Kimberly Forder was a stay-at-home mom and her husband Robert was a painter. The Forders had the reputation of a “happy, religious family that moved to Africa to pursue Christian missionary work.” They home-schooled their eight adopted children.
There was something else going on in that home, and it was straight out of hell — the Forder’s eight-year-old child Christopher, ended up dead on the bedroom floor. This sadly familiar tale of the publicly pious Christian one-man, one-woman headed family gone horribly wrong comes to us from the Kitsap Sun in Washington State. Blender Gary said the press conference was held two blocks from his house.
As 8-year-old Christopher Forder lay on his bedroom floor, stricken with pneumonia, heavily bruised and nearing death, his father called a family meeting.This wasn’t a one-time event. The court records show a pattern of abuse, hidden from authorities. Both parents say they are innocent of the charges, claiming the boy had bruising from undiagnosed reactive detachment disorder — basically they are saying the kid scratched and picked at his skin, and hurt himself by throwings his body against walls. Of course that doesn’t explain why the child died from pneumonia. It also doesn’t explain this:Inside the family’s Seabeck-area home, the father, Robert, told his seven children they had a choice: They could bury their brother in the backyard, or call 911 and risk having the state snatch all of the children away because of Christopher’s obvious bruising.
The account of Christopher’s last moments is contained in court documents alleging that his mother, 44-year-old Kimberly Forder, abused and neglected her son to the point of death, never seeking outside medical help as his pneumonia grew worse.
One child told detectives that Christopher was beaten an average of six times a day. It was alleged Kimberly Forder was the primary disciplinarian.If he didn’t chew his food correctly, his mother would take away his food, sometimes for days at a time, documents allege. The boy resorted to stealing scraps from a compost heap, and eating dog food.
If the boy soiled himself, he was forced to wear the dirty diaper, sometimes on his head. If he didn’t wash his clothes correctly in a 5-gallon bucket, his parents were accused of dunking his head in the dirty water “until he stopped struggling,” court documents said.
163 Responses to “‘Christian’ family accused of killing their child”
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It’s okay though because his soul was saved and that’s what really matters.
And what government agency allowed them to adopt eight kids?
Second question: are these domestic or overseas adoptees? Because if it’s the latter, then we go down another circle of Hell.
And somewhere out there, there are wingnuts glad that Christopher didn’t have a chance to turn out gay…
You gotta love the hermetic nature of the lies — the kid had a psychological disorder (which naturally just appeared out of nowhere) that made him injure himself, but the family couldn’t get him any treatment for it because that would have looked bad. This is one quiver full of arrows that are going to fly very badly; I feel sorry for the rest of the kids.
It’s “reactive attachment disorder” - there’s no such thing as detachment disorder, unless that’s what the parents have that makes them not clue into the fact that attachment disorder only happens when kids are seriously neglected when they are very small. I’m thinking if he had RAD, those folks certainly made their contributions to it.
And it’s gays and feminists who are ruining Marriage in America ™. (spits in disgust)
My husband and I spent four and a half hours at the Seton Southwest ER with our 8 year old son who had broken his arm at after-school care. (Upper right arm, in an ‘overlaying fracture’ bad enough that the techs on duty kept telling me, “I wouldn’t be as quiet as he is if I had that break.” When ER employees tell you they think something is bad, it’s really bad.) We’re going to be off work today getting a permanent cast applied, if we’re not spending the day in surgery.
I report all this to explain why this story made me hit the roof. Repeatedly. We’re Bad, Evil, Destroyers of Society because I have a full-time professional job. Lots of wingnuts would blame Steve and me for Andy’s injury because someone else was watching him when he fell off an indoor slide. (FWIW: If he had been in my care when he got this injury, I’d probably have had a long and unpleasant talk with CPS since it’s a bad break.) My kid’s accident proves I’m a bad parent, but this sadistic harridan beats and starves her son — same age as mine, by the way — and allows him to die from pneumonia. Pneumonia, by the way, is very, very painful, and generally follows other, easily treatable infections. Healthy, well-treated eight-year-olds don’t die from it. Still, until the boy died, in the eyes of most wingnuts, she was a much better mother than I am. Daddy Dobson even has advice in his books on how to hit your kid so that the bruises don’t show and you won’t have to talk to CPS.
Right now, I think I could kill those parents with my bare hands. After I spend all morning with a kid in pain because of the insurance paperwork required before I can get his permanent cast, I’m sure I’ll be able to do so. GRRRR!!!!!
Okay, the father calls a house meeting and has the family watch their adopted son die. Clearly, household decisions are in his hands, which is unsurprising for such a “Christian” household.
In the eyes of the court, “his mother. . .abused and neglected her son to the point of death”. Emphasis mine, of course. She’s the “primary disciplinarian”, so he’s not responsible.
Mmm, smell that patriarchy.
It gets worse:
This is not a healthy family. Forder’s husband and other kids are in Liberia. She came home for medical treatment and was then arrested on charges about the death of the son going back to 2002.
I formerly represented parents and children in state intervention cases. Parents who responded to allegations by talking about God were universally responsible for the worst abuse, with sexual abuse disclosures commonplace within weeks of the children entering foster care.
Every member of the defense bar knew that deep sh!t was on the way when their new client started talking about how God wouldn’t let them do that.
Hey, I found this site the other day linked from Gawker…
Just wanted to say that NOT taking a child in for medical treatment is negligent, and the parents are still accountable (although it seems pretty clear there was abuse)..
I am not Christian, but I’m sure Christians would not like being associated with this family, just as the majority of Catholic priests are not pedophiles..
I am interested in Paul’s comment. Why do you think that is? Do you think it is genuine or lies? That is bizarre.
This is incredibly disturbing. Are we to understand that the abuse was only directed toward that one child? And that the other children essentially voted to allow him to die?
This speaks of some deeply fucked up “he deserved it” rationality that’s probably worming its way into those other kids’ belief systems.
Why the scare quotes? These are genuine Christians. Let’s not contribute to the No True Scottsman defense by implicitly accepting that all Christians are good people therefore anybody who’s not a good person can’t be a ‘real’ Christian.
Did they accept Jesus as their savior? Then they’re Christian. Maybe that offends Christians, but they should clean their own houses.
I believe I read the stat that of fathers who physically or sexually abuse their children, their top two pathologies are as follows: 1) addicts 2) fundamentalist. These numbers come from case work, but somehow the myth persists that family values belong to the religious crowd.
Um, no. In fact, being highly religious apparently can be a potential warning signal.
Most conservative Christian parents love their children, like all parents, and don’t abuse or murder them, but at the same time, I don’t think the fact that there seem to be many conservative Christian parents who are abusive or neglectful is a coincidence entirely seperate from their religious, political, and social views. It’s true that, like loving parents, abusive parents can be found in all groups (there are abusive liberal parents and all that). However, the disproportionate share of abusive conservative Christian families is partly encouraged by a “spare the rod, spoil the child” publishing industry associated with Focus on the Family, etc.
More subtly, though, I think it’s encouraged by conservative views about childbearing as an obligation. Many people love children and want to have kids of their own, but some people don’t. Liberals say “if you want to have kids, and raise them lovingly, that’s great, and if you don’t want to have kids, then don’t have them.” Conservatives say “you should have kids. Being ‘child free’ is self-centered, selfish, etc. If you want to have kids and love them, great. If not, well, you can still do your duty.”
So you end up with “would-be” bad parents who are liberals simply not having kids, and “would-be” child-free couples who are conservatives having kids, being parents, and doing it badly.
In answer to Ang’s question:
My take is that when a normal person does something wrong (broke a friend’s dish, for example), and is called on it, they’ll respond by saying “I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry about that,” or “It wasn’t me! I was across town!” or “Well, you shouldn’t have left it on the stairs where people could trip over it.” All these responses address the issue at hand, with varying degrees of acceptance or rejection of responsibility.
People who *immediately* invoke God *any* time they’re accused of wrongdoing are doing two things. One is trying to escape all responsibility by blaming thier own actions on a third party. The other is that they’re aware some people stop thinking when religion is invoked. Some people believe any allegation of “God says so” and won’t question further. So really calculating abusers try to use this to block criticism of their own actions.
The point of the scare quotes, Chet, is that “Christians” are supposed to live outwardly Godly lives and serve as examples of patience and charity. The whole meaning of the word “Christian” is “Christ-like.” Maybe in your brand of Christianity acceptance of Christ is all it takes to call oneself a Christian. I was raised in the Pentacostal church, however. We were taught that one must “believe in [their] heart and confess with [their] mouth” in order to be a Christian. That means you can’t just say you’ve accepted Jesus and then starve your child to death. You have to actually model your behavior after Jesus Christ’s, in order to be a true Christian.
By abusing and neglecting their child until he died, the Forders were not displaying “Christian” attitudes and behaviors prescribed by their religion. For them to call themselves “Christian” is indeed hypocritical, and they deserve to be judged for their wrongdoings and failure to model their behavior after Christ.
Maybe adoption should be limited to those segments of society that haven’t built up a sense of entitlement. We can’t stop the fundies from having babies, but let’s start handing kids over *only* to gay people, single women, etc…y’know, people who haven’t been getting away with heinous shit for enough centuries that they believe it to be their literally God-given right. Sure, it’s prejudiced, but maybe what some of these wingnuts need is a taste of the other side of the fence.
Meh. This story is sick. Gimme more coffee.
This is incredibly disturbing. Are we to understand that the abuse was only directed toward that one child? And that the other children essentially voted to allow him to die?
This is unfortunately not an uncommon pattern — though all of the children suffer at least some abuse, both physical and mental, there’s usually one kid who catches the brunt of it because s/he becomes the family scapegoat. The parents will turn the other kids against that one by doing occasional collective punishment: “Johnny was bad, so now EVERYONE gets a spanking because you didn’t stop him.”
I wonder if it’s also something to do with the authoritarianism and the frustration levels it causes..”Gosh hang it, I have to follow all these rules and so do you. If I can do it, you can too so you are just being lazy, stubborn, bad, whatever.” After all, the inability to be appropriate in expectation for the behavior of a child of a certain age is not uncommon. Expecting a 3 yr old to read, expecting a toddler to understand long-winded speeches, expecting an 8 yr old to think about consequences before doing something stupid, expecting a 15 yr old to act exactly like an adult but one you can still boss around. These things are so common that it seems almost no one understands or is familiar with child development or normal brain growth. One would think, if one didn’t know and one was about to become a parent, one would do some research on these things but….that might be asking too much, I guess.
I am no expert, but I understand that it is not at all unusual for one child in a family to be made into a scapegoat and abused while all the other children are well cared for (except, of course, for the damage that witnessing the abuse does). That’s one of the things that makes these types of cases difficult to prosecute.
“However, the disproportionate share of abusive conservative Christian families is partly encouraged by a “spare the rod, spoil the childâ€? publishing industry associated with Focus on the Family, etc.”
So true. I was abused at a Christian preschool because of that crap.
Gex–addicts and fundamentalists are often two sides of the same coin, as my stepkids’ former alcoholic/current raging fundie mother exemplifies. Isn’t one of the first precepts of twelve-step programs that you have to accept that there’s a “higher power?” Substitution of one addictive substance for another, as I read it.
