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This is Rachel Oates. She is responding to a “Christian” article titled, “Why God Wants You to STAY in an Abusive Relationship.” It is written by my old “friend” BGR, of Biblical Gender Roles. BGR is a red pill, well acquainted with Tomassi, Dalrock, etc. He likes to advocate in favor of oppressing and abusing women in the name of Christ and spins biblical justifications for it. He is infamous for having once declared that there is biblical precedent for marital rape and that you are entitled to simply drape an imaginary “napkin over Medusa’s face,” so you aren’t tempted to empathize with your wife’s feelings.
Needless to say, that is the one article about Christianity that the secular world decided to pick up on and spread far and wide, rather than the 75 million other articles written by real live Christians who are actually living, writing, and breathing the love of Christ in marriage.
This is what makes the red pills so dangerous. In an inner world ruled somewhat by logic, love, and common sense, it becomes immoral for people to accept a version of Jesus Christ that is in direct conflict with our own innate morality, feelings, and the things we know to be morally true.
Yes, even secular humanists have an internal sense of right and wrong and a capacity for reason and logic. If you believe that being a Christian means you must embrace things you know are morally wrong, it will create inner conflict that can lead you to reject Jesus Christ and the bible entirely.
God designed us that way. Rachel is not the one in error here. She is recoiling in horror, exactly as God designed her to do. Rather than kicking people like Rachel for rejecting faith, we need to be kicking red pill Christians for deliberately creating secular humanists in the world.
The enemy comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. This is what a robbery looks like.
I could not bring myself to listen to all of Rachel’s prattle. She is no doubt quite intelligent, but she still does not know what she is talking about. Is Rachel responsible for her ignorance? She is more so than BGR. She is smart enough to know that guy is not representative of Christianity.
BGR is right about one thing. If God tell us us to do something, we do it. If God tells us not to do something, we don’t do it. Where BGR errs is that he finds things in the Bible that are not actually there. He is justifying himself, not seeking God’s guidance.
Nevertheless, Jesus is clear. We are made in God’s image. So we render unto Caesar what is made in his image. Ourselves we give to God. Before we obey Caesar, we obey God. It would be stupid to do anything else. Yet Rachel is so ignorant she makes fun of an obvious truth. What is our government compared to the God that made the universe?
Why shouldn’t a woman stay in an abusive relationship? Even without the Bible we know the answer. In the law God wrote on her heart God tells her that suicidal behavior is wrong. On the other hand, if a woman’s husband is trying to be a good husband, a lady does not walk out. In addition to the fact the Bible clearly says that is wrong, because of the law God wrote on her heart a lady knows that is wrong. Our heart tells us we don’t abandon our spouse unless they betray us.
Here is a link from one of my favorite blogs => https://settledinheaven.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/mardivremprotected.pdf. I don’t believe the good pastor is with us anymore, but he sure was a diligent Bible expositor. That document considers the problem of abuse as one of the reasons for divorce.
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“She is smart enough to know that guy is not representative of Christianity.”
She really is not, Tom. Keep in mind that all she sees and knows of faith is what the secular world has told her, and what they have chosen to share with the world about Christians is only going to be the worst that we have to offer.
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@insanitybytes22
For the sake of argument, I will concede that Rachel is not smart enough to know that guy is not representative of Christianity. Yet consider what you just said.
What is keeping Rachel ignorant of the Gospel and the Bible? It is those people you call the “secular world”? Who is the “secular world”? I will let you define that group, but whoever those people are Christian parents should trying to keep them away from their children. Too many of us have not been doing that, unfortunately.
So what about BGR? According to your own words BGR is just one of the many pretenders that the “secular world” holds up as representative. Why waste your time worrying so much about such sick clowns? It is as pointless as a dog chasing its tail.
What should we do when the “secular world” lies and holds such BGR up for ridicule? Remember this verse.
Our Lord bruised the head. He did not deal with a symptom of problem. He went after the source of the problem.
If Rachel is ignorant, then what is there to gain by excusing her excusing her ignorance? Isn’t our job is to preach the Gospel? Don’t we make disciples, baptize, and teach in His name?
So what do we do with apostates and those who twist the Word? We ostracize those who will not repent. We correct their foolishness by pointing to Bible and teaching what we know to be true, not speculative. So that we may correct them, we may learn of the errors taught by apostates and those who twist the Word, but God has already damned apostates and those who twist the Word. So we gain nothing by trying to avenge our Lord. Vengeance belongs to the Lord.
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“Who is the “secular world”?
Public schools, media and the majority of businesses for a start.
They are the ones who insist that all references to God be removed and if a reference is left in, it is to be mocked. They are the ones who put profit over everything. Look at the backlash over Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-a when they put values first.
Unless we totally isolate our youth, we cannot block them from exposure to the secular world – technology sees to that. 😦
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Do you want to live in a theocracy?
