Oh man, they should totally have gone with 2nd Corinthians 5:7My reaction after my brain had kicked in:
"We live by faith, not by sight."
Or John 9, where a blind man is given sight.
Those would've been much better.
They did what now?! How the hell did anyone think sending soldiers into Muslim countries with bible references on their weapons was a good idea?posted by Kattullus at 1:06 PM on January 20, 2010 [2 favorites]
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"And for Buddhists, Dhammapada 1:5
"Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule"See, much better.
New York Times: Questions Raised Anew About Religion in Military.posted by ericb at 2:38 PM on January 20, 2010
And in a larger sense, you're buying the ridiculous arguments of Machiavelli and Hobbes and Spinoza to the effect that any sort of spirituality of any form which finds any place in the public sphere is automatically manipulative, domineering, power-hungry, and brutal.You are very plainly responding to a set of value judgements and condemnations of Christianity. That would be fine, except I have not in this thread made any such judgments or condemnations. None at all. You are raging at a phantom of my comment which exists purely in your own mind, and it's honestly a little bizarre to see you so angry and condescending in response to something that hasn't actually been said.
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The Christian Bible does not lay that role down, and almost says nothing about it, beyond Christ's very, very cryptic admonitions which seem almost like prescriptions for something between nonviolent protest and complete passivity.
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So why is it so hard to believe that a thousand years of a tradition might have gone onto the wrong track?
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If you really believe that immediately in 300 we started slaughtering everybody we could get our hands on, that's fine, but you have no idea how history went down.
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Why does believing a tradition went off the rails at some point mean you can't discuss sexism or racism?
Moreover, you're steamrolling over the simple and direct fact that during the last two thousand years Christians have been debating this very question – we've been arguing and turning over the question of the political involvement of Christianity since Christ walked the earth. What's more, unlike the two other branches of the three monotheistic faiths of the west, Christianity actually does not have an explicit and immediate political role laid out in its holy book; while they are as nuanced and deeply varied as the Christian Bible is, both the Quran and the Torah deal extensively with what the perfect society looks like, and what role Muslims and Jews have in any given society. The Christian Bible does not lay that role down, and almost says nothing about it, beyond Christ's very, very cryptic admonitions which seem almost like prescriptions for something between nonviolent protest and complete passivity.I am more than aware of the vast differences of opinion from Christian to Christian, sect to sect, denomination to denomination, and so forth on the issue of whether or not Christianity and political/cultural involvement blend, and if they do, on what setting and at what speed. I have not, however, addressed that here. I have not even alluded to it here. What I am talking about is not what Christianity means, nor if Christians should involve themselves in politics and society. Whether they should or not is completely irrelevant to my argument.
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It seems like you don't even understand that there were plenty of Christians in 300 who were scandalized and deeply offended that any Christian would accept any position of power; in fact, it seems as though most of the leaders of the Church at that time were at least ambivalent about it...
Here you've completely lost me. Why does believing a tradition went off the rails at some point mean you can't discuss sexism or racism? Seriously, I'd like to know. Those two things don't seem to have anything to do with each other.This passage is a direct result of missing my point. I am not arguing that a tradition went off the rails, or making any moral judgments about the subject matter. I am arguing that decoupling the action of many individuals who operated in the same or similar context(s) from the context and structures that the individuals in question acted within is problematic because (and I could have stated this more clearly, I think) it makes it difficult to discuss or assess the collective. ricochet biscuit understands my point:
Yeah, it somehow puts me in mind of a police apologist I heard recently who dismissed an account of police brutality by saying that, "police officers did not do this; criminals did this. Every occupation has criminals who managed to get hired in that field and police are no different."To insist that we cannot speak of the collective makes it very difficult to understand society, because while society is at its most atomic level comprised of individuals, the groups and structures which those individuals are organized into and which they organize themselves into make up a vast portion of the character of that society. I specifically chose racism and sexism as examples because they suffer the same when one takes an individuals-only approach to the issue. (Insisting that we look only at the actions of individuals makes it impossible to understand white supremacy or patriarchy; while the racist/sexist actions of a particular white person/man are in and of themselves bad, one must be able to look at patterns of behavior across the entire class, across society, to be able to construct a full and useful account of white supremacy/patriarchy. Or more plainly: one white man passing over a black man for a job based on his race is bad, whether it happens within a society with a racist power structure built into it or not. The same act within a society with a racist power structure built into it is worse than one taking place in one that did not have such a structure, as it is part of a structure of one group taking action against another.) It's the ability to interact not only with individuals but with the groups and structures they comprise that I think Empress's insistence on addressing individuals free of their context undermines.
…the church has historically been incredibly powerful and completely willing to putz about in earthly affairs.Huge derail and bitter feelings between people now, because of the fear that somebody might read that in a stupid manner.
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Grind them off. Now
posted by A189Nut at 12:45 PM on January 20, 2010 [5 favorites]