Welcome! I agree with you 100% (which wouldn’t surprise some other members of this forum). I know how discouraging it is to see how heartless and hard hearted many people who call themselves Christians can be.
Don’t despair, though! God is still preserving churches and raising up new churches that take the Gospel seriously, preaching about Jesus as Lord and not just as a good example to follow, and caring for the poor and “the least of these” (Mt. 25:31-46). One group of churches that I have experience with is The Salt Network (https://www.thesaltnetwork.com/). They focus primarily on planting multigenerational churches in cities with colleges or universities, and typically preach sermons that walk through a book of the Bible week by week. If you’re not close to one you can watch many of them online (for example, the founding church at https://cornerstonelife.com/).
I’m reminded of 1 Kings 19, when Isaiah thought he was the only person left who hadn’t abandoned the Lord, and God told him there were still 7000 faithful followers. The Bible says that many people will be deceived by false prophets but I hang on tightly to who God is - holy, good, omniscient, omnipotent, loving, just, …
ha ha… Yet another attempt to portray regular, honest, American-Christians who just want our government to be fiscally responsible and responsive to Americans first, as somehow ‘not’ Christians at all. Take your guilt and scoop it on a cone for your personal partaking. I’ll have none of it thanks.
If your church or organization wants to collect donations and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the oppressed, etc… WONDERFUL. Do it. That’s a great role for any church. Don’t use my tax dollars, while at the same time claiming tax exempt status on all the money you collect or all the money you receive from taxpayers in any form (including USAID).
You know? -and you might be familiar with this… There was a time when America didn’t employ thousands of people to ‘administer aid’ and to ‘influence’ and ‘promote’ American interests and behavior in foreign countries. Churches independently fostered, funded and forwarded “missionaries” to carry out these “missions” around the world. Now we have the State Department with “missions” all around the world-- and we pour Billions into and through Non-governmental-organizations (NGO’s) and these new, taxpayer-funded “missionaries” take our money and support extremist regimes, and transgender operas. It’s disgusting.
It doesn’t make me “less of a Christian” than you, Neal-- to want it to stop.
It doesn’t make me “less of a Christian” than you,
@MrE, I didn’t mention you specifically, and didn’t say you were “less of a Christian”; I just said “many people who call themselves Christians”. Whether that applies to you or not is between you and God, just as what I do and say is according to my understanding of the Bible and my commitment to God, and between myself and Him. All of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus, myself included, need to take Jesus’ words seriously, including Luke 6:43-46ff and Matthew 7:15-23.
After a lot of thought on why we have government at all, I believe that the purpose of a good government is to help us all, as a society, to “love our neighbor”. This could be debated but I don’t want to, and won’t; I’m just putting it out there as something to consider.
I asked if you considered yourself a Christian because I have trouble reconciling what you say with what the Bible says. I simply wanted to know how you would describe/label yourself and perhaps didn’t phrase the question clearly enough. That’s all.
We can have different points of view, feelings, ideas, beliefs, practices, even politics Neal. None of that gives you permission to question my faith. I happen to think you are a bleeding heart liberal, who probably stops short of protecting babies in the womb or the robbing of taxpayers— but I won’t question your Christianity.
It really isn’t a lot of condoms though.
If each condom was worth a dollar…
And each person had sex everyday…
It’s enough for about 140,449.people to have sex.
Or enough for about 1 million people if they had sex once a week.
The United States consists of about 340,110,988 as of 2024…
If you consider people are not going to stop having sex even if they have diseases. And the strain on health care resources that will cause would be asteonomical as stds become antibiotic resistant… And God forbid some of these disease stop being contracted by sex alone. I mean, HIV going airborn would be a health crisis… So… Maybe worth it?
Not to mention unwanted children treated like a punishment from God to unwed mothers, born without fathers to unloving mothers, some with drug addictions, deformed by stds and placed into orphanages where they grow up wild to a life of crime…
Half the battle isn’t buying the condoms but getting the guy to use one. They think its not as fun or less manly or ungodly to make sure the seed doesn’t spread. So maybe it is a waste of money…
But if cannibals are going to eat meat no matter what you tell them. Wouldn’t you want to keep chicken in the freezer just in case they visit?
I love that idea. It’s better than chanting dismal mantras of negative rhetoric like a lot of these political tv shows and radio stations do over and over again. That stuff will rot your brain and twist you like the devil’s puppet.
I love that Christmas special from my childhood… The one with the smurfs where they fought the devil to save two children and a noble man who loved people and provided for tgise in need.
Papa Smurf tells these two children that the evil guy wants you to be afraid. He wants you to cower and give in. Stop doing it. So the children, all the Smurfs and even the evil Gargamel and that cat of his start singing, "Goodness makes the badness go away. Goodness makes you happy every day. Badness cannot start when there is goodness in your heart. Goodness makes the badness go away…
Stop putting dark things in your heart.
