And destroy nutrient-rich soil to in order to grow one thing that is either too poisonous to eat or to degrading to my car engine for me to want to fill my tank with it.
The Fountain was one of my top choices too.
Struggling between The Fountain and The Fall as top contenders for underrated movie. I'll settle with both:
I don't know if it is what they were going for, but this movie captured spiritual warfare in a really fascinating way.
For most of human history, the household was the economic locus of societyāthe term economy literally duriving from the household. Households were also covanental. The husband as the covanent head of the family, the wife as his helpmeet and "oikodespot" (household manager), the children involved in the domestic and economic life of the home. Fathers were involved in raising, training up, and educating the children. Wives were very often involved in the household business.
This all changed after the Industrial revolution. The economic center shifted from the home to the factory. Fathers left the home for work. In the beginning, women and children did too. But over time, the home became the woman's domain, and the domestic life became her primarily responsibility.
As industrialization and modernization unfolded, the family fragmented more and more. Work, education, entertainment, and social life all shifted from being anchored to the household to taking place elsewhere. And, most fundamentally, society began to see its foundational and basic unit shift from families/households to individuals.
This was the context in which feminism emerged, and it grew more militant, more divisive, and more toxic as the family became more fragmented and as the household more plundered of all its richness and texture.
For the waves of feminism to subside, there needs to be a retrieval of preindustrial life. We cannot go back, but we can pull forward:
Masculine men and feminine women getting married, having children, and establishing productive households. Both parents finding ways to be involved in raising children and in domestic life. Families starting home businesses or engaging in remote work from home. Families reassuming the duties of education rather than outsourcing it to the State. Fathers training up their children, particularly their sons, in their craft, trade, or line of work. Families developing more food and finance sovereignty, growing gardens and denominating their household economies in #bitcoin. Families joining solid churches and reviving the discipline or family worship in the home.
This retrieval is happening. May it accelerate. May egalitarianism and feminism be cast into the dustbin of history. May men, women, and families flourish.
As goes the household, so goes the world.
Admittedly I'm not sure how you see 2 Thessalonians making any such point about the church. Nor do I see any division between church and congregation in the NT or any condemnation of the institution of the Church as a business.
I do think many modern churches *function* too much like businesses (overly focused on marketing campaigns, brandong, and numbers of congregants, corporate leadership structure rather than biblically modeled elder board, etc) but that's not the same as saying the institution of the Church or any local church *is* a business.
Correct me if I have misunderstood what you are saying.
If you ask your dog "do you have flees?" and it looks you in the eyes and says "yes," it might have flees.
Where do you see the Scriptures making a distinction between Christ's body the church?
Much of the Church is in a bad way right now for sure, but what you are describing sounds like mostly mainline churches which went astray long ago and are mostly hollowed out. I really don't consider them churches or really a true or meaningful part of Protestantism.
There are still faithful spiritual enclaves of Protestantism you'll find among the PCA, OPC, Lutherans, CREC, Reformed Baptists, etc.
One note regarding the earlier discussion of the crusades and a lot of Christendom pastāmuch of the Protestant Church, even the solid churches and denoms, do often make the mistake of ignoring the first 1500 years of church history at best, denigrating a lot of it at worst. This is something I would like to see change, and am indeed seeing a slow change. We ought not be so quick to disdain and disavow our fathers.
We have the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic manuscripts, as well as the Vulgate, early Reformer translations, and the KJV.
There are numerous modern translations, some of which are garbage, most of which have strengths and weaknesses based on translation philosophy.
What versions are you referring to that are censored, edited, and omitting things due to secular politics?
Section 6 of Chapter 2 of Calvin's Institutes is relevant for this discussion
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes/institutes.vi.iii.html
Luther's original intent was not to cause a schism, but over time he and other reformers saw themselves as course correcting. We commonly see the Protestants as being the ones to split away, but they saw the Roman Church as doing so.
Also worth noting: prior to the Reformation, average congregants could not read the Scriptures for themselves and neither did many understand the Mass because the commoner did not know Latin. The reformers were so effective partially through their shrewd use of technology. Luther bypassed the gatekeepers and wrote directly to the common German, in his own tongue, leveraging the printing press in a way no one had done before. Other reformers did the same. In fact, without the Reformation, there would not be mass literacy. Anyone being able to learn to read the Scriptures for himself comes with the risk of various interpretations and divisions. But I would argue for all the complications this has wrought, it was worth it.