Is this christianity fascism ?
I recently had a debate with a relative who is religious and of the christian right. I wasn’t aware of how extreme the christian right has become. He can’t say what denomination his church is, it is just christian. IS there a denomination for the ideas he preaches ?
The following are some of his ideas, after the line are my remarks on variuos pieces:
christian right ideas:
public school teachers should express the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of all.
Jesus is coming soon.
John Lennon was a big advocate of “tolerance.” Remember his song, “Imagine”?
Imagine there’s no heaven
Hmmm… No heaven, no hell, no religion … no consequences. I wonder if John Lennon would have preferred that Mark Chapman believed in heaven, hell, religion, and consequences. I also wonder if John Lennon would think that what Mark Chapman did was wrong.
I heard a preacher say that when he was in college in a psychology class, his prof was talking about how there are no moral absolutes. He said that it would have been interesting to see the psych prof’s reaction if he had gone up to the front of the class and punched the prof in the face. Imagine it.
“Ouch! Why did you do that!?”
“I just like hitting psych profs.”
“Well, that’s not right.”
“Wait a minute! You just said that there are no moral absolutes!”
If you are not interested in seeking, then you are contributing to the world’s problems. There is no neutral ground. We are either working for justice - or we end up working against justice by default. Apathy and silence in a world full of injustice is wrong. We need not tolerate injustice. We must confront it. Or else, we are contributing to it.
I’m a wretched sinner. But God in His mercy saw fit to bestow His saving grace upon me…without faith, it is impossible to please God.
If they do not repent, and start showing giving generously to the “have-nots,” then these people will burn in hell.
my note: (similar to communist ideology…)
It is also true that there are what I call “modern day Pharisees.” There are people who call themselves religious, but are some of the most pernicious people in the world. They are giving Christianity a bad name. But God knows everything. He sees their wickedness for what it is. And frankly, it ticks Him off. These people will also burn in hell unless they repent.
Jesus will deal with these people violently when he returns.
The Bible says of itself that it is the Word of God. So, we have two options really. Let us believe, bow to its authority in holy reverence; or let us commit it to the flames and go get drunk. But let us not hold to the foolish notion that it is a good book, but not God’s Word. Good books do not mislead. The Bible repeatedly speaks of itself as being God’s Word.
… furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done."
if people keep on insisting on doing things their way and living life their way and thinking their way, then God will give them over to their own depraved ways of thinking. If people insist that they do not want to have anything to do with God, there will come a certain point where God will say, “OK. Have it your way. You want nothing to do with me? You now have nothing to do with me.”
Frankly, this truth puts the fear of God in me. See, I know the sin of which I am capable. I know that, left to myself, I will really mess my life up - not to mention messing up other peoples’ lives in the process. When I come to God, I come as a sinner praying “God have mercy. Do not give me over to myself. Cast not your Holy Spirit from me.”
To people who are not interested in seeking, God gives them over to their own depravity.
This is also a big reason why people hate the Biblical doctrine of hell. In that same chapter of Romans, it says, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
The reason why so many churches in Europe and many in America have rejected the doctrine of hell is because of all the pressure that depraved people put on the clergy not to speak the truth about the coming wrath. Also, many clergymen are just as depraved as the laymen. But if I was to describe God in one word, I would use the word “holy” because that is how God describes himself over and over again throughout Scripture. God is holy. The word holy means to be righteous, good, pure, and set a part for God’s purposes. God is set a part for His own purposes. God’s holiness is radiant and awesome.
The opposite of holy is sinful. People hate the fact that God is holy, because it exposes their sinfulness all the more. So, by their own wickedness, they suppress the truth and thus deceive themselves. As Simon and Garfunkel put it, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” People have itching ears that are wanting to hear lies. “You’re a good person.” That’s what people want to hear. They want to hear about “the man upstairs” who is like a big, jolly Santa Claus. What they don’t want is for a holy God to confront them with a message that says, “Unless you repent, you will receive the wrath of God. That wrath is terrible… and just.”
Here is the deal. We are sinners. By this I mean that we are wicked, evil people. If you don’t think so, let me encourage you to take your head out of the sand, and face the truth like a man. We are bad. We are so bad that God would be completely just to condemn us to an eternity in a lake of fire. That is how bad we are.
MY REMARKS ON THE ABOVE:
What is important is to be tolerant of other opinions and other ideas, even those that contrast ours. I don’t know if there are absolutes or not or anything else and anyways this is more a philosophical problem maybe without any solution. I tend to dislike a strong religious point of view because it may lead to violence like the extreme muslims or like the extreme right in the US that would readily nuke Iran and all the middle east. OF course we could go on forever debating, but the bottom line is I think we should be careful with imposing religious ideas, as there is no end to how fanatical and violent it can get.
