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34 Comments(+Add)
The Glenn Beck rally was idolatry on parade. He openly called people to go to churches, synagogues, and even mosques to pray for this nation. Spiritual pluralism, which of course, is in line with the constitution. Beck was accurate in his nationalism but blind to Christ.
I think the most disturbing thing I saw on television was a man carrying a 4 foot cross with the American flag nailed in its center. For so long we were warned about a one world religious syetm, but the devil had a trump card all along – a one nation religious sytem.
Amen, Rick.
We don’t want people to pray for this nation, and we definitely wouldn’t want them to go to their churches and pray for it – we just want it to all fail and go to hell, to hasten the coming of the end.
Anti-nationalism can be just as much of an idol as any other -ism. You can just feel more self-righteous about it if there are fewer people on your ill-conceived bandwagon.
Yes, they can pray in Salt Lake City with Beck. You are blinded, Chris. This nation holds no specail place with God who deals with people and not nations.
“Anti-nationalism can be just as much of an idol as any other -ism.”
I agree.
“we just want it to all fail and go to hell, to hasten the coming of the end.”
People go to hell, not entire nations. Remember, Beck invited people to pray in mosques as well. He said we are all children of God, even in the redemptive sense. According to him God has called him to awaken America. He never gave the gospel, except the gospel of America and the founding fathers.
I consider you of higher than average intellect. Your patriotsism and nationalism just proves how deep this deception really is. It’s a shame believers in China cannot return to their “founding fathers”, but then again, America has a divine destiny.
What is far more sick is the people who call themselves Christians following after Beck who is an idolatrous Mormon and joining hands with him as though they worship the same God. The God of Mormonism is no God at all. He is a glorified human having orgies on planet Kolab.
Glen Beck is after all worshipping a different God, as I suspect many of those Christians are. It is a God of nationalism, and Glenn Beck is their prosperity preacher promising if they grab their divine destiny their god will make them whole again.
I had a Beck-free weekend. but from everything I have heard, this too sounds the most disturbing. I find it more disturbing than the pluralism (which i believe is both constitution and best for the nation… though i think pluralism is often confused for relativism which is, of course, false).
Anyway, i find this more disturbing because so many evangelicals fail to see that the mixture of jerusalem and rome is as anathema as the misture of jerusalem and mecca, or salt lake city.
the video, btw, is very very cool!
I didn’t say I was cheering Beck on – I just think that your hyperbolic whining is just as pathetic as overblown mixing of church and state. Oh noez – a Mormon is telling people to pray! Think of the children! Personally, I’m not offended if people of all religions decide not to kill one another and to engage their differences in peaceful debate and by example.
I recognize that Beck is not a Christian, and I don’t support his PC view (as expressed yesterday), but I also don’t see it as your boogeyman “one world religion”. I was at a triathalon (as a spectator) most of the day yesterday, and didn’t see anything about the Beck event until almost midnight, so I am not supporting or denouncing anything he might have said, since all I was was a short snippet, which seemed pretty innocuous, and was couched in terms of civil rights, not religion.
However, there is no evil in praying that God would bless a nation, or that He would call its people to Him. And I’m sorry you’re offended that the “founding fathers” of America were unashamedly Christian and sought to create a country that embodied the ideals of Christianity. Actually, I’m not sorry you’re offended. If I was in their place I would have done the same thing 100 times out of 100.
Franklin an unashemed Christian? Jefforson an unashemed Christian? Washington made immense amounts of money on the backs of humdreds of slaves, and he broke up several negor families. Some “founding fathers” (possibly Washington) fathering slave children.
If God was “blessing” a nation He certainly did not inlcude the slaves, and I do not agree with democracy and capitalism as “Christian ideals”.
I wonder if you will ever be able to have a conversation without demeaning asides like “hyperbolic whing” and the like. Are those you “Christian ideals” as well? I would like a spirited debate without those kinds of invectives and dismissiveness of other’s opinions. It is a pattern.
