Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
Sounds like the situation could have used some careful explaining and instruction for the sake of the assembly, on the nature of sin, repentance and forgiveness.
All are sin against God, with homosexuality having the added distinction of being a perversion of nature, God's natural order (Ro 1:26-27) which defiles even the land (nation)--Lev 18:22, 24-26.
If one goes to the "He Gets Us" website, there is nothing about how to be saved. There is #LOVE, #RELATIONSHIP, #ACTIVIST, #HOPE, #STRUGGLE, #JUDGEMENT (not our judgement but judgement of Christ). That's it. Nothing of a presentation of the gospel.I guess your pastor missed the part where Jesus says, "...and whatever you do not do for the least of these, you have not done it for me," or "love your enemies."
But yes, I do agree that spending $20 million on a commercial is probably a bad expenditure of ministry funds...
Yes, God punishes sin with more sin.What about Romans 1:25?
25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones...
To me it sounds like God made them this way because of idol worshipping. I guess I'm having trouble understanding.
That is do not mix right things in the wrong way, do not defile the pure (Lev 19:19).As far as Leviticus, do these also defile the land?
“‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed."
“‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material."
This was a pagan practice (Lev 19:27), along with self-mutilation, tatoos, and prostituting their daughters (Lev 19:28-29).“‘Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard."
Where is "relationship" in the Bible?If one goes to the "He Gets Us" website, there is nothing about how to be saved. There is #LOVE, #RELATIONSHIP, #ACTIVIST, #HOPE, #STRUGGLE, #JUDGEMENT (not our judgement but judgement of Christ). That's it. Nothing of a presentation of the gospel.
Of course our beliefs matter. I never said they don't. In fact, it's because they matter, and how and why they matter, I'm saying the things I'm saying.
What I am hearing - or at least what I'm afraid I'm hearing - is that you seem to want to foist a bunch of unsaved people on the church, Baptize them, have them confess and then declare them saved before the church.... seemingly for the purpose of being able to say we can't judge whether they are saved now that they are baptized. .
For what? To force social acceptance of homosexuality?
One of my issues with this, is that they are denied the gospel of salvation.
If one goes to the "He Gets Us" website, there is nothing about how to be saved. There is #LOVE, #RELATIONSHIP, #ACTIVIST, #HOPE, #STRUGGLE, #JUDGEMENT (not our judgement but judgement of Christ). That's it. Nothing of a presentation of the gospel.
One has to balance "loving your enemies" with obedience to what God has commanded us to do.
1 Samuel 1520 Then Saul said to Samuel, “I did obey the voice of the Lord, and went on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and have brought back Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. 21 But the people took some of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God at Gilgal.” 22 Samuel said,“Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrificesAs in obeying the voice of the Lord?Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,And to heed than the fat of rams.23 “For rebellion is as the sin of divination,And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry.Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,He has also rejected you from being king.”...32 Then Samuel said, “Bring me Agag, the king of the Amalekites.” And Agag came to him cheerfully. And Agag said, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.” 33 But Samuel said, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.” And Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord at Gilgal.Now who seems to be most loving, Saul or Samuel? Christians have a very warped view of what love actually is. Our love is first to God, then the rest follows.
There's absolutely no way anything I've said in this thread could possible, by any stretch of the imagination, imply that I'm doing what it is you're judging of me here. Of course, I realize that I can't expect you to have read every other post I've made in this thread, but I'm no Progressive.
You all just haven't figured that out yet.
Alright. I get the message. I'll try for more clarity.Well, perhaps if you tried for more clarity?
You just keep sounding cryptic or something and I just can't follow what point you are trying to make.
In explaining what I'm understanding thus far I was hoping that you would correct and clarify what you actually meant...
So please, consider this a teaching moment and explain what you're trying to say.
P.S. it's doctor day and I'm home now but I'm in a ton of pain and had to take meds... So forgive me. Bad day, bad week... Lol
Be blessed and I pray you get to feeling better soon, Sis!
