Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nenjin]

The flip side to the prosperity gospel is also poisonous. If you're successful, it's because god has your back. Ergo, anything you do to enrich yourself is a-ok by the Lord because it's enhancing your prosperity and is a sign of His love. It gives successful evangelicals the idea that they can do no wrong. That or people who have inherited their wealth.

[McTraveller]

The funny sad thing is that the prosperity gospel isn't actually based on the Bible*.  I don't actually understand how people keep adhering to it, other than it sounds good?  I guess it falls under the category of "poor education."

But yes, the economic system that essentially requires that someone else exist that is willing to hire you, instead of letting people more easily establish their own livelihood, is an interesting emergent phenomenon.  I say emergent because I think that, while the current entrenched interests are now intentionally trying to maintain that situation, it arose out of things that taken by themselves are good, like personal property laws, zoning laws, and product safety laws.


*Well, it is, just a very selective reading of it.  Certain groups always seem to like to treat the Bible only in parts, rather than as a whole.  I mean, seriously, Jesus' teachings are almost exactly the opposite of prosperity gospel.  And for the people that think "I'm prosperous because God has my back" have obviously never read the Psalms about how frustrating life is because obviously evil people often have lives of luxury.  I mean, how hypocritical do you have to be to complain about some people getting wealthy off the backs of the innocent, but "my" wealth is because I'm good and God has blessed me.  It makes my heart ache.

[Karnewarrior]

It's because very few people in America these days, I'm sorry to say, are actually Christian for the sake of being Christian, and more and more are being "Christian" for the sake of being more "Christian" than the Dinklebergs. People who are concerned about the level of Christian you're at are hypocrites at best, and doing the devils work at worst.

This is the shit that really, seriously pisses me off; when people use other people's faith to exploit them. I'm not particularly religious but there have been a few pastors I've seen (that bloke in texas comes to mind) who make me wish for a inquisition so we could burn them at the stake.

It's 100% pride, and more often than not has Greed and Envy lathered on top, seasoned with basically every other deadly sin to become a layer-cake of evil.

[Dunamisdeos]

It's because very few people in America these days, I'm sorry to say, are actually Christian for the sake of being Christian, and more and more are being "Christian" for the sake of being more "Christian" than the Dinklebergs. People who are concerned about the level of Christian you're at are hypocrites at best, and doing the devils work at worst.

This is the shit that really, seriously pisses me off; when people use other people's faith to exploit them. I'm not particularly religious but there have been a few pastors I've seen (that bloke in texas comes to mind) who make me wish for a inquisition so we could burn them at the stake.

It's 100% pride, and more often than not has Greed and Envy lathered on top, seasoned with basically every other deadly sin to become a layer-cake of evil.

This is extremely (AND FRUSTRATINGLY) true. As a Christian, I see way, way too many people who want to go to church because their friends are there, or because their family went there and it's familiar, or because they want the Wednesday potluck, or in the worst cases I've seen because there are less (insert race) here.

I'm very, very happy to see more recent trends in Christianity that reject this behavior. My church of 1000+, one of the largest in the area, does constant sermons about this exact subject. I don't hear any complaints from our congregation.

A church that had been around for something like 75-100 years in the area recently closed shop because of their refusal to change this stance, and while I am sorry to see an institution with that kind of history go, it was very far past time for that kind of toxic rhetoric to be removed from the community. They had so many other ties to good things that were lost because of their unwillingness to drop hate (big charity events, hosting free summer camp, and hosting a secular special ed school were among these).

@Mctraveler
Or the story about how Jesus healed blind folks because they were blind and needed to be healed, not because they were good people. Then all of the people who were supposedly pious and righteous and following the religious law got really pissed and threw the previously blind man out of town because blind people are only blind because obviously they've done something wrong, they just won't tell us what it is.

It's literally telling us as Christians not to be these people, specifically.

[Egan_BW]

Just think how much better balanced society would be if all the people who didn't really give a damn about god found it easier to just not be religious, rather than finding convoluted and illogical ways to justify still being christian so they can be part of the community~

[Trekkin]

It's because very few people in America these days, I'm sorry to say, are actually Christian for the sake of being Christian, and more and more are being "Christian" for the sake of being more "Christian" than the Dinklebergs. People who are concerned about the level of Christian you're at are hypocrites at best, and doing the devils work at worst.

This is the shit that really, seriously pisses me off; when people use other people's faith to exploit them. I'm not particularly religious but there have been a few pastors I've seen (that bloke in texas comes to mind) who make me wish for a inquisition so we could burn them at the stake.

It's 100% pride, and more often than not has Greed and Envy lathered on top, seasoned with basically every other deadly sin to become a layer-cake of evil.

