Brothers and sisters, the world is watching us. Don't you get that? They seem to sometimes know more how we should act that we do! My friend Steve Lay who has a blog called The Groundworks emailed me this article and really, it breaks my heart...
iggy
Christians for Torture
So what in the world is an atheist to think when he sees the widespread Christian support for torture? Yes, torture. But don’t Christians claim to follow the ethics of Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament? These are unbelievable poll results. Christian torture advocates should be ashamed of themselves for being so ignorant of New Testament ethics. We associate torture with the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao, .....
It is pastors who ought to be teaching and warning their congregations about what is wrong with the U.S. empire, the U.S. military, the CIA, U.S. wars, and U.S. foreign policy. Instead, we have pastors that lead their congregations to pledge to the flag, sing praise to the state on every national holiday, and honor the U.S. war machine on special military appreciation days.
What have we come to in the United States when people who name the name of Christ support torture? How dare Christians criticize Muslims for saying that Islam is a religion of peace and then advocate the torturing of suspected terrorists? By their support for torture, Christians have given "great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme" (2 Samuel 12:14).
Continue the article from: lewrockwell.com
7 comments:
Wow! That's quite a picture of the blood on the walk-way. I lead a sheltered life. Ya, the pendulum has swung a long, long way to the right. Hopefully not too many souls will be lost before we return to our Jesus roots.
Makarios,
I have to check out your blog.. it looks interesting.
Yeah, that is one of the infamous Guantanamo Bay pictures. I was going to use a more graphic one... but felt that maybe some of my readers may not handle it.
Thanks for stopping by.
iggy
Good Grief! What a perfect example of liberalism with a little Christianity lite sprinkled on top.
All this whining over fake drowning a couple of Terrorists in order to SAVE perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives from a nuclear dirty bomb.
God has given government the power of the sword (Romans 13) to "punish evildoers", and our government officials have taken an Oath to protect us, and God is very serious about us taking oaths.
Christians who refuse to repent of Liberalism, are engaging in Idolatry. Leftism is a type of quasi-religious belief system that is contradicted at every point in Scripture.
James,
I know who you are and we had this conversation before. To you Jesus words mean nothing... all that love you neighbor and do not repay evil with evil is all "liberalism" to you... well you can have you nationalistic right wing idolatry you call Christianity and I will continue to follow Jesus and his teachings. You keep right on justifying using Jesus to harm and abuse others and I will continue to call out for the ministry of reconciliation God has given believers of Jesus to do. You keep following your Glen Becks (a Mormon) and Rush Limbaugh and I will continue to follow Jesus and the bible.
Follow your heart, but remember it is evil through and through... I will continue to trust in Jesus and take what He says as truth to follow not something to twist to fit my own political agenda.
To me that is perversion upon blasphemy upon anti Christ... To twist the very words of Jesus and make them evil "liberalism"...
You need to truly get this worlds politics out of your heart and Jesus into it. You left your first love to follow man made creations... I pray you come back to your first love.
iggy
Iggy - for what it's worth, I agree and disagree with your view point. For me this is about the tension I feel (and haven't reconciled) as a Christian and a citizen of a government.
If I put on my Christian hat, I'm pretty much with you. But, neither of us have been able to take off our citizen hat. I do not think your perspective is proper, workable, etc. for a government. I would approach it very differently ... but I'm aware that I should only wear the Christian hat ... but we aren't doing that here ...
So the problem I have with this post is that you mix the two and in my mind that's a 'fail' ... but again, I haven't figured that one out for myself either so ... keep on plugging away ...
And again, happy birthday man ... hope you are getting better sleep these days.
rick,
I am not saying one should not be a "good" citizen, but to be a good citizen does not mean one must support torture. I think that what is being mixed up in your mind. Following Jesus is about doing what is right.
If the government demanded that all people must only have 2 children so you must abort or choose only which 2 of the three you have... do you follow Jesus or be a good citizen.
If the government tells you that you must drown someone then bring them back to life over and over (BTW I had a pastor who was in jail in Mexico that had this done to him... it is not pleasant at all) or beat someone... would you do it?
How is shooting one's enemy, loving them?
Now I understand that the government is there to protect us, but we must never confuse the government for God. God chooses a government to either punish or reward a nation or people... but at times I think we assume God backs that government... if that was so, then we should always accept the other governments abuse of their people as it was ordained by God.
There are ways to fight other than killing or torture.
Have you watched Charlie Wilson's war? If so or if not, the big fail was we could have gave Afghanistan schools and other resources to help them but after we gave them weapons to keep Russia out we abandoned them. No wonder they hate us in that region and others. We failed to help in the humanitarian ways that were more important... so who did go in and start schools? The Taliban. It was our own damn fault as a nation. We could have stopped the fighting by giving food, digging wells and building schools... but we failed. But we supplied warlords with weapons and the Taliban with the opportunity... and mixed that altogether we get the huge mess we are in now.
So, if we loved our neighbor? If we believed in going the extra mile? If we did not repay evil for evil? What if we did those things as well as protect ourselves. But seriously, are we the same as our enemies that we torture and abuse those we capture? I hope we are much better and the "Jack Bauers" will stop being the heroes.
Listen. I look at things realistically... while people like James see that anyone that talks like I do is a Liberal... he misses that not everything that is capitalist, republican, conservative, right wing... and on and on is of God. He misses that to build a idol of those things is just as wrong as the liberals he attacks... worse that he attributes the teachings of Jesus and those who follow those teachings as "Liberals" and twists what Jesus says to mean something that fits his own political views... that is a corruption of the Truth of the scripture. I was on a discussion group with James for a time and left due to his views and constant attack on me when I talked about Kingdom Living as opposed to mixing this world's systems with the Kingdom. God's ways are not our ways... I hope we all begin to see that some day.
iggy
"we must never confuse the government for God" - AMEN
I just haven't figured out how, when, etc. to intervene in government ... I see the things that concern me v. those that do not plus the amount of energy I put into them as quite arbitrary ...
Others seem the same to me ... they just don't appear to realize that they are also 'picking and choosing' ...
Personally, in an ultimate sense, I don't think a government can be Christian ... and this is why I get frustrated at our election process ... because while a government cannot be Christian in my opinion, it could be led be Christians ... but that doesn't seem to be the criteria for most ...
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