Jersey Girl wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 9:21 pm
It's not about God. It's about hypocrites USING God to forward their agenda.
So what I am getting at is that it's not primarily about religious belief at all. It's about hypocritical control freaks who sometimes function under the guise of Christianity.
How does one state this without falling into the ‘othering’ trap that Res mentioned?
What does one do when large numbers within your community - or numbers large enough to manipulate the levers of the legislature - are basically meeting the description that you give above?
Everyone has an agenda, and a method - or a weapon, if you will - that they’ll use to advance it, because most folks (as Schmo pointed out) seem to need to find their identity within their beliefs. If their weapon of choice is religion, then how does one reach an armistance? What’s the incentive for the faithful to compromise in any way if they want to stand behind their version of God and proclaim that this God - and by extension, themselves - absolutely cannot be wrong? How does one most effectively counter their need to
control?
That's exactly why last evening, I asked canpakes if they could post a series of perhaps 4 quotes made by politicians where they make claims about the God of Christianity. I can pick those apart like nobody's business and that should be the focus of criticisms leveled towards them.
We can start with Greene’s and Boebert’s statements. How will you talk any different opinion into them? And if they effectively can control or eliminate the options for nonbelievers by virtue of their position, then why would they shift position, when what they push for rewards them so well?
It would be like asking Trump to not say the sort of stupid crap that he says to gain the fawning admiration of his Base. With a third of the country (most of them very willing to claim to be on the side of God) always eager to believe any crap statement that he’ll make in order to convince themselves that they’re right rather than challenge their own assumptions, there ends up being no downside for Trump to act differently. Same for Greene and Boebert, except that they operate on a smaller scale. And same for your or my enthusiastic evangelical neighbor or relative, just acting on an even smaller scale. The payoff is the same: never having to challenge one’s own beliefs, and being rewarded by others who similarly want to remain unchallenged and seem ‘right’, regardless of whatever is
true.
I have several super-faithful relatives immersed in that reality … wrapping their belief in God with and around a political opinion that requires believing in massive election fraud, believing that Trump was sent by God for them, believing the crap posted on Facebook by self-proclaimed modern prophets like Johnny Enlow, who reel in their faithful audience by feeding them a constant chum of ‘prophecy’ about how
any minute now, God is going to magically have Biden arrested and then restore Trump back into his rightful seat of Christian destiny.
I don’t mention this ‘because Trump’; if not for him, there’d likely be another charlatan that would spring up in his place to take the
faithful flock under the wing, for the mutual benefit of both parties.
That said … and to come back to the point … what’s the
one weird trick to reach into and talk with the rational center that one hopes still exists within these folks (and loved ones) minds?