Linkathon!
New biography defines Eugene Peterson’s view on LGBTQ issues…
How a failed prophecy turned into a major sect…
The Bible in the Book of Common Prayer…
Atlanta suspect blamed women for tempting him…
Pope Francis won’t bless same sex marriage…
How will the church respond to children at the border?
St. Patricks confession of faith…
Congrats to Beth Moore for leaving the SBC…
Getting to the root of the Reformed war on women…
Black pastors push for compromise rather than the Equality Act…
More later if I feel like it, but I probably won’t…
I don’t know how to do this….that’s what I said a year ago when I found out I would be teaching from home. I made lots of mistakes in the beginning, gradually got better, and now i’m comfortable. Needing to get up and teach 100+ kids in two different grades on different days was a challenge, but it also kept me busy. My biggest take-away: I have today…I can’t change yesterday, and tomorrow will come…but I really need to focus on today. So, I have been, and God gives just enough grade for all the “todays.” (See James 4)
Way too much is being asserted on news stories without clarity. Weāve become whores of rushing to judgment. Itās an obsession. Behind it is the agenda of the claimants. āExpertsā and āsources close toā are the paparazzi of our urgent lust to know and of our prejudiced agenda.
Pastor Dread @ 1:00m. Wise, wise words… IMHO. š
Reading a new rand of biblicism….?
Translates – IMV – deny the Book! ! !
Hereās the real HORROR of this moment. Massage parlors abound in every American city. They are largely fronts for sex trafficking. We flip this moment into another faux race bait while the subjugation of women is flaunted.
God will indeed damn this kind of chicanery. Don Lemon says God does not judge. A God like that is a clown and a fraud.
“We flip this moment into another faux race bait while the subjugation of women is flaunted.”
Another white man instructing racial minorities on how to view their world.
Jean,
That was out of line.
Two things are in view here.
There is ample evidence that there has been an increase in Asian American prejudice since Trump.
That does not mean that this crime was another example of it.
It’s possible, but my guess is that this is more of a case of what I was taught in my initial “pastoral training”…”all women are Philistines”.
The fact that these places are hotbeds of sex trafficking does seem to be being overlooked…
Jean was just being consistent in contempt of me. And Iām not sure how my comment instructed racial minorities on their feelings. It was unambiguously aimed at the general reporting of the matter. Everything – even Jeanās comment is about race because we want it to be so.
White Man Dread
Michael,
As your comment that these massage parlors are hotbeds of sex slavery and trafficking the actual evidence based upon arrests and subsequent LEO investigations and trails shows that to not be the case:
https://reason.com/2020/02/02/massage-parlor-panic/
Considering most of the employees busted in these places are middle-aged women, the notion that it is for underage sex trafficking is quite farcical indeed.
A large number of people, most of whom were Asian, were cold blooded murdered or injured by gun violence at massage parlors. I don’t see what the relevancy of sex trafficking or the obligation of journalism regarding that issue is in the case of this crime? Why can’t journalism report on the crime at hand without being accused of ignoring some other evil?
CM
Neither myself nor Michael injected the qualifier āunderageā
Two Caucasians died as well…what is the racial meaning of this?
Dread,
Understood.
But much of the noise, rhetoric, etc. especially by politicians and other groups gives the impression of that. Using “for the children/minors” as convenient cover for overreach, controversial actions/policies, going after drugs, guns, you name it,etc and so on. Something both TEAM RED and TEAM BLUE have done many times over the years for things they do not like (Like guns – TEAM BLUE, drugs – TEAM RED).
Why do they do that? Because it works so well as they can say, “You don’t want kids to be ________ ? Do you?”
Anyone who cannot see that gangs and cartels are exploiting vast numbers of these minors swarming the border doesn’t really understand the evil and the rationalizing that the chilren, so called, and the unredeemed are vulnerable to… IMHO
Em,
My point is that minors are NOT exploited/abused in various situations, but time and time again various groups have used it as canard when the evidence had shown that it is not the case. Here some prominent examples.
1) The Satanic child kidnapping and sacrifice conspiracies of Mike Warnke popular in Fundie and Evangelical circles in the late 1970’s and 1980’s.