Last time I checked, no Christians claimed perfection. If you actually read about the men who founded the country – the signers of the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution, you will see that most were avowed, and unashamed Christians (noting that “freedom of religion” as written in the Constitution actually allowed each state to have an official state religion – just not the federal government). Were they perfect? No. Did they make a mistake in allowing slavery to continue? Yes – which was paid for less than a hundred years later, in blood.
Was their view that God embodied people with the natural rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Yup.
Was their view that America should be a “Christian” nation, that would strive to embody the principles of the church? Yup.
Did they get it all right? No.
Their ideas of democracy and freedom from government intrusion were rooted in their interpretation of Christianity, and I would concur that if we wanted to order a country in such a way as to be most Christ-like, the government would have no role in dictating how one must live (beyond basic law and order), and would treat all equally.
Again, I’m sorry you hate the country that has given you the right to hate it. You’re always free to leave.
Well, if I’m having a conversation w/ someone who’s not issuing hyperbolic/paranoid whining about “one world religions”, I’ll try that out…
#10 – The pattern continues…as expected.
It should be obvious to all who read threads like this that nationalism brings out carnality in its defenders. Again, I do not hate America. That is your unfortunate take.
it appears to me you are both expressing equal levels of snarkiness.
Show me where I was snarky, Neil.
Besides calling my serious perspective being called “hyperbolic whining”, I was invited to leave the country.
I do not expect you to be impartial, Neil.
America did not give us any rights that we did not already have from God.
One American should not tell another American that he should love his country or leave it. As an American, he has the right to hate his country and hate nationalism.
Another Topic (from Time Magazine) Is America Islamophobic? Discuss.
Correct. The Constitution is a list of negative rights – rights that are given by God, which the country is not allowed to infringe upon (in theory).
I wasn’t saying “love it or leave it” – I was saying “If all you have to say on the subject bitch about it, nobody’s forcing you to stay…” And when you can’t do anything but twist history and pretend that the founders were godless hacks, that anyone who generally supports the country is a “slave to nationalism”, and then hyperbolically whine that the country is slouching toward Satan’s objective of a “one world religion”, I’m not sure why failing to treat your (literally) endless grousing on the existence of and purpose for the country as something less than a “serious perspective” is not a reasonable position to take.
Am I being snarky? Probably, since this is about the ten thousandth time I’ve heard the same chorus of “Anyone who supports America is an idolater, politics is evil, etc., etc.”, then yes, I’m being snarky.
There is a balance than can be struck somewhere between being a nationalist and being an anarchist – somewhere that doesn’t see an unbeliever’s call for members of all religions to take their beliefs seriously as some insidious Warren-Commission-esque slippery slope to a “one world religion”. Personally, I think that peaceful coexistence between people of all faiths would be a net positive for the spread of the Gospel and the kingdom – not because I desire a one-world government (or a one-world religion), but simply because I believe that a greater state of peace is congruent with Jesus’ teaching.
Glenn Beck is the Devil! Rush Limbaugh is decadent! Fill-in-the-blank-politician-slash-commentator is just feeding the church’s idolatry of the state!
I agree that too many Americans mix the church and the state (which was part of the point in my panning “Our God” as a song to be included w/o comment in normal worship sets in my church – which was then bitched about because “dodgy lyrics don’t matter”, even if they might propagate a worship of the state in their common understanding). I don’t believe that going to the opposite extreme and living in Fruehistan is the solution, though.
If Islamophobic is defined as “doesn’t see any value in granting special politically-correct ‘rights’ to Muslims”, then yes. If Islamophobic is defined as “unwilling to say anything bad about/mock Islam for fear of being killed” then yes (only if you’re a card-carrying member of the media). If Islamophobic is defined simply as “fear of Islam”, then no.
last line of #3
#10
#12
interesting, i “accuse” each of you of the same foul – yet, I am partial.
