BibleForums Christian Message Board

All politicians lie, especially the ones that claim to follow Jesus.  By the time you reach any level of political ascendancy such that your election even matters, you are by nature so compromised that you can justify anything to yourself.

"4 years of lies"... please explain.

How is any politician any different from any other?  They are all about power for the sake of power (see the book 1984).

Every day it feels more and more like the only point of reference for concepts of totalitarianism, oppression and surveillance states that people have is 1984. Its like, perhaps try reading a second book. Maybe something outside of a 75 year old novel. Its not so much that there are no useful ideas and helpful analogies that can be gleaned from the book, its that this highschool staple that should be treated as an accessible introduction to complex topics is instead often presented as the definative work on pathological political systems. It is at the end of the day it is a novel with simplistic representations of people and the morally complex landscape that produces, inhabits, maintains and even overturns pathological political systems. "See 1984" or "Read 1984" isn't informative analysis of our political climate its what people do instead of that to transmit some vague insinuations about how scary it all is. By my reckoning it doesn't lead to a deeper understanding of the dangers posed by whatever item prompted the book recommendation it just pastes over it with some sloganic labels that we can all gawk at,  superficially react to over and exchange like political pokemon cards. That being said, If you really want to understand what I'm talking about you should read an awesome book called "1984".

Anyway those are just some of my personal picadilloes with 1984 recommendations, my true unsolicited criticism is the flattening power of "How is any politician any different from any other?  They are all about power for the sake of power.". Just as people like to assert that "everybody is racist" as if it follows from this rather dubious premise that any and all opposition or sometimes just a particular expression of opposition is hypocritical and is therefore invalid in some way. Even though I think we can all agree that you shouldn't rob a bank, There are more destructive and less destructive ways to go about it. I personally believe that Hank "Murder-Everybody-In-The-Bank" McCoy's style of robbery is susceptible to some vectors of criticism that Gaspar "Hypnotize-The-Manager-Into-Enthusiastically-Relenquishing-The-Cash" Romanov's style isn't. Does that mean that on some level I'm pro bank robbery? I don't think so but to let some folks tell it it does, or at least its a disgusting unjustified double standard worthy of sending me to the pillories to be pelted with spoiled tomatoes and rancid cabbages.

And before you get all huffy, remember that I'm only telling you this because I love you. You see the world defines love as this gushy squishy weak fawning thing, but you and I both know that truly loving someone means saying things that might hurt their feelings in the moment but will ultimately help them grow if they open their hearts to righteous correction. I love you so very much.

You already mentioned Paul on his way to Damascus in the name of God persecuting Christians. Paul was a hard nut to crack and Jesus hit him hard, leaving him flabbergasted for 3 days in complete darkness to figure out what happened to him. And Paul got it. In 3 days he turned 180 degrees, the sign of a real conversion.

Many of us need a mini Damascus experience before they turn 180 degrees, usually they (like me) have to go to the bottom of the well first before they in their despair even think of God. I have seen the battle of my son in law (an atheist) for 20 years before he came to Christ and turned 180 degrees.

After conversion you speak with respect of God as the giver of (your) life and with great thankfulness for the undeserved grace you received saving you for eternity and from your miserable life.

How deep do you need to sink first, what kind of hard nut to crack are you, too often there is a relationship. Blessed are the ones who don't need to sit at the bottom of the well first and just believe.

Well, okay. I don't plan on persecuting any Christians like Paul, I mean outside of my little mess-arounds at places like this. So I don't think I'll need to be hit quite that hard. It is often much easier to get people to believe things when they are under severe stress so its not  surprising to me that many people convert under those conditions. Anyway please tell me about your micro-Damascus? Were you an atheist?

Jesus and the scriptures speak fluently of the "new birth" - so essential that one will never see the kingdom of God without it. To be reborn is to be made spiritually alive as God dwells within and that is the relationship He recognizes.

Yeah, okay so I guess you're not one of those folks that is always gushing about your personal relationship with Jesus?

To finally acknowledge (a version) of God's existence, while usually a good thing, is not the basis for eternal life - God reaching out to impart life to you, however, is. Having once entered into that new life, we grow from there.

Seems to be putting the cart before the horse, I just met the guy for Pete's sake, we'd need to get to know each other a little better before I start letting him impart stuff in me and making eternal life commitments.

All the operation of God, and by faith, at the cross of Christ.

I'm sure you understand that, of course - a matter of conscience.

