Report: Commanders telling troops the Iran war is part of God's plan to cause Armageddon

Debate Room
21

Absolutely spot on.

I have long said they sold their vaunted “morality” to the highest bidder. They went on consistently about philandering, dishonesty, lawlessness … and turned right around and became enablers of same.

Although in fairness to the exact sub-sect I was in, they have stayed true to their belief that getting involved in politics was a Bad Idea, and have distanced themselves from most of their fundamentalist brethren in that regard, though not doctrinally. Still, I’d be unsurprised to find that there’s a lot of daylight between their “official” position and the views of the typical pew-warmer in their churches.

A patriarchal authoritarian system will IMO always seek out political power in the end. It is all about enforcing conformity and controlling outcomes which involves forcing / forbidding specific behaviors both in and out of their tribe. And that requires raw power.

22

Good explainer of the influence of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which is the subset of Christian Nationalists who have a good deal of political connections and sway with the regime, and is also the group that Paula White-Cain, Trump’s “spiritual advisor” is from.

TL;DR they are just giddy with excitement. Trump has long been rationalized as a “modern King Cyrus” who, despite being pagan, liberated the captive Israelis of yore. Cyrus was a Persian (Iranian) king. Coincidence? They think not!

23

it’s just human persons violently losing their lives, suffering horribly from countless atrocities, and never getting the chance to live a full life of happiness. it ain’t that bad.

24

is this a frickin renaissance painting?

25

“God is using President Trump to execute judgment on wicked civilizations.”

Hmm, isn’t that pretty much the excuse the 9/11 and 7/11 bombers used? Minus the Trump part I mean?

And these are the idiots who want the ten commandments up in schools and public buildings, have they actually read them?

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26

According to three gospels at the moment Jesus died on the cross the temple curtain was torn in two, from heaven down to earth.

Which is god signifying that the Law of Moses is fulfilled in Jesus.

Therefore, whatever Jesus said about the Law in the New Testament now takes precedent over what was said about it in the Old.

You DON’T repay evil with evil and take an eye for an eye. You turn the other cheek and love your enemy as yourself.

The OT application of the Law no longer applies and stopped applying 2,000 years ago.

But of course, 99% of Christians don’t even understand this and if they did they wouldn’t accept it.

They prefer the angry, violent and vindictive God of the OT over his peace-making Son.

:roll_eyes:

27

Sure seems like it RN but in reality I would guess over 50% of Christians at least dimly understand this. It is rather like how about 30% MAGA got Trump elected.

But my view is that Christianity has this tendency baked in and it will always be a danger because the Christians who transcend it, do so despite the bigotry, tribalism, patriarchy, etc. in the NT, much less the old.

28

Do they really understand that the Beatitudes ARE the fulfilment of the Law?

Did Trump really get elected by people who expected him to turn the other cheek?

Or to love his enemies as himself?

Or to clothe and feed the poor?

?

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29

I think the easiest way to understand how a fundamentalist’s thinking works in this regard is that it is “kindness for us, but not for others”. Since evil-doers are subject to god’s wrath, it is only the in-group where there is any sort of forbearance. And even there, it’s pretty thin. It still is conformity cult. But so long as you don’t rock the boat and keep any divergent views / doubts to yourself, yes people will “love” and affirm and encourage you. They will clothe and feed you (to a point), and forbear things about you they don’t like or agree with so long as you are essentially orthodox by their lights. They will regard the beatitudes as applicable to you.

Outside the in-group, they’re usually always living in terror of being seen as “condoning sin”. The only way to relieve that tension is for the sinners to repent and join the flock and submit to its social requirements and moral code and practices. Otherwise they must be avoided if not actively shunned. If they don’t seem like prospects and aren’t open to proselytization then any kindness evaporates pretty quickly or at least always comes with strings / expectations attached. These people often don’t know of kindness for its own sake / reward. Everything is relentlessly transactional.

Also of course they have to protect themselves from temptation. They can be so dour and dreary in their effort to avoid anything that’s fun. This is another reason they can’t be too chummy with Outsiders; they might start to compromise and loose sight of heavenly rewards and won’t “persevere to the end”.

