Anti-Christian bigotry is alive a well
Discussion
Meh, it's not healthy to play victim. Better for Christians to examine the role they played in creating the current social environment & figure out how to be better.
I only consider myself a Christian today because of Jordan Peterson & a few others. They helped me see that the words & actions of the people who drove me away were really not all that Christian after all.
Yes, it isn't healthy to play victim, but commiserating can be healthy. We aren't tattling and looking for big brother to fix it, just looking for validation in the observation.
In my experience, many just want to feel self righteous & avoid seeing their own failings. Most Christians & their church communities are their own biggest enemy. They are often very superficial & very hard to stomach. What's worse is that most of them have little awareness of it & work very hard to avoid improving said awareness.
The way I see things most Christians are more hostile to any healthy form of Christian culture than any outside force ever could be. Actually standing up for what is right is uncomfortable. How many church communities showed their cowardice & shut their doors during covid? How many actually stood up for what was right?
Most of the church normies I know, even when shown quite explicitly, refuse to see any familiarity in the pattern of today's persecution of Julian Assange for telling the truth & the man they supposedly worship. "...but is Assange even a Christian?" Most are so disconnected from reality that rather than seeing this life as a gift from God they pray for the afterlife. I could go on, but I won't.
All valid criticisms here, and I agree with most. Based on what your saying I’m guessing your talking about the Protestants.
Look into the early church same Catholic/Orthodox church for a thousand years.
Good place to start:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4qSE7UMQlus7XbMNTqVO2p?si=jYkXuqgiQiWM6cKpqbucGA
There are some better people there, still lots of issues. Huge sexual hangups, lots of denial, lots of authoritarianism supposedly justified with scripture.
Realize everything man does fails to comparison to the ideal, we live in a fallen world full of sin (the Church included), and especially in our retarded age. The attitudes and actions of the average man should not be your main focus but the truth and your relation to it which is independent. If you want examples of lives well lived read the lives of the saints. Like you said earlier should can only focus on what we can control, which in this context, is your own repentance, and relationship with the divine.
JP helped me on my path as well. It’s true especially in America, lots of cultural Christians, and few actual ones. And I do appreciate this sentiment. But Don’t think the anti Christian actions of the left can be blamed entirely on the shortcomings of American Christianity. This is a much older story, and has happened in many countries many times in the past perpetrated by the same ideologies that are present today.
There are lots of forces at work, but all we can do is focus on the role we have to play. Isn't the whole point of Christianity to have people who are willing to stand up & speak the truth no matter the cost? Even when threatened with torture & death by authorities who are possessed by their desire to promote & maintain delusions on which their power & status depend?
Not the whole point but a side effect, or fruit if you will, of knowing Christ.
I think sticking to whatever concept of truth you can reach via the best within you, no matter the outside pressure to deny reality, is quite literally the only way to save your soul. People who abandon what they know to be true in response to fear of some arbitrary authority are just destroying themselves.
It’s a big part, but not the whole. Its necessary but not sufficient.