This is extremely (AND FRUSTRATINGLY) true. As a Christian, I see way, way too many people who want to go to church because their friends are there, or because their family went there and it's familiar, or because they want the Wednesday potluck, or in the worst cases I've seen because there are less (insert race) here.

I'm very, very happy to see more recent trends in Christianity that reject this behavior. My church of 1000+, one of the largest in the area, does constant sermons about this exact subject. I don't hear any complaints from our congregation.

Emphasis mine. I literally cannot tell if this is an attempt at satire or not.

[Karnewarrior]

Just think how much better balanced society would be if all the people who didn't really give a damn about god found it easier to just not be religious, rather than finding convoluted and illogical ways to justify still being christian so they can be part of the community~

That is very definitely not the problem here. The problem is American Laziness, Cold-War Capitalism, and American Puritanism all coming together to make something incredibly toxic.

People aren't saying they're Christian because there isn't a community for them outside of it; they're saying their Christian because it makes it easy to justify being a hateful bigot since there's a lot of gullible American Christians who'll just nod along. Or there's a lot of hypocrites, because somewhere along the way there became this race to be "more Christian" than the next guy and the easiest way to do that is to condemn and condemn and condemn, without fixing your own vices at all. People like that only bring up the passages about forgiveness when they need to be forgiven for being sleazeballs, but when it's someone elses neck on the line they preach the old testament slaughters like they're actually relevant.

They're the American equivelent to the Middle Easts terrorists, with exactly the same vices and exactly the same rhetoric, and the only thing keeping them from bombing the fuck out of "infidels" like Japan or Israel is the fact that American culture thankfully has resistance to that sort of thing, but then you have asshats  who want to rip that resistance away so we can march on Crusade again. And a lot of the time they have support from the more gullible sloths who can't be arsed to read the Bible, much less actually try to learn anything about the Koran.

Tell you what, if I get elected president, I'm enforcing ecumenism. Call me Fuhrer all you like, but I'm sick and tired of people trying to convert people by the sword when they haven't even read their own holy book, much less actually tried sitting down and talking like a civilized human being.

[smjjames]

I can't believe you guys missed Trump having a panicattack-tantrum over the latest Mueller development.

Trump and his lawyers did the equivalent of shitting bricks today, running scared and lashed out all over the place because Mueller submitted some preliminary questions. Gotta wonder what has them so freaked out, other than asking 'did you collude', but I doubt Mueller would be that generic and broad with his questions.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/17/politics/donald-trump-andrew-mccabe-james-comey-justice/index.html

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/378980-mueller-gives-trumps-legal-team-questions-for-potential-interview

It's really starting to boil over now....

[hector13]

Why are they freaking out if they’ve been given the questions on the test before the actual test? I mean, instead of working on excuses for not answering the questions, preparing answers for them would be the best move.

[bloop_bleep]

Why are they freaking out if they’ve been given the questions on the test before the actual test? I mean, instead of working on excuses for not answering the questions, preparing answers for them would be the best move.

Because if they don't have any valid answers that wouldn't raise suspicion, then making excuses starts to seem awful tempting.

[smjjames]

Why are they freaking out if they’ve been given the questions on the test before the actual test? I mean, instead of working on excuses for not answering the questions, preparing answers for them would be the best move.

Maybe because they can't without incriminating Trump in some way or other and lying would make it perjury?

I'm certainly curious as hell as to what the questions are that made them freak out so much.

[Trekkin]

I didn't miss it. I was just waiting to see if anyone did anything different, and they did not. Trump panics about everything Mueller-related; it takes the news cycle out of his control (sad! terrible! fake news!) and reminds him that nobody he thinks of as his personal servants can make this go away. Sure he's worried about Mueller finding out about his Mob connections or other malfeasance, but that's many cheeseburgers in the future and therefore secondary to the immediate problem: no one will rid him of this turbulent priest. The best his lawyers can do is to alternate between platitudes that the investigation will end tomorrow and a sort of vague strategy to stall and discredit it until either the hammer falls or someone can credibly promise that Congressional Republicans won't impeach Trump for firing everyone in the DOJ until he finds someone to shut it down.

I'm not sure we have any indications that the questions themselves were at all exceptional. Trump would be panic-tweeting if Mueller so much as asked him about his favorite color, and his lawyers would still be concerned he'd perjure himself trying to ramble through an answer to it.

[smjjames]

His favorite color is Russia, obviously.

[Teneb]

Maybe because they can't without incriminating Trump in some way or other and lying would make it perjury?

Remember kids, it's only perjury if you get caught.

[martinuzz]

Does this new plan of Trump to give drug pushers the death penalty mean that pharmacists and doctors are going to be executed, seeing that the majority of opoid addiction in the US is pushed by those?