I didn't see the Super Bowl commercial, but I have seen some of the other "He gets Us" advos. I'm not sure what the problem is other than the fact that we now have a nation that has way too many knee-jerk reactions to even mentioning the name of Jesus ...
Matthew 19:10 The disciples *said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.”Where is "relationship" in the Bible?
Ooooo...that's a fancy word."Christians" have a very warped view of love ... ?
What?! You talk like a Theonomist.
Not EVERYTHING in Liberation Theology is dead wrong. Assuming that it is always heretical is where we go wrong in an attempt to maintain an Evangelical front. We get so gung-ho and politically militaristic that we douse the fact that along with Holiness is supposed to come not only the lip-service to "Loving even our enemies," but the activation of a social mission for feeding, clothing, directing, encouraging, educating and aiding, even them.
But what do typical American Right-Leaning Evangelicals all too often do? Out of their political fear(S), they over-emphasize the former and leave undone the latter. Sometimes, they do neither of these; they just hoot and holler about how we need the 'right' governmental leader to somehow make it all better.
It's time for U.S. evangelicals to get over that, while at the same time scrutinizing those aspects of Liberation Theology that may be cogent on the one hand and less than theologically correct, on the other hand. I should be able to take a book like James H. Cone's, God of the Oppressed, and at least see the valid points he makes within it all the while still not necessarily agreeing with the entire theology. We should be able to do this without taking the flame thrower to it ... we should save the verbal FIRE for where it's really needed and apply it in the right context.
Matthew 10:34-36; Luke 12:49-53
Ooooo...that's a fancy word.
Theonomy (from Greek theos "God" and nomos "law") is a hypothetical Christian form of government in which society is ruled by divine law. Theonomists hold that divine law, particularly the judicial laws of the Old Testament, should be observed by modern societies.I'm not sure how government got into the picture. I'm talking about how people need to 1) Love GOD with all their heart, mind and strength, and then 2) love others as themselves.
As a side note: I live in a part of the US that has one of the highest Muslim populations. There are a number of mosques within a few miles of my homeIn and of itself Liberation theology it has to be denounced as heresy. You can't look at people and tell them to explore it for that 10% worth that is decent.
To pretend though, that Evangelical Christians are not giving, loving and caring people is to literally not know them.
I've never met more generous and kind people. They aren't perfect, but face to face they'd give the shirt off their back to anyone who had a need. Even those who themselves live in poverty would.
To me I guess that's what is striking, is that even out of their poverty they will give.
And look at my husband's family. They never met me and they opened their home to me and treated me better than I've ever been treated. Never pressure, never judgement. Just love.
You may not understand their mannerisms or their language, but they are Christians and they act like it in rural America in very real ways. They always have even if we aren't recognizing that in them.
Just after 9/11 is honestly the only time in rural America I ever felt a different vibe than this. And that was simply cause and effect. People are always going to react in certain ways, we are human after all.
It didn't stop any of my friends from coming to my get togethers or them inviting me to theirs. But at the gas station people would just freeze when they saw me and stuff.
I had more than one veteran tell me I actually set off their PTSD. I became friends with one vet because he wanted a safe exposure therapy so he didn't panic when he saw Muslims in public.
That's not to say there's not nuts. There are, everywhere. My husband says some people are just born junk yard dog mean, and you can't change them. But they aren't Christian either, nor are they evangelical even if they may vote similarly.
As far as public policies, in rural America we see nothing but abject failure of public policies, and most are living through the largest opioid epidemic in American history. It's serious out here.
My son has lost more friends to opioids - lost their actual lives - than I had known people to die by the time I was his age if we don't include his friends that got caught up in it. He's lost 7 or 8 friends to opioids. Funeral after funeral. I don't even understand how it's happening when they are seeing everyone die from it.
People never used to die like they die now.... Sure there were addicts but this is intentional murder by those making these drugs and selling them. They are trying to kill Americans and succeeding.
Put a few death pills in the bag of pills they're selling and boom; it's Russian roulette every time they buy drugs now.
