Posted on 09/16/2012 8:03:11 PM PDT by Thorliveshere
My brother and I have been going back and forth over the last few years, his atheism has really taken a sharp curve into aggravating territory. I got this message from him, and I'm trying to let my anger subside before I respond. I'm curious what you would say:
The only two things you should ever worry about getting married to each other are big government and big religion. While many are very vocally opposed to "redefining marriage" (even, though there are more than one definition of marriage if you bother to look in a dictionary) they don't realize that, in the process, they are redefining the word "liberty". Anyone who believes that big government is too intrusive on their personal lives, but also believes that using religion to dictate the liberty of others isn't intrusive, needs to look in a mirror... for there they will most definitely find the definition of "hypocrite".
Make up with your Brother and only talk about positive stuff.
... or maybe the other way around. During the Soviet Union the elite would send their kids to private religious schools. This is the reason why teachers who belong to unions also send their kids to private schools that boast religion organized teaching. Yeah, how is that for separation of church and state in atheistic socialist and communist statist countries!
Yes indeed, that is the big hypocrisy of socialists and atheists right there. They hate God, but they like the discipline that engineers their sex gizmos at German factories.
Ok, first what do you think marriage is?
Does the government really have a roll in deciding what it is?
If someone wants to get married in the US there are hundreds of churches who will perform the ceremony.
Most states will grant a civil union certificate, which gives all the state’s rights of a married couple.
The federal government does not recognize civil unions for tax purposes.
I do not know of any insurance company that does not provide coverage for civil unions.
So what is it that you are angry over?
It is important for you to know what you think marriage is.
In my opinion marriage is the earthly representation of the marriage between Christ and His church.
No government can change that, it is what it is, God had ordained it.
Homosexuals want normalization, they do not care about “marriage in and of it self, they can already get married, they can all ready have a civil union....that is not their goal.
Homosexuality can never be normalized in the Eyes of God, no anger towards your brother will change that.
No anger towards homosexuals who are desperate to be normal will do that.
We can not redefine what God has defined.
Decide why you are angry, decide if your anger towards your brother is a valid.
Those are questions that can only be answered by you.
I pray for your wisdom.
God’s speed.
References?
>> They seem to go hand-in-hand quite often.
But there are also plenty of Pro-Abort Christians, and plenty of Conservative Statists. We’d probably see a will distributed graph of the various combinations of affiliations, principles, practices, and opinions.
Regarding “marriage”, the state has demonstrated that it will persecute Christian photographers that refuse to record homosexual celebratory gatherings.
I personally enjoy the benefits of DOMA, and it should be enforced as legislated. I wouldn’t be upset, however, if it went away along with the state law that requires citizens to support and service homosexuality. In my opinion, the govt does not belong in the marriage business save the utility value of civil contracts — contracts that in no way obligate third parties to the affairs of the signatories.
Agreed.
Agreed
Ask him to explain the difference between liberty and anarchy.
A book that could be helpful for you in thinking through how to deal with him is “Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult”, by Nick Pollard.
I do not have direct references, but I talked to Polish people on the net, and they can tell you that indeed, strangely as it may seem, they had private schools back then during the Soviet Union.
This might help as it refers to a kidnapping at the St Augustine School in communist poland in the 50s.
http://www.brightreview.co.uk/ARTICLE-A-Kidnapping-In-Poland.html
Possible, yes, but Poland was not the Soviet Union, to which you referred in the initial post.
Don’t bother, he’s lost. His logic is flawed.
He is just trying to irritate you. Unless you enjoy arguing with him... don’t respond at all... it is just a waste of your time and energy.
Secular humanism is a religion, so our Big Government is already wedding to a big religion.
Stop right there. Your dear brother is already presupposing things that he cannot account for, explain or justify, given his atheistic world-view. He is adopting a presupposition contrary to the conclusion he wants to argue; namely, that there is no God.
Already, when he says, "should", or (later) uses the word, "hypocrite" he presupposes some sort of absolute standards of morality or reason that are universal and prescriptive in nature, the very things that are precluded by his own world view. His prescriptions do not make any sense unless it is objectively wrong, for example, to redefine the word "liberty", marry big government and big religion, or be a hypocrite.
But how does he justify his notion that some things are good and some things are evil when in the atheistic world-view everything just amounts to different combinations of matter in motion? What sense does it make to think that matter in motion is not behaving as it 'ought" to?