So yes the beatitudes, etc., exist but only in very specific contexts. It’s not an accident that they so often emphasize that the scriptures must be understood “in context” lest you go astray in your interpretation. Since helping “the least of these” involves people with brown skin, who are poor or smelly or uneducated or have weird customs, they have a vast array of rationalizations for (ironically) not literally following such commends.

It isn’t accidental that fundamentalist churches are predominantly a rural or suburban phenomenon. The diversity in large cities is something they simply can’t cope with. “Inner city ministries” are rare and not much loved. It’s one thing to help the poor savages off in a distant jungle – something that can be outsourced to specially-trained missionaries who come back home with colorful stories to tell – and quite another to confront things like drug abuse, homelessness, or domestic problems here at home, in this supposedly “Christian Nation” that is exceptional and where all difficulty and failure must be explained in ways that blame the victim and never challenge the believer.

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30

I accept these are the rationalizations that people come up with, Mordant.

But what are human rationalizations compared to what Jesus plainly said?

Matthew 25

***31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ***
***32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ***
33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

***34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ***
***35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ***
36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

***37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ***
***38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ***
39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

***41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ***
***42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ***
*43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

There’s very little that needs any kind of special interpretation here.

Jesus is be found, not just in the community of believers, but in everyone and if you do not show kindness to those outside of that community, then you are not showing kindness to Jesus.

On that basis, these so-called Christians who kept their Christian kindness only for other Christians, will be judged and found wanting. Their faith in Jesus will not save them because they didn’t put it into practice what he said, in the Beatitudes and elsewhere in scripture.

That’s disobedience by selective reading from the scriptures, pure and simple.

That’s selfishness and prejudice.

There really is no excuse, Mordant.

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31

The apologists who rationalise the literal texts to means something entirely different, are just as frustratingly biased as those who blindly and doggedly cling to literal claims that are at odds with objective facts. We have seen enough of both to avoid making any assumptions.

If someone can insist the ten commandments be placed in schools and public buildings, then celebrate a war killing countless people because they are evil, then such a person can rationalise anything.

Sadly apologists never ever run out of those. :wink:

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32

There’s plenty of things Jesus plainly said or did or failed to say or do that justify all sorts of human mischief. As a good and decent person, you’re just less likely to notice them or take license from them.

Just the assumption of his own age, of a sovereign / subject, master / slave, patriarchal system, and teaching within that framing, is problematic.

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33

Well, I won’t argue with that, Mordant.

But perhaps the moral of the story is that we shouldn’t look to ancient texts for guidance on how to conduct ourselves but simply treat everyone else as we would wish to be treated?

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34

Yep – methinks so.

It’s just amazing the degree to which typical Christians don’t know the Bible in the sense of having either read it through or at least reviewed the conclusions of credible others who have. They just know a few verses they heard once that resonate with them, maybe things that are repeated often in their liturgy or whatever, or, sadly, whatever their preacher bellows from the pulpit and heavily slants a certain way. They mostly belong to a sect with its own culture and that is what they actually follow.

In some cases even when they are better students than that they only listen to their own echo chamber. I was guilty of that. Although I don’t recall having been explicitly told so, I came to see the reliable sources were “thinkers” from Dallas Theological Seminary, Moody Bible Institute, Grand Rapids School of Bible & Music, Prairie Bible Institute, perhaps Bob Jones University. That was about it. None of them were accredited institutions, either. I intuited that if I started listening to folks from, say, Harvard Divinity School, or some dissenter like Bart Ehrman, I would encounter way too much to think about.

The problem IMO is that the Bible only makes even partial sense through a very restricted lens where you ignore a lot of stuff that “doesn’t fit”. The more inclusively and exhaustively you study it, the more the abstractions leak. What one ends up doing is picking the lens they know because of family history or what appeals most to them, and run with that. Once I figured out my particular hermeneutic wasn’t sensible, it rendered the rest suspect. It was all clearly cherry-picking.

And then it seemed to me that the other major religions were just the same thing writ large. So it was good riddance to bad rubbish – for me, anyway.

35

I applaud your integrity and honesty, Mordant.

The sheer pressure upon you from family, friends, peers and community to conform must have been tremendous. You have my profound respect for having enough inner strength to be your own man and not be the man all those others wanted you to be.

With thanks,

Walter.