If not, then you are a part of the “secular world”
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@Wyldkat
What do I mean when I say Christian parents should trying to keep the secular world away from their children? Consider what you say the secular world is doing.
— educating our children in the belief that we use knowledge for the sake of “me”
— entertain our children. Entertainment is all about pleasure seeking
— sell to our children using sex, violence, and appeals to our egos
What Christians can do is provide their children alternatives.
— an education based upon Christian values. We gain and use knowledge to glorify our Creator
— entertainment with the understanding that we gain the greatest pleasure when we can share our joy in God’s Creation with each other
— selling our children on the idea that it truly is better to give than it is to receive.
As our children grow, we cannot, as you say, isolate them. However, we can teach them that those immersed in the “secular world” are lost. Those of the “secular world” are desperately looking for something to fill that God-sized hole in their hearts, and they are looking in all the wrong places. Once our children understand that, it doesn’t take long for them to see how little the “secular world” has to offer.
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I agree whole heartedly CT. 🙂
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@John Zande
You are deliberately ignoring the context. How is “secular” being use here? What is Secular Humanism?
Why was Jesus crucified? Those focused on this world, the world of the flesh, saw Jesus as a threat. Yet Jesus came to teach of the Kingdom of Heaven, not the kingdoms of this world.
Because we do not want our government to promote a religious belief, we have a secular government. Unfortunately, Secularists in our society too often do what you do. They use the existence of a secular government as an excuse, to provide cover, for condemning the public display of Christian beliefs and for promoting Secularism.
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Do you want to live in a theocracy, CT?
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@john zande
No. That is why I don’t support Socialism and vote for Liberal Democrats. I don’t worship government.
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If you don’t want to live in a theocracy, then you are a secularist.
End of story.
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@john zande
We both know better than that. Consider the definition.
What you are doing is similar to the way a serpent hides among the weeds. You are hiding in the ambiguity of the definition. Nevertheless, because the usage of the word “secular” in this post is unambiguous, your deceit is obvious. Shame on you!
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Well actually, as a Christian, I have a far more invested interest in NOT living in a theocracy than you do, Zande. I know exactly what the nature of people is and how corrupting sin can be. I don’t ever want to see people power concentrated in one place and devoid of checks and balances. One problem with secular humanists is that they don’t understand Gov is not a benevolent force, it is not a safe god for them to worship. That is what secularists always try to do, make an idol out of state power with tragic results that are well documented all through history.
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You’re erecting quite a straw man there, Inanity.
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You can mock my strawman all you want, but I’ll remind you, it was actually Christians who insisted on building that wall between church and state. We are not a country designed and founded by atheists.
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That’s not the straw man i was referring to.
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You know, IB, for nearly ten years (about 10 years ago, in fact) I had a website where I explored human sexuality as it relates to the various personal interests and slants… that many in here might judgmentally call moral perversions. The idea that we humans can feel intense guilt for having even the most “harmless” of sexual fantasies. My site ended up becoming a bit popular in its own right as the Internet was growing and people were exploring social taboos. In fact I did some internet radio interviews and I even had a couple police profilers trying to solve their own cases discussing human sexual proclivities. In all those years I chatted with many problem souls, male and female, tried to help some marital relationships fit in sexually. Each time I thought I had heard it all.. every strange and bizaare sexual interest imaginable.. there was always a new one. My whole point in this yet again long-winded reply… the one interest that stood out to me as being the most offensive was BDSM. I went to the link you posted on this guy and he may be a gospel intellect filled with all kinds of logic about what justifies his sexual interest… the bottom line after all his bravado.. his penis gets hard controlling women either emotionally, physically, or both… and there are women out there who in fact don’t mind that, generally from their own personal issues. Yet it’s one of the most common sexual interests. I dealt with these guys on my site at the time without judgement, but I hated what they did. I understood it.. but didn’t mean I liked it one bit. Off my soapbox. Feel free to delete this.. just read his stuff and got some deja vu.
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LOL, I figured you had a history of some kind. I’m fascinated, you should write a book about your blogging experiences.
You make a good point about the sexual element. Part of what ticks me off is that these red pills try to use the bible to justify what is an obvious proclivity for BDSM, while at the same time exploiting and shaming what is natural to men and women. In other words, they are grooming people into a lifestyle they don’t even desire, by trying to claim it is God’s will and they are sexually defective if they don’t get with the program. I have watched them target young guys, guys who are confused and vulnerable, and to basically indoctrinate them into a cult. So rather than telling these guys that their feelings are completely normal, that some feelings of dominance are simply a healthy, natural part of being a man, they call them wimps and betas, shame and ridicule them, and tell them they better level up their game and learn to detach emotionally from women. Than these guys go out and try to have a series of casual, abusive, sexual relationships that leave them more bitter and frustrated than ever. Eventually the rage becomes real enough, and the red pills fuel it on by telling them they are being persecuted for Christ’s sake, and to level up their game. Eventually what we wind up with is self loathing, addiction, suicide, and lost boys now more broken than ever, some who go on to commit well documented acts of violence and stupidity.
