Today I feel more disheartened than usual! It seems this country is barreling toward destruction with the Religious Right in charge! It is so contradicting...they are the ones who point to the ‘sins’ of the unrighteous and points out to them, the punishment that awaits! Have they gone so ‘batty’... that they have emotionally transported themselves out of living on earth? Who do they see, when they look in the face of a child...or other human beings, some of different colors and origins? Every religion has some redeeming qualities...I utilized some of them myself...they ‘stuck to me!’ One in particular, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Repeated in most all religions that I know! Have the Religious Right, killed off the humane parts of their nature?
I think the religious right credo is: Do unto others before they do unto you..
Ultimately, the pendulum will swing back in our favour. It's the cycle of strife.
I don’t function well, in ‘the cycle of strife!’
@Freedompath I don't think anyone functions well in the cycle of strife except, perhaps, the fear mongers who profit from it.
U misunderstand their intelligence. They only accept that which they agree with. They ignore separation of church and state,kindness,taking care of the poor,greed, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They use the bible in a perverse manner and state how they represent the protectors of the Constitution.They want to present the USA as a christian Nation which is against the thinking of the forefathers.
I don't know that the Bible is being perverted by them so much as cherry picked differently.
The Bible does teach to be kind to widows and orphans and the vulnerable, to treat them just as you would treat Jesus himself.
But ... it also does teach, as Jeff Sessions pointed out, that you should be subject to government authorities because they are ordained by god.
It also teaches ... or at least it's pretty easy to misunderstand as teaching ... that it's an abomination for same couples to have with each other.
It also teaches that the disobedient will be cast off as useless, to be burned in the town garbage dump. And much of the church has gleefully misunderstood / mistranslated this already nasty authoritarian sentiment and merged it with Dante's imagination to produce eternal perdition and literal eternal hellfire.
It also teaches that it's okay to beat a slave senseless so long as he doesn't die too quickly, that it's okay to have indentured servants so long as all debts are forgiven every 50 years, and a lot of other things.
It also teaches things (almost) no one pays attention to anymore, such as, not wearing clothing of mixed fabrics or forbidding women to speak, much less have leadership roles, in church, or avoiding touching women who are menstruating.
Holy books are vague templates for whatever the current religious power elites need them for. That's they're "timeless".
The southern baptist convention has just elected a new leader, who is guiding them away from the Republican party. This marriage of republican and Christian occurred because of abortion politics. They may finally be awakening to the fact that the Republicans aren't really on their side. There is hope.
He's not exactly a progressive or something but he at least understands in the age of #MeToo that they have to at least change their open messaging. How they're going to do that and still remain compatibleist (which the new guy most definitely is) is beyond me, but at least they're wrestling with the issues and recognize they're losing people over it.