There have been thousands of thinkers, philosophers, scientists that have tried to analyze all you say from thousands of points of views. What can I say ? Nothing, but I just don’t like the right wing agenda and the religious agenda. Anyways if you want to see what others much more smarter than me had to say about all these problems, then read up on MARX, NIETZSCHE, PHILOSOPHY, HEGEL, PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY and all the social sciences offsprings, FREUD, PSYCHOANALYSIS, PHYSICS, ANTHROPOLOGY and thousands of other writers and thinkers. There are millions of books, the bible is just another and probably one of the worst.
I think it all boils down more to your search of “perfection”. There will always be some bad people, who cares, put them in jail, that’s it , end of story. There is no need to invoke heaven and hell and god and all. We should not emphasize the importance of the wrong doings. Just deal with them legally as fit. 10 idiots threw down the twin towers and the US extremely emphasized the importance of it. This just encouraged other idiots to do similar. They should have just put the CIA out to search the others without creating wars. You can’t fix the world absolutely in total so you can’t say either on my side or against me. I think relegion tends toward a totalitarian view just like the extreme terrorists.
I noticed that most of your arguments rotate around “violent” situations, murder, hate, burning in hell etc. Maybe this marks a very big difference. In Europe your religious position is very rare as they rarely talk about the issues you put forward, at least not in such extreme cases. Also the “burning in hell” thing is really out of this world here. The catholic church does not in any way ever refer to such horrible ideas, actually it is very much more lenient and towards the political left here, and they emphasize forgiveness more than anything else. Also physics does not have any absolute truths either, just look at quantum mechanics.
It is a problem of world views. If you concentrate on “evil” bad people sin and hell and punishment etc. you limit your views of the world to only a kind of struggle between good and bad, right and wrong. Leave this to the criminal justice system and laws. There are alot of other things in life like art and science etc. If everything goes through the filter of moral judgement (just like an ideology) then nothing is left in life. Your examples of art works are those questioning morals, but most works are really creative works of imagination and are positive and have nothing to do with good and bad, and punishment and hell. I think religion like yours in the end provokes violence and war and punishment. We are not sinners, maybe you feel like one.
Most people are relatively decent. Woodstock was an example of great people with free minds and there was no violence. Your ideology would in the end provoke violence just by starting to call everyone sinners!
Most people in the world are decent people. Calling everyone in the world sinners is offending everyone and provocative, and can easily lead to violence. This is not good. Your references are all very old things, bible , handel, I assume everything new is a sin and evil and we should all be punished. Maybe some religious fanatic would like to start punishing everyone as they are all sinners. He would be doing what god wants, right ?
I don’t buy into all this religious stuff, you should free your mind from all this and write on non christian forums to see what other people have to say. I have seen what ideology brings to, and believe me it doesn’t do good for anyone. There are many sociological and psycholgical books that can deeply explain how the ideological mind works and how people can become terrorists. I am praying for you. Alot of christians in the world would never accept your views.
You say that you are speaking god’s words. Well anyone can say their words are god’s and then say anything they want. In the US there are thousands of churches and religions of all kinds from extreme right to extreme left. The terrorists say they are following god’s plan and then kill etc. That is not logic it is arbitrary arrogance. It is always your word against another person’s word each saying that a book told them what to do (marx, bible, koran etc.).
You always use violent terms like hate evil sin etc. Most people in most of the world are relatively decent. No one is perfect but your religion extremes all the situations and as such is an extreme view that can lead to extreme acts just like terrorism.
Your view is mostly an ideological view, just like the communist view. I had a friend who believed in the communist ideology for many years and after told me how hard it was to free his mind from all that stuff That was exactly the same ideology you have in the sense that the world is wrong and must be fixed, people must change etc. It is an attempt to box everything up into a logical coherence always using some book or formula (like Marx). These ideologies ended up killing many people. The world is way better off without any ideologies and religions.
I know the christian right in the US has a large following. May I add some other points.
The ideology of saying “man is bad”, “you can’t imagine how bad” can easily lead to justifying any degree of violence and repression against man. If god considers us all sinners then why not give him a hand and create a police state ? if “you can’t be left to manage yourself” because you would “be evil and create disaster” means you must be firmly controlled, hence a powerful repressive state, police and laws. Where is the limit ? Even saddam thought man was bad and repressed his “brothers”. Even the twin tower terrorists thought of all the sin man was effecting in new york and decided to do something about it.
You say “I am afraid of god”, so then you live your life in terror and fear of all, any pleasure is a sin, anything you do you will be terribly punished. This is a devastating psychological view of things. It can only bring to violence repression and hate.
So where did all the logic go ? This ideology of religion is dangerous, has nothing to do with christianity, at least as far as I know it. Christianity’s main emphasis is on helping your brother, giving without asking for anything in exchange, forgiving. Your’s sounds more like a satanistic religion. All hell and punishment.