And half the time traditional churchian sexual repression just feeds and fuels the whole dynamic.
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That’s the entire idea with BDSM.. like you said,, lifestyle. It’s the selling of that lifestyle that’s important to the acceptance of it. Again, for as seemingly complex as they wish to try and make it sound in the various justifications, in the end it’s still all about sex. The imposition of the religious interpretation is just an effort to give it all some legitimacy… and as you suggest.. making it sound normal enough to get more followers. It’s been my experience that women who indulge in this lifestyle tend to be vulnerable enough in their own right because of previous abuse trauma and the onset of depression… ie., often the victims of rape find rape fantasies become part of their sexual preference… if they engage in sex at all after the assault; sex itself becoming the ultimate humiliation in order to cope.
Religion itself, and its variety of interpretations, is complex enough without tossing sex into it. 🙂
I prefer to gaze up to the stars on a clear night to be humbled by my own insignificant significance.
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Is this really the outlier position among evangelicals? Never have I seen such astonishing hypocricy as that being exercised right now by evangelicals, especially when it comes to Trump and his “mulligans” for abusing women, his lies.
And here’s an article from just yesterday: “Pro-Trump pastor: Stormy Daniels allegations ‘totally irrelevant’ to evangelical support for Trump”
So, screwing a porn star when your third wife has just given birth to your fifth child (to three women) and paying her to keep her mouth shut (and there’s another porn star now, at about the same time) is ‘totally irrelevant’?
Nice.
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@John Zande
Keep it up! I always find it amusing when someone who cannot explain why there is difference between tries to tell a Christian he or she is being a hypocrite. When it suits their purposes, Liberal Democrats switch their positions all the time. It is so transparent it is absurd.
Does voting for Trump equate to evangelical support for adultery? No.
Does voting for H. Clinton equate to support for abortion, the LGBTQ “lifestyle”, gun control, a weak military and foreign policy, Obamacare, stifling taxation, and so forth? Yes.
Why are the “Stormy Daniels allegations ‘totally irrelevant’ to evangelical support for Trump”?
— The source is suspect
— We voted for the best candidate. Trump is actually doing what he said he would do. The alternative was H. Clinton, and we sure didn’t want her to do what she was going to do.
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Ah, so you’re saying you have absolutely no moral compass.
I see.
And FYI, Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti says that 6 more women have come forward with similar stories to Stormy Daniels’ and at least 2 of them have signed NDAs.
Documentation.
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Shrug!
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Thanks for demonstrating my point.
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You don’t believe in God, but you believe I demonstrated your point?
🤔😏😊😀😁😂🤣
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Yes, the point about the stunning level of hypocricy within evangelicals when it comes to Trump and his “mulligans”… Or in your case “Shrug!”
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To be a hypocrite, one must have standards. I doubt that is something you have to worry about. On the other hand, to be concerned about your opinion, I would have to respect it. I don’t. I just wonder when you will realize how absurd you have become.
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Is stealing a line from Nioxon the best you have, CT?
I just saw this fresh from Pew Research Center today:
White evangelicals approve of Trump’s job performance (78%) at twice the rate of the general public (39%).
Interesting, huh?
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I suspect that line goes back further than Nixon.
Do I find it odd that the people who voted for Trump are happier than those who did not? No. Trump is doing what we wanted him to do.
🙄
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So you fully support a lying, cheating, gluttonous, thieving, traitorous, sexual predator that’s leaving your country completely friendless (save for Moscow, of course) on the foreign stage.
If that makes you happy, Comrade CT, then so be it.
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“White evangelicals approve of Trump’s job performance (78%) at twice the rate of the general public (39%).”
LOL! Well, it seems as if white evangelicals are now no longer perceived as a part of “the general public.” Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I am quite certain that removing white evangelicals from the general public will skew your statistics.
I’m actually a latte colored American, Zande. They didn’t poll me, but I am especially pleased by Trump’s work on the economy, the meth and heroin epidemic, the waver of Obamacare fines, tax relief for the working class, his work on sex trafficking, corruption, organized crime, and trying to stem the flow of drugs into the country. Ironically there are quote a few evangelicals and Republicans who do not agree with me. The largest group of Never Trumpers happen to mostly identify themselves as “white evangelicals.”
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Gee.. whatever happened to W.A.S.P.? I thought I found a home with that category. (sigh)
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tax relief for the working class?
LOL!
Carry on.
