What do you think the US is guilty of that equates in any way to this?
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There are a lot of Chinese people running businesses in other countries around the world, in many places if you have a few hundred thousand dollars to invest in a business they will give you a citizenship. China has basically taken over the Caribbean, in Jamaica most businesses are owned by recent Chinese immigrants.
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There is other crazy stuff going on with evangelicals, like this speaking in tongues thing or wanting to start world war 3 because it will bring on the rapture and of course all evangelicals are going straight to heaven.
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This is a subset of the evangelicals, mostly the pentecostal demonation. This or the wanting ww3 I think only applies to a small number of the evangelicals.
From what Iāve heard many call themselves evangelicals, but only attend church a couple times a year. Part of this i think is due to coupling politics and religion. It seems to be almost an identity for many. They are part of the team so to speak.
Obviously, some are really trying their best to live by what they believe the Bible teaches. I grew up around many like this. I do think the all in approach results in a lot of all in believers, but also in a lot of agnostic / atheists. More of my friends that grew up like this (church twice a week, Christian School, youth groups) ended up atheist than are still in it. Many of my friends that grew up with a lot more moderate christianity are still in it.
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I think the West just canāt make sense of how ludicrous things can get in ex-commie nations so they interpret it according to normal logic.
Years ago, in China, people started filming stuff like people forming long queues outside of a CCP officialās house bearing gifts obviously hoping for a favor. Exactly like that scene from The Godfather. Only it was very common in a lot of places.
One official decided it was a good idea to go around flaunting a rolex in public appearances despite having a salary of $500USD per month. Then they found out this dumbass had also bought 10 million USD worth of property on the street RIGHT ACROSS HIS HOUSE.
When the crackdown on corruption started in 2011, people started to think of ingenious ways to give bribes. One dude stuffed money into several FISH and sent a basket of them to an official.
And who can forget this gem:
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That is a difficult rabbit hole to describe if one doesnāt live in the States. Also FYI, baptists and protestants would be considered evangelicals here.
The term is absolutely terrible, as it makes no sense theologically and is partially demographic, partially political, and a tiny bit faith based.
Itās like āideopathicā in medicine.
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Agree here. I very much dislike the coupling of politics and religion.
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I am definitely guilty of this lol.
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Yeah I know they arenāt all the same, but the only people you hear talking about the rapture or speaking in tongues are evangelicals.
Donāt blame God for the actions of a crazy church group.
I think the Catholic church is probably pushing a lot of people to atheism too, claiming to represent God and morality while molesting kids and doing a bunch of other bullshit for centuries.
It serves absolutely zero purpose. I have not seriously delved into the historical development of the term as it pertains to politics, but I believe the original goal may have been to classify the demographic that goes to church weekly and seriously from the āEaster and Christmasā crowd. Because yes, they do tend to be more conservative than the twice a year crowdā¦on average. But still sane.
This was done by political entities for political pandering purposes, not from a grass roots reality of (serious) Christianity in the US. As such, they screwed the whole thing up.
I think it has morphed and taken a life of its own now much like Frankensteinās monsterāwhich is where the combination of politics and religion you mentioned happened. Of course everyone who is religious also has political beliefs, but this hybridized ā¦thingā¦ was a development of the political class more than it was grass roots.
As a term it does not accurately describe ANYTHING, but yet somehow survives and is used to classify people politically. I am an Evangelical.
EDITāItās also worth noting that itās no less insane than terming all the loonies in the left āThe Leftā. Both ends of the spectrum have their lunatics but then labeling the rest of the sane folks the same thing is useless and aggravating.
Edited for auto-correct
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I interpret the Bible as very much suggesting an all in approach.
This is just something Iāve noticed. Others have noticed too. Phrases like if you want to create an atheist, send them to Catholic School. It has also been researched by pew if you are interested. They found the groups with the most knowledge of religion to be agnostic, atheist and Jewish (many Jewish people practice religion, but are not believers, something I recently learned).
Yeah but things like child molesting or the rapture are not sanctioned by the Bible in any way. The rapture idea is mostly based on some loose interpretations of various verses here and there that were talking about other impending disasters that already happened a few thousand years ago. We discussed this in another thread a while back.
The thing is that a lot of people are not really into learning anything for themselves, they prefer to listen to someone else and then base their opinion on that, or abandon the idea completely. Same reason so many people supported BLM and Antifa in their mostly peaceful domestic terrorism.
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I agree.
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I almost forgot about this verse, shows that evangelicals are very selective in which parts of the Bible they follow:
Woe to you who long for the day of the LORD! Why do you long for the day of the LORD? That day will be darkness, not light.
Amos 5:18
Because Satan abhors beauty, and so all his servants are repellant.
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Of the top of my head, two recent examples:
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Police raiding a secret mancave of a lowly official earning 1500 bucks a month and finding an actual stuffed polar bear
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A small town mayor (and an international drug lord as well) that takes bribes only in giraffes. The man loves giraffes, has his own private giraffe zoo (where he celebrates giraffe weddings) and if you want him to you a favor, better have a live and well looked after giraffe ready
Enlightenment, or lack of it. The Revolutionary War cut many cultural ties with the Old World for those few crucial decades when the new perpetually broke country had more pressing matters to attend to.
Hence the decoupling of religion and politics that occurred in Europe thanks the sheer force of Napoleonās armies never happened in the US.
Thatās why the importance of church both in daily life and politics is so perplexing to outsiders.
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I would disagree. I think it is a more modern invention, or at least phenomenon. Until the 1900s in this countryās development, the population was largely Christian and devout (at least in comparison to today).
If most of the populace is Christian it stands to reason the representatives are as well.
I place this particular phenomenonuch closer to the 1980s or 70s.
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I couldnāt make sense of some of the stuff myself.
Have you ever heard of people paying to GET IN the military lol? I honestly thought people were making this up and started calling bullshit on it until one of my wifeās relatives came to us to borrow money a decade ago. She paid 15,000 USD to get her son in. At that time, the average salary where she lived was around 500 USD per month.
Then I found out it was a path towards a CCP official post. And officials make lots of money from bribes.
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I canāt say too much for risk of breaching NDA, but one fund I perform AML for is set up to get residency permits for Chinese investors for 1 million euros a pop.
Anti-money laundering is a wild field. One of my investors is a Russian gangster with 2 murders on his rap sheet, another is a Chinese individual in the regional legislature.
Edit: to demonstrate how nuts this fund is, any profits made on their million goes to the fund, no investor is allowed, BY CONTRACT, to receive any profits made on their investments.
Edit 2: Iāve taken to calling it the Hong Kong displacement society.
Edit 3: I think the āself deportation societyā is funnier and will refer to it as such subsequently.
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I had never, in my life, heard of this haha
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