2) The whole McMartin Preschool Trial fiasco and others
3) The whole WACO fiasco.
4) The whole Q-anon and Pizzagate pedophilia conspiracy
The sad fact is that minors are far more exploited/abused by their own family members and places like churches. Far more Baptists and Catholic church leaders and teachers have abused minors than the so-called Satanists.
So tell me Em, when all the Mike Warnke stuff about the Satanic child sacrifice first came out did you believe it? Yes or No? Likewise for the whole Pizzagate / Q-anon pedophile thing? Yes or No?
CM
I’ll answer NO NO and NO … and I pushed back against those who did that I am acquainted with.
But there are kids at the border and they are being used by bad actors, sent by desperate parents and held in the same kinds of conditions or worse that have existed through several presidents.
And it is worse but that is not what this thread was about,
There are kids on the border and yes, they are being exploited by cartels…as are their parents.
In particular the thousands of people who were forced by the Orange Bastard to wait for asylum hearings in Mexico instead of the U.S.
They are forced into some of the most dangerous places ion the world…exactly what they tried to flee from.
No one is talking about that atrocity…and even if Biden has the will, it will take years to unwind all the myriad ways that administration found to make oppressed people suffer more.
No, I do not give a damn what anyone else thinks about the matter.
Don Lemon says God does not judge.
Help me out here.
Is Don Lemon a Christian pastor?
Isn’t he a secular news host on a CNN program?
Who cares what he says. anyway?
Since God has said, “Vengeance is mine. I will repay.. ” i think it is safe to say God judges..
However, He does extend grace and mercy also…..
Indeed.
Haters gotta hate…
Wouldn’t be better if the sex-trade were decriminalized, regulated and monitored just like any other industry?
Muff, wouldn’t that, like Nevada, show approval? Approval of what we know God labels sin in the N.T?
My last comment was meant for the Open Blogging thread. My apologies.
You seem to be confusing, uh, church and state. They’re not synonymous and interchangeable. The state isn’t run under New Testament principles, per se. There are lots of things in our culture that Xns might consider sinful. We work to have a positive, life-giving influence, of course.
But we’re not in charge. We sit at the table alongside other interest groups.
I think Muff has a good point. Ironically, such regulation would probably lead to some good results.
Sadly, looks like we’re in the middle of yet another surge in anti-Asian incidents of violence in our country.
Snopes reports:
The (Atlanta) attack put a spotlight on a surge in hate crimes against Asian people in the U.S. since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a trend outlined in a study published in March 2021 by California State University, San Bernardinoās Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
The study logged hate crimes reported to police departments in the 16 largest U.S. cities in 2020 and found a 149% increase overall.
Here’s a powerful statement from the Asian-American Christian Collaborative.
https://www.asianamericanchristiancollaborative.com/read-statement
Lots and lots of endorsements from various parts of evangelicalism.
https://www.asianamericanchristiancollaborative.com/signatories-institutions
A narrative look at prostitution in the text is powerfully impacting. The prostitute finds mercy and even has moments of nobility. We find victimized women in the birth lineage passages of our LORD. Tamar of Ge 38 takes advantage of the social norm of prostitute camps following the work force to seduce Judah into a tryst that brings forth the covenant child. And of course we see all kinds of compassion and mercy toward the prostitutes who encounter Jesus.
Today we have a situation where women are virtually owned even though they ‘consent’ to such arrangements. They are drugged, beaten, manipulated and coerced by violent men and women who have perfected the art of subjugation. If you look into their stories and work with rescue organizations you find a complex story. It is not clear that legalizing the industry will change this. It is virtually legal now. Almost nothing is done to attempt to police it. The sheer numbers make it impossible.
The massage parlor industry is filled with women, often asians who are shifted from one storefront to another so the women cannot make relationships with clients that could end in their escape.
The discussion of legalizing is worth having but again, it isn’t clear that an improvement for victims will result.
The Failed Prophecy..
Part of me wonders if Darby’s Rapture was labeled secret in reaction to Miller’s day-year prophecy. If so, it would make sense post-1844 to distance oneself from dated eschatologies.
Em,
I think there’s a difference between approval and toleration.
What I propose is toleration.