God is typically used by people like this (I won’t argue about whether or not they’re “real Christians”) to justify any form of behavior they choose to engage in, or shift off the blame if they don’t want to take it themselves (the devil is also good in this case).
From what I’ve seen, I have absolutely no doubt that what Paul has said above is completely true. Whether or not the people involved have genuine belief/faith or if they’re lying is a harder call. In the case I live with every day, I believe that this woman has spent so much time lying that she literally cannot distinguish between lies and truth anymore; therefore, when she says that what she does is what God wants her to do, she may truly believe that’s the case. So may the parents that Paul has dealt with.
Those poor children. I am so sad.
I just can’t get over what this must be doing to those other kids, psychologically. What kind of abusive adults are they going to grow into? They’re already demonstrating blame-the-victim group behavior; you can just seem them in twenty years at their first arraignment for domestic violence, arguing that the victim deserved it for being “bad.”
Ang - the reason why alot of the worst abusers in AMERICA are christians is because the fundamentalists in America are mostly christian.
The problem is that the fundamentalist mindset is one of people-as-property.
Example of human ownership in fundamentalism:
God owns everyone.
God gives fathers total authority (read ownership) over children and wife/wives.
Wife has total authority over what happens in the home, unless husband intervenes.
Oldest children have authority over younger children.
Boys have authority over girls.
Therefore - the most vulnerable are usually the young daughters OR effeminate boys, who often suffer doubly - one for being effeminate, and two, for not living up to their manly duties.
i
Regarding the question of “Are we to understand that the abuse was only directed toward that one child? And that the other children essentially voted to allow him to die?”
It’s true that many abusers pick one scapegoat for the brunt of the abuse. Some other factors to consider:
The father gathered all the children and told them if Social Services were called, they would be taken from their home, separated, and have who-knows-what done to them. That’s a threat. Especially if you’ve been abused, maybe almost as much as your brother who got pneumonia, the prospect of ‘what people who don’t even claim to love you might do’ can be really scary.
And when the control freak who’s always had power over you threatens bad things if you take action X, that’s usually a strong signal you should avoid X if you want to survive.
If any one of them had tried to call Social Services, he could have beaten them to a pulp before help arrived. They undoubtedly knew that.
Most importantly, these were kids. What could they do? Nobody reasonable asks kids to make decisions in emergencies. That’s an adult’s responsibility. By telling the kids they were participating in decisions, making them feel complicit in abusing their brother, this man was just extending his cruel mind games.
Nowhere in that description of that family meeting do I get any sense of anything like a vote or a shared decisionmaking process. Much more like when Bush gives a speech saying “We have a choice between sending another 20,000 soldiers to get shot at in Iraq and handing over our nuclear-weapons keys to Osama bin Laden” and then does whatever he was going to do anyway.
Stories like this always remind me of Alice Miller and her writings on “poisonous pedagogy.” In, I think, For Your Own Good, she describes the commandment about honoring your parents as a keystone of the system which forces children into the desperate situation of having to please unpredictable authoritarian figures who can mete out punishment at their own discretion. What a different world we would live in, she writes, if instead of the children honoring the parents, the parents were commanded to honor the children.
And, you know, if these people are Christians, if being a Christian and saying, “I’ve accepted Jesus as my savior,” somehow makes this all right, then I can never be one with a clear conscience.
Maybe in your brand of Christianity acceptance of Christ is all it takes to call oneself a Christian. I was raised in the Pentacostal church, however.
So the fuck what? What, Pentecostals get to define Christianity for everybody else?
I don’t think so. These people say that they’re Christian; therefore, by their own standard, they are. Why would we judge them by Pentecostal standards?
If you don’t like what Christians are doing, clean your own house. Deal with their behavior. These arguments that they’re not “true” Christians because of their actions are fallacious - or don’t they have the No True Scotsman fallacy where you live?
Seconding what Rozasharn just said, here. In my experience, abusers sometimes couch their threats in terms of how “nice” they’re being. “Some fathers wouldn’t be so patient with a brat who did X. Some fathers would just let the little animal starve. Better thank your lucky stars . . .” Etc.
I suspect that (a) the other children knew full-well that calling DCS wasn’t a real option because it would send their parents into a rage (something they would be quite reasonably afraid of), and (b) they strongly suspected that if they were taken into custody, things would get even more horrible for them. If they buy into the BS their parents had been feeding them—and they’re kids, how would they know how the rest of the world works—they might believe that their parents love them dearly, that they provoke all the things they’ve suffered, and that if their parents didn’t love them it would be far worse. From what I’ve heard, just one of the soul-killing aspects of working for DCS is trying to help children who are absolutely terrified of being rescued, who see the social worker as their worst nightmare rather than a person trying to help them.
Mind you, the posters who worry about what these kids will go on to do have some very legitimate concerns. Just for starters, these children have been given an extremely dark and twisted idea of what love entails and how family works. They need counselling. They need it intensely. But at the moment, they’re still victims, not villains, and (IMO, of course) they shouldn’t be held responsible for what those monsters pressured them into.
Irene
I don’t understand why our state agencies allow religious maniacs to be foster parents… It should be the most obvious red flag out there.
I say these people are not Christians. I say that because I cannot believe that anyone who is a true follower of Jesus, who told his followers to love the Lord with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love their neighbors as themselves, could then turn around and beat their child black and blue, leave him dying on the floor, and instruct his brothers and sisters to bury him in the backyard.
I may be wrong. I don’t know. But I do know that if I am wrong, that if these people are Christians, if being a Christian means it is acceptable to kill your child, then I am not one, and can never be one.
I know that this is vile and ostensibly beneath me; I know this sounds like a FReeper talking — but since that is exactly how this is making me feel, I guess that’s apt:
This warrants a death penalty.
I acknowledge that this is even worse because the “mother” is so obviously deeply mentally ill, and in desperate need of serious help, and the “father” is almost certainly more so.
I don’t care.
Karen Jan 26th, 2007 at 10:12 am “Daddy Dobson even has advice in his books on how to hit your kid so that the bruises don’t show and you won’t have to talk to CPS.”
I read a lot of blogs, media, etc, including ones that have quoted or described Dobson’s work, but I never knew this before. Thank you, Karen.
I can’t believe that these people and their followers get any traction at all in the world, let alone get to decide that gay people can’t be adoptive or foster parents, but people like this can, eight times over. I will never, ever get that.
Chet:
In fact, we shouldn’t be judging them at all. They were just doing what comes naturally to millions of Christians the world over.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you’re not allowed to neglect your children until they die of pneumonia. Anything that isn’t expressly forbidden is perfectly acceptable, because abstraction from general principles isn’t the Christian way.
So they were, in fact, behaving like Christians. QED.
Apparently the mother had a blog. I think it’s gone now, though. But while Googling, I found this:
Yeah, this must just be religious persecution. [eyeroll]
If I were ever pregnant with a child I couldn’t or wouldn’t raise, i would abort it just to avoid having the poor little parasite get adopted into a family like this and spend their lives in a level of Hell deeper than Satan ever imagined. Not only do the parents abuse the children and make them watch while they kill their brother, they make them collaborators in the death by calling this “family meeting” in which the children have just enough pretend power to feel guilty about their actions without having enough power to make an actual decision.
I say that because I cannot believe that anyone who is a true follower of Jesus, who told his followers to love the Lord with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love their neighbors as themselves, could then turn around and beat their child black and blue, leave him dying on the floor, and instruct his brothers and sisters to bury him in the backyard.
Really? You really can’t believe that someone who says they love the Lord with all their heart could do those things? The evidence suggests that’s fairly easy for such a person to do.
Even Hitler called his mother. How hard do you think it usually is for people who say good things to do bad things?
Being in a religion doesn’t automatically make you a good person. So you can’t use the fact that someone isn’t a good person to prove they’re not in a religion.
That’s the infuriating arrogance of Christians; the assumption that Christianity has such a monopoly on good people that bad people can’t possibly be Christian. Why, because going into the church burns them? Bullshit.
I wonder what’s up with this?
Karen, great and mordant comments. I hope your son’s arm heals quickly. Probably the reason that he was so composed in the ER with such a bad break is because he had his loving parents with him!
10$ says the kid that DSHS placed there was the one their oldest was raping.
i’m sure jesus told him to do it.
Frankly, i’m willing to hang this, and any other fundy-influenced patriarchal slaying (and there are many) around the necks of anyone who doesn’t immediately denounce this shit as horrific.
Matter of fact, let’s go ask Focus on the Family for their comments on how their methodology contributed to this heinous act.
Chet said:
I believe someone who says it could do those things, yes. Do I believe that person is a Christian? No, I do not.
What I’m trying to say is that I believe someone can say they are a Christian and not be one. In this case, I believe these people say and believe that they are Christians and have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. But I also believe that they are not Christians, because someone who truly followed the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t do such things.
I imagine you will now excoriate me for various things, including imposition of my own moral standards on others and so forth. That’s fine. This is what I’ve worked out for myself. It doesn’t always make sense inside my head, so I’m not surprised if it doesn’t make sense outside of it.
Oh, Jesus said more than “love God” and “love thy neighbor.” This article gave me the willies: http://www.slate.com/id/2132993/
Tasty quotes:
While we’re singing about peace on earth and good will to men, it is worth remembering that in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus declared: ‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ Then, quoting the prophet Micah, he intoned:
‘For I have come to turn “a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.’
. . . He announces to a crowd of followers that “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.” This is not the stuff of “family values.”
Looks like the Forders might have been right on track, after all.
magikmama -
I fully agree that I know a few fundamentalists (or as I say - “Crazy” Christians), and I have witnessed a lot of judgemental behaviors. I was just blown away that people who think they are acting in a Christian manner would do sometihng like kill / abuse a child.
I guess the stuff about family roles, etc fits into that. That’s messed up, though. I just think extremists give a lot of people a bad reputation, and I have friends who are Christian but they are very tolerant and accepting of other religions (but, granted, I live in the NE where I guess people in general are more like that…). I still don’t think other extreme fundamentalists would support this behavior, or at least, I would hope not.
Interestingly, in many parts of the world, reactive attactment disorder is the label given to children who actually have autism. Although this kid sounds like he was in a position to legitimately have developed RAD, his self-injurious behavior, problems with toilet training, and inability to follow directions sound like autistic behaviors as well. Either way, though, he needed someone willing to help him learn to do things in ways that made sense to him, not someone who would beat him for disobedience and then let him die of a preventable illness. Fundie parents of children with autism kill their kids while trying to exorcise the possessing spirit; fundie parents of children with RAD let them die in the bathroom… What can I say, I wasn’t terribly surprised by Paul’s comments.
On the topic of the family dynamics of abuse, one of the most poignant and disturbing books I’ve ever read was Mikal Gilmore’s Shot in the Heart. The author is a writer for Rolling Stone who is also Gary Gilmore’s younger brother. The combination of religious and physical abuse that Gary Gilmore suffered is pretty horrific and, while you can’t forgive his killing spree, you come to understand what kind of background is required to make someone do that.
Mikal Gilmore says in the book that the only thing that saved him from turning out like his brother was that their father died right before Mikal was the age where their father started escalating the abuse with Gary and their third brother.
There aren’t any entries on the blog, but the family did have a website:
liberia4jesus
The stress on their devotion to helping children is ironic, in a deeply tragic way.
