occur to me that Christianity wasn't true or that sane people might not believe in it, unless they were deceived like some evil groups off in foreign countries were, but that was a minority, right?
If I still had that mentality, then I would probably see the rapid growth of non-Christian cultures and the popularity of secularization and de-Christianization as an assault by Satan himself, deceiving the entire nation. I would be absolutely terrified that I, too, might be deceived into rationalizing sin or even outright blasphemy or non-belief, because I knew what the consequences of that was. They didn't talk about it in Catholic school, but the Baptists I grew up with were very fond of their hellfire sermons.
What an absolutely terrifying existence. It doesn't surprise me at all that many of these communities are lashing out and becoming more militant. That's what fear does.