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*Nixon
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I remember when we used to talk about character counting, but you know what? People like you mocked us for being uptight and uncool. Remember all the talk about how sophisticated European leaders all had mistresses? Oh, us repressed hayseeds and our sanctity of marriage nonsense! Well, moral purity came up for a vote and we were outvoted by peoplw like you who now want us to rev up some oh-so convenient caring.
Well, no go-backsies now that those Old Rules would be useful again. You liberals made the New Rules, and by doing so you deprived yourselves of being able to leverage human frailty to weaponize Christian morality and score a victory based on collateral antics where you can’t win on substance.
Gosh, if you and your liberal pals had held Cohiba Clinton and Tanqueray Teddy to a standard you might have had a shot. But you didn’t. And now your ridiculous expectation that we are all going to all channel John Lithgow in Footloose is really pretty funny.
Pound sand Zande.
Or, better yet, keep it up. Your idiocy and fake outrage will ensure Trump wins reelection in an epic landslide.
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Remember all the talk about how sophisticated European leaders all had mistresses?
No, I don’t remember that at all, and I have a very good memory.
Nice series of straw men, though. Enjoy your pantomime.
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LOL! Now THAT image is funny. 🙂
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And I am enjoying my “pantomime” very much, thank you.
Every day I wake up and delight in the fact that it’s another glorious day Hillary will never be president. The only thing that makes my days more delightful, in fact, is the wadded panties of people like you.
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So, “Isaiah”, does that mean you are complicit to everything this country has endured since the last election given how you exercised your vote for Mr. T? Just forgetting his agenda for the moment, you are enjoying all this? Ahh.. nevermind. Silly question. I forgot the end justifies the means.
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Doug, you can call me James.
All I did was vote for who was the lesser of two evils at the time of the election so if you think that makes me complicit then fine, I guess.
Am I happy about how Trump’s presidency is going so far? Yes, I am absolutely 100% happy.
Did I ever say the end justifies the means? Or are you just putting words into my mouth and making assumptions?
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Just drawing the conclusion that you approve (100% apparently) of what Trump has wrought on the country thus far, therefore you have obviously weighed all the events since Trump has become president and have decided that everything he has done (you might call “accomplishments”) is well worth the experience of having him as president. The end justifies the means, of course.
You will not enjoy this.. but explains my perspective (not that it’s important in the grand scheme of things)…
http://www.findingpoliticalsanity.com/but-look-at-all-the-good-things-he-has-done/
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Well Doug, there is more nuance there than I may have led you to believe.
Within the constraints he has to operate within and the do nothing Congress who is more self-serving than for the people (both parties) I am 100 percent happy with how it’s going, so far.
Would I do things differently? Sure. Could someone else (not Hillary) do a better job? Sure. But, as I said, the lesser of two evils won and that makes me happy.
Now, am I hypocritical, wrong, and unchristian regarding politics, as John Z suggests? Yes sir. That is why I don’t talk about it much.
As far as your link goes, I’ll get to it soon.
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Not to worry about my link.. I’m not that vain. Just explains more of a point you brought up. If you do leave a message.. I might like to engage more with you.
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I read your post Doug and you lost me at, “…exhibiting a clear and present danger to the security of the nation.”
I stopped there as I didn’t see any point in continuing.
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As an Australian, I’m simply sitting back watching your country (sadly) get ruined.
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As an American, I see it getting better. 🙂
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From Moscow’s perspective, sure.
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Can you handle 7 more years of Trump, John?
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As an American I don’t. We cancel each other out.
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Agreed, and it’s sad to watch. The US pulling out of TPP (designed specifically to put a check on China) was pure madness. We’ve now all signed it… with China! Trump just lost Asia/Pacific forever, for no reason other than he hated Obama. The stupidity of that move is beyond words. Xi says “Thank you, Trump” though.
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Yes we do
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Well, moral purity came up for a vote and we were outvoted by peoplw like you
Well, I’m Australian, so I have no idea what you’re trying to say here. And as I recall, Trump lost the popular vote by over 3 million votes. He won the electoral college by just 80,000 votes across three states… the exact targets of the Putin/Russian machine.
The only question here is: What does Putin have on Trump?
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You do have an idea John, stop playing dumb.
And please, don’t ever change. The world needs comic relief that only you can offer.
Russians 🙂 lol, lol, lol 🙂 🙂 🙂
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No, I have absolutely no idea what dream you’re trying to relay here.
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The “idiot” beat the smartest woman alive.
Let that sink in, John.
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But Russia, but strippers…
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The White House just released Trump’s schedule for tomorrow.
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And here’s a lovely video demonstrating the stunning hypocrisy (Re: N. Korea) from the Evangelical TV network:
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What always strikes me as totally bizarre here is that the tolerance crowd who supports everything from homosexuality to trangenderism, is always prepared to judge, condemn, and stone someone for any potential allegation of consensual, heterosexual sex.
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I’m merely calling attention to the shocking display of hypocricy being exercised by evangelicals…. en masse.
