Progressives love to lecture us about love, but they have politically distorted the word. To be loving is not to embrace lawlessness (i.e. illegal immigration). To be loving is not to cheer people on who live self-destructive lifestyles (i.e. homosexuality, trans). Progressives have turned love into a club which they have repeatedly used to beat us all over the head with, and I've just about had enough.
This meme and its message have been posted all over my personal feed by friends who are lost, atheist, and consistently critical of christians. I find it fascinating that they have discounted the Bible, have no familiarity with the whole of Jesus teachings and have repeatedly rejected God. Yet somehow these arrogant 'wiser than the rest of you' people lecture loudly on what true christianity must look like.
Also I am so weary of the 'love is love' twisted anthem of our day.
This mantra has permeated many a church and is wrecking havoc with many a well meaning follower of Jesus. My feed is replete with believers chastising those of us who aren't 'being kind' enough to let others 'love' whoever they please.
I'm really confused about what exactly is terrifying trans children. What are they afraid of? A slowing of funds for transitioning meds and procedures? Afraid they won't have applause during pride month and special treatment for their sexuality? Ye gads what a mess.
Thank you for your post, it was therapeutic for me this morning!
Amen! Therapeutic for me, as well. But many of those who are "disappointed" with me and "quite sad" are Christian friends who have fallen into the being Christian is being nice trap.
Thanks for the reminder. Through a sermon last year I was shown that biblical truth shows us who the marginalized are and how we are called to show them love, as individuals and a church, not the primary role of the nation. We are manipulating truth when the gospel is not part of that love, and satan is using that manipulation to redefine who is marginalized.
Love your description of the reading of the law opening eyes and softening hearts to the message of salvation even before Jesus completed the work, what a beautiful thought this morning.
Oh, and thank you, Anne, again for your sensible and orthodox rendering of the truth and contrasting it with worldly foolishness in the guise of courageous grandstanding. Well done, young lady.
Being a Christian often feels like being part of a book club where most of the members haven’t read the book and are just there to socialize, and then even worse are the ones who’ve never read the book but have heard a lot of folks say things about it and feel certain that they know what it says. Even worse than that are the ones who have read the book and are lording it over the rest of the group, while very similarly to the rest, really have no idea what they’re talking about.
I had not seen that meme before now. Thanks, I think.
Here is my comeback:
If your Christianity causes you to ignore or even justify the predations of a treasonous & near totalitarian regime but then be oh-so concerned about the Trump Administration, then your Christianity probably isn't Christianity at all.
"And thus was every person silenced who would ever after try to say, “The Bible is too hard to understand” or “The Bible is full of contradictions” or “I can just read it by myself I don’t need to go to church” or any other number of excuses that people have made down the ages for not wanting to crack open the text or click open the app to hear what God says to his people."
I do appreciate your repeated emphasis on the fact that the Bible can be understood by the average person. I spent years in an environment where this was functionally not accepted, even though we claimed the Bible as our authority, and where it often felt like our understanding of the text was always placed at a remove and filtered through whatever academic or popular writer we currently aligned with. It led to a situation in which, to my observation, everyone believed what was right in their own eyes and, in the end, people went astray. I left that environment several years ago, but I still deal with the damage, doubt, and chaos it brought into my life and the lives of people I care about, and it is encouraging to have a voice stating so clearly things I believe but often feel uncertain about.
I think we stand for the gospel reading in honor of its concentrated focus, Christ Jesus, His life and ministry, much like rising at the entrance of royalty or for a man in the presence of a lady. In a real sense, He is the Word of Himself and we stand to honor His entry.
Isn’t it amazing how the Word of God is always relevant to whatever is going on around us? In my personal Bible reading for today, I found out that today is the day to remember St. Titus, who like St. Timothy, was a friend of St. Paul, and like Timothy, found encouragement from Paul. The prayer for today is as follows, and appropriate for all Christians everywhere to pray for their pastors:
Almighty God, You called Titus to the work of pastor and teacher. Make all shepherds of Your flock diligent in preaching Your holy Word so that the whole world may know the immeasurable riches of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Now, I can’t wait to get to church to hear how my pastor will deal with Ezra and the people of Nazareth.
I already raved about this article on your Facebook page. Thank you for it. I was shocked by how shocked many of my Christian friends and cohorts (except for the ones who thought she was wonderful!) were by Bishop Budde. The event really exposed the Episcopal Church's waywardness and since then, the woke folk who agree with her. But I forgot to add in my comments on FB how grateful I was for your including the link to the article by Kaeley Triller Harms, no least because she uses one of my favorite quotations from Flannery O'Connor in her conclusion!
If immigration isn't a powerful/powerless binary, then it's kinda funny that the paradigm Americans use to describe it is a binary called legal/illegal.
That literally means "we have all the power to decide if you're free to live and work where you desire, and you have none of the power".
The power/powerless dynamic is a thing in the Bible. Liberals invented intersectionality as a way to cash in on that truth and shuck the rubes. It's a grift. But conservatives don't defeat the grift by denying the truth they co-opted. We defeat it by obeying the Bible. "...and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame."