Chet:
You also can’t use the fact that someone claims to be in a religion to prove that they actually follow the tenets of that religion.
But if you don’t follow the tenets of the religion you claim for yourself (or if you don’t know them well enough to recognize the difference), it’s pretty much axiomatic that you aren’t what you say you are. QED.
The funny thing, Chet, is that you seem to have an even lower opinion of Christianity than most of the rest of us. We can at least admit that it has its heart in the right place, and expects a fairly high standard of behaviour from its adherents. For you, however, being Christian is apparently no more complicated or demanding than slapping a “Hi, my name is…” sticker on your lapel. A blank one, at that.
Trillian: “Maybe adoption should be limited to those segments of society that haven’t built up a sense of entitlement.”
A very good point. Unquestionably, a sense of entitlement and a belief that you are automatically exempt from criticism because you’re just so *good* (meaning, virtuous, intelligent, professionally-trained, in tight with the correct god) is a prerequisite for abuse.
Irene, unfortunately fear of being placed in foster care by DCS is not entirely irrational. They screen families poorly (case in point above) and worse yet, shuffle them around from one family to another, thus increasing the chances of their coming into contact with bad people (and preventing them from bonding to any family, ever).
Badgermama, if the state vetoed a family on religious grounds, that would be rightly condemned as discrimination. Besides, whose religion would undergo the most hostile scrutiny, do you suppose?
Re: One child being singled out:
Still don’t really understand why people do these things in the first place, let alone something as pathalogical as that, but I do personally know of two cases in which this happened. I lost track of the one child; the other grew up to be horribly abusive and narcisistic.
Re: Why do “pious” people do horrid things:
I can say categorically, from my own experiences with people of many religions, that the truly God-fearing (for whatever value of “God”) don’t proclaim that they are; for the most part, you don’t really even know they’re all that religious unless/until it comes up in subtle context. They’re too busy living their beliefs to make a scene of them; moreover, they’re not usually interested in beating anyone else over the head with them either. They respect other people. Really.
The louder they bang the God drum, the more they have to hide.
My take: It’s a distraction, like sleight of hand - while you’re looking at the thumping bible, you don’t see the horror two feet away. Until you do, anyway.
Ah, Chet, I see you’ve been donating to Scotsmen Without Borders again. “One True Scotsman” only applies to things outside of actual, you know, accepted definitions. I could call myself a Jew, but since I’m not Jewish by decent (to the best of my knowlege) and I attend a Lutheran church and beleive in the divinity of Jesus, I’m not really a Jew, despite self-labelling. Now, these folks, probably Christians, I’m sorry to say. Not especially good ones, but Christians. Other Christians are no more responsible for their acts than you are for the atheist regime in, say, China.
Dan:
The problem arises with defining those tenets. It is as Chet said earlier, the no true Scotsman fallacy. Christianity is what christians make it. As there is not monolithic exclusive guidelines, this family is as christian as anyone else claiming to be. Now if enough christians manage to get together and make some basic guidelines things might change. As is however, saying one is a christian seems to be about the only commonly held tenet.
First let me say this is a horrible tragic situation and should be dealt with severely and decried by all. My heart is torn for the surviving children.
Wow what a lot of hatred against Christianity comes out when the offending party is a “Christian”. If this were a homosexual atheist or feminist couple would you issue blanket condemnation of both groups?
One thing is for sure this conduct is against everything taught in the Bible and exemplified by the life of Jesus. The church or individuals do not define true Christianity. True Christianity was modeled by Jesus and is taught in the New Testament. Persons claiming to be Christian are to judge themselves and be judged by others according to the standards of Christ like conduct.
I agree the visible organized church needs to do much more to teach and train it’s adherents in New Testament Christian conduct. To our shame we fall far short in condemning immoral behavior in our midst.
I hear much decrying of authority in these posts. I believe authority is hated because of our rebellious spirit and because of abuse of authority. Authority is as necessary as responsibility. If a person is to be held responsible that person must be given the authority necessary to carry out that responsibility. Responsibility and authority must be equal. There is great misunderstanding within and without the Church when it comes to authority and responsibility.
I do not expect non-Christians to accept the following rule of life. I put it out as a glimpse of what the Bible teaches Christian conduct looks like. The world is right to judge our conduct by Biblical standards if we claim to be people of the book.
Biblically God is responsible for all creation so he has ultimate authority. Biblically man has first responsibility for the family. God will hold the man responsible for being a godly example of self-sacrificing love in providing for the family. The man must have the authority to meet this responsibility. Biblically woman is to stand beside her husband as a partner in seeing to these responsibilities. She must have the necessary authority to meet that responsibility. Children are responsible to learn to live in loving respect with others. They must have the authority to meet their responsibility.
Submission is required in two ways.
1.Submission to the one in authority.
2. Submission to lovingly serve and meet the needs of those to whom we have responsibilities.
It’s easy for us to demand submission from others while neglecting our responsibilities to others.
1 Corinthians 11:3 Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
Ephesians 5
Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives and Husbands
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Eh, whatever. The Bible and all other “holy” books were written by people, not divinely ordained. I was raised Catholic and even as a ten-year-old inwardly fumed that husbands only had to LOVE their wives but wives had to RESPECT (they actually called it OBEY as I recall) their husbands.
I think Chet’s point is also Christ’s point: Matthew 7: 15-17
15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Chet’s pointing out the division between what people say, and what they do. I think Christ would count dead 8 year olds as ‘evil fruit”.
Ang - my point is that there is an underlying philosophy in fundamentalism, which, at it’s heart, implies not only that it’s OK for people to be owned, but that ownership of others is NECESSARY in order to be godly.
It is this kind of thought pattern which lends itself to abuse. Even if only, say, 5% of the fundie population had the propensity towards beating the shit out of their kids, this kind of thinking not only fails to deter this behavior, it actually encourages it under the guise of headship/honor/whatever.
Well, color me naive, but I’ve never heard of a “homosexual atheist or feminist couple” doing this to one of their kids.
I think it’s incredibly disingenuous to suggest that the male-headship, pro-corporal punishment, world-be-damned ethos of this family didn’t contribute significantly to this poor little boy’s death. Are you capable of reading the Bible verses you cut-n-pasted and thinking about what the violent and frankly anti-family implications of those might be, or does that just require a little too much self-reflection and possible self-condemnation?
Just thinking about this child lying there in pain, waiting for death, while his parents had a quick tactical meeting with his siblings, makes me feel like throwing up. And giving every member of my atheist, feminist, gay-friendly nuclear family a big freakin’ hug.
(now returning to lurkmode)
Hey Halfmad, Love and respect are not mutually exclusive. The Bible teaches wife, husband and all to love others. That includes your husband and even your enemies and those who speak and do hateful things against you.
I don’t see any hatred towards Christians as a group here. What I see going on is that several people - rightly, in my mind - would like to see Christians just for one fucking second acknowledge the fact that you can be Christian and a bad person at the same time. It’s entirely possible for Christians to do terrible, evil things - just like it is possible for any human being who is a member of any arbitrary group to do terrible, evil things. You’re not special, and I don’t particularly agree with the statement that “Christians have their hearts in the right place.” They are a large group of people, thus various members of this group could have their hearts in any number of places, right or not. So let’s stop with the fallacies and the arrogance and just admit that Christians are people like everybody else. Christianity is a belief system, just like any other belief system.
JB, do you seriously think that most of us haven’t been slammed over the head, time and time again, with your beliefs? I assure you, we have. Why do you insist on coming onto a blog and taking up valuable bandwidth to publish a long post full of things we’ve already known? What, exactly, do you believe you will accomplish? And don’t give me that crap about witnessing. We all know what y’all believe. Many of us have chosen to turn away becuase of that.
I don’t CARE what your bible says. I don’t CARE what your religion teaches. Trust me, I know it, as a child of Bob Jones University graduates, and a childhood and adolescense spent in a Southern Baptist church. I’ve heard enough of it, it’s warped me (and millions of others) enough.
We don’t want to hear you blather. Get it?
And, as for the OP, I think that conservative christanity is directly responsible for violent behavior, and the acceptence of violent behavior. After all, you have a religion focused around the torture and murder of a person by his father (a theme that gets repeated again and again, from Adam eating the “fruit” of “knowledge,” to Abraham and Issac, to Jesus, to the Woman in Revealations. One big mound of sexism and infanticide). A religion with a penchent for meditating upon and glorifying that murder. A religion that rejoyces in destruction. Is it any wonder its most faithful adherents are twisted?
JB:
One thing is for sure this conduct is against everything taught in the Bible and exemplified by the life of Jesus. The church or individuals do not define true Christianity. True Christianity was modeled by Jesus and is taught in the New Testament.
followed by:
1 Corinthians 11:3 Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
Ephesians 5 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Pardon me, JB, but don’t you think that if you’re exhorting people to follow Christ’s teachings, you should quote someone other than Paul, who never actually met the guy?
Culturally Catholic two cents: “Christians” have ruined the word Christian. Christian is like Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz telling the mean lady on the bike that she’s too Christian to tell her what she really thinks. Christian is restraint, control, doing unto others. Christian is not throwing stones, judging not less we be judged, humility, love, winning by perservering and peaceful resistance. “Christian” is big stupid billboards and purity balls, and telling women that their husbands are to be submitted to as if divine, and being too dim to realize that a book written by humans is going to be flawed, and not being able to deal with the fact that God’s not telling her plan to any of us. Those “Christians” that are so wrong, mainly because they are so gadammed sure that they are right.
Michiganders know of a similar case to the one in the post- a couple of kid collectors abused one of their sons and basically tortured him till he died. They homeschooled, and the mother was apparently the main abuser. His name was Ricky Holland and he was 6. They were recently convicted and sentenced.
Nymphalidae, I’m glad to hear these comment are aimed specifically at the misconduct of individuals. That was my plea because I read several comments as blanket condemnation.
Let me fulfill your desire and admit, as Christianity in general does, that any Christian is capable of the grossest of sins. As one grows toward Christian maturity the likelihood of that decreases. When a Christian sins it is called sin because it is contrary to righteousness or Christian conduct.
Romans 3
21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Romans 6
15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Man, there’s a lot of nonsense argument being brought to bear to defend religion. Par for the course, I guess. From the top:
I never said they followed the tenants of the religion. Do you have to follow the tenants of the religion to be a part of it?
No, of course not. The Bible makes it pretty clear, for instance, that fucking gay hookers and taking crystal meth and lying about it to everybody is against God’s plan for your penis, or whatever. It’s certainly not allowed behavior for Christianity’s adherents.
Was Ted Haggard excommunicated? No, of course not. Christianity doesn’t expect you to be perfect; they just expect you to claim your acceptance of Jesus as your lord and savior. Which these people did. Which makes them Christians.
You can be a Christian and still not be a very good person, people. Hell, according to Christianity nobody is a good person. The religion itself says you don’t have to be a perfectly good person to join - that, in fact, everyone is evil.
So how exactly are these people not Christians? Because they did something that Christians are embarrassed to be associated with; so, naturally, they’re bending over backwards to disassociate themselves. “Oh, that’s not my religion.”
No, of course it is, if you’re a Christian. If you don’t like the actions of your fellow Christians it’s time for you to clean house. It’s not our job to do it for you.