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I’m not shocked by it at all. Sin is a part of the human condition. That’s why we evangelize the good news, the need for a Savior. Like it or not Zande, you will never create a hypocrisy free world.
Evangelicals are only hypocrites because we actually have a standard to fall short of. What does atheist hypocrite do? Secretly sneak off and take communion? Hide a bible in the closet?
The standard in which you use to measure evangelicals is a Christian standard, one you refuse to believe in. So your argument becomes incoherent, legalistic, self righteous, because it is a standard you are unwilling to embrace for yourself. A bit funny Zande, but this actually makes you a pharisee, a religionist of the hypocritical sort.
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Yes Inanity, you’re right. Only Christians can determine right from wrong, good behaviour from bad behaviour.
Carry on.
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Actually Zande, I think you really do need Christian wisdom to understand the nature of yourself and those around you, and to than begin to grasp morality in a larger context so it becomes something much more substantial then “this feels bad, this feels good.” Without God we are simply unable to see ourselves as we really are and as a result, we tend to create larger systems that don’t work and can actually get quite evil.
Morality is far more complex than simply “good behavior” and “bad behavior.” Once again, that is actually a very legalistic, pharisitical, religionist understanding. It’s actually the same kind of flawed understanding that lead the religious leaders of the day to crucify Christ Himself.
That’s kind of what you try to do everyday, Zande, crucify Jesus Christ, at least metaphorically. That is because you are actually thinking like a pharisee.
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Morality is far more complex than simply “good behavior” and “bad behavior.”
Not really, but even in this most basic of representations it does appear a little too complicated for evangelicals.
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Liberals nees to keep caring about Stormy Daniels, Tom. That kind of lunacy is one thing that will ensure Trump gets re-elected.
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You really are rooting for Moscow, aren’t you?
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Huh?
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LOL! I think it’s the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, James. You can just call me Natasha. I think we’re being Putin shamed.
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Putin shamed? Well, lol, I love it.
Truth be told, Trump had to do only three things as president. Help America recover from Obama’s reign of error, not be Hillary, and was the panties of idiot liberals. And, he’s killing it on those points so, I am happy 🙂
Seriously, though. We should be upset because Trump “allegedly” banged a stripper because liberals who are wrong about everything tell us to. Hilarious.
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Exactly what I’ve been asking all along. The old “moral majority” seems a thing of the past.
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“The old “moral majority” seems a thing of the past.”
Is that such a bad thing, Doug? I mean, the so called “moral” majority, has long been anything but moral. Believe it or not, the evangelical right, the moral majority, really did not put President Trump in office, working class middle America did. People like me who just roll our eyes at the alleged “scandal” of locker room talk and porn stars. We don’t care! Ironically, people like me tend to be about as equally unimpressed by the self righteous finger wagging of the moral majority or the self righteous finger wagging of the Anti -Trumpers.
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He got 84% of the evangelical vote, more than Bush even won… and that support is not waning.
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Soo.. your stance, IB, is that you are not of the hard & steadfast old school moral majority in your application of being a Christian but rather will accept some level of “old school immorality” in an elected official if said official is carry forward an acceptable (to you) political agenda? (not to worry.. I’m not going to use your reply to hammer away on you… just find that view an interesting variant to “evangelicalism’).
Given that, I would find Citizen Tom as being not of your same Christian views. Obviously you can’t answer for him but he is generally vehement about his application of Christian thought as a replacement for government in general. Seems the point is that, like you said, the old moral majority has shifted to more a “moral tolerance majority” in reaching for some compromise.
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Well, I think Citizen Tom and I share some very similar ideas. Our money for example, does not say “in Gov we trust,” it says, “in God we trust.” And for good reason too, thanks to Gov, money is now hardly worth the paper it is printed on.
Second of all, the moral majority has never been moral, which simply means they themselves have been riddled with sin. They weren’t called the “moral majority” because they were sin free and moral, they were called “moral” because they believed in an ideal, a set of standards worth fighting for and preserving.
So my problem with both the left and the right, Christians and secularists alike, is that their morality is very tribal and subjectively defined and it does not like to distinguish between sexually abusing small children and oogling porn stars and beauty contestants. I suggest there is actually some objective morality here in which we can use to measure our level of outrages. President Trump by all appearances, is a heterosexual man who seems to have chased consensual sex with adult women. We have yet to see anything resembling threats, coercion, children, or exploitation.
Judge Moore on the other hand, seems to have been pursing very young girls and covering it up with all the religious zeal of genuine dictator.
So in politics, I am really not looking at specific sexual behavior, but rather how much coercion, threats, intimidation and cover up was involved. If you’re going to exploit, power-trip, and act like a dictator in your personal sexual relations, you’re probably going to do it to the whole country too.