Your brother's atheism cannot account for his moral umbrage. He is not in any position to explain the objective and unchanging nature of moral notions like good or evil because his atomic makeup as opposed to someone else's atomic makeup ultimately reduces to mere relativistic preferences for thinking,
And because your brother is a finite, ever changing collection of molecules and electrochemical reactions he is also in no position to pronounce on what is universally true even in a descriptive sense because the aforesaid electro-chemical reactions that make up your brother are limited in the scope of their use and experiences.
In short, his arguments and claims are self-vitiating and incoherent.
Cordially,
Is your brother a homosexual? Maybe he is trying to tell you something. Ask him. If he isn’t it might take him back a bit to be asked if he is one.
Other than that I would simply tell him that darkness cannot comprehend light and since he doesn’t at this time confess Christ as LORD and Saviour he cannot understand the truth of the matter, but you will pray for his salvation. And then do it. Pray for him. Ask God to save him, as only He can. Pray and even weep for him before The LORD, because if he doesn’t get saved, he will burn in the lake of fire forever. If all of us would come to stronger grips with this fact, we would be praying with many tears for those we love, and The LORD would hear.
He sounds like my brother and I have decided that the only thing that will get through to him is prayer. I said the same thing to my other brother who wanted to reason with him, it can’t be done because he isn’t reasonable and will not change his mind absent an act of God.
So I will optimistically pray for him and also pray that he doesn’t find the time to vote if God doesn’t change him in the next few months.
So I guess it is liberty to not warn our gay meighbors that their lifestyle is against God, (and will if supported send them to Hell), rather than (not angrily or hatefully) share the truth of the Gospel?
Jesus is real, and He wants to save both your brother and the practicing homosexuals. He created life, He gets to make the rules.
“You would love him and show him mercy.”
I agree, I just think that providing truth (Scripture) and urging people to repent is loving them and showing them mercy.
That’s what I wonder.
I am not denying scripture is important. But what comes first? The only people Jesus directly confronted like you speak were the pharisees. I would guess your brother knows pretty clearly that he is separated from God (if he thought there was one). What he only knows is who God is by those around him that say they follow Him.... just a thought.
Your brother is using his ideas of “good” and “bad”, or “right” and “wrong” to argue against what he sees as a “wrong” system. However, in an evolutionary or atheistic worldview there can be no real right and wrong since everything is relative and the only consistent truth is survival of the fittest. He has borrowed his beliefs from a Godly worldview in which there is justice and injustice. As C.S. Lewis said... (paraphrased) How can one argue against a crooked line when he has no notion of a straight one?
Amen!
Wow, a lot of really good posts here. A lot to really chew through and meditate on.
I truly appreciate all of your great responses. It is helping me tremendously.
Thank you.
God bless you all.
Should people with multiple personalities be able to marry themselves?
I don’t know how your discussions with him go, but he’s right about worrying about the joining of Big Government with Big Religion. Theocratic regimes are among the worst hellholes to live in. Right up there with them are Cult of Personality dictatorships where Big Government IS the religion.
As a Conservative who is a small “l” libertarian and also a “non-believer” (I prefer the term “non-believer” for describing myself over Atheist because I see too many that call themselves “Atheist” to be anti-religious freedom and anti-Christian more than anything, and while I may not believe in God or in Gods or in the supernatural, I am not anti-religious, especially not anti-Christian as I see the traditions of the Christian religion as being a big driver in the founding of our nation).
As far as the State’s definition of marriage; while tradition holds and has always held that marriage is between a man and a woman, the State doesn’t have all the same sorts of test for and demands of who can get “married” excepting of course for laws regarding close relatives, siblings, 1st and 2nd cousins (although it could be mentioned that 2nd and even 1st cousins did legally marry, even get married in churches in the past, it was not all that uncommon), that the man and woman be of legal age and mentally competent, etc.
But let me try to explain further. The State doesn’t care if two Atheists get married or a man and woman belonging to different religions – say a Hindu and a Zoroastrian, a Catholic and a Jew, a marriage between different “races” etc. The State recognizes those marriages and treats them from a purely legal perspective the very same if it was a civil non-religious ceremony performed by a JOP, a sea captain, a ordained Universalist Unitarian “minister”, just as much as a marriage performed by an ordained minister or Priest or Rabbi in a very traditional church or synagogue. However a church may choose not to recognize such “marriages” in terms of how their religion defines marriage. The State, unlike many churches, also doesn’t require prior religious instruction or a promise to raise children in any particular faith prior to marriage, nor does the State, unlike many religions, require that a married man and woman even have children. The State recognizes divorce whereas some religions do not or only under rare circumstances.
