Mind & Behavior Control, Intolerance, Where is God?, Christians Free to be Lawbreakers?, Judeo-Christian Nation, Freedom From Religion...and Legalists
Response to comment: "Religion is used as mind and behavior control."
Actually, when government wishes to control your mind, the have more difficulty with those who believe in God. If government wishes to control a population they attempt to gain control of the: the money (e.g. taxes), the schools, the healthcare system, move people into mass transit (e.g. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid not concerned with the cost of fuel), etc. I realize that atheists pride themselves on being "free thinkers" but scripture says you are deceived. "The god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe to keep them from seeing the light of the glorious gospel of the Messiah, who is the image of God (2 Cor 4:4, ISV)."
Response to comment: "Intolerance based on religion (or lack thereof) is not to be tolerated."
Christians try to win others over by sharing the gospel or the "good news" of Jesus Christ. Namely, that your sins can be forgiven. Everyone can see that there is a problem with the world. Many different people have many different answers as to what that is. For the Christian it is sin. Because man sinned in the garden, the world changed from perfect to flawed.
Your site states that you "promote tolerance and understanding of secular people." I would hope that Christians could also be tolerated. There is a difference between historical biblical Christians and cultural Christians. The former are Christ-followers, not religious. The latter play at religion and have not been freed from the law. Christians are bothered by them just as much. The law was meant to show people that they fall short of God's standards. It was meant to show them that they are sinners in need of a Savior.
Can that view to be tolerated?
Response to comment: "Where is God?"
If a person sincerely wants to know God, he will. If he doesn't, he won't. God will be revealed to you or hidden from you depending on your response to Him. God has set our lives up to be born in a certain time, live in a certain place and respond to Him. "And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us (Ac 17:26-27, NKJV)."
Response to comment: [Topic: A Clergy Member Charged with Rape
& Murder] "Christians think they can get away with crime if they ask God for forgiveness.
They feel they are above the law, because they obey God's law. Funny how that
somehow means they do bad things."
This wicked man was no Christian. Naming the name of Christ does not make
you a Christian anymore than claiming to be the President of the United States
makes you the leader of our nation. Jesus said we will know a Christian by
their fruits (Mt 7:16). Many people claim to be Christians but few are (Mt
7:14). The masses are evil not good (Ex 23:2).
Christians do not believe that they are about the law. God's law is perfect and Christians are freed from the law--to obey.
It would convenient and disingenuous for Christians to distance themselves from every Christian who sins and maintain that such a person was never saved. Yet, if a man's life is marked by sin, he clearly is not a Christian. Christians can of course backslide into sin for a time-- (e.g. what J. Vernon McGee used to call the prodigal son living in the pigpen; but he will come out of the pigpen because he is the Father's son. He goes back up to the Father's house) If a Christian is backsliden he is the most miserable person in the world. He is not able to enjoy living in sin like a person of the world enjoys sin.
Christians do not dismiss a sinning brother. There have been organized churches who sweep their dirty secrets under the rug. A church truly lead by Christ would not hide wicked men within the church walls. Although many Christ followers would prefer biblical justice for a criminal in their midst, it would be proper church policy to turn criminals over to the authorities to be prosecuted. The Christian life is one of submission not deception.
Christ followers do not hide illegal immigrants inside their church walls and claim immunity. Christ followers to not move pedophile clergy members from city to city to protect them from prosecution. Christ's true church, an organic body of believers, has a "tough love" policy. Christ clearly not the head of many churches who name his name. It takes decrement to know who is of God and who is a heretic, an apostate or a deceiver.
Christ himself will clean house one day. He has wrath stored up for
churches that deceive in the book of Revelation. He knows who they are and
they have a day of reckoning coming.
Response to comment: "Although you might have strong opinions about what 'God's standards' are, other people have different opinions...[S]ome of the refugees from all this fighting-for-God founded a secular country with church-state separation...rather than religious, law....Consider yourself lucky to live in such times. You might have found the Middle Ages to be...intolerable."
Putting man's law above God's law is human secularism.
Our nation was founded and grounded in Judeo-Christian ethics. Benjamin Franklin for example said: "God governs in the affairs of men, and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?" We have been blessed by God in our nation. Godless men today want Him out but those faithful to Him want Him to stay. We realize that without God's hand of blessing our nation, we are headed downward not up. We see evidences of that now. "Consider yourself lucky...". There is not such thing as luck, but if anyone is "lucky" it is the atheists because he already has what he wants-- a godless nation. Atheistic "freedom" is bondage though he doesn't know it. Read: Faith of America's Founders.
According to scripture we are judged not only as an individual, but as a people or nation. As a saved man loves God's perfect law (Ps. 2), our nation once loved God and His law. It is why we were blessed as a nation. But the unregenerate man sees God's law as repressive. He wants God not only out of his life but out of his nation as well. We see the fruits of the downward spiral.
"You might have found the Middle Ages to be... intolerable..". Christ followers were persecuted by the organized church as well. Men who believed in God were persecuted, rejected and killed for revealing the true Jesus of scripture: John Wycliffe, John Hus, Martin Luther, Menno Simons, John Calvin, etc... Christians want to be lead by Christ, not a church. The churches who persecuted believers and non-believers alike did not represent Christ. Scripture refers to "the bride of Christ" as His church throughout the world. She is meek and lowly not puffed up in pride. She points to Christ not herself. The modern-day Pharisees who many think represent Christ's church do not. They are legalists-- ironically never freed from the law. The atheists and believer are more closely related in that they want the same thing--freedom from religion. The former is not freed from law, the latter is. The atheist hates God's law and is bound by it, the believer loves God's law and is freed from it. Read: Reformation Time Line.
Text originally posted at www.athesits.org