It doesn’t have its heart in the right place. No religion does. Religion makes people do the good things they were going to do anyway for all the wrong reasons. And it convinces people to do bad things that they wouldn’t have done otherwise. (See feministe’s front page, today.) How is that a net gain for anybody?
They make it that easy to get into it, on purpose. It’s a proselytizing tool. How successful would a religion be if it was a big pain in the ass to get into it? I mean, one popular Christian tradition is that as long as you’re baptized, you can’t ever separate yourself from the Christian church, no matter what you do (and thus are eternally “saved”). Hence the popularity of kidnapping Jewish babies and baptizing them in orphanages.
Bullshit it does. The No True Scotsman fallacy is invoked anytime somebody commits the fallacy of equivocation and begging the question, simultaneously. For instance, one does that anytime they’re certain that they can dismiss someone’s stated religious preference by making up their own entry requirements and then acting like they’re the only ones that matter.
No, because homosexuals, atheists, and feminists aren’t devoted to absolute belief to the same series of counterfactual, dogmatic statements that attempt to justify radically altering one’s behavior and infringing on the rights of others.
You put a room full of atheists together and there’s very little they can agree on. They’ll even have differing ideas about religion - some will defend it, even if they don’t believe in it; some will attack it.
If you put a room full of the religious together, sure, they’ll argue - until an atheist enters the room. Then, there’s unanimous agreement about one thing, at least - the atheist is an idiot, a liar, a charlatan, and a threat to all they hold dear.
Do you think it’s just coincidence that the one thing that could unite Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Jerusalem was the prospect of a homosexual pride march? It’d be hilarious, except for the fact that as an atheist they all want me dead.
JB: I don’t comment on this blog very often but I read it all the time. And right now, since I’m procrastinating by reading this thread, I have to ask you to please stop pasting long passages of scripture into the discussion. Either cite the chapters and verses you wish to refer to or use your own words. I’ve known many Christians who are capable of expressing their opinions and participating in a discussion -even about Christianity- without quoting long passages of scripture.
Not only are you making it difficult to follow the conversation, but what you are doing is incredibly rude.
One underrated thing about Catholics is they don’t bible thump, or bible paste as it were. You have to give Catholics credit for that, at least.
Jenna, I believe I said I did not expect non-Christians to accept or live by the Bible. No head beating there. I hear my beliefs being attacked and belittled because of a horrible event that happens when horrible people look for any cover they can find for their unrighteous deeds. Teachers abusing the children in their care. Cops abusing their power. Pedophiles worming their way into the scouts or head start. The list goes on and on.
Am I to understand dissent is not tolerated here?
JB, I don’t give a shit if you dissent or not. Just stop with the frackin’ scripture quoting. It’s annoying. And, besides, why, on earth, would you find it necessary?
I know that Christians tend to fall far short of Christ. I know that they tend to fawn all over Paul and his schizoid cycle of hatred and love. I don’t need your quotes to prove to me that Jesus wasn’t an asshat like most of his “followers.”
Jenna, My point with the scripture was that much of what goes by the name of Christian is no such thing. My point is to stand with the Bible. If you don’t care to OK.
Jill, these people claim that they are Christian. They have done some pretty horrible things.
Why shouldn’t we take them as indeed, representing Christianity? Especially when we have seen “Christians” quote chapter and verse from the Bible to justify a) wife-beating b) child-beating c) slavery.
(We’d all probably have much more sympathy except for the fact that there are far too many self-identified Christians out there who use their religion to fulminate about how all of us non-Christians are Evil and Going To Hell. Which is why we say: clean up your own house FIRST, please.)
Phoenician in a time of Romans,
Paul took His teaching to the apostles in Jerusalem and they approved it as in accord with what they had learned from Jesus. That aside the church in general gives it the same weight as the very words of Christ.
My point was not to convert anyone. My point is the conduct of this couple was not Christian. My point was not even that they were not Christian though I doubt it.
Paul took His teaching to the apostles in Jerusalem and they approved it as in accord with what they had learned from Jesus.
Got the notorized statements to that effect?
Ooops - nope. You claim it was approved because the Pauline Bible says it was approved - the same Pauline Bible canonised, passed on, and edited by a church built on Paul’s authority.
Just how gullible can you get?
If this were a homosexual atheist or feminist couple would you issue blanket condemnation of both groups?
Again, no, for the reasons above, and also because homosexuals and feminists don’t go around pushing that their way is the only true way, and parenting should be done according to their guidelines, and forcing legislation that institutes their rules as law for everyone. Christians do, and therefore this is a perfect example indicating that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. If your group keeps shouting that they will never allow gay adoption because gays can’t be as good parents as Christians can, then you bet people are going to jump all over the numerous examples of Christians being worse parents than most reasonable people can ever imagine.
Oh, and
My point with the scripture was that much of what goes by the name of Christian is no such thing.
It DOESN’T MATTER what you think Christianity is. It’s whatever the majority of Christians are doing. A few centuries ago the highest in the church hierarchy would have argued that anyone eating meat on any religious holiday wasn’t a real Christian. Today you have people arguing that anyone who uses birth control isn’t a real Christian. I don’t care what your definition is, Christianity doesn’t just reside in you. It’s a name for a religion that millions profess, and in that case, what the majority says is Christian is Christian.
They were missionaries!
Are we allowed to do this too? Am I allowed to say that athiests are, by definition, kind loving people concerned with the well-being of humanity on this earth rather than the safety of their (unbelieved-in) eternal souls? Do I get to say that, by definition, criminals who don’t believe in God are not true atheists?
Alternatively, can I say that no true Christian would ever try to prevent gay people for marrying, and that anyone who does is not just acting in an un-Christian manner but is categorically not Christian?
I really hope so, because I’d really love to find out how Dobson would react to finding out he’s not a member of his professed faith.
Carl, Atheists or homosexuals as such have no published moral code to measure up to. Christianity does.
RagingRed, My distinction was between conduct and claim, between word and deed, position has no bearing.
Car, I think I hear homosexuals saying that their way is the only right way. Accepting homosexual behavior as normal is right all other ways are wrong.
It may not matter to you what true Christianity is and it does not matter too much of nominal Christianity what true Christianity is but it does matter to me. The Bible draws strong distinctions.
Jesus wielded his strongest condemnation against hypocritical religious leaders and they hated him while the prostitute saw in Jesus a man who loved her as a person and not as a sex object.
JB, there was no hate-fest against Christians here. Remarkably, there still doesn’t seem to be, even though you came to an egalitarian, feminist site and quoted authoritarian passages that place women inferior to men. Basically, you’ve proved Amanda right about how bad marriage can be for women (because it places them specifically in inferiority to their ma in your religion.) You’ve defended your religion, not with quotes about “faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love”– not quotes that warm the heart and remind people of the best the Bible may offer. No, you chose to quote exactly the kind of passage that these maniacs would use to justify abusing someone who doesn’t follow the chain of command.
Whether or not individuals choose to identify the Forder couple as Christians is beyond the point. These were sick, screwed up people who have tried to hide their horrific behavior under a veneer of “Godliness”. And they are far from the first people to do this. Personally, I think it’s a natural, healthy reaction for other Christians to try and “vote them off the island”. What sane, decent person would want their faith linked with people who’d neglectand abuse a child to death? Rabid fundyism should be an automatic disqualifier for anyone applying to be a foster or adoptive parent.
Samantha, A careful reading of the passage I quoted could never justify abuse of a woman by a man. That it is and has been used in that way is undeniable. I speak out loudly in Church against that abuse of scripture. The first responsibility of the man is to love his wife sacrificially like Christ who lived and died for the benefit of His Bride the Church. I do not blame women for not liking marriage. There are few men including Christians who follow the admonition of this passage. The greater tragedy is that while making little or no effort to love in that sacrificial way he demands subjugation from his wife. Jesus never forced anyone into subjection He loved them into following His loving guidance to a better life. Also notice the passage begins with a mutual submission passage. Each thinking of the other before self.
JB:
The point is that your definition of “true christian” is no better or worse than mine. People can and do make strong moral biblical-based arguments stating that forbidding gay people to marry is a moral wrong according to the bible. You may disagree with them, and you can provide strong arguments against this statement, but you have no more right to determine that they’re not true Christians than you have to determine that they are.
The True Christian fallacy is one which has bothered me all my life and one of the main contributing factors to the decision to drop my formerly fundamentalist faith, at enormous personal and emotional cost. The fact is, my ex-church is more Christian than you, and you’re probably more Christian than them, and wars get fought over it and people get tortured and executed in horrible, awful ways because of differences over interpretation of the document.
The fact is that the Bible has often contradictory (e.g. the tension between the New Covenant and Old Covenant restrictions on diet) and always impossible requirements on behavior; if being a True Christian means living up to the requirements of behavior contained in the Bible, then nobody on earth is or possibly could be a True Christian, including Jesus (who, according to your New Testament, ran afoul of the law more than once)
According to their interpretation of the Bible, the parents of this child probably felt that to have done anything other than what they did would have been a sin. As raging_red said, the were missionaries! They probably approached their family life in prayer and study of the Scriptures, and probably did what they felt God was leading them to do. In fact, I’d imagine they probably had greater Biblical justification for their actions than you do for most of yours. No matter how deluded they were, they probably thought they were doing the right thing, the Christian thing.
The point is, don’t hide behind “real Christians wouldn’t do that”. Real Christians would, and real Christians do. Take a deep breath, say to yourself “Christians are just people, no better or worse than anyone else,” and OWN it. That’s all we’re asking.
And how many times has Pam talked about that little fundie meme. Since you seemed to have missed it JB, someone asking you to stop trying to wipe out their existence isn’t the same thing as you asking them not to exist. But since you claim to be standing beside your Bible, we understand that you must hate women, homosexuals, Jews and any christian that doesn’t toe the line of your take on christianity.
JB sez:
Jesus wielded his strongest condemnation against hypocritical religious leaders and they hated him while the prostitute saw in Jesus a man who loved her as a person and not as a sex object.
So. Like. Why do Christians hate prostitutes, then?
Hmm, an interesting discussion.
I say, drop the issue of gender.
Drop the issue of sexual orientation.
Drop the issue of religion.
These people, if guilty (I am not the judge), are sick. These parents, one or both involved, obviously suffer from severe mental illness that resulted in the death of a child and most likely the destruction of the siblings’ perceptions of life. Their religion, sexual orientation or gender had nothing to do with it. They are people of free thought and need to take responsibility for their actions.
You find crazy people that are agnostic, atheist, christian, catholic, homosexual, male, female, transgendered and any other thing you can think of.
For sure you can find patterns and trends in these life choices and how people carry out their lives, but a lot of that can be accredited to per-capita numbers of (religion/gender/orientation) in a specific area, likelyhood of a specific (religion/gender/orientation) to report issues, the timeline of available data to make an average, etc etc. A linear assessment of the situation will only reap a linear result.
In a long winded way, all I am trying to say (in a linear way) is that these people were bad because they were bad people. Perhaps their reasons for getting into christianity, parenting or even marriage were probably different than that of a sane person.
