We are going to let Allie conclude her series today.
We are at the last part of debunking the arguments in the articlehttp://www.alternet.org/belief/9-truly-evil-things-right-wing-christians-do?page=0%2C2 . 9. Trying to suck vulnerable people into your poorly researched worldview is evil.
I’m going to go ahead and quote the first paragraph of this part of the article:
“It’s one thing to latch onto the supernatural worldview you were raised in or the one that first triggered for you some radically cool temporal lobe micro-seizure or similar altered state. But then failing to do your homework before using your position of adult American privilege to foist your religion on kindergarteners, or families who live in desperate poverty, or people who just got hit by a natural disaster—in other words people who trust you because you are older or richer or more powerful or have more access to the very information that you have failed to use—now we’re talking about a violation of ethics. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.”
Woa now! Altered state? That may be how it is for the Word of Faith movement but as for most Christians, it’s not an altered state! We’re not on drugs! We’re not high, in fact, we have many lows! It’s not easy being a Christian! People think it’s easy to be a Christian but it’s not, and I think that’s part of the reason why so many people leave the faith. They expect everything to go well and hardly any problems to head their way, but that’s just not the case at all. We face many obstacles, many obstacles that people who aren’t following Christ don’t face in fact. Christ never promised life would be easy following him, he instead said it would be harder when following him:
(John 15:18 NLT) “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.”
Failing to do our homework? Writer (of the article), I’d say you’ve failed to do much of your homework and have done mostly personal complaints instead of actually researching the other side. I have both read your sources and defended the Christian side giving Biblical and outside sources. As for the American privilege, everyone has that. Living in the US is a privilege, whether you think so or not. Yes, this country has it’s problems, but what country doesn’t? One of the greatest privileges of this country that many countries don’t have is the freedom of religion and speech. Writer, just as you have the freedom to antagonize us, we have the freedom to worship the Living God and tell the truth about him. In the US, everyone has the opportunity of getting a job and working hard. Now, in this economy, it is much harder. But it isn’t easier for a Christian to make money or get a job than it is for someone who isn’t a Christian to do so. Everyone has an equal chance if they try and work hard. The problem is the economy has made it so difficult and the government has babied people so much that people are either too hopeless or too lazy to try. There are people who go on Welfare just so they don’t have to get a job and that’s abusing the system!
We are to help people in poverty and who are hit by distasters. We are to educate our children, just as much as everyone else. The problem is, you don’t want us to do it the way we are supposed to do it! If you knew the truth about something, and you knew it gave people hope, wouldn’t you want to tell it to people? Then why prevent us from telling this truth to people? As for education, there are a lot of people who say the US was never a Christian nation. This is nonsense! Take a look at this website that discusses the earliest Bibles published in the US (http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/colonial-bibles.html). Even Congress had produced Bibles for our schools, people in Congress such as George Washington and you know those people who were so anti-religious like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. They all endorsed these Bibles to be published at every home and school in the US! As for being, older, richer, and more powerful. I’m almost twenty-four years old, so I’m not old. My husband and I are broke and without jobs, as well as disabled, so we are not rich, but poor. I have no power in any sense. I have a brain injury and only a high school diploma, yet I have done better research than you’ve done. All you have done is throw empty accusations with little to no facts behind them. Moving on now.
The next paragraph the writer says is:
“Some reader is bound to say that without God anything goes and so as a nontheist I have no basis for calling anything evil. A short snarky retort has been making its way around the internet: If you can’t tell right from wrong without appealing to an authority or a sacred text, what you lack is not religion but compassion. The long answer, meaning the evidence showing we really can recognize evil and good without gods, is available in neuroscience, sociology, developmental psychology, and in the lives of individual atheists including the Dalai Lama.”
I’ve got one, single, verse to answer that paragraph for you, Romans 2:14 (NLT) says:
Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it.
So yes, you do know God’s laws like you shouldn’t murder or steal because God wrote that in our hearts. It has nothing to do with how great we are, but because of how great heis. Just because you know his laws instinctively doesn’t mean there is no God though. You can breathe air, but just because you can’t always feel it or see it doesn’t mean there isn’t any air.
The writer concludes by accusing Bible-believing Christians to be trying to go back to the Iron Age. We’re not trying to go back to the Iron Age. We don’t want to go back in time! We want to move ahead in the future as much as you do! The difference is we have a different path to the future than you do. Your path leads to more destruction and we’re trying to steer you away from that path! We see the path you’re heading because some of us have actually gone down that path and know what’s down there. We hate watching people destroy themselves and God hates it even more than we do! You are his precious children!
(Ezekiel 18:23 NLT) “Do you think that I like to see wicked people die? says the Sovereign LORD. Of course not! I want them to turn from their wicked ways and live.”
We have to tell the truth!
(John 8:32 NLT) “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Be set free from your bondage and your destructive paths!
In Christ,
Nick Peters
Support Deeper Waters on Patreon!