It's really revealing why Greg Abbott's stunt of busing immigrants to blue cities was so effective. It wasn't because good Christian households and churches on the border were really being stripped of all their resources and they needed northern help... it was merely to get liberals to admit they dislike immigrants as much as conservatives do. The schadenfreude was so palpable on our side.
You know, that notable biblical emotion so prevalent in the saints... Schadenfreude.
We're much better and pwning the libs than in doing what Jesus commands, I'm afraid.
By that logic, is the binary between homeowner and trespasser a powerful/powerless binary? Need I wrack my conscience for consistent scruples before shooing strangers from my infant's bedroom door?
You seem to have swallowed more of crit theory than you're willing to admit.
I'm glad you asked. Although Torah doesn't anywhere equivocate thieves with immigrants like you just did, examining the case of thieves could be instructive.
When does Torah say you can kill a thief without blood guilt, versus when your self-defense actually incurs blood guilt?
Who said anything about killing? I understand that lets you invoke a scripture you think shuts down the argument here, but that's not a very useful way to dialogue. I addressed your comment head-on, it's a shame you won't do me the same courtesy.
You wrote "shooting strangers". I'm primarily an English speaker, so my mind went straight to killing. Sorry if I misunderstood your use of the word "shooting."
Torah says only shoo thieves if it's day, you may shoot them if it's night. That's God's jurisprudence for thieves.
God's jurisprudence for immigrants is different. The Bible is pretty famous about not being muddy on these things. Muddiness is something we do, because we don't like how easy it is to understand the Bible.
Of course, some known thieves will occasionally disguise themselves as immigrants.
God's jurisprudence for known thieves is: prosecute. Punish. Convict with 2 or 3 witnesses.
Penalty for a thief is: restitution to the victim; pay back between 2-4 times what was stolen.
Now, if someone wants to argue, "background check them, let them go if they're clear", that's the closest thing to a biblical argument for a militarized border one could hope to find.
Oddly, I've not yet run across a conservative Christian who argues for that, all by itself.
They invariably throw in additional things on top of that, like Anne did, such as, "it's not loving for me to let you into America because you don't really know how bad it is here and you're poor".
You won't find any argument remotely like that in the Bible about immigration.
But, if I'm wrong on that point, please show me from the bible.
Progressives love to lecture us about love, but they have politically distorted the word. To be loving is not to embrace lawlessness (i.e. illegal immigration). To be loving is not to cheer people on who live self-destructive lifestyles (i.e. homosexuality, trans). Progressives have turned love into a club which they have repeatedly used to beat us all over the head with, and I've just about had enough.
This meme and its message have been posted all over my personal feed by friends who are lost, atheist, and consistently critical of christians. I find it fascinating that they have discounted the Bible, have no familiarity with the whole of Jesus teachings and have repeatedly rejected God. Yet somehow these arrogant 'wiser than the rest of you' people lecture loudly on what true christianity must look like.
Also I am so weary of the 'love is love' twisted anthem of our day.
This mantra has permeated many a church and is wrecking havoc with many a well meaning follower of Jesus. My feed is replete with believers chastising those of us who aren't 'being kind' enough to let others 'love' whoever they please.
I'm really confused about what exactly is terrifying trans children. What are they afraid of? A slowing of funds for transitioning meds and procedures? Afraid they won't have applause during pride month and special treatment for their sexuality? Ye gads what a mess.
Thank you for your post, it was therapeutic for me this morning!
Amen! Therapeutic for me, as well. But many of those who are "disappointed" with me and "quite sad" are Christian friends who have fallen into the being Christian is being nice trap.
Thanks for the reminder. Through a sermon last year I was shown that biblical truth shows us who the marginalized are and how we are called to show them love, as individuals and a church, not the primary role of the nation. We are manipulating truth when the gospel is not part of that love, and satan is using that manipulation to redefine who is marginalized.
Love your description of the reading of the law opening eyes and softening hearts to the message of salvation even before Jesus completed the work, what a beautiful thought this morning.
Oh, and thank you, Anne, again for your sensible and orthodox rendering of the truth and contrasting it with worldly foolishness in the guise of courageous grandstanding. Well done, young lady.
Being a Christian often feels like being part of a book club where most of the members haven’t read the book and are just there to socialize, and then even worse are the ones who’ve never read the book but have heard a lot of folks say things about it and feel certain that they know what it says. Even worse than that are the ones who have read the book and are lording it over the rest of the group, while very similarly to the rest, really have no idea what they’re talking about.
I had not seen that meme before now. Thanks, I think.
Here is my comeback:
If your Christianity causes you to ignore or even justify the predations of a treasonous & near totalitarian regime but then be oh-so concerned about the Trump Administration, then your Christianity probably isn't Christianity at all.
"And thus was every person silenced who would ever after try to say, “The Bible is too hard to understand” or “The Bible is full of contradictions” or “I can just read it by myself I don’t need to go to church” or any other number of excuses that people have made down the ages for not wanting to crack open the text or click open the app to hear what God says to his people."