Humbly yours,
Dylan
In my personal opinion, these people were Christians because they called themselves Christians. I’m also equally certain that if they lived in China, they would have been devoted, passionate members of the Communist Party and enthusiastically ratted on their neighbors for going to church. They are authoritarians: they follow whoever’s in Charge, and in this country Christians are the in-crowd. It’s not about being a follower of Jesus, whom I’m pretty certain doesn’t have many warm fuzzies for child abusers. (”Suffer the children” is 16th C. English idiom for “permit,” it’s not a commandment despite what these morons did.) The issue is not the Forder’s proper place in group taxonomy; it’s that they murdered their own child.
Oh, and let me repeat my outrage that virtually fundies would consider her a better mother than I am, but for the murder charge, because she was, publicly, passive and I have a job.
Oh, I forgot to mention that there are crazy str8 ppl too.
Hmmm, dog-whistle of homophobia anyone?
JB - word of advice, when you come to an egalitarian feminist progressive blog, don’t use the word ‘homosexual’ to refer to members of the LGBTQI community. Why? Because the phenomenal overuse (to the point of virtual ownership) of that term by the bigoted evangelicals and fundamentalists in denying us our rights means that anyone using it can be rightly expected to be holding similar views.
Also, why on earth the constant linking of us that are queer to being atheist? I mean, I’m lesbian AND atheist, but I know plenty of either type that aren’t the other.
Moreover, I reiterate what Samantha said so excellently:
This is a place where we argue based on rational coherent secular arguments, as Jenna said; your quoting of scripture does not contribute to this, so it has not place here. Personally for me it speaks to a lack of critical engagement and/or ability.
The reason we are emphasising the Christian nature of these evil people is that in this society the espousing of Christian identity is taken as a given statement of a moral standpoint, with the converse also then following, with the familiar accompanying judgements.
We who are not Christian (or straight, or whatever) are sick and tired of being demonised in this society (where, for instance, Muslim has come to mean terrorist, denying the terrorist acts that are committed by Christians). All we are doing is holding Christians to their own standard, and not letting the fact that they ARE Christian slip through the cracks. It’s being held to an equal standard and moves towards reducing Christian privilege in this society.
D,
I can honestly say I do not hate anyone I have homosexual neighbors at whose home I have had dinner and they have visited in my home. I do not agree with their lifestyle but I have no wish to wipe out their existence. I have a wife of 35 years who married a widow with 3 children after my first wife was killed in an automobile accident. My wife works like I do and I cook clean do laundry changed baby diapers etc. Our marriage is not perfect but neither of us have any desire to leave it. I have three grown daughters and three granddaughters. No I love women. My Bible teaches me that God will do the separating in a just manner and that religious teacher will be held to the highest standards of accountability because they were teacher and claimed to speak for God
Carl,
In an above post I have already admitted that Christians are capable of the grossest acts of sin. I am drawing a distinction of conduct being against the teachings of Christianity. Jesus condemned those who called Him Lord and did not follow His teachings.
Sarah,
In posting here I hope to begin a dialog with mutual respect. This is a new experience with an opportunity to speak with people I would never meet in ordinary course of life. I hope to learn from you and you from me. I think that could be possible. If I use terms that are inappropriate or use them in an offensive manner I will gracefully accept correction. Please inform me.
I can honestly say I do not hate anyone I have homosexual neighbors at whose home I have had dinner and they have visited in my home.
“I have a few ____ friends” is soooooo cliche!
Why is it your job to approve or disapprove of their “lifestyle”? Most of the citizens of Judea didn’t approve of Jesus’es lifestyle, let alone Mary Magdalene’s!
Moreover, when did Jesus ever find the time to condemn gays? Didn’t he have a lot of better things to do with his limited time, like stopping hysterical mobs from murderous rampages, showing kindness to lepers, lecturing about how even Samaritans could be with the Love program, and terrorizing money-changers?
Ms Kate,
I approve or disapprove of various things as you do. I never said they were friends. With our differing views I doubt friendship is going to happen. Yet I don’t hate or desire to extinguish them as one post affirmed. As to Jesus teaching about gay behavior it seems to me He stood solidly for sex within the bonds of marriage only.
interesting discussion.
the mother’s behavior was pathological and fits the patterns of abuse described in a lot of survivor narrative–A CHILD CALLED IT, for example. Often, the mother singles out a child for abuse, concocts all kinds of stories about why the ‘punishment’ has been brought on by the child’s behavior, and essentially makes the child a pariah in the family. The fathers may raise objections but don’t intervene, or accuse the child of causing problems with the mother.
Abuse is not discipline, it is torture. We’re not talking about parents who went too far with corporal punishment. A mother who denies a child food for days because he ate too fast is a tortuous abuser. If you haven’t eaten for days and have been foraging through the compost heap, how are you going to eat when you finally get some food? Ravenously, maybe? Well, then that crazy mother would deny you food again because you’re eating wrong.
There’s a strong connection between child torture and starvation, and I’ve always wondered why. The boy in A CHILD CALLED IT was starved and his mother went so far as to sprinkle lye on leftovers to keep him from eating them. There was a family in NJ a couple of years ago who starved some of their adopted children, and lied to their neighbors, claiming the boys had HIV and that’s why they were so skinny. The boys ate sheetrock from their bedroom walls. Nixmary Brown, the little girl who was killed a year ago, was starved and underweight. Her stepfather apparently flipped out the final time because she took a yoghurt from the refrigerator.
The whole Christian thing is little more than a distraction. Child torture is pathological, and neither positively or negatively correlated with people’s professed religious beliefs. Abusers seem to be a special category of borderline personality disorder–people who are seemingly normal, possibly articulate and personable, who in fact are highly unstable, controlling, manipulative and in the case of child abusers, tortuous. The fact that the woman would use religion as a smoke screen, claiming she’s being persecuted for her beliefs, is extremely manipulative. She’s attempting to solicit the sympathy, support, and probably the prayers of other Christians, many of whom have a persecution complex to begin with.
And yet he was oddly silent on the subject of gay marriage…Seems like many Christians have forgotten about that, though.
Even if you take the dubious Pauline stuff at face value and ignore all those Thomas gospels that got destroyed in the process, there is still a huge disparity between the things Jesus even reportedly spent his time on and the amount of effort evangelicals put into their expression of their faith!
In other words, leave the gays alone - and help out at a program that gets drug addicts and prostitutes into self-directed healthy lives on your way to protest at a bank. Usurers! Money Changers!
I’m still waiting for JB to explain why people who worked as overseas Christian missionaries shouldn’t be considered “real” Christians by the rest of society. In fact, by most people, they would be considered more Christian (if you will) since they were actually doing religious work.
And yet they tortured and killed one of their children. They let him die while his brothers and sisters were forced to watch.
Hey my parents are atheists and we were never beaten or molested as kids. They don’t smoke, drink, do drugs; are totally nonviolent; are 100% faithful to each other. They are more morally upstanding than most Christians.
count me as another person who has anecdotal evidence of religious hypocrisy … like the person I knew in high school who was raped by their father and blamed for it by their Sunday School teacher mom.
BTW, I’ve met a lesbian couple who are very religious and seem to hold beliefs which strike me as fundamentalist-leaning. like when a disaster strikes but your own house was left standing, it was because the area needed to be “cleansed” but through power of prayer, God protected your house.
hey one of my earlier posts got eaten by a grue!
all I want to say to any Christians reading these comments:
My parents are atheists. And they did not beat or sexually abuse their children. They don’t smoke, drink, or do drugs; have never been violent; they have been 100% faithful to each other for 30+ years.
One does not need religion to behave ethically/morally.
Mnemosyne,
Such people are very adept at keeping their behavior secret. Their behavior is not Christian. I am drawing a distinction of conduct being against the teachings of Christianity. Jesus condemned those who called Him Lord and did not follow His teachings. In fact He called them liars. There is the Church, which is Gods and is known by Him and there is the professing Church.
John 10:27
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
1 John 2:4
The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
Such people are very adept at keeping their behavior secret. Their behavior is not Christian. I am drawing a distinction of conduct being against the teachings of Christianity.
Yes, but … these people are the public face of Christianity. These people, and Ted Haggard, and the Roman Catholic priest in “Deliver Us from Evil” who molested children for years with the cover of the Church.
The behavior of people who are very publicly Christian (or, if you prefer, “Christian”) is one of the things that turns people against religion. And saying, “But they’re not, like, real Christians just because they have their own churches or do missionary work” is not cutting it.
Chet:
Dude. Even Jesus thinks you’re full of shit on this one. And he would know, I think.
Mnem:
It’s possible that one can simultaneously follow some of the teachings of Jesus and not follow others. It seems to me, then, that only doing some of the stuff that Jesus commands would qualify one as being a liar, as per 1 John 2:4 that JB quoted.
And I think that it’s just as acceptable to differentiate between “Christianity” as an abstract social construct and it’s public face — in the guise of Ted Haggart and Catholic child-molesters — as it is to differentiate between “America” and its public face — in the guise of multi-billion dollar desert-adventure ego-wars and prick-waving geopolitical policies.
Dan said:
Then you’re ALL liars, and the truth is in NONE of you. I can quote scripture with the best of you, so here’s your refutation:
Romans 3:22-24
22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
The idea that any human, Christian or no, is considered a heresy by all but the people who believe it (who get called “heretics”, natch). Your Bible says that Christians behave in un-Christian ways, and do so repeatedly. I know there’s some theological tap-dancing that lets people feel better about it, but the truth is, Christians on the whole are no better or worse people than those of any other faith. They are simply people. Often self-righteous and with an inflated view of what their religion buyss them, but people nonetheless. And you don’t get to decide that their behavior makes them not Christian.
Again, arguably, there’s nothing un-Christian about these people did. There was no idolatry, violation of the sabbath, oaths, disrespect of parents, adultery, false witness, usury, and arguably no murder (non-treatment of a disease for philosophical reasons can be legally and morally considered murder, but the Hippocratic oath isn’t part of the Bible). What they did was heinous and wrong, but you can’t distance yourself from it by saying that they’re not really Christian. Like I told JB, OWN it.
I would bet they’re more Christian than you, they pray more than you, read the Bible more than you, are more public pious, and it’s absolutely CERTAIN that they’ve done more service to the Christian God than you have. To claim that they’re not Christian is a mockery of your faith.
Oo, scary! The imaginary man doesn’t like me!
Believe me when I tell you that an argument that consists entirely of “my imaginary man says you’re wrong” isn’t very compelling to me.
Chet said:
Come now, Jesus may not’ve been a Christian, but he almost certainly did exist.
But then, Dan was speaking of Jesus in the present tense. So asserting Jesus’ prior existence doesn’t count for much.
JB, sorry for the cheap shot. If you want to talk, and can do so without quoting scripture, I’m willing to listen.
I don’t believe in scripture - The Bible - because it is an unreliable document. It was transcribed by “men of God” in positions of power, with vested interests in controlling the illiterate populations under them. It was written by men; the obvious Biblical bias against women is then easily explained. It was written, translated, retranslated, and rewritten so many times that it has to be inaccurate, and largely invalid.
The Bible today is still used as a tool of power and control over people who cannot interpret its words within the context of history, and who don’t bother to read it themselves. I do not doubt that there are people like yourself, who try to live their lives by the tenets of Jesus, but unfortunately you are outnumbered by those “Christians” who use the Bible to self-aggrandise and to oppress others. Alas.
Come now, Jesus may not’ve been a Christian, but he almost certainly did exist.
