Thank You!

In my opinion, a lot of the animosity toward Christianity has to do with the oldest of sins . . . aka Original Sin. It is the attempt by man to be gods. In a Godless society there is free license to engage in any vice imaginable. The result? I present to you Europe, the dying civilization.

Take Care, mailloux

I was interested in doing something like that too. It’s necessary to get a unified message, and win the arguments. I’d hate to still be hearing the same old debate 30 years from now.

a most welcome resource.

Lukewarm Christians are widespread (admittedly, my opinion). Politically speaking, this is akin to the low hanging fruits. Step 1 in winning them to conservatism is showing them that their Christianity and politics are not oil and water. RedState is a great central resource . . . and from there it’s onto the Churches, the catechism lessons, the Sunday schools, the Church picnics, etc. Political correctness be damned . . . our culture is at stake.

Thanks for all that you are doing and for your own excellent writing. I assure you that evanweeks.com is now a bookmarked site on my computer.

Take Care, mailloux

it was on the web and was being blathered by some lefty. As an attack, however, it’s just more of the same message, which is for Christians to keep their faith bottled up . . . hermetically sealed at that!

Thanks for reading, commenting, and the reco too!

Take Care, mailloux

and don’t worry about credit. As far as I’m concerned, this is a team effort and I appreciate that you engage people in witness encounters.

Thanks for reading, your comments, and the reco too.

Take Care, mailloux

It supports the notion that Christianity is no “threat” to the body politic . . . for there is no evidence of it. Christianity is not being spread with the encouragement of an AK-47.

Take Care, mailloux

Thanks for the reco and the too kind compliment.

There does seem to be that party of death quality to the Democrats. If it’s contrary to Christian ethics, it’s likely supported by the Democrats. That’s almost a sure bet.

I’m guilty of not being too well read concerning Thomas Sowell’s writings. He’s been on the to-read list, but something else always seems to edge him out. This summer I should correct that.

Take Care, mailloux

Thank You!

Take Care, mailloux

…it’s most often a choice rather than some inexplicable feeling or dead-to-rights intellectual certainty. There are some days I wake up and don’t feel particularly faithful, but I make the choice to behave as though I am, and faith often surprises me.

And I agree on the characterization of faith as freedom. The comfort of knowing my path is defined, and was before I was born, that my choices are clear regardless of my attempts to fog the issue with humanistic drivel, is incredible. I don’t have to worry over choosing my own path or avoiding big pitfalls. And that’s to say nothing of the liberating power of grace.

I have spoken with some people who were turned off, or frightened away from embracing the founder’s doctrine of natural rights, on the basis that they thought it meant you had to embrace religion.

I, of course, berated them for such a silly view point, but there you have it, some people have such knee jerk anti-religion sentiment that they become idiots whenever the subject comes up.

Sure, there are private elements to its practice, such as which church you attend and your prayer life, but Christianity was never meant to be a practice almost entirely divorced from the rest of one’s life.

Even if a Christian is not actively in the business of evangelizing by speaking of the Gospel, he can still quietly evangelize by living a pious life characterized by love. Either way, the Christian is expanding his Christianity from just Sunday into the rest of the week.

As far as “legislating” the Bible goes, I still stand by the post. It’s a misnomer.

The rest of the post has more to do with encouraging politicians who happen to be Christian to go ahead and allow their Christian-formed consciences to aid in their judgment of legislation and policy. God enlightens the mind . . . after all He is omniscient. Before any big decision, I pray about it. What’s wrong with that?

Christianity has a whole system of virtues and ethics (these are more general principles rather than specific laws of any one particular covenant). Why can’t a Christian politician use that to help judge the prudence of some policy?

If I were a Christian politician (I’m at least half of it . . . a Christian, but not a politician), I would not hesitate to admit that I pray for to God for good judgment and that I look to the millennia of Judeo-Christian thought to help me make good decisions. If a voter was bothered by that, I’d simply recommend he don’t vote for me.

Thank you for taking the time to comment!

Take Care, mailloux

It is indeed the Jim Wallis’ and others on the Christian left who want to enact their vision of a Biblical mandate of social justice by utilizing the coercive power of the state to taken money from one group of people to redistribute to another, rather than voluntary behavior. At the same time, as soon it comes to lifestyle, sudden the Christians need to retreat into a closet. (Though to be fair, many of the evangelical Christian left do hold a pro-life position in terms of unborn children – unlike liberals from mainline denominations who celebrate and bless abortion.)

And the next step, as we’ve seen with “Christian Marxists” in power in other nations is to downright confiscate the property and businesses of citizens because they believe they can do a better job, and then to imprison or “reeducate” (or liquidate) those who disagree with their vision of God’s demands for a society. And the more the economy collapses, the more they blame people’s greed and laziness and counterrevolutionary thoughts as the cause and clamp down even harder.

And sooner or later, they always end up prescribing lifestyle and sexual behavior too.

Whereas from my viewpoint, my greatest motivator on social issues is to take out of the hands of the courts and return them back to the legistlative process at the lowest level feasible. And once it’s in the hands of legislators, then we engage in that democratic process of enacting laws to reflect the prevailing views of the governed by consent of the governed.

Christianity’s “fundamentals”, if I had to give you the abridged version, are freedom from spiritual bondage (and freedom in general, to secularize it) and selfless love. Those two are exemplified most clearly by Jesus sacrificing himself so that we could live free from sin, and choose to have a relationship with him. Again, extremely abridged, but if these are Christianity’s fundamentals, I think it’s difficult to argue that any of the examples that you mention are representative of them. I would also say that such ideas are, fortunately enough, not the mainstream in the Republican party.