I do appreciate your repeated emphasis on the fact that the Bible can be understood by the average person. I spent years in an environment where this was functionally not accepted, even though we claimed the Bible as our authority, and where it often felt like our understanding of the text was always placed at a remove and filtered through whatever academic or popular writer we currently aligned with. It led to a situation in which, to my observation, everyone believed what was right in their own eyes and, in the end, people went astray. I left that environment several years ago, but I still deal with the damage, doubt, and chaos it brought into my life and the lives of people I care about, and it is encouraging to have a voice stating so clearly things I believe but often feel uncertain about.
Thank you Anne! I wish we could take the TEC back, but for now we can just pray for their souls.
I think we stand for the gospel reading in honor of its concentrated focus, Christ Jesus, His life and ministry, much like rising at the entrance of royalty or for a man in the presence of a lady. In a real sense, He is the Word of Himself and we stand to honor His entry.
Isn’t it amazing how the Word of God is always relevant to whatever is going on around us? In my personal Bible reading for today, I found out that today is the day to remember St. Titus, who like St. Timothy, was a friend of St. Paul, and like Timothy, found encouragement from Paul. The prayer for today is as follows, and appropriate for all Christians everywhere to pray for their pastors:
Almighty God, You called Titus to the work of pastor and teacher. Make all shepherds of Your flock diligent in preaching Your holy Word so that the whole world may know the immeasurable riches of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Now, I can’t wait to get to church to hear how my pastor will deal with Ezra and the people of Nazareth.
I already raved about this article on your Facebook page. Thank you for it. I was shocked by how shocked many of my Christian friends and cohorts (except for the ones who thought she was wonderful!) were by Bishop Budde. The event really exposed the Episcopal Church's waywardness and since then, the woke folk who agree with her. But I forgot to add in my comments on FB how grateful I was for your including the link to the article by Kaeley Triller Harms, no least because she uses one of my favorite quotations from Flannery O'Connor in her conclusion!
Progressives always loving the people “out there “ who they don’t know. But what about the people they actually live with and do know?
Another awesome writing, Anne - thank you! I absolutely love Isaiah and the text Jesus read and called fulfilled.
If immigration isn't a powerful/powerless binary, then it's kinda funny that the paradigm Americans use to describe it is a binary called legal/illegal.
That literally means "we have all the power to decide if you're free to live and work where you desire, and you have none of the power".
The power/powerless dynamic is a thing in the Bible. Liberals invented intersectionality as a way to cash in on that truth and shuck the rubes. It's a grift. But conservatives don't defeat the grift by denying the truth they co-opted. We defeat it by obeying the Bible. "...and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame."
It's really revealing why Greg Abbott's stunt of busing immigrants to blue cities was so effective. It wasn't because good Christian households and churches on the border were really being stripped of all their resources and they needed northern help... it was merely to get liberals to admit they dislike immigrants as much as conservatives do. The schadenfreude was so palpable on our side.
You know, that notable biblical emotion so prevalent in the saints... Schadenfreude.
We're much better and pwning the libs than in doing what Jesus commands, I'm afraid.
By that logic, is the binary between homeowner and trespasser a powerful/powerless binary? Need I wrack my conscience for consistent scruples before shooing strangers from my infant's bedroom door?
You seem to have swallowed more of crit theory than you're willing to admit.
I'm glad you asked. Although Torah doesn't anywhere equivocate thieves with immigrants like you just did, examining the case of thieves could be instructive.
When does Torah say you can kill a thief without blood guilt, versus when your self-defense actually incurs blood guilt?
Who said anything about killing? I understand that lets you invoke a scripture you think shuts down the argument here, but that's not a very useful way to dialogue. I addressed your comment head-on, it's a shame you won't do me the same courtesy.
You wrote "shooting strangers". I'm primarily an English speaker, so my mind went straight to killing. Sorry if I misunderstood your use of the word "shooting."
"Shooing" not shooting.
Ah, yes. Thanks. Good catch.
Torah says only shoo thieves if it's day, you may shoot them if it's night. That's God's jurisprudence for thieves.
God's jurisprudence for immigrants is different. The Bible is pretty famous about not being muddy on these things. Muddiness is something we do, because we don't like how easy it is to understand the Bible.
Of course, some known thieves will occasionally disguise themselves as immigrants.
God's jurisprudence for known thieves is: prosecute. Punish. Convict with 2 or 3 witnesses.
Penalty for a thief is: restitution to the victim; pay back between 2-4 times what was stolen.
Now, if someone wants to argue, "background check them, let them go if they're clear", that's the closest thing to a biblical argument for a militarized border one could hope to find.
Oddly, I've not yet run across a conservative Christian who argues for that, all by itself.
They invariably throw in additional things on top of that, like Anne did, such as, "it's not loving for me to let you into America because you don't really know how bad it is here and you're poor".
You won't find any argument remotely like that in the Bible about immigration.
But, if I'm wrong on that point, please show me from the bible.