Which Jesus - the Jewish teacher executed by the Romans for troublemaking, the focus of a Messiah cult by Jewish mystics, or the man/god crafted by Paul to compete with Grecian and Roman religions?
Carl,
There is following with stumbling. There is habitually doing what is known to be wrong. One can follow the teachings of Jesus as the pattern of life. Though they will never reach perfect obedience in this life they do not live in the habitual practice of evil. Your quote from Romans says 1)all have sinned (past tense)2)and come short of the glory of God (present tense). None measure up to the full glory of God (moral perfection) in this present life.
I John 1
5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
In this passage walk is the lifestyle or habitual conduct of an individual. To claim to have not sinned is a claim of moral perfection.
Stacy,
I am sorry if Scripture offends. Obviously it is an integral part of my life. In an earlier post I stated I was using it to make the point that the couple who killed this child were not Christian - Christ like in thier conduct.
Phonecian et. al. said:
That’s like asking which Abraham Lincoln we’re talking about — the one was elected in 1860, the one who many people revere as the chief figure of the Republican party, or the one who lead the united Earth military against the Martians.
JB said:
I would argue that, from the way they conducted themselves and from their response (”this is some sort of a spiritual attack”) that they don’t view themselves as habitual walkers in darkness. They probably can and will defend themselves on what they believe to be solid, moral, biblical grounds. That they’re not makes them sincerely deluded, but no less sincerely Christian.
This seems to be kind of a battle on semantics. You say their behavior is not sufficiently Christ-like; therefore they are not Christian. I say (and I think they would agree, hopefully the only thing that we would agree on) that that’s not a determination that’s yours to make. Most conflict in religion is not between two people who sincerely believe that they are in the right and that the other is a heretic. Usually it comes down to a judgement call, and it’s usually the people with the stronger millitary that wins, not the ones who are more sincere in their faith. The fact that heretics are willing to burn for their beliefs says a lot to me about whether or not they’re true Christians.
Phonecian:
My understanding is that Paul didn’t make up the divinity of Jesus. He was just the first Rabbinical scholar to take a close look at it and write the rather convoluted theology surrounding it. From what I’ve read on the subject, he and the Jewish church did make nice, but more because the Jewish church recognized that they’d better do it or have their power usurped than any kind of deep and abiding friendship.
Bear in mind also that most of the gospels are Jewish in origin.
Chet:
The sad thing is that you honestly think that was my point. Whether or not Jesus existed, and whether or not you care what he allegedly said, what he did allegedly say is not consistent with what you claim his followers say, which, in all likelihood, they don’t. In fact, the only people I’ve ever heard say that the only requirement for Christianity is to claim that you’re a Christian are invariably the ones with something to hide, and who are trying to use Christianity as a smokescreen to hide it.
You think I’m defending religion, but that’s exactly the opposite of what I’m doing. I’d much prefer that religious people actually be held to the high standards they expect of all the rest of us, because I know they’d all fail the tests miserably, and that would set me beside myself with glee. You’re the one who’s trying to give them a pass on their irreligious behaviour by declaring that it’s possible to do exactly the opposite of what Christianity demands and yet still be considered a Christian just because you’re wearing the right hat. You’ve claimed both that religious people are special and don’t have to follow their own rules, and that they’re not thoughtful or intelligent enough to do so, anyway, so we should all just stop being so mean to them.
And in that regard, you’re more their ally than I ever will be.
Carl:
Atheism isn’t a faith, stupid, and I truly couldn’t care less how much they prayed or read the Bible or acted piously when other people were looking or “serviced” an imaginary fascist sky fairy.
That’s kinda my point.
And frankly, I’m of the opinion that neglecting your kid to death while pleading Christianity makes much more of a mockery of the religion than whatever it is that you think I’m doing.
Can I just stir the pot a little by adding in an anecdote about Christianity and abuse?
My mom works in special ed as an assistant, she loves her job, she adores her kids, and she does everything she can to help them learn, if that’s possible, keep them from destroying themselves/others, if necessary, she does what she can to make their lives better. (Which is causing some friction right now, she’s working one-on-one with a high school girl who cannot do academic work, but the mother’s pushing it - and she’s rich enough to push it. In the elementary school, they were going to put a low functioning girl in the high class and high girl in the lower class, because girl A had rich, white parents and girl B had poor, Hispanic parents. But that’s something else.)
She worked in an elementary school for about ten years, and the assistants most likely to abuse the kids were the ones that mentioned going to church and jesus all the fucking time.
These are special ed kids!
On the other side of the coin, my dad was fine with emotional and mental abuse of his wife and two daughters without the spectre of religion - like, we tried churches over the years, none clicked, I don’t recall nightly prayers or threats involing God.
Of course, he went to a Catholic school, but he hated it until 2005, when the pope died.
Dan:
Mea culpa. Irony is often wasted on me.
It’d be nice if Christians were held to their own standards, but they aren’t. They aren’t because they get to pick the standards, which means they get to keep the easy ones (confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord) and ignore the tough ones (sell all you have, give the money to the poor and come follow me). They also aren’t because whenever Christians grossly and publicly violates a standard, well, they weren’t ever really true Christians to begin with. It’s that second part that bothered the hell out of me growing up hearing that Christians are more righteous than un-Christian people, because if they aren’t, then they aren’t really Christian. UGH. They make a tautology and then pretends that it means something.
Yeah, they’re making a mockery of their faith, but people who would deny their Christianity are making a mockery of it too — the way that annuling a marriage that has resulted in three children makes a mockery of annulment.
My understanding is that Paul didn’t make up the divinity of Jesus. He was just the first Rabbinical scholar to take a close look at it and write the rather convoluted theology surrounding it.
Carl, the exact “divinity” of Jesus was decided by vote in 325. Look up “Arianism” some time. And further, it was decided by only about 300 of the 1800 Christian bishops of the time.
Come to think of it, look up the Nestorians, who still exist as a religion.
Phoenician ejaculated:
Jews for Jesus wasn’t founded until 1973. So before that, there wasn’t a Jewish community that felt Jesus was the (non-divine) Messiah?
The idea of the divinity of Jesus was around since at least the Pauline letters, circa the 60s. It wasn’t invented by Paul, though it was popularized by him. It competed with several other Jesus-centric religions, as well as other religions that incorporated Jesus without making him the central figure. It may not’ve been established as the central, infallible doctrine of the church until much later, but it’s an older idea.
I’m not a scholar, but I have a decent grasp of Church history. I wasn’t trying to disagree with you, and I think that people would have a much better handle on their own religion if they realized some time how much of the givens in their church — the canonnonical books of the Bible, the nature of Jesus, the means of salvation — was decided the way most political arguments are decided, by arguments, fights, and burning the losers at the stake.
Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like if some of the arguments had turned out a little bit differently, and we had reams of Protestants screaming about how absolutely vital it is to understand that the Spirit of God that had descended on Jesus during his baptism departed moments before his crucifixion, and condemning those who disagree to hell.
The idea of the divinity of Jesus was around since at least the Pauline letters, circa the 60s. It wasn’t invented by Paul, though it was popularized by him.
The interesting question is who shoehorned teeny little things like the birth in Bethlehem, incompatible with actual events, into the story. Or, perhaps more interestingly, why one group of writers found it so necessary to point out that Jesus was descended from David through Joseph that they included two different genealogies when other writers pointed out he was born with God as the father, not Joseph.
It’s almost as if the story was written and rewritten to suit different agendas…
Dan
I think that is in part Chet’s point as well. Christians don’t agree upon much anything amongst themselves. The sort of bare minimum common ground seems to be a claim to be christian and perhaps a claim to follow the teachings of Jesus. So saying someone isn’t christian because they don’t meet requirements beyond this is playing loose with definitions.
Carl, don’t forget the heavy editing of the texts over time. Not only were things decided in a political fashion, once they were decided, the texts were often changed to match what was decided. In regards to Paul, in the letters that today are considered to be authentic to him, he does ascribe to the idea of a divine Jesus, but doesn’t harp on it much. Most of the harping came latter than him, though not necessarily by much.
Hey, that’s amazing. Somehow you’re able to read my mind and conclude that the ten years I remember spending in the pews of a modern, fundamentalist Evangelical church didn’t actually happen. Astounding!
Maybe you could be bothered to do a little research into the differing doctrinal positions of the various mainstream churches, at least in America? Or are we going to play that game again where Dan gets to determine which Christian churches are legitimately Christian and which are “pretend” Christians?
Astounding. Are you even reading my posts? This doesn’t give any indication that you did. Is English perhaps not your first language? Because otherwise I don’t understand how someone could read my posts here and come to the conclusion that I’ve just tried to give the religious a pass.
What I’m trying to do is point out the inherent ridiculousness in Christians giving themselves a pass by “evicting” unsuitable Christian models under some kind of invented-for-the-occasion moral bylaws, at the same time that they cleave to a religious tradition that says “all have fallen short of the glory of God”, that nobody’s perfect, that all are equally sinful and evil in the eyes of the Lord, and that either choosing or denying the redeeming grace of Jesus is the sole criterion for entrance into Heaven and fellowship with the Lord. (Don’t tell me that this isn’t Christian doctrine. Maybe this isn’t your Christian doctrine, or maybe you just don’t know that much about Christianity, but it is clearly the doctrine of many Christians, and you don’t get to decide what’s legitimately Christian and what isn’t.)
The rule in Christianity isn’t “be perfect or you’re not a Christian.” It’s “accept the forgiveness of Christ for your sins, no matter how bad.” They don’t get to advertise their policy of universal, all-encompassing forgiveness for sin when you walk in the door and then boot you out when you do something that makes them look bad. It’s false advertising, at the very least. Watching your child die from abuse is clearly covered under their “forgiveness for sins” insurance plan, and all you have to do to cash in - straight from the Bible itself - is proclaim your acceptance of Jesus.
I just had a semi-random thought about the cause and effect here.
I’m wondering if what we’re seeing is less “Christian morality is *this* screwed up” and more “people who are *this* screwed up are drawn to the church.”
If you think about it, Christianity (like, yes, Republicanism) is actually not a bad thing in theory: relax about what other folks are doing and love them anyway. The poster above who compared Jesus to Lincoln wasn’t that far off, in that regard; they’re both positive figures whose movements have since warped into something that they probably wouldn’t align themselves with, in the current incarnation.
I grew up in an abusive household, but was very lucky to have a high school teacher who clued me into the brilliance that was attending a college 800 miles away, and basically taking my dad’s money and using it to get the hell away from him. As a result I found a community of supportive individuals, and have made my peace with my father to the extent that I go home for Thanksgiving and can have actual phone conversations with him. I was pretty lucky, and I went through my share of over-indulgent navel-gazing college ideological crap, but I got counseling and like to think I’ll end up okay after all.
If I’d found myself stuck in that home community, though, I could see myself reaching out for whatever would have me, and guess what, the church would take me. Which, bully for it. It’s a loving, welcoming environment, but if that’s all you’re getting, you’re probably still going to have some authority issues, and the church is going to feed that, and all of a sudden you have someone who identifies strongly as Christian who is also an abusive asshole. Once you have enough people like that in a community, it can become… well, like the Republican party, which is to say corrupt and divorced from its principles.