“Will I accept some level of “old school immorality”? I guess that depends on what you mean by “accept.” I think the world has only produced one sin free man, so if I’m waiting for a political candidate with no evident immorality, I’ll be waiting a long time.
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Actually nicely explained, IB. Doesn’t mean I subscribe to your politics but I understand your assessment. Obviously for me the issue regarding Trump and his sexual liaisons before or after are of no consequence as long as no laws (campaign or otherwise) were broken. Heck.. when President Bill did his thing with Lewinski I reacted like most guys in America.. “Go guy!” He slipped up by lying about it. While my perspective is always from the viewpoint that I am a male (for whatever liability that might suggest), I always hope if the guy is sexually happy then he will focus on running the country. 🙂 (well, hope springs eternal, as I have NO faith in the current guy).
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@Doug
This is not exactly correct.
As insanitybytes22 observed, we share very similar ideas. We have still have disagreements, and we discuss them respectfully, but we are in the same camp.
For example, I disagreed with her about Judge Roy Moore. We did not disagree about the seriousness of the charge, however. We disagreed over whether those making the accusations should be believed.
So what about your statement? Am I vehement about the application of Christian thought as a replacement for government in general? I am not certain what you mean by that, but I have never argued for a theocracy. What I stand for is limited government. Consider the First Amendment.
These days most people don’t even know what this amendment means. They think that it requires a wall of separation between the church and state, but that phrase is not there. The church is not restricted. The First Amendment restricts Congress.
What I fight for is a government that protects our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So long as my neighbor respects the rights of my family, friends, and neighbors, and my rights, I am willing to leave him in peace to do what he wishes. God is His judge, not me.
That said, will I promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Of course, but I cannot make anyone accept Jesus. Only God can give a man, woman, or child the faith to believe.
Undoubtedly, we differ in some details, but both insanitybytes22 and I agree that church and state should not step on each others turfs (see => https://clydeherrin.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/meeting-melchizedek/#comment-1234).
My view is that government should close down most health, education, and welfare programs. These activities can be accomplished by private entities. When government gets involved, politicians just use health, education, and welfare programs to buy our votes. That corrupts both us and our leaders. While it might seem desirable to have government money for health, education, and welfare programs, experience has shown we don’t even have the discipline to manage such programs with busting the Federal Budget. Even if using the power of government to redistribute the wealth was not immoral, we still don’t know how to do it without a slue of ethical and financial problems.
Are there exceptions? Yes. For example, because government sometimes has to force the mentally ill to accept care, government has to have a role in mental health. Note, however, government’s role in this situation. Only the government has the power to force anyone to accept treatment. When that is necessary, government has to be involved to protect the lives and the liberties of the mentally ill.
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Fairly stated, Tom, and clarifies any inaccuracy in my reference to you in my reply to IB.
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Choosing the lesser of evils is the oldest morality there is. The art of politics often comes down to the art of choosing between a rock and a hard place.
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Of all the stuff you’ve posted in this thread, Tom… this made the most sense to me.. because I agree. 🙂
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So you choose Vladimir Putin over an American who’d dedicated her life to public service?
Interesting choice.
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Um.. wasn’t this scene in “Pirates of the Caribbean 2”, the boring one?
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Interesting illustration of the failure of a vacuously legalistic view of Christianity. Straining the gnat and swallowing the camel, if you will. This red pill defense pretentiously uses the Bible as a proof-text to defend abuse but totally misses the whole point of the Bible…to learn to walk in other-centered, self-giving love. Talk about a total contradiction!
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It really is a total contradiction,Mel. We people have an uncanny knack of completely reversing things, almost like a mirror image will present a word backwards. Like, hello people, what you are staring at is actually a reflection of you, not of God! That’s a really hard concept to explain to people, but we find that truth in Matthew 7:2, “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” God exists right on the other side of the mirror and He is good, Holy, perfect. If what you are seeing is actually fear, control, abuse, and condemnation, that is actually just our own reflection staring back at us.
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“We people have an uncanny knack of completely reversing things, almost like a mirror image will present a word backwards. Like, hello people, what you are staring at is actually a reflection of you, not of God!”
How very true. You’ve just explained what’s wrong with Christianity.
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“He beat me. I thought that meant he loved me.” Is a cliche.
And then there was that “50 Shades….” thing.
I’d say a significant number of women are wired that way. To varying degrees.
Red pill guys take advantage of this kind of knowledge.
Figure out how the mechanism works and take advantage of that knowledge. It’s a guy thing.
Whose genes (and culture) show up in the next generation is nearly totally up to you ladies these days. Choose wisely.
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Again I point out.. boiling all this down, ignoring all the convenient religious rhetoric, Bible quotations, crazy justifications… however you want to package it, dress it up, make it palatable… red pills, green pills, whatever trendy term… it’s all about certain proclivities with many males to satisfy a sexual urge, a sexual impulse, the natural instinct to procreate, at the expense of women. Once we understand and accept the natural diversity of humans to include sexual variants in what creates an erection in a man.. as created by the Almighty, in fact… then we can start dealing with the social problems it creates.