I just feel the need to say that Glen Beck is bad for the Christians who listen to him. I would call him an idiot, but the man has made a fortune doing what he does. He’s called himself an entertainer and I think that says a lot. I’ve seen a lot of Christians drink the cool aid and buy into things that just aren’t true. (Caveat: That doesn’t mean he’s always wrong, or doesn’t care, or whatever. Just that I think it’s unhealthy for Christians to get caught up with him.)
chrisitan,
would you say it’s always wrong, or just wrong when they mix their christianity and their patriotism (as rick illuatrated in #1)? could a believer agree with him ;olitically, and disagree with his misxture of rome and jerusalem?
maybe the latter is not possible.
Neil,
I’m not sure I understand everything you are asking. I think it’s wrong when we separate our faith from any other aspect of our lives. I disagree with Rick at times (probably not as often as others do), but I recognize that even when I disagree with him, he is trying to live out his faith in every area. We’ve just come to different conclusions about how to do that. I do think it’s bad when we let patriotism shape our Christianity.
I don’t have a problem with people agreeing with some of Becks political positions. My problem is when Christians sit under his teaching. I believe in reading and listening to people I disagree with, but the bulk of what I read and listen to are from trusted sources. Because what is coming in will shape me: my thoughts, my heart and attitude, my beliefs. Even when we think critically about what we see and hear, we are being shaped by our regular diet. And a regular diet of Beck is unhealthy.
I imagine he’s got a high cholesterol content, and you’d want to avoid his liver since he’s an ex-alcoholic…
Rome and Jerusalem have no common subset.
Seems to my recollection that there were Christians living in both…
christian p.,
i think we are pertty much in agreement.
chris, i agree – and i suppose you could use this as an analogy to christians in politics – something i think rick opposses.
rick, i agree – when using the cities as representative of a worldview they are incompatable.
“Seems to my recollection that there were Christians living in both…”
Yes, in an invisible kingdom that was never of this world. No one can serve two masters. Jerusalem and Rome are metophors that represent two opposite kingdoms. Only the Spirit can allow us to see the invisble.
#27 – But I do appreciate you making a valid point around which we caqn share valid perspectives.
I know we’ve discussed this before, but I don’t know that I really agree that the Kingdom is simply invisible. I think in many instances, it’s completely visible and tangible, even to unbelievers. I actually think that seeing the Kingdom is one way people are drawn to Christ. So, to me, the division Jesus is making when He says, “my Kingdom is not of this world” isn’t one of space and time verses spirit and timelessness – it’s about the principles and values at play in the Kingdom. The things that govern the Kingdom of God are different than those that are at play in worldly kingdoms.
So I think that wherever believers find themselves, they need to live and move in the rules of the Kingdom – not the kingdoms of this world. So that doesn’t necessarily mean that a believer can’t participate in politics at all, it just means that when we do it should look different. Now, I know that has not seemed to be the case, but I don’t know that the antidote is to say all must withdraw altogether.
To me participating in the political world isn’t functionally that much different than participating in any other human endeavor. Even in my job as an engineer, I have to deal with persuading people about my ideas and designs and worry about rather mundane things. That doesn’t mean, though, that my job isn’t spiritual or that I can’t operate out of Kingdom principles. I think the danger with pronouncing certain fields off-limits for believers is that we develop a sort of dualism where there are holy and unholy vocations. If anything, believer need to recognize that whatever work they do (as long as it’s not inherently immoral or unethical, like a drug dealer or something) can be an expression of the Kingdom.
For the record, I’m a big fan of Darth Vader. He was the Jedi who returned. He brought balance to the Force.
@Jerry,
Darth Vader’s story is a kind of redemption story, don’t you think?
It’s interesting too that the Jedi didn’t seem to really know what “Balance to the Force” really meant.
Who knew that Balance to the Force required a kind of disruption brought about and then consummated by the same person?
Very philosophical, say I.