It's so bad out here that the authorities recommend everyone keeps that drug that can bring someone back from an overdose even if you don't think you know anyone who does the drugs - just in case you find yourself somewhere and an OD occurs. They give it out free so people can do that.
When people say things about welfare and such, it's because of things they see in life. When people recommend giving charity to people in person and making sure it's not going to drugs etc it's because of what we see out here in rural America.
They still give, they just give how their conscious informs them instead of the way it's been failing to address real need and can sometimes support negative behaviors like drug addiction.
It might not sound loving to your ears, but it's actually because they care about people.
I'd never give my neighbor cash because he's a drug person. But I'd empty out my freezer to make sure he ate. Make sense? (No one who knows him will just give money, but they'll go to the gas station and put gas in his truck, or pay a bill for him, or buy him a space heater etc)
Some people think tough love is better, though I think there's a happy medium somewhere.
The accusations against evangelicals are simply false. Evangelicals just want people to hear that they think another way of helping the poor is better, it's not because they are somehow uncharitable.
but they, and other denominations, are still seen as a "thing apart" from our lives.
The church I attend now (EFCA) does a lot of the same things the mosques do in terms of public and civic engagement. They even had an Imam come a give a long lecture, which was fascinating.
Since you and I are just talking here like brethren I want to say a couple things about your post. It's not to be taken harshly, it's just a point.
This is actually probably it's own topic but you started in this thread directly attacking people saying they were having a knee-jerk reaction to this. Granted, here you were not specifically talking about evangelicals and I see and recognize that.
To a degree perhaps many in American Christianity feels quite attacked these days, and not without cause.
They've been attacked in ever harsher terms in this country since around 2005, no one even thinks twice about calling them racist hateful bigots, without really knowing or even trying to understand what they are trying to say.
Are they eloquent speakers? No... But they love and they care. And the media attacks are getting ever more ridiculous.
I don't really know what an evangelical is, I know I took a test once when I was Muslim to determine my political leanings and the test was general enough that as a practicing Muslim I tested out as "Evangelical Christian" lol...
I've never known what an evangelical is since. In Christian terminology it seems to mean Protestant Christianity sans the Lutherans? Not sure...
So I don't know if I'm an evangelical but I think I am, and have always been considered one all my life... Lol.
But all these attacks since Trump decided to run for president set off my PTSD. That's why I take Internet breaks, it's not easy for me to feel under attack.
And If it sets off my PTSD, even those without PTSD are likely feeling it.
I stopped watching what is now seen as left wing mainstream media after the first year of the nonsense with Trump, their reaction was just ridiculously over the top, and there was never a need for it.
PTSD is why I stopped watching news. And MSNBC was my favorite news channel to that point, and got at least equal run time to Fox News in my house. But they stopped being journalists and decided to go on a hate fest instead.
Within 1 to 2 years of that I stopped watching Fox also. Same reason, my PTSD couldn't handle it.
I actually started having to use my earphones and listen to music when my husband watched the news so I couldn't hear anything... my PTSD has been set off that badly from all this - just from media.
I do almost exclusively use print media now for the news, which is causing me to actually listen to the politicians themselves and right now that's helpful.
But that's how bad it is now in the world for someone like me who has PTSD.
If all this hate is affecting the PTSD people it's affecting everyone whether they realize it or not.
And evangelicals are in the cross hairs of it every single day now. There's no real escape. You just have to learn to deal as best you can. Not everyone handles it with grace. We could certainly do better. I could certainly do better.
But you are probably right.. there probably is an amount of knee jerk reactions to what is seen as just one more attack on our faith and person.
However, pointing it out by coming into the thread full of criticism for everyone who didn't agree with the Ad saying they were having a knee-jerk reaction is in itself just another character attack, even if it might hold some truth.
Can you see that?
In an age when a lot of the advice we have to give people deals with how to manage PTSD symptoms and avoid outright PTSD attacks how we approach one another as Christians is probably pretty important.
I'm not doing as well in this regard as I should, as a person who does take the name of Christ for my own. So forgive me for being fleshy sometimes, and reactionary, I'm sorry.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?