Posted on 05/28/2013 6:58:35 AM PDT by xzins
Wilberforce and his group could have a major influence on policy because in his day slavery was largely something that went on overseas.
It took a massive effort to overcome the power of the slave traders and sugar planters, but still, most Britons didn't have an obvious material interest in slavery.
If you want to change things at home, sheer numbers are more important than well-placed minorities. Masses of people resolved to change their lives (if you can get that) count for more in that case than tactics practiced at the elite level.
I've seen the bigotry go both ways; my cousins and I agreed not to exercise it in adulthood, after growing up with Republican Protestants vs. Democrat Catholics at every family holiday table. We've done pretty well with that. Particular points of Protestant disgust were from the dry protties who thought priests drinking was an outrage, the whole idea of confession to an earthly human being, suspicion that veneration of saints is the same as worshipping saints, and the splendor of Catholic churches when the community is poor. Naturally, Catholics have quite a few well-founded concerns about the heterodoxy and apostasy among non-Catholic Christians, and the downplaying of important education such as the absence of consistent dogman or catechism in many of the prottie/evangelical sects.
I, myself, think that the total freedom of choice and of doctrine in American Christianity has as many downsides as the problems of bureaucracy and periods of corruption in the Catholic church. I'd really like to see a concerted effort of Bible-believing groups to band together at this present time of great challenge. Sadly, the old-line National Council of Churches, World Council of Churches and even the International Red Cross have taken left turns.
“I didn’t read the author saying that. I heard him say that having a majority culture is a good thing, but that without targeting leadership within that culture, you still have ungodly leadership. There is logic to it. The only reason I mentioned TV networks is because they have such a profound impact on both culture and on political campaigns.”
I’m all for a Godly man running for office and governing with God’s wisdom. I’m all for a Godly man buying a media source and producing Godly material for the saints and their children to enjoy. I’m all for Godly men ALSO marrying and having 13 children, raising them all via home schooled teachings of morality, and leading them to marriage and 13 moral children of their own.
And I’m all for having a majority culture of Godly men, but we don’t have this. The vast majority of Americans are immoral. The number of saints is so small as to be almost nonexistent. People today believe they can be good without being moral (i.e. following Jesus’ teachings to the letter), when being good and being moral are the same thing. That’s what the immoral majority doesn’t get, and never will. They truly believe that being moral means whatever they want it to mean, whatever feels good to them to do at the time. What “feels good” and “feels right” is wickedness, because man is inherently wicked and delights in his natural state. This is why children must be disciplined (i.e. taught morality), they must be *taught* to be good, and why America’s society of undisciplined children have grown up to be wicked and have wicked children of their own. One cannot say, “oh I’m good and I’m going to be good and do good”, while at the same time saying, “forget about all that Jesus and God stuff for now. We need to do what’s important.” America’s formerly Godly society will fall.
Only a moral people can have a civilized society, because a civilized society and a Godly society are the same thing. A country that is not made up of saints will be a “third world hell hole”. Again: A country who’s majority is not followers of Jesus and His Father who sent Him, will be a nightmare to live in. But the immoral will never believe it. Jesus’ teachings show how to live in peace, love and joy. Reject them and you get the opposite of those things.
Immoral television and other media only have a profound impact on the immoral. The moral simply don’t have anything to do with it. The moral partake only of moral content. The fact that immoral media has a profound impact in American society only proves that the vast majority of Americans are immoral. Only by the saints having lots of children and raising them morally, or by mass adult conversion to Jesus, will an immoral society become moral. Keep in mind that mass adult conversion usually only comes about by a collapse of society, and huge numbers of saints can just move somewhere and build a new country.
“I don’t even see any gates”
Your neighborhood association, city council, planning board, or local political party could be a gate. Take charge.
Organize your precinct. Organize the precinct next to you.
It takes less than 3-5 percent of those operating at the top of a cultural mountain to actually shift the values represented on that mountain. For example, this is exactly what advocates in the gay rights movement has done through the "mountains" of media and arts and entertainment. They have strategically used these avenues to promote their cause and reframe the argument.Thanks xzins.
I beg your pardon for my long posts, they must seem quite boorish. Brevity is the hallmark of a good writer, and sadly I am nothing of the sort.
There is no kind of wickedness a saint cannot understand without partaking in it personally. That would be an excuse to partake in wickedness.
I’m all for Godly media and have nothing against the technology itself.
If a follower of Jesus experiences something, and after comparing it to what is written in the Bible finds it in agreement, then is it unusual that they would like it? If they find it in disagreement, wouldn’t they be ashamed of themselves, want to know why they like it, and how to stop liking it? Wouldn’t they be fearful of God’s wrath if they in any way expose others to it, or speak highly of it in public? If they don’t care, or try to twist Scripture or the meaning of words so that the experience no longer “seems” to contradict the words in the Bible, wouldn’t that mean the experience is an idol?
I ask your forgiveness for speaking in compete ignorance here, as I don’t know anything about the shows you mentioned. Are the characters in the show people you look up to and long to emulate for their Godly character?
I’m not trying to tell you not to eat the meat of idols.
Freepmail for you!
The media has to want to promote an idea to create it, writing an expose itself doesn’t mean much, the media can create public thought, or squelch it and it never spreads or even gets heard of.
The real opinion leader, is the public being saturated with something until it becomes the “opinion”, the public opinion on the recent historical figure and a major American of the 20th century, J. Edgar Hoover is that he wore dresses and was a homosexual, that was created out of thin air and simply implanted in the public brain, like so many other opinions that people think they have.
In short, I've come to the opinion over the past few years that important though it is, we dont need more evangelists, more spreaders of seeds. What we need are more apologists, people turning the soil over, and watering it. Certainly in the western world anyway.
I understand. In the 21st century, how do you get people to believe that they need to be less sinful when they don’t even believe in sin?
In general terms, we need more apologists. We need people who can go on the opinion columns of newspapers, the blogs, the opinion forming websites, and argue the Christian case - not specifically evangelism, but creating the conditions whereby evangelism can actually work. We can point out the logical inconsistencies of secularism. We can point out the results of secularist thinking (not pretty). We can, in short, begin to change people’s minds. Standing in a pulpit haranguing people worked two generations ago, it wont work now. We have to embrace new technology and new communications.
I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that stuartcr now believes in ZOT! Finally, and long overdue. He is the terribly annoying child that responds to everything by asking "Why?" Game over, Stew.
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