08
Nov
2015
Dr. Charles Stanley on Victory Over Anger
I really think [EDIT: that many] people who are very hostile to Christianity don’t understand what a typical sermon is like. They are like this:
Of course the primary purpose of “going to church” isn’t to make people better members of society and family, but my goodness people going and hearing stuff like this week after week is extremely healthy.
Is it environment or genetics? That can be tested.
Also, people should be much more angry about NSA mass spying and Obama & Erdogan’s creation of the Islamic State and general destruction of Syria and Iraq.
“Is it environment or genetics?”
Notice this binary choice already assumes materialism is true.
Well, yeah. I’m a materialist.
If not “to make people better members of society and family,” why else would they go to church???
Really, you can phrase it any way you like but ultimately the two big commandments are love God and love your neighbor and when you have done all that, go and give all that you have to the poor.
If your religion tells you that there is something else, something that does not involve being a better member of society and family, then you pretty much have missed the point of the Bible or whatever other teachings that you follow.
Wow, Khodge, you never saw the bits like “My Kingdom is not of this world,” hey? Maybe you’ve been reading Jefferson’s edited Bible.
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
Hmm, I guess it IS all about getting along with your family after all!
Draw it out…what did he teach his disciples to do?
Khodge wrote:
If not “to make people better members of society and family,” why else would they go to church???
Really, you can phrase it any way you like but ultimately the two big commandments are love God and love your neighbor and when you have done all that, go and give all that you have to the poor.
Khodge you’ve provided the answer to your own conundrum. Just re-read what you wrote, and look back at what I wrote. It’s pretty simple.
Bob that response sincerely made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Forward to the 20 minute mark to get to the good part. It’s where Dr. Stanley leads the congregation in a chant of ‘Death to America!’ before returning to the subject of Anger.
That would have been so cool!!! Sadly, it didn’t happen. 🙁
The various strains of Christianity to which I have been exposed have all included some doctrine about “false prophets” and people who commit sin while invoking the name of god. My observation here is that it is always someone else’s prophet who is false. The insiders never identify their own preachers as sinners until the cops get involved, and even then, there are some who hold out.
So, when the preachers stop a small boy from doing his schoolwork, present him to a large group of his peers on school grounds, and call him a sinner under the influence of Satan, and not one parishioner objects, we come to see the function of these sermons as fostering obedience to hurtful people.
I don’t want to present this as an argument against Christianity, Bob, but your post seems to imply (upon my reading of it, anyway) that no reasonable person could object to value of a good weekly sermon. But context is everything, and some of us have had to face the sharp end of that particular stick one too many times. My current view is that less exposure to such things is better, but that is a conclusion drawn from the context of my experiences, not those of a believer.
“I really think people who are very hostile to Christianity don’t understand what a typical sermon is like.”
What constitutes “very hostile”? What if you spent 30 years attending church services and have a very good idea what a typical sermon is like but still don’t think Christianity is true? Do you think that everyone that is “very hostile” to Christianity believes that most Christian churches contain snake-handling as a regular practice?
Knox, you more than qualify for “very hostile,” but I agree you know a lot about Christianity and what a typical sermon is like. I’ll amend the post.
Murphy, if you’ll excuse me and if you’ll pardon me, but when you watch a “typical” video of a Nazi political rally, with the millions of delerious and overjoyed populace, cheering and clapping, do you think that when people react with hostility of what is done in the name of Nazism, is unfair because heck look how fun those people had?
Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all in any way “comparing” or “likening” Christianity with Nazism, what I am saying is that the hostility people have towards a particular ideal or set of ideals, is truly not well reputed by pointing to videos of deliriously happy followers of said ideals.
I think the hostility you are referring to stems from stories of hardcore Christian parents murdering their children because they’re gay, and cheering drones being dropped on the homes of Muslim families, and contributing to a stifling of scientific progress that does not gel with the Bible’s claims, to saying crap like those in San Francisco deserve to be hit with an Earthquake for their “alternative” lifestyles.
It is that kind of deep, dark horrors that you can’t see at rallies of followers and supporters.
Personally, I think the hostility is nowhere near sufficient, since we still have to love with so much evil from the fringes of hardcore Christianity.
MF you didn’t offend me with the Nazi analogy, but the unnecessary quotation marks would have provoked anger had I not just watched this video.
Yeah that’s a bad habit I’ve found myself in. Like Chris Farley on SNL:
I may or may not “drink maple syrup straight from the bottle”.
Maybe I’ll just quote everything.
Fair enough.
I appreciated the sermon.
Is there any such thing as a “typical” sermon? I am sure there are a great many flavors.
But to the point here, what if Bob is right and going to a weekly (or more) sermon makes results in people being better members of society and family?
My hypothesis is that this is exactly the case, and indeed this is the reason why we have religion. Societies cannot grow unless there is some mechanism to ensure people do not cheat or defect (in the language of game theory). Religion provides that mechanism. All societies that have grown so far have used that mechanism (I think).
My conclusion is that religion is extremely useful, but also wrong.
It remains to be seen if there are other mechanisms that can maintain the existing religiously derived cohesiveness. This experiment is currently underway in Europe, where religious belief and adherence is reducing quite dramatically, and so far it seems to be holding together. Possibly it was run in the USSR, a nd that time it did not work so well.