I went through my share of “No, really, it’s my fault,” rationalizing with my father; if I hadn’t found people who gave me an ideological bitch-slap and said “You’re an idiot, only one person in that house was an adult hitting a six-year-old kid, no way in hell that was the kid’s fault,” I can see transferring that through to “God was working through him,” and transferring that to “God is working through me” as I… well, let my kid die of pneumonia.
Well, I didn’t say it’s okay. I’m just saying we might have a single cause here (the thing causing the abuse and the thing causing the hyper-Christian identification).
And I just wrote a novel, so to sum up: These people are complete and total failures as human beings and I kind of hope they’re right about there being a hell.
If this were a homosexual atheist or feminist couple would you issue blanket condemnation of both groups?
Well, since I’ve never had a gay atheist or a feminist couple–or a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, pagan, Buddhist or Taoist for that matter–knock on my door at seven in the morning on a weekend and tell me that if I don’t live like they do I’ll burn in hell, yeah, I do tend to come with the blanket statements when it comes to evangelical Christians. If you have to tell everyone what a good Christian you are, you’re probably not.
That poor kid.
Chet said:
Yes! Exactly! There’s two threads; the “Christians are by definition morally superior” thread, and the “all you have to do to be Christian is to repent and believe” thread, and whenever people say “Christian” they’re trying to imply both when the two defitiions are not identitical.
My ex-church did some even-more-fun theology to explain why it didn’t seem like christians were actually any better as people. According to my short, firey pastor, it was literally impossible for anyone who was not a born-again believer to do anything that was not sinful; every action taken by someone who was not a True Christian was tainted and morally corrupt because it came from corrupt nature. Christians, however, were capable of not sinning in their actions. So they got to literally defitionally say my pagan friends, who were kinder, gentler, humbler, and altogether more decent people than the ones in my church were more evil than the more arrogant, self-righteous, authoritarian members of my church. But the tricky thing is, when they said “Christians are better”, they were basing it on a theological belief but implying a moral stance. And it was the inevention of convenient theologies to explain otherwise gaping holes in the Church’s perception of reality that ultimately convinced me to leave.
Phonecian said:
The best parts, though, are when they leave stuff in that they had to leave in b/c it had already become part of the legend of jesus, even though it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense or conflicts with the point they’re trying to make. A lot of the explanations of the intentionally obtuse parables are really fun, and I love the instruction to gouge out your eye if it causes you to sin.
Well, since I’ve never had a gay atheist or a feminist couple–or a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, pagan, Buddhist or Taoist for that matter–knock on my door at seven in the morning on a weekend and tell me that if I don’t live like they do I’ll burn in hell,
That’s because the superior follower of The Way arranges things so you knock on your own door…
wren said:
I agree with you in principle, but I don’t think that the church has had the attitude of radical egalitarianism and pacifism since Jesus’ death. Most of what we know about the pre-church Jesus has to be inferred from the various scriptures, whether Christian or gnostic, and most of what we can infer shows a different Jesus from the one that Paul was preaching 30 years after his death.
Additionally, I’m really hesitant to call the community that the church provides an unmixed blessing. Yes, it attracts people who are insecure, lonely, in need of structure, and it gives them a source of self-esteem, of authority and purpose. But it does it in a way that can often be ugly; fundamentalist churches are extraordinaly devisive, and spend a lot of time explaining why they are true believers and most everyone else isn’t. There’s also the constant drumbeat of war, the message that they are literally warriors fighting against all non-believers, who are by definition agents of Satan and other devils (as per Jesus Camp; another fun theological position to justify isolation). To me, sending someone who is already mentally unbalanced to a hardline church is like giving someone who craves alcohol vodka instead of beer; it satisfies their craving, but doesn’t help cure the disease.
Unless one feels that unbelief is the disease; then the church becomes the only cure.
Re: Overseas adoption
I have always been of the opinion that it’s a bad thing, wouldn’t it be better to adopt a kid from your own country, and sponsor a foreign one through an UN program or something? I’m still wondering about the Madonna adoption of the orphan that still has a father thing.
…and cases like this, is why, there should totally be an overhaul of the children aid society system, in U.S., and in Canada. We’ve got our shares of crazy with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society in Toronto the past years, there was a boy named Jeffery who ‘fell through the cracks’ to tragic consequences. Like healthcare, we need social services, but we need them to function /properly/.
JB: “Wow what a lot of hatred against Christianity comes out when the offending party is a “Christianâ€?. If this were a homosexual atheist or feminist couple would you issue blanket condemnation of both groups?”
That’s an utterly bogus comparison.
No one is claiming that ALL Christians fatally neglect their children. That doesn’t change the fact this couple is indeed Christian — and the characterization of them should accurately reflect that. It is dishonest to put quote marks (a la ‘Christian’), when they are simply Christian. If an atheist couple had done the same thing, we wouldn’t label them an ‘atheist’ couple — we’d stick to the facts.
Let’s stop pretending that Christians who kill, rape, maim or send their children to early graves are not Christian — they are every bit as Christian as any other.
“Well, since I’ve never had a gay atheist or a feminist couple–or a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, pagan, Buddhist or Taoist for that matter–knock on my door at seven in the morning on a weekend and tell me that if I don’t live like they do I’ll burn in hell,”
I’m agnostic, but I’ll start going door to door with copied pages of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and pressuring people to read it as the word of a man, a funny man, but a man nonetheless, and I’ll wildly misinterpret random sentences from the books as laws we should live by…
That actually sounds like a lot of fun…
“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer, “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
Thus, Thursday is our holy day off, our kids will not go to school on Thursday, beer can be sold that day, and the apocalypse will come on a Thursday. And if you work on a Thursday, Vogons will read their poetry to you.
Thus, Thursday is our holy day off, our kids will not go to school on Thursday, beer can be sold that day, and the apocalypse will come on a Thursday. And if you work on a Thursday, Vogons will read their poetry to you.
No! NOOOOoooooo!
Run, run screaming now. Not the Vogons’ poetry.
That is to cruel a price to pay for ANY sin.
Religion sure is a divisive subject isn’t it? I’m glad we live in America where the founding fathers finally decided the State should not establish A religion as was being done all over Europe. Here every one has the right to organize a church synagogue musk etc, establish their doctrines include or exclude with out the interference from the government. This has resulted in the proliferation of denominations. Isn’t freedom a great thing? You can have any religious organization with very few outside restrictions. Makes it prety hard to include every one under on lump.
We can get in we can skip it altogether if we chose. I say The Truth is Still The Truth and The Bible is Truth. I don’t expect everyone to agree with the Bible or me. Actually I expect none will agree with me or the Bible in all things. I believe God gives each of us freedom of will we can accept or reject what ever we will. I believe True Christianity cannot be coerced it must be chosen freely.
The Church councils gave their often-political decisions about their stated published and State enforced doctrines. The reformation was in reaction to state forced religion and has resulted in he plethora of denomination we see today.
“No! NOOOOoooooo!
Run, run screaming now. Not the Vogons’ poetry.
That is to cruel a price to pay for ANY sin.”
Those are the rules. I have it documented that you went farther than your local pub one Thursday, so here goes…
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don’t!
Now, count to 42 42 times and sin no more.
JB said:
Kind of. It was a reaction against the central religious control of Rome, which, to be fair, was pretty corrupt. It happened that the interest of the individual goverments to rebel coincided with the reformer’s interest in advancing their own doctrinal conflicts.
What the reformation was NOT was a movement towards freedom of religion. Each breakway reformed group established its own governments and enforced their religious ideals within them. The reformation did eventually result in freedom of religion in most of the Western world, but one could argue that the Englightenment played a pretty big part of that as well.
I (and many atheists I know) find religion to be absolutely fascinating, and I know that I personally enjoy discussing with people whether or not they believe it’s The Truth. I find that it’s generally believers who find religion divise, not non-believers, who don’t tend to get offended easily over differences in doctrine.
JB, I’m curious, if you consider the Bible to be Truth as you say, how do you handle the internal contradictions as well as the historical contradictions?
JB, I’m curious, if you consider the Bible to be Truth as you say, how do you handle the internal contradictions as well as the historical contradictions?
I’ve got a pretty good guess: handwaving.
*nods* I have to agree with you there Carl, totally. I find the history of religion absolutely engaging (like the awesome stuff Phoenician is bringing up), particularly so the political nature of it. and will sit down often in front of the History Channel glued. I find a lot of believers actually know less about that stuff than do atheists, because the believers tend to focus uncritically and without analysis solely on the Bible.
The only time I get frustrated and offended by, say, Christianity is when they either a) feel the incredible need to convert me, or b) HAVE to have their religion (and only their religion) recognised in the public sphere.
I’ve heard the accusations that liberal atheists tend to be more welcoming to Islam than to Christianity … and the funny thing is, I actually am. Why? Because of all the Muslim people I have known or met, not one of them have tried to convert lesbian-feminist-atheist me, whereas almost the reverse has been true of the Christians (though there are some of the live-and-let-live type admittedly). Moreover, I see FARRRR more Christians trying to destroy my life here in this country than Muslims ever have, in regards to reproductive rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, affirmative action, etc, etc.
A good Muslim friend of mine, who I miss a lot since her husband got his visa renewal denied when she was mid-way through grad school here with me, and so had to return home, said that as a Muslim she lived as good a life as possible, and if someone saw her life as that, and wanted to know more and asked, then she would explain her beliefs. Otherwise, she believed it as being against her faith to actively convert.
It was so wonderfully refreshing to hear actual pluralism (and not that wannabe patronising pluralism of “well, you can believe what you want to believe, but I have The Truth and you are going to hell” that you hear most of the time) from a religious person, I almost wanted to cry.
I have a friend whose mother followed Dobson’s child-rearing advice; he’s 40ish and still has issues. Stories like these are horrifying, and one of the reasons I don’t view adoption as a facile alternative to abortion; better aborted than risk this, I think
But to be fair, there are fundamentalists and fundamentalists. Most of the fundamentalists I’ve encountered, including my boyfriend’s family, hold many views I find morally abhorrent but would never support or commit an atrocity like this.
D
I find that what is often pointed out as contradiction is nothing more than failure to look at the number of alternatives that could bring the perceived conflict into harmony. I have found answers that satisfy me.
Sarah
I feel no overwhelming need to convert anyone. God is capable of proving Himself. I believe He speaks through creation, through our conscience, through messengers and through the progressive revelation preserved in Scripture. I believe each person must choose for himself or herself and are responsible for their choices. I believe parents who try to make their children be Christians fail miserably. Example is essential. You teach a little by what you say, more by what you do but most by what you are.
Most of what is presented on the history channel is from a viewpoint that the Bible cannot possible be inspired. It therefore like any mere human book is bound to contain contradictions. So finding them is expected and not finding them is not possible. Everyone brings presuppositions to the table. I do watch much of what is presented on the history channel. I find the correlation of ancient history and archaeology with the biblical account of events fascinating and confirming of my confidence in Scriptural reliability.
JB:
Just a minor aside, but it isn’t called the World Wide Web of the United States of America. There are a lot of people from elsewhere in the world who post on Pandagon.
Perhaps you’d like to indulge in some specifics then JB? How did Judas meet his demise? Did John the Baptist know of Jesus’s divinity? Is the old covenant broken? Are the apostles, Paul and his followers still alive or did Jesus already have his second coming?
That should be enough to start I think.
D, Here are answers that satisfy me.
How did Judas meet his demise?