So where does this lead me as a Conservative, small “l” libertarian and a “non-believer” in terms of “Gay” marriage?
Some good perspectives and points from a secular perspective can be found here:
A Secular Case Against Gay Marriage
{1} Anti-Minoritarianism. The majority has rights, too.
{3} There really is a slippery slope here. Once marriage has been redefined to include homosexual pairings, what grounds will there be to oppose further redefinition — to encompass people who want to marry their ponies, their sisters, or their soccer team? Are all private contractual relations for cohabitation to be rendered equal, or are some to be privileged over others, as has been customary in all times and places? If the latter, what is wrong with heterosexual pairing as the privileged status, sanctified as it is by custom and popular feeling?
{5} Human nature exists, and has fixed characteristics. We are not infinitely malleable. Human society and human institutions need to ”fit” human nature, or at least not go too brazenly against the grain of it. Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us. It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.” There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding. This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.
{6} There is a thinness in the arguments for gay marriage that leaves one thinking the proponents are not so much for something as against something. How many times have you heard that gay marriage is necessary so that gay people will not be hindered in visiting a hospitalized partner? But if hospitals have such rules — a thing I find hard to believe in this PC-whipped age — the rules can be changed, by legislation if necessary. What need to overturn a millennial institution for such trivial ends?
As far as “rights”; gay couples can, just like heterosexual couples who choose to not live in a “traditional” relationship such as a traditional marriage, that currently being defined as that between a man and a woman, can still live together, can purchase and own joint property, can hold joint checking accounts, can will property to each other, can enter into business and other legal contracts together or with each other such as naming their “partner” in a living will or naming that person their medical guardian in case of illness. In other words, they are granted the very same rights and are protected by the very same laws that I, as an unmarried heterosexual woman have.
As a childless, unmarried, heterosexual middle aged woman, I have named my niece and nephew in my will, they are my emergency contacts, the beneficiaries of my life insurance policies and 401k should I die, I’ve named my niece in my living will and should I become terminally ill and reach the point of no longer mentally competent to make decisions for myself, will name my niece as my legal and medical guardian. I can do all these things without “marrying” my niece or nephew. And absent my niece and nephew, I could have also named my heterosexual, Catholic and married best friend. I cannot claim any of them as dependents for tax purposes, nor could I also if I chose to live with a man without the benefit of marriage, claim him.
So in other words, what I would say to your brother is that “gay marriage” in no way grants them any legal rights that they, in reality do not already have. The only reason for recognizing “gay marriage” is to grant “special rights” to a specially recognized and socially non-traditional arrangement that we as a people do not and should not grant to any and all voluntary arrangements (marriages between siblings, minor children, plural marriages) and to force religious institutions to recognize “gay marriage” as being equal to marriage as defined by that religion’s definition.
I would ask your brother, as a Libertarian, if he thinks that this is really “Liberty” or is just the voice of a small minority dictating its will on the majority and if he is OK with marriages between consenting brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers with their children, minor children with each other, young minor children with adults, plural marriages, marriages between humans to cats, dogs, sheep, etc.
As a "free" individual, I can and should be allowed to voluntarily enter into whatever sort of living arrangement I chose to with other consenting adults without government interference, but I also have no expectation that the government or that the will and consensus of a truly free people have to be forced to accept my choices as being "normal" or grant that relationship a status equal to marriage.
I’ve got a brother who is an atheist and a big time liberal. He wasn’t like that until he joined the unions in his late twenties, then it was all down hill from there.
I’ve tried to counter some of his arguments in the past but he doesn’t listen. He’s become a drone to the left. What ever the union says is gospel to him and what ever his friends on the left say, he listens. Besides myself and my mother, the rest of the family doesn’t really get into politics or religion and really go with what ever is popular. It’s actually depressing at times.
As a practical matter, Atheism is going to eventually become an unworkable choice. As Islamists gain in numbers and acceptance, the choice will not be between Atheism and Religion. The choice is going to be between Christianity and Islam. The Islamists WILL FORCE everyone to accept their religion, and they will kill or imprison the ones who refuse. The only force which can oppose them is Christianity. (As has been the case for the last thousand years.)
Islamists care nothing about Atheist arguments. Their activities are based on what they believe, and facts won't get in their way at all. It is only a Christian culture that will tolerate Atheists. All other cultures in History punished them.
Your brother is going to have to eventually pick a side as a practical matter. That argument ought to appeal to someone who thinks they have a reasoned argument for Atheism.
Also watch this video. It woke me up to the problem. If he doesn't know about this, he needs to. If he needs more information, just look at rape statistics in Europe.