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I think I might be agreeing with you, Doug. Something that bothers me about society is that we don’t talk about what is healthy, normal, good, biology, innate to our design. Instead, all sexual behavior is portrayed as something more like 50 shades and CSI. I worry about people growing up in this environment because they have no filters to sort it all out. When I talk to kids these days they know about every possible sexual issue, but nothing about intimacy, love, commitment.
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I hear you, IB. But.. can I suggest that religion gets in the way? Actually that’s too generalized a statement. By that I mean.. the moral interpretation of religious doctrine, especially in America, in regards to keeping the discussion of sex in the bedroom?
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By the way.. sometimes you give off an inkling of being a pretty good liberal. 🙂 Not a damn thing wrong with that because most of us do have opinions that spill over to the “other side”. I’ve always been more a liberal conservative in spite of what party I might register for at primary time. Heck.. my blog is completely anti-Trump because of the man himself yet I am oft assigned to be a liberal on that alone.
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LOL, I tend to kind of resist those “liberal-conservative” labels because they are often so fluid and full of stereotypes, they aren’t very accurate. I definitely lean to the right, however.
So, conservatives are not necessarily closed minded and sexually repressed. That’s actually a caricature. 🙂
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I submit.. you lean to the “Right”, but not necessarily to the right, to those who can differentiate between right and wrong. 🙂
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Hi doug, just enjoying the scenery with an observation if I may.
More exactly, the good lady here not only leans to the right, but she stands on the ‘correct, which is far better than right.
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Oh I like that Colorstorm! The “right” is an invention of people and as such, can slide all over the place. I like to stand on much firmer ground. 🙂
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Just calls em the way I sees em. 😉 😉
Your standing has been seen and proven; most people of sound minds who frequent your well knows this.
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Don’t confuse me this early in the last 30 minutes.
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The male urge was also created by (something).
But the more interesting question these days is why we don’t teach women their actual nature as a defense against “those” males?
Truth is actual female nature is just as unflattering to them as male nature is to men.
Due to vacuum cleaners and birth control women can now express their nature almost unfettered. It is not a pretty thing to see. At least for a lot of people.
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You might ask yourself, why in the vast majority (if not all) of the animal species on earth (certainly all the mammals) human females are the most ill-equipped to defend themselves from human males who want to mate with them (resulting in the concept of rape)? My contention is we have to acknowledge where we come from along the evolutionary tree and how much of our behavior has instinctual roots before we can attempt to deal with social ramifications. Personally, I find there are a lot of people who prefer to assign spiritual controls as if all instincts are simply personal choices in which to act upon or not based on a belief system. Certainly we can adopt some of that as a tool to support a conscious checking of our social behavior, but it is no solution to the problem of humans who have trouble containing their more questionable instincts.
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You might ask yourself, why in the vast majority (if not all) of the animal species on earth (certainly all the mammals) human females are the most ill-equipped to defend themselves from human males who want to mate with them (resulting in the concept of rape)?
They get the men they choose (mostly). And do the best they can to reproduce them.
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Um.. I have no idea what you just said.
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Men are the way they are because women (for the most part) choose who they mate with.
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Been a while since that topic. I had to go back and re-read.
I agree… while some will regard that as sexist these days (women are responsible for men raping them) one has to look at the entire picture of animal, then human sexual reproduction to understand the instinct. Now we are getting down to the reproduction nitty-gritty. I would be curious if that specific set of reproductive instincts were acquired at a much earlier stage of our evolution prior to our current ability to reason, when humans were more “animal”, dependent on nature to stimulate reproduction…. and then when our ability to reason evolved all of our human instincts became “judgmental” and have been in conflict with our instincts ever since.
This still doesn’t address the “why” a human female is not naturally capable of warding off aggressive males who want to mate with her as in the rest of the animal kingdom.
Methinks we are getting a bit deep in this blog with evolution.
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“This still doesn’t address the “why” a human female is not naturally capable of warding off aggressive males who want to mate with her as in the rest of the animal kingdom.”
Well, I think we are. Rape is actually a crime of power, not sex. It doesn’t fit the cultural message at all, but the vast majority of men are surprisingly unwilling to commit rape. If rape were a crime of passion or lust, it would be much more common. In theory women would be constant collateral damage in the world and yet we are not. In spite of the narrative, statistics really show men are ten times more likely to get themselves killed,imprisoned, victimized. Women actually live longer because we are less likely to be victimized and killed then men are. We don’t have good rape statistics on men, but men are often violated by other men, both as children and in other vulnerable situations. Obviously male on male rape is not about reproduction, passion, or lust, it is about power.