I actually do not believe that I do understand. Most of what most of you say is fairly opaque to me honestly; Simple yet inscrutable and unwavering in extreme dedication to the certainty of its inimitable gravity and of the futility of further elaboration. I genuinely feel like if God revealed himself to me then I might almost be more excited by the prospect of being able to disregard so much cryptic Christianese about God than I would be by the prospect of being able to directly interact with the creator of the universe...almost.

Maybe you exercise your free will and choose to believe

Ugh I already said I could get a traumatic brain injury, I though this implication was clear

Appears easy in this age of tech and knowledge to assume man knows where he came from and where he's going outside of the revelation of the Creator.

Does it? I feel like these are legitimately 2 of the deepest and hardest questions out there...

When scientists do the same experiments over and over and over for millennia and come to the same conclusions we call it fact

Congratulations

You have been coming to the same conclusion as the wisest man that ever lived.

Fear God and relax and don’t sweat the small stuff

Sure, there are some conclusions, or facts that have been maintained since old timey times, but that is entirely different than saying that there has been no accumulation of new knowledge of meaningful influence since Solomon did an exhaustive analysis of all human endeavors or as he might have said... that there is nothing new under the sun.

Like what do you suppose Solomon thought the sun was made of, or how hot it was, or why it was hot, or how big it was, or how far away it was, or why it moves across the sky, or how old it was? These are all very basic questions that any person ever could have asked themselves, but I'm about as certain as I am of anything that he didn't get to the bottom of a single one of them. Knowledge of Heliophysics was pretty flat for most of human history, and then in like the last 2 minutes of the 9th inning there was an explosion. Actually I don't think that is how innings are measured, I do not watch or enjoy baseball, but like you get what i'm trying to say; Most of what we know about the sun is relatively recently acquired.
 
Ecclesiastes is an ancient text, and it is true that the writer(s) of that text were not likely to see anything new under the sun, nor were many generations that came before or after them. Meaningful improvements to medicine or agriculture or production or cartography or whatever were probably not going to happen, and when it did it would likely be the slow creeping evolution that is as conspicuous as fingernail growth. Life, for very long stretches of human history remained essentially unchanged, you could drop a guy from one point in history into some other point in history for most of history and while the politics, language, borders and art styles may have been different, the basic level of knowledge about the world (and importantly access to it) would be essentially unchanged.

We do, for better or worse live at a point in human history that is exceptional when compared to most of human history. There are new things under the sun everyday, the very idea of inevitable and rapid technological progress is something that we take for granted, but I'm most places for most of human history nobody invented a wheel. The idea that my {hypothetical} grandchildren will likely live in a drastically different world than I do seems obvious to me, but it would have likely been alien to Solomon (at least in the way that I mean it).

All that to say, Solomon can be forgiven for believing that the world is more or less static and that knowing things is a distracting trifle at best and a frustrating quagmire at worst. However we have example after example of the old dictum that knowledge is power. Not only are there new things under the sun, but those new things use knowledge of the sun itself  to convert its radiation into electrical current to power all manner of other new things that Solomon couldn't have possibly examined because he preceded even the antecedents of their antecedent's antecedents. Acting as if Solomon's wisdom applies so broadly distorts the little utility of what he did say into something absurd to the point of parody... I have no idea why you insist upon it.

TLDR: I believe you are grossly overstating the applicability of Solomon's thing that he said.

Quote from: Oscar_Kipling on April 15, 2024, 07:18:54 PM

Quote from: IMINXTC on April 14, 2024, 08:13:11 PM

Oscar, per your example, I have no idea which birds God created first, and consider it completely irrelevant and not problematic at all, regardless of human speculation.

Okay. See you around.

haha okay, my question was less about the specific example or if you knew the answer to it so much as I was illustrating the sort of trivial thing that you might feel okay admitting to ever wondering about... and it appears you either still don't understand what I was asking, or for whatever reason you just don't want to say. See you around.

Have you ever wondered what is needed to make you a believer?

Are you asking me if I have considered what could cause me to believe in God? if so, then yes, yes I have.

Oscar, per your example, I have no idea which birds God created first, and consider it completely irrelevant and not problematic at all, regardless of human speculation.

Okay. See you around.

haha okay, my question was less about the specific example or if you knew the answer to it so much as I was illustrating the sort of trivial thing that you might feel okay admitting to ever wondering about... and it appears you either still don't understand what I was asking, or for whatever reason you just don't want to say. See you around.