THREAD:
1. I saw a video of a black police officer telling a protester that "America has a sin problem."
He's right.
Racism, like all hatred and cruelty, is SIN. Separation from God. Sin of any kind is not unique to any race or class of people or country or era.
1. I saw a video of a black police officer telling a protester that "America has a sin problem."
He's right.
Racism, like all hatred and cruelty, is SIN. Separation from God. Sin of any kind is not unique to any race or class of people or country or era.
2. THAT'S what every Christian pastor should be preaching from the pulpit. Every sermon. Every Sunday. Now that we're online, every day.
We broke our worldview up into religious and secular decades ago. So we've lost the language of good and evil, and the sources of both.
We broke our worldview up into religious and secular decades ago. So we've lost the language of good and evil, and the sources of both.
3. This permits any mob that's loud enough - Hollywood, media, academic theorists, nihilist activists - to dictate what "good" and "evil" are, separate and apart from any natural law or universal order.
The results are predictably absurd, arbitrary and capricious.
The results are predictably absurd, arbitrary and capricious.
4. Promiscuous sex is "good."
Abortion is "good."
The sexualization of children is "good."
The lack of marriage is "good."
The lack of fathers is "good."
Pursuit of self-gratification is "good."
The lack of actual truth and falsity is "good."
Abortion is "good."
The sexualization of children is "good."
The lack of marriage is "good."
The lack of fathers is "good."
Pursuit of self-gratification is "good."
The lack of actual truth and falsity is "good."
5. We tell ourselves that whatever we want is "good." But then when the consequences are horrible, we refuse to take responsibility for them, and blame other people.
This is a human trait, not a racial trait (whatever that is).
This is a human trait, not a racial trait (whatever that is).
5. The Judeo-Christian worldview acknowledges the universality of sin - humans' inclination for wrongdoing. It provides a mechanism for redemption: repentance and forgiveness. It also prioritizes reconciling with one's brethren before coming to the altar to worship God.
6. The kind, loving, inclusive, fair, truthful and just treatment of each other is paramount in the J-C ethos.
Having abandoned it, we are flailing as a people; desperate for a language of healing and lacking it; at the mercy of every carnival barker and self-promoting sadist.
Having abandoned it, we are flailing as a people; desperate for a language of healing and lacking it; at the mercy of every carnival barker and self-promoting sadist.
7. And without a mechanism for forgiveness and redemption, we find ourselves increasingly in a system of perpetual punishment and vicarious responsibility, with destruction and the extraction of a pound of flesh demanded, but no "sin" ever expiated thereby.
8. Instead, we seek the power needed to retaliate.
That is hell. And the only thing that keeps it from being eternal is our own mortality. The cycle of retaliation stops only when people are too few or too exhausted to demand it any longer.
That is hell. And the only thing that keeps it from being eternal is our own mortality. The cycle of retaliation stops only when people are too few or too exhausted to demand it any longer.
9. Those of us who subscribe to the Judeo-Christian worldview have a responsibility to reinfuse these principles into the conflict our nation is facing.
If our church leaders are too timid to do it, we have to do it ourselves.
If our church leaders are too timid to do it, we have to do it ourselves.