For practical minded people, Real world Experiments are better evidence than is theory.
Very well put. It is a point I am constantly making to Atheists. They rise up out of a sea of Christianity, and think their current moral opinions are independent of the Christian influence which molded and shaped them.
All the Atheists today have moral opinions heavily influenced by Christianity, but they are completely oblivious to this fact. Remove the Christian contamination from their moral perspective, and they will have the same moral convictions as Joseph Stalin. This experiment has been run numerous times. Atheism left to it's own devices is a recipe for mass murder.
“The only people Jesus directly confronted like you speak were the pharisees”
I don’t think so. The woman at the well comes to mind. The rich young ruler. Just off the top of my head.
Wishful thinking on your part.
Prayer is also an establishment of religion. The courts have consistently implicated these religious practices in establishment rulings.
The government cannot modify or confirm religious practices such as marriage. Such actions are civil rights violations.
Marriage is an establishment of religion. The state has no power to change it.
If there is amphibole going on it was changed more than 100 years ago. It’s hard to find an establishment ruling fitting your archaic description today.
I actually appreciate that reality. I see the first amendment as preserving our religious establishments. The government cannot modify them. It’s a dilemma because creating vast religion free zones would of course be hostile. Your post is good and arguably legit. This was not the French revolution. This is the American revolution and we like religious practices.
My argument is that "establishment of religion" meant something very different in 1787 than it does today. The only purpose of that clause is to prohibit a State Church. It was not designed nor intended to strip away pervasive Christian culture from our Government.
I will point out that several states had official state religions before during and after the Constitution was created. I think it wasn't until 1832 that the last state officially disbanded their state religion.
The establishment clause was created to avoid conflict between the individual states regarding religion. That the entire nation and government would be Christian was simply a given in that culture. Their use of the term "religion" in this context would be more accurately addressed by the use of the word "denomination" in it's place.
The US Constitution itself mentions Jesus Christ. Hard to disconnect Government from Christianity through a document that explicitly invokes Christ.
Atheism is fundamentally illogical. You cannot prove a negative. Therefore, you cannot prove the statement “God does not exist.”
Tell that to your pompous brother.
I think you have the history right.
I also don’t mind saying Christianity is the great hope of humanity.
It’s sad more people aren’t willing to publicly defend it.
He told the woman at the well that she would go to hell? The rich young ruler? You better go back and re read.... He came to both with compassion.
I totally and completely agree with everything he said. Don’t see a problem. :) I can’t blame a guy for wanting government out of his life - in EVERY way imaginable.
Love this!
I did not recommend that the response be “you’ll go to hell,”
See my post, to wit:
“Dear Bro,
The things you send me are in opposition to God’s Word.
Here is God’s word on the subject:
**Genesis account**
**Jesus’s comments on marriage**
You should not reject God’s word. There is still hope for you. Repent.
Love, Me”
He did confront the woman at the well with her sin, however, as he did the rich young ruler. Hell would be implied.
I did not recommend that the response be “you’ll go to hell,”
See my post, to wit:
“Dear Bro,
The things you send me are in opposition to God’s Word.
Here is God’s word on the subject:
**Genesis account**
**Jesus’s comments on marriage**
You should not reject God’s word. There is still hope for you. Repent.
Love, Me”
He did confront the woman at the well with her sin, however, as he did the rich young ruler. Hell would be implied.
Ok so where is the Good news? Our turning from sin is a response to the love of the relationship with have with God. We are not living on the way to the cross, we are supposed to live on the other side of the cross. Sin has been dealt with. Do we continue in sin? NO, but is our focus supposed to be the absolute avoidance at every cost, or living like new creations? With confidence that God loves us relentlessly. That He can not wait for us to connect with Him. He adores us, and we can never ever “be good enough” in our behavior to have him bestow His grace on us. He did it when we were at our worse. I am not preaching, but I am curious if you really know who God is at his core?
“Ok so where is the Good news?”
The good news, contained in my proposed sample letter to the atheist brother, would lie in the following portion:
“There is still hope for you. Repent.”
” but I am curious if you really know who God is at his core?”
I believe I do; not perfectly, but sincerely. I know He hates sin, and it is what separates us from Him. I know we must acknowledge we are sinners and repent of sin to obtain His forgiveness - putting our faith in Christ.
A man can’t repent of his sins if he doesn’t acknowledge them. Thus he remains lost. If my brother is sinning, I tell it to him.
“Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” (Mathew 18:15-17, that is Jesus talking)
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