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To: Jamestown1630

Frankly, I don’t know what you are suggesting; you’re quite oblique.

This post of yours, however, heavily implies that praying to God will not “work”. One prerequisite is faith, and I see a lack of faith (in general), and also cutting Jesus’ words in pieces (He said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s”). Also, the “helps themselves” quote is a pagan quote. But you’re trying to guess at what I mean.

I hope you’re taking the “here to learn something” admonition to heart yourself.


53 posted on 03/05/2021 10:26:55 PM PST by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: Olog-hai

I didn’t say that prayer doesn’t ‘work’. But Jesus told us the way to pray. He included the very important ‘Believe that you have received it’.

That’s a very hard thing to accomplish, when most people pray by just begging, asking, pleading - and when the prayer isn’t answered, they say it is simply ‘God’s Will’ to NOT answer their prayer.


62 posted on 03/06/2021 5:35:49 PM PST by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Olog-hai; caww

I think I got ‘into’ this largely because someone suggested that we were founded as a ‘Christian Nation’.

We are a nation begun by people who came from a culture infused with Christian ideals; but, save the reference to a Creator God, the Founders left out of the governing documents references to any particular religion. They even included specific language in the Bill of Rights precluding the establishment of a State religion.

(And if they had allowed it, exactly which flavor of Christianity would they have chosen? Christianity isn’t ‘A Religion’ - it’s a philosophy, a set of Ideals and teachings which many people believe in very differently than others do. Just look at the virtual tooth-and-nail squabbles between Christian sects that take place right here on FR, to see what a mess that would have been - and it has ever been thus.)

But they didn’t designate us a ‘Christian Nation’.

They could have outlawed slavery, too - it was completely incongruent with both the principles of our Founding documents as well as with the spirit of Christianity.

After the revolution, esteem for General Washington was so great that he could well have retained a level of authority and even dictatorial powers - but he ceded it all back.

They didn’t do any of these things, because to do so would not be consistent with the sort of Republic that they were hoping to create.

You can say that we are a nation created by men inspired by Christian ideals; but not that we are a ‘Christian Nation’.

(Even in revolutionary days there were thousands of Jews here. Some of them helped to finance the cause, served as blockade runners, or were on the battlefield. And the Founders were brilliant and very forward-thinking people. I don’t think they believed for a moment that if their experiment was successful, people would not come from all over the world and from many religious backgrounds to become part of it.)


63 posted on 03/06/2021 6:19:30 PM PST by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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