Mathew 18:3
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven
We need to accept reality too, though. We live in a fallen world, full of fallen people. Unfortunately happy thoughts didn’t stop the fires in California from burning all those homes and killing some people, or stop COVID from killing people or giving some “long COVID”. Goodness doesn’t always keep badness away, either; some people harm other people, deliberately or negligently, and lots of countries have / have had bad leaders who harm, kill or imprison their own citizens even though most of the people in their country were, and are, good. (Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Cambodia, some Latin American countries, some African countries, and Russia come immediately to mind, among many others past and present.) Sometimes in politics it’s hard distinguishing truth from propaganda, and even harder is seeing the subtleties of some issues - a great many things in life are complicated, even though black or white / yes or no would be much easier.
It’s not about turning off reality. It is about what we give power to. Feed the right wolf. Psychologically you lose the war if you feed yourself negativity. Even the Bible says
Philippians 4:8: Focus on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and worthy of praise
Fear is a prison, it does not free you. Rage and unforgiveness and constantly being a victim does not make you free.
Forgiving frees you.
Loving others frees you.
Doing good is liberating. It has power. Much More than demonizing others. And seeing enemies everywhere.
Good thoughts @Tillman – do you know what else is liberating? Justice is good, and very much a part of “doing good.” Ending evil is good. Ending corruption and grift and abuse… that’s part of doing good. It’s more than just “feeling good” -but it’s nice to feel good too.
Christ only requires that I witness to you. The rest belongs to God. Including who is actually doing evil amd who is not.
The lies, the bad behavior, the mistreatment of neighbors, the neglect and abuse of children, the cheating and stealing what isn’t yours to have or take will be addressed very soon. Justice indeed, America…
Christ and the whole Bible, Old Testament and New, also require that we love our neighbor and help those who need it (Micah 6:6-8, the parable of the Good Samarian in Luke 10:25-37; Matthew 25:31-46; James 1:27, James 2:14-18, and many others)
Micah 6:8 NIV
[8] He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
I feel good when I do things to help people and love my neighbor as the Bible commands. For example, I donate blood every two months (and encourage anyone else who can donate to do so as well! Consider donating!) and through my donations have helped save the lives of literally dozens, even hundreds, of people. Besides donating money to my local church (which has a number of benevolence programs) I also donate monthly to several other organizations (homeless shelters, and others) that help the needy. All of this helps me feel that I’m doing what I can to “fulfill the royal law” (James 2:8).
I have a strong sense of justice and of right and wrong, though, and it’s hard for me to not get upset when I hear about violent criminals being pardoned, things being done that harm or kill needy people directly or negligently, and our government not honoring commitments that in some cases are literally the difference between life or death for millions of people…
But I take comfort in who God is - sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, good, just, and that He has the big picture and will work everything out for the overall best, whether I can see it now or not.
You are right but you misunderstood what I meant. i meant in this moment, my being here, I don’t have to argue to convince you of anything. I just have to say what God has put in my heart to say. The rest belongs to God. I cannot walk another man’s journey for him. We each must have that moment when our hearts open to love, and mentally understand and figure out what Christ was talking about. and we each must have and maintain that relationship with God.
I am not perfect, God knows. But I try. I don’t want this world to end. I don’t like it that some do and are doing their damndest to bring it about. But it all belongs to God. I only do what I am called to do, as all do who are called.
There is a mental hold that has gripped many people across the globe. You can hear it in the rhetoric, the nature and tone of voltility. As Christ said on the cross, they know not what theu do. I have no power in myself to break that spell. Only God can do that.
But when people have attached themselves to a spirit, you cannot just rebuke that spirit without rebuking the person. You must pull them out first from that spirits grasp before sending that spirit away. Otherwise they will follow that spirit like a herd of pigs over a cliff.
But how to help God break such a hold, that is the question. When so mamy are under it’s control. And that spirit’s return to that freed person can mean a greater hold.
Brother stands against brother, neighbot against neighbor, but it is the spirit at large that inspires the war. Our enemy is not flesh and blood.
There’s a right and a wrong way to do things. Trump and Musk are doing it the wrong way (“ready, fire aim”, as a commentator recently said) and are being sloppy in reporting supposed savings. Clinton (despite his moral failings) did it the right way, with 6 months of study before
“The cuts that Clinton made to the federal workforce followed a six-month period called the National Performance Review, launched in March 1993, soon after he took office. The review process ended in September of that year with a report that found nearly 400 recommendations, which Clinton then implemented gradually so that essential services were not interrupted even as the workforce shrank considerably.”
Your complaint is that DOGE is eliminating waste, fraud, corruption and uneccessary positions too fast?
Clinton and Gore set out with a pair of nail clippers, DOGE has a chainsaw. Of course, it’s a much bigger problem today after 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Obama and 4 years of weekends at Bernie’s. The situation demands immediate and impactful action.
My complaint is that he’s going so fast and eliminating critical positions and personnel who are who are experts in their field, and not leaving enough people to do what needs to be done. As I’ve said several times, I’m all in favor of cutting waste if you do it with some forethought but that’s not how they’re doing it - they’re cutting flesh and bone along with fat.
We’ll start feeling some of the fallout soon. For example, my wife are planning a vacation to Yellowstone this summer but they’ve cut rangers who maintain trails and deal with bears… Others who have been cut were keeping tuberculosis, ebola and other diseases from spreading. Other important behind-the-scenes services that aren’t there anymore will become apparent before long, too.
