Smile, Sarah.... Smile ...!

Why did stoning people come up?

Edit: genuinely curious

Edited again: looks to be simply thrown in, I guess.

If we read the teachings of John the Baptist, Jesus and early Church fathers, we will see that violence is against Christian values. Christians could not be soldiers.

For the record, you are stating that Christianity itself is a peaceful, if not pacifist, religion when genuinely understood and practiced at its source?

Not derailing. For long. I won’t respond back. Just curious.

I know I wasn’t the target of this question, but will respond anyway if you don’t mind.

I think the answer is yes. But I would phrase it this way: Christianity is irreducibly, ineluctably, relentlessly pro-life.

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No, I am stating what John, Jesus and the early Church fathers taught as true and ideal Christian values.

Not at all, thanks for answering! Don’t mean to derail, and I won’t be making some kind of argument from it.

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Thank you, Z.

H’mm, I guess all the people who believed they are true Christians from Christ’s death until now didn’t get that message.
They also didn’t get the message about not raping kids either. These days people cherry pick their beliefs and can justify any behaviour as Christian. Don’t believe in hell, that’s fine you can be a Christian. Adultery, divorce, sex before marriage, female priests, acceptance of homosexuality, that’s fine you can be a Christian.

Sorry, actually not sorry but I can’t take any of it seriously, so when I hear Christian behaviour as a reason to do anything I’m pretty sceptical.

Hence why I think hiding behind religious freedom is a crock of shit. These are the same people who have a problem with people identifying as something different from their birth sex. It’s OK for them to pick and choose and interpret what beliefs they want from whatever fairy tale they say is true.

A person can identify themselves as anything, and do horrible things regardless . But if they are advocating stoning homosexuals, on the basis of “Christianity” they are shitty christians, and are violating the basic tenets of Christianity.

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And that is the problem with religious freedom. Is it freedom for established religions with actual rules and laws and leadership or is it freedom to believe whatever an individual wants to believe?

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This is why you can’t fight religion. It’s so subjective in practice and its entire existence is rooted in faith.

Humankind hasn’t found a way to combat irrational beliefs when the believer TRULY believes. That’s why we have ISIS, and it’s why we had the crusades.

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Or believing to be true what you already want to be true.

I don’t think freedom of religion is a problem at all. As long as someone isn’t imposing on anyone else they can believe whatever they want to believe.

I think it’s odd that we seem to be arguing about baking cakes. There already is/was a thread about that.

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I imagine it’s the of refusal of service which brings it to mind. I know I was curious to see if folks thought Sarah had a right, or should have one (or not), to her dinner at this specific establishment, with the other thread in mind.

But that is probably inevitable. Abortion comes to mind.

I don’t think she had a right as far as refusal being based on something personal that she has control over unless it is religion since that is a protected belief. Race, ethnicity, sex, are things we cannot control and I don’t think a civilized and civil nation should tolerate its citizens being discriminated against for those reasons. The Pledge of Allegiance alludes to this with “for all.”

The restaurant owner had the right to ask Sanders to leave. I don’t agree with how she handled it as it was rather immature and quite frankly stupid in my opinion. If it were me, and Sanders walked in and I really felt strongly about an issue that I just had to express my feelings to her, and this is America so people in politics should be approachable to citizens and should listen to them, I would have gone about it differently. I would have told her that I appreciate her business and do not want her to feel unwelcome. I can separate my political beliefs from my responsibilities as a business owner. I would tell her how I felt and repeated that I appreciate her coming to my business and also taking the time to hear me out. I would then send a bottle of wine over to her table on the house.

What this moron did was create a martyr in Sanders. She engaged in behavior that the left has condemned in the right for creating more division. Maybe by talking to Sanders like one human to another something positive could have come out. At the very least you avoid all the negative outcomes from the confrontation. If Trump is helping to fuel the divisiveness then the answer isn’t to respond in kind. That’s how a child would think. It’s amazing how the so called left has learned nothing from MLK.

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I agree with you, yet when you say a “civilized nation shouldn’t allow someone to be discriminated against”, I believe that the people of the nation should be trusted to handle this through boycotts, especially in the age of social media when it’s easy to find out that a business discriminates against certain groups, for whatever reason. We don’t need to delegate this to the government.

If that were the case we wouldn’t have needed civil rights laws or federal intervention for the Little Rock Nine. The damn governor of Arkansas closed all of the public schools for a year to stop integration.

Look at what happened in Nazi Germany.