I agree with you regarding both Huckabee’s statement and the idea of teaching creationist science in public schools (I don’t think that a required class full of impressionable kids is the appropriate venue for a discussion on origins), but I would argue that there are few who fit the classic political caricature painted of religion in politics. For example, most apologists for “creation science” don’t advocate the exclusive teaching of same in the classroom, and not many argue for even a presentation of both evolution and intelligent design. What I hear most often is that textbooks should not have fraudulent or discredited evidence to promote evolution, and that it should not all be presented as being equally factual, or lumped in with other theories to construct an origins narrative (i.e., microevolution has more proof than macro, evolution as an origin has less proof than macroevolution as a general theory, and macroevolution has more proof than the Big Bang).

Thank you for going the extra mile on the reco!

Admittedly, I’m not the most computer literate guy. Sometimes I too haven’t been able to reco and had to wait several hours to try at a later time or place with eventual success. I never bothered to figure out why, but again, I’m not a very technical fellow. To tell you the truth, I’d rather be in the kitchen cooking than figuring out all the intricacies of computers and the Internet . . . and that’s probably the result of having an Italian mother (both of her parents were immigrants . . . legal ones too!). Good food (chased down with a little Chianti) trumps the computer any day.

Take Care, Mark (mailloux)

utopia be Christian, libertarian, secular, etc in concept, is a lie that even some Christians have historically bought into, but as long as “sin” exists there can be no such utopia, for mankind does not have to power to remove this evil from his very being, no matter how hard he may try to teach, liberate, or legislate it out of society.

The best a society can do is try to restrain its influence in ways such as our own constitution has done, but even our constitution requires that the people acknowledge and understand in some way sin’s power over themselves, in order to frame, execute, and judge legislation correctly. Apart from this shared view of mankind’s condition our nation will splinter, as we are seeing, and eventually like other societies fail.

As always, you’ve added insight and enriched our understanding of the topic.

I concede that there is a nearly inexhaustible litany of religious abuses, of which you pointed out a few. There have been many who have attempted to use Christianity as just another political tool in their arsenal. It is precisely this sort of behavior that gives atheists, agnostics, and folks of all other religious persuasions pause when they run across a diary such as mine. So too, Huckabee did make statements in that same vein (by the way, I was and still am a Fredhead . . . how I wish and pray that Fred Thompson was our current president!).

To a certain degree, I think it is true that the abuse of religion has fueled the kneejerk societal reaction to encourage the private compartmentalization of Christianity. Other reasons also add to this phenomenon, including, I believe, the fact that Christianity crimps hedonistic tendencies, which our culture seems to be engaging in with fervor.

The current situation with Christianity and politics reminds me greatly of humanity’s propensity for extremes. I think reacting to abuses of religion in politics by moving to completely eradicate every vestige of religion from civics is a prime example of such an extreme reaction. It’s the old, “throwing the baby out with the bath water,” reaction. On the other hand, there really are some fundamentalist preachers who would advocate legislating very specific laws of the Bible (also, there’s an aside here that I wanted to note . . . in no way am I advocating the legislation of biblical covenants instead of specific biblical laws; the nature of a covenant is not really amenable to legalization. A covenant is more accurately described as a relationship rather than merely biblically based do’s and don’ts. A relationship in all its richness and nuances is an awfully hard thing to legislate.).
The better solution (and I think we do agree on this) is what I hoped to have communicated in my diary, even if my effectiveness as a writer is lacking. What I hoped to say in my diary is all of the following:

1. It’s best to understand the Bible as a story of covenants between God and man rather than simply a list of God-given do’s and don’ts. Hence, fears of legislating the Bible are unwarranted so long as one has a more in depth and accurate understanding of Christianity.

2. Christian politicians should not be afraid to live their Christianity openly. It’s OK to say grace before a meal in public. It’s OK to pray for wisdom when making important decisions both in your personal and professional life. It’s OK to wear a cross in public. In other words, the diary was a call to Christians not to hide their Christianity and attempt to compartmentalize it from their daily life. A devout person is being disingenuous if he believes he can un-Christianize his secular life. We are not machines, we are persons and such a separation is plainly impossible.

3. Finally, the diary was also a call out to non-Christians. It was meant to be somewhat of an assurance that a devout Christian, genuinely trying to do his Christian duty, will make for a good public servant. He will be someone that treasures liberty, wisdom, and justice. Sure, his Christianity will influence his values and judgment, but absent Christianity, something must influence our values. The Christian politician is, therefore, no different than any other and does not deserve to be brow beaten by his own Bible and cowed into apologizing for and hiding his Christianity.

Thanks so much again for your commentary!

Take Care, mailloux

I agree mostly with what you have said, and my take on this is that they misunderstand or deliberately pervert the nature of Christ.

You should see some of the pictures of Jesus I have seen. They paint him as some kind of Third World revolutionary in the vein of “Che.” How sad for people that don’t really understand Jesus.

it’s just another strain of sin that is self evident throughout history. We must not confuse Christianity with the works of the flesh by grouping terms together like “Christian” authoritarianism. We must as a society learn to discern a persons character by the works they have done whether they are Christian or un-Christian instead of the titles that they carry (R), (D), Christian, Muslim, Black, White, Hispanic, etc, for we are all prone to the same vices because we are “man”.

Thank you for the comment and the reco too!

I think you are quite correct in terms of our accountability. We, in our earthly life, live in but a tiny sliver of reality, the present. Each and every moment of the present that we are afforded is an accountable moment where we get to exercise our free will to either serve God or something else. Serving God doesn’t end on Sunday and it isn’t just something we do in our private life. It’s every bit as pertinent to our professional and civic lives too. God will indeed judge each Christian as to whether that Christian’s time was time well spent.

Take Care, mailloux

Thank you for sharing this. It should be a diary in and of itself!

Take Care, mailloux