Silencing Christians

Two TV stations, WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, MI and WSYX-TV in Columbus, OH, have banned a television special showing how the media is silencing Christians.

What do y'all think about this?

http://www.nmatv.com/video/1180/Silencing-Christians-One-Hour-Special

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Permalink Reply by Dean on February 20, 2009 at 8:17pm: That's why they call them 'fruit' flies. (yuk,yuk); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by dlw on February 21, 2009 at 2:06pm: If you'll see my post on the movie Milk, I am of the view that there is much to debate on homosexuality and other issues and that imo the issue isn't as clear-cut as the socially-liberal mainstream media like to make it out to be.

So I'd say, we need to avoid trying to fight fire w. fire or politically strong-arming the powers, but rather pick our battles carefully and go out of our way to find common ground with various dialogue partners in ways that do not diminish our view of the Bible, but may require distancing ourselves somewhat from what church historians call the free church heritage that often treats the Bible as if it were a blue-print for definitely settling all ethical issues in all times and places, as opposed to being necessary to demonstrate love in dealing with any controversy in all times and places.

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Permalink Reply by Fred Holland on February 21, 2009 at 10:57pm: I watched this video. It was very well put together and the arguments are laid out in a very neutural emotional state. These are not the angry, frothing at the mouth radicals that I see every day in my workplace. They were not the boys I went to high school with that openly beat homosexuals. They were not my boss I had at a job in 1980 that had mutilated a homosexual. The fact is that since I came to God in 1978 I have never met any people like I saw in that video.

One of the unspoken premisses seams to be that if homosexuals would just shut up and go back into the closet then the practice would eventually die out. That somehow, homosexuality is a modern invention of post sexual revolution America and if we could embrace the "values" of the 1950's all this nastiness would just go away. But homosexuality was just as common then as now. Just better hidden.

I don't think that people with views such as Dean has should be silenced. Nor do I believe that homosexuals should have anything to fear in our country. I believe that our country holds to human rights for all humans, even those who offend our religeous sensabilities(or our sexual ones for that matter). Just as you should have the right to speak your mind(or type your mind) with out the fear that someone will beat you up or kill you for it. But should we be allowed to utter vicious statements against another human being? To try to hurt them verbaly? Like I said before. This video does not show any of the hatred I expected, none. In fact, it seemed a little more like a work of fiction in that I have never encountered those type of well spoken, well mannered anti gay conservative evangelicals. Not once on 31 years of faith. I guess my feeling is "was this real or memorex".; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by dlw on February 21, 2009 at 11:38pm: Well, I don't know if it's true that all aspects of homosexuality are just as common now as then. My big dissent is that I think we lump heterogenous phenomena under the popular usage of the term homosexuality. During my trip to Sweden, I learned about omnisexuality, how some young males came to emulate males with homosexual orientations and thereby chose to become flexible...(Not unlike the best-looking of the young british students in the english movie, "The History Boys" or how about Jessica Stein from "Kissing Jessica Stein".)

It's these anomalies that convince me that a part of the reason there's so much heat over homosexuality is because both sides are seeing part of a heterogenous phenomena and ignoring the other part and then talking past each other...

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Permalink Reply by Dean on February 23, 2009 at 8:35pm: Hey Fred. Thanks for watching the video. I appreciate your comments.

It's interesting since I got saved in 1985 people like in this video are the "norm" for the Christians that I have known or been involved with. Of course there are always some believers or preachers still stuck in the Old Testament and haven't realised that the Messiah has come. But I always avoided them because I knew their message was off. I grew up in upstate NY. Now I am curious where you are from because I have not had the same negative experiences with the church or preachers that you have had.

As I have written before, much of the Church has "fallen from Grace" and gotten into legalism. They are more familiar with the Law of Moses than they are with the Grace of Jesus Christ. They constantly teach against sin without teaching that Jesus was the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. The message is that God loves you and wants a relationship with you. Everything that has separated you from him has been dealt with at the cross. If you will turn from your sin and accept Jesus as Saviour, God will accept you just as if you never sinned. If you could have done this yourself God wouldn't have had to send Jesus. There is grace for everyone who wants to be truly free.

The whole story that some people leave out is this. Though everyone is invited to the Wedding Feast and everyone can come, you will only get to stay if you have on the proper wedding garment. (Matthew 22:11) God loves everybody. God desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. If you give him your filthy garments of sin and self-righteousness He will give you His robe of righteousness. He accepts you as His son and gives you an inheritance.

More and more Christians are being awakened to the message of the Gospel of grace. There is one guy on TV that I could recommend is Andrew Wommack. He also has a website where he posts all his audio messages for free. Much of the old time religion has done much to keep people from God. I believe this is changing.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by dlw on February 24, 2009 at 7:33am: you should tell us your story of your conversion and faith-walk and what led you to come and participate w. RE sometime, Dean.

I work it out like this, I believe the early Christians talked/shared/lived about their faith somewhat differently depending on their context. When among fellow committed believers, their views were unabashedly firm like what one finds in conservative Christianity. When among mixed groups, they were more seeker-sensitive and avoided language/practices that outsiders wouldn't get so well. This tends to be somewhat more akin to the sort of language/views found in "liberal" Christianity. So both approaches may have some biblical warrant and the rub is that we need to value faithful communication about who Jesus is and what that means for us in whatever sit we find ourselves.

A lot of what I write comes from my experiences and how I try to model how to communicate about Jesus w. others who don't share my background or commitments.

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Permalink Reply by Fred Holland on February 24, 2009 at 9:07pm: I should also say that if people of faith are actualy being persecuted it will be from within the community of religious people that will do it. Even when Jesus went into a Samaritan(still no spell checker I see,,,)village they had no problem with him or his teaching.

I am not nearly as Biblicaly correct as I used to be. I no longer see the Bible as applying to anyone else except me. This keeps me from trying to controll anyone else. I am not so concerned with being right as I used to be as this focuses on my intelect rather than on what God wants to tell me. I don't have to be very bright for God to talk to me. Heck, I don't even have to have a great education for God to tell me what ever he wants. I just have to listen.

I would dare to guess that our definitions of what it means to be saved are quite different. I also woud guess that what most people call religion and what I call religion are quite different. In fact what most people call scripture and how I define the word scripture are completly different. I am sure that I am not right about much of what I think or believe, but I don't have to be right anymore. I just have to listen to God and obey as much as I can understand.

I do not live in Up-state New York, but I do not subscribe to the notion that where I live has any bearing on how many mean, violent or verbally abusive people are in any community. Land mass or state borders do not have sufficient power to create or dispell the evil that men sometimes do to eachother.

You may very well take issue with some(if not all) of the things I have said and I can't blame you. I used to say things in a simmilar way to the way you do now. It just did not work for me. For me, I was always trying to straigten every body out. This is NOT the same as making disciples. It was, for me, clever debate over words.
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Permalink Reply by dlw on August 7, 2009 at 9:54am: Well fred, I'm into local rules for local communities, which takes the edge off of trying to control people.
http://www.thecommonroot.org/forum/topics/a-christcentered-or-radic...
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