So, by virtue of the whole structure and design,women actually enjoy a kind of privilege, of protected status. Nearly all sexually aggressive men are engaged in the pursuit of trying to ascertain consent.
Ducks too, ducks are just plain weird. Female ducks can ward off reproduction but they often get themselves killed in the process. In truth, I’d say human women have far out manuvered ducks, so as far as being able to ward off advances, we’re far better at it.
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I think you might be applying more contemporary thought. Yeah.. there’s some contemporary “thought” that rape is all about power, not sex. Yet if sex were taken out of that mix would rape even occur? In fact, if we accept an erection has to occur for there to be rape, then are we assuming pure power over another is the sole stimulus for such an erection? It certainly can be such a stimulus given the human propensity for a wide, seemingly endless variety of what can cause sexual stimulation in males… and females for that matter. Yet when we hear of wholesale rape in Third World conflict nations is sure sounds like rape-for-sex to me… and by large numbers of males… typically militants. That’s not just males asserting their dominance for the sake of getting turned on by just power. Sex is the reward for asserting power over females. It’s more the idea that when there is no government.. no authority for rendering consequences to someone who does rape, rape will flourish. Consider all those end-of-the-world scenarios.. apocalyptic end of our normal society… that instantly thrusts us into the stone age (no electric, no internet, etc.) rape will increase dramatically.. and it’s not because of power.. but because there are no consequences to raping, at least until hunger takes over.
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Rape in war is a crime of power, Doug. That really is just, “males asserting their dominance.” Rape is a weapon of war.
“Sex is the reward for asserting power over females.”
That’s certainly the narrative isn’t it? I don’t buy it. There’s something much more complex going on. I think if I posed that statement to a group of women, we’d all start laughing. It’s a very male centric statement. You could just as easily say, “sex is the reward for exercising power over males.”
“Consider all those end-of-the-world scenarios.. apocalyptic end of our normal society… that instantly thrusts us into the stone age (no electric, no internet, etc.) rape will increase dramatically….”
Surprisingly, I disagree. In fact, I’d say the farther we go from society, the less likely rape is to occur. I’ve lived way off the grid, out in the boonies, and if there was any law, you would never know it. The respect and dependency between men and women actually tends to grow, to become even more cooperative. Rape is actually a destructive act, it’s not survival oriented, and it’s also dangerous for the perp.
What you are basically saying Doug, is that all men are by nature rapists and nothing prevents men from raping except fear of punishment. I don’t observe that, so I reject it. It would make sense in an evolutionary context and there is a certain kind of logic there, but it just doesn’t play out in the real world. You get into a survival situation and women become your ally, your backup. There is interdependence there.
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Well.. we can agree we are both looking at the issue from our respective genders. 🙂
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I need to apologize to IB. I was reading over some of today’s rather politically inspired posts and the thought came to mind… ooops. Her blog here is not a forum for drifting into political dramas and traumas and debate as all that nonsense just amounts to little anyway; just a big pissing match. I am likely more guilty than most who reply in here as so many of IB’s themes, comments, and replies do have a tendency to find relationship overlaps with current political events. But I’ll try and be a good boy in the future and limit any replies I might make to more “theoretical” themes as they may relate to IB’s posts.
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I actually don’t mind drifting into politics at all, Doug. There is often a correlation.
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So I read most of the article (blech) but only managed to make it a few minutes through the video. The (il)logic of both of their positions made my head hurt!
I found the juxtaposition of their views for why murder (or for that matter, any sinful action, but murder was the example used) very interesting.
He says it’s wrong “because God says so” and she says feelings and inner intuition tell us. Both of them are right…and wrong.
Murder is wrong because it brings harm to others. Ironically, she points that out, not him. But who told her that bringing harm to another is wrong? Inner logic, reason, and an evolutionary anthropology of man often dictate otherwise. Reason tells us to put self-interest ahead of the interests of others, after all, the strong prosper and the weak do not survive.
It is precisely because we have the word of God which tells us that mankind was created in the image of a holy God that we derive the teaching that doing harm to one who bears His image is wrong. Without this teaching, we wouldn’t instinctively “know” that murder is wrong. We might intuit that there is something very wrong with harming another but we wouldn’t be able to articulate “why” it is so.
The law is written upon the hearts of all, but unfortunately our hearts, by nature, are turned in towards self. Without the Scriptures, we would not even know that our hearts need to be turned back towards Him and those who are created in His image.
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Thank you for this post. As someone at the center of relentless attacks because I choose not to continue to be abused and to stand up for justice I am more than grateful to hear that not everyone encourages abusers. As a believer I hope against hope (www.hopehasahome.wordpress.com). It is nice when, like Elijah, you realize you are not the only one standing against deception. Thank you again!
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Thank you for reading and for your own blogging words. I have followed, I appreciate your voice.
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I think that any time independent thought is discourage, we’re in trouble. Great post.
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