The statement in Acts 1:18 that he “fell headlong and burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out,” is in no way contrary to that in Matt. 27:5. He hangs himself the rope or the branch breaks; he falls and is broken open on the rocks below.
Did John the Baptist know of Jesus’ divinity?
John knew of Jesus’ divinity. But the current events seemed to contradict what he knew so he sends for confirmation and receives a reply that confirms it.
Is the old covenant broken?
The old covenant is replaced and made old by the coming of the new which the old promised. The old was to stand as a teaching tool until the one it typified came to fulfill (perform) all it taught and demanded and typified.
Are the apostles, Paul and his followers still alive?
Death is not the annihilation most people think of. Death is a separation. When physical death occurs the spirit leave the body. The body is dead without the spirit but the sprit lives on. The apostles are with us in their writings and are living spirits who will return with the Lord when he comes.
Did Jesus already have his second coming?
Jesus is now with us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When He literally returns in the flesh there will be no need to ask or wonder. Every eye will see Him.
Are the apostles, Paul and his followers still alive?
Death is not the annihilation most people think of. Death is a separation. When physical death occurs the spirit leave the body. The body is dead without the spirit but the sprit lives on. The apostles are with us in their writings.
Did Jesus already have his second coming?
Jesus is now with us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When He literally returns in the flesh there will be no need to ask or wonder. Every eye will see Him.
Sarah in Chicago,
Of course I am glad for tolerant Muslims and religious freedom wherever it exists. Muslim Mosques are springing up across the USA and in other “Christian� communities around the world. In which Muslim countries do we see Christians able to express themselves freely and build Churches? How great are the strides of expanding freedom for women where Islam has flourished?
Hekie,
Sorry did not mean to leave any out of the conversation. My we only meant the we who do live in America the USA.
Are you somehow forgetting the HUGE expansion of the Christian Church over the past four hundred or so years? At the end of the gun and sword no less?
Hey, given the teachings of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, there really isn’t that much difference between them and fundamentalist Muslims. Pluralistic moderate Muslims support women’s autonomy too, within their own cultural practices. Not things I would agree with mind you, but they aren’t the ones trying to get their beliefs enshrined in law here either.
Sarah,
In the past we’ve had wars for possession of territory and spread of religion there is some of that still going on today. My question is about the present. Do people experience more freedoms where Christian ideas have influenced the formation of governments or where Muslim ideas have?
I am not standing for the total rightness of Christians or fundamentalism or evangelicalism or all their political actions. I have little regard for such labels and think they serve little purpose. Lets talk about specific actions and ideas. I do not think Christianity has or will bring about perfect human government. We will always be seeking ways to live together with differing ideas about what is right. We will always be trying to figure out what rules we must make so this is possible. Christianity relies on behavior changed from interior motive not external force. I still think more freedom inheres where Christianity has had great influence and such cannot be said about Islam.
So then the Truth is really an incomplete truth that you have to read things into to make sense?
But to the specifics:
I’d think it would be hard to fall headlong when having hanged oneself. Also, there is the discrepancy with what he does with the money. In Matthew he discards it, while in Acts he uses it to by the land on which he supposedly dies.
The baptismal stories are bit muddled. It seems a bit discrepant however that John would know Jesus to be a much holier than himself in some versions, but only figure out later that he was the mesiah in others.
Regarding the covenants, what you say seems to counter matthew 5. Where Jesus claims the old covenants hold until after the earth is gone. Or shall we take that you think all has been accomplished?
Paul and Jesus both make claims that Jesus’ second coming will occur within the lifetimes of their followers, not within their spirit time. Either they are alive still, Jesus has already come or the Bible is incorrect.
I’m sorry, you don’t like my answer, so you redefine the parameters of the question? Awfully open to discussion that.
Ah, so we are down to offering as proof what you ‘think’ … right …
This conversation has stopped being of any real worth to me.
D
I gave you a possible reconciliation of two different accounts of the same event. I do not profess to know what is not said “how exactly the two accounts are reconciled”. I do not believe reconciling them is impossible as just a little thinking can come up with a possible reconciliation. Quibbling about finding the exact reconciliation is useless as neither of us has first hand knowledge of the event.
Holier and Messiah are inclusive not exclusive terms. Not stating everything you know at the same time is common.
The law was fulfilled in the sense that Jesus observed its requirements by living a sinless life. The right and wrong of the moral law stands and will never change. The requirements of observing the ceremonial and foreshadowing parts of the law are no longer required as Jesus the reality they represented is now the living example we are to learn from.
I do not contend He came in their spirit time He came in their lifetime in the ministry of the Holy Spirit who he promised he would send and whom they receive on the day of Pentecost.
Sarah, still no answer to do you think there are more freedoms where Christianity has had influence than where Islam has. I think you don’t like the obvious answer.
I agree that it is quite easy to reconcile them. But there is no way to do that and still be able to maintain that both are true without departing from reason. And I will tell you this; the Bible is not your Truth. Your beliefs are your Truths and that is what you see instead of the Bible. You have given me your answer.
D
Your ears were never open. You eyes were shut.
About the whole “Christians who do X bad thing are not really Christians” business, I think, on the one hand, I understand it.
To many Christians, being Christian, being part of that community, is the most important thing in their lives. Nothing would be worse for them than to be denied membership in the community of Christians (of their particular denomination, or of all, it depends on the person). When these people look at those who do truly evil things in the name of Christianity, like the Forders, and say “Those people are not Christians”, I think what they are doing is issuing the strongest condemnation they can think of.
Often I find this even among liberal Christians who have no problem with those who follow other paths. When I asked one about this, she said that the difference was between following a different path, and professing to follow the Christian path while actually doing something diametrically opposed to it. So what they are saying is not necessarily “Oh, well, those people aren’t the real deal”, so much as “WE CAST THEE OUT!”
That said, they could do a much better job of explaining it. Or they could just replace “These people aren’t Christians” with “We cast them out, let none speak their names except as a curse!” or somesuch.
And, on the other hand, I’m just moved to think of Yigal Amir, the Mizrachi zealot who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin for the “sin” of trying to make peace. All over Israel and the world, Jews of all stripes and all sects rose up to condemn his actions, to say that he had done a great sin and must be punished for it. I remember hearing all kinds of condemnations and analyses and introspection, including the question “What has gone wrong in Judaism that could cause one of our own to do this?” Nowhere, however, did I hear anyone say “Well, no Jew would do that, so he was no real Jew.”
Just a thought.
JB:
Not sure if you’re still hanging around the thread, but I thought I’d reply anyway.
Another thing that frustrated the hell out of me with respect to Christianity (and really, theistic religion in general) is that it’s somehow both the unquestionable, unnassailable truth and yet that it’s also far too fragile to withstand questioning.
I hear the same attitude in what you’re saying about the Bible. Yes, it’s possible, through some mental gymnastics (the science of apologetics) to come up with reconciliations or harmonizations of most of the texts. It’s entirely possible to say and believe that the Bible is without contradictions. However, Christians NEVER apply the same standard to other books. We don’t look at the Koran and say, here is an infallible book, all contradictions are only apparent and a deeper understanding will help us resolve them.
We can’t handle all other texts this way — even historical texts, even historical texts that are generally accurate — because even if they don’t contradict themselves, they contradict each other.
So the Bible doesn’t get to claim its “rightful” place as the only holy book free of contradiction unless we let it pass a lower standard than we set other holy books. This sort of textual affirmative action is very frustrating.
I personally feel that a lot of the strength of Christianity is in its contradictions. The old covenant, which shall never pass away, and the new covenant, which supersedes it in a lot of ways, allows people to vary their interpretation of what is acceptable to match whatever is culturally in vogue. Want to say that it is the responsibility of the Christian to gain as much knowledge about the world as possible? You can defend it scripturally. Want to say that it is the responsibility of the Christian to avoid worldly knowledge? You can defend that too. What you’re left with is a fantastically flexible document that can be fundamentalist, progressive, libertarian, economically socialist, communist, or conservative, facist, egalitarian, and all manner of wonderful things. Other religions with a single-sourced religious can have this flexibility, but it’s more difficult.
Flewellyn
The Bible does recommend puting someone out of fellowship if they persist in doing evil after being lovingly dealt with by the Church. Hard to find a Church where this is practised. Matthew 18:15-17
Flewellyn said:
Yes but, for many of these people, “not a real Christian” is a label that applies to the vast majority of self-described Christian (or at least a sizeable minority). For example, to most Protestants, being Catholic is a sin and it’s extremely difficult for a Catholic to be a “real Christian”.
It’s this attitude that allows 75%+ of the US population to be Christian and for them all to still feel like persecuted minorities.
Oh, certainly. And I sure don’t approve of the notion.
It’s one reason why I brought up the Rabin thing. One thing the Jews do well, at least, is own our mistakes. (Another is to piss off people by refusing to own THEIR mistakes.)
Carl,
Everyone brings their presuppositions to the table. I believe the Bible is inspired. That means it is without error. Right “Christians NEVER apply the same standard to other books.�
You believe it is written by ordinary men without the special aid of God to assure its accuracy; of course we will come out with opposite conclusions. With your presuppositions you could reach no other conclusion. Your mind is not open to the possibility that the Bible is the special revelation of God. You would never approach it being truly open to that possibility unless your whole outlook was first changed.
So you conclude my reasoning did not reach the right obvious conclusion because it did not follow your rules.
I’m saying that the revelation that the Bible is a special, inspired book must necessarily come from outside the Bible. It can’t be because the Bible says it, because other books make the same claim, and we don’t believe in those. It can’t be because the Bible is uniquely non-contradictory, because we reach that conclusion based on standards that we don’t apply to other books. It can’t be because it’s uniquely historically accurate, because there are other texts that are just as accurate.
What I’m saying is that if the Bible is a unique, inspired book, and if we’re supposed to know this outside of a revelation from God himself, then we should be able to analyze the Bible like any other book and come to the conclusion that it is somehow special. That the Bible looks a lot like most other books when you apply that sort of analysis to it suggests that the Bible isn’t the uniquely inspired, non-contradictory word of god.
You’d probably argue that, not being a believer, I’m unable to see that the Bible is divine revelation and not a book written by men. What I’m arguing is that, if the Bible is a divine revelation, it shouldn’t take another divine revelation to be able to see that.
Carl, There is outside confirmation. God has entered the human family and proven the authenticity of his written word by His birth life death and resurrection.
http://bangordailynews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=144481&zoneid=20
Yes, but he wasn’t the first or the last person to do so. Vishnu and Zeus both had multiple incarnations, we have a line of reincarnations of the Bhudda going back thousands of years, resurrection isn’t particularly uncommon in other ancient cultures.
Jesus’ resurrection is very well attested to by people who believe in it whole-heartedly. It isn’t mentioned in any contemporary non-Christian literature, and no, Josephus doesn’t count.
I’m not sure what the point of linking me to the article was. I’ve read a lot of apologetics. I’ve read my CS Lewis. I’ve read much more sophisticated arguments. There are unapologetic martyrs of every faith, martyrs who are good kind people willing to die for what they believe to be true. Forgiveness is not just a Christian virtue.
Carl
To what literal bodily resurrection with concurrent eye witness testimony are you referring?
Why do you take an extreme/fringe example and act like it’s mainstream? Leave hyperbole for math class, please.