Zone1 Christians are not Pacifists

[buttercup]

I can see how shallow and pedantic your Christianity is.

Dudley is actually an atheist, he has stated that a number of times. I don't want to speak for him, but he has said that he appreciates certain things about Christianity even though he's not a believer. His intentions might be good when he sometimes defends Christianity against the godless leftist types ... but unfortunately, when someone speaks for Christianity while returning hate with more hate* and uses foul language and name-calling….that reflects badly on Christianity and all Christians, even though that person is not even a Christian.

And that happens WAY more than the nonbelievers realize. They think they're hearing from a Christian when they're actually hearing from either a cultural christian who was never born again (which is essential).... or someone who doesn't even claim to be a Christian, but just jumped into a discussion like this and the nonbelievers assume they are.

* something we are specifically told not to do, see Rom 12:14, Matt 5:44, 1 Peter 3:9, etc.

 

[buttercup]

The original translation of the Commandant against killing was "You shall not commit murder. It's very easy for people to convince themselves that certain types of killings are NOT murder.

Christian priests during the Crusades would preach that killing non-Christians wasn't murder because anyone who wasn't Christian was less than human. The catholic church would literally pass out papers to murders, rapists, and thieves, that would give them automatic forgiveness for all crimes and sins committed in the Holy Land if they agreed to go. They were sent for the specific purpose of murdering, raping, and stealing from non-Christians. The Knights Templar made it their goal to "protect" Christian pilgrims. They did this by murdering any pilgrims who weren't Christian.

And you brought up another huge problem. People see those horrible things in history done by corrupt people or churches, like the Catholic Church… and those who don't know any better assume that that is "Christianity." That is a huge mistake, to judge Christianity by a specific church....because if said church is not obeying God, and they're clearly going against the scriptures, then they have created their own religion, which is in opposition to numerous teachings in the bible.

Jesus said to love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you... the scriptures also say to be at peace with others as much as it is possible, and "do not return evil with more evil, but return evil with good." I could go on, but we already went over this in the last thread on this topic.

In fact, I think now we're on the third thread on this topic? Why? Many of us made it clear that there's nothing wrong with self-defense or defending one's family. So those other threads were mostly filled with strawman arguments, as almost no one was arguing against self-defense. But in his previous threads, Mortimer was talking about more than mere self-defense... He seemed to be implying that Christian should be more aggressive, and instead of taking oppression or verbal attacks on our faith, that we need to start getting physical (violent?) the way the Muslims do when people attack Islam. I asked him to correct me if I was wrong about his position, but he never did that. At least not that I saw.

The funny but annoying thing was that some of us must've stated at least four or five times that self-defense is OK there's nothing wrong with defending oneself or one's family… Yet a certain poster kept ignoring that, and kept arguing with us as if he didn't read one word we said, and kept saying that we were wrong when we were actually agreeing with him about self-defense. What a mess. But whatever, I need to sign off here soon and try to get back to sleep.