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Why Having More Christians Won't Necessarily Change Our Culture
Charisma News ^ | 5/27/2013 | Os Hillman

Posted on 05/28/2013 6:58:35 AM PDT by xzins

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To: nitzy

I see, I guess that post 65 made sense to you then.


81 posted on 05/28/2013 10:11:41 AM PDT by ansel12 (Social liberalism/libertarianism, empowers, creates and imports, and breeds, economic liberals.)
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To: nitzy; ansel12

There’s no such thing as “your truth” and “my truth”. The minimalist DIY American model is incompatible with the ancient and apostolic faith. If you don’t know this, you don’t know history, or else feel somehow entitled to choose the history you like.

One or the other is wrong, defective, inadequate. Somebody had to say it. Everybody else has to have the courage to submit to the truth. Call it a come-to-Jesus moment.


82 posted on 05/28/2013 10:17:34 AM PDT by Romulus
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To: All

While having more christians won’t necessarily
change our culture, you can be assured by simple
observation that having more muslims WILL.


83 posted on 05/28/2013 10:23:40 AM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: Alex Murphy
The only way this would "work" is if the author is talking about a autocratic monarchy imposing their cultural will onto a powerless majority.

I think Mr. Hillman's point is not advocating autocracy, rather acknowledging the role of leadership--in EVERY society, be it democratic not.

It is well established for example that no more than 1/3 of Americans at the time of the War of Independence supported the Patriot cause. It took a George Washington to win the war, and later...to win the peace, in establishing the Constitution.

Do you disagree with his example of the homosexual rights movement? Have anywhere NEAR a majority favored the changes in law which has taken place? No, of course not--not even in California (though perhaps in cities like San Francisco...). Rather a majority, either don't know what to think, or are not utterly certain in their convictions--i.e. willing to fight. When a very small, but determined, minority pushed and pushed and pushed...things changed--either democratically or (in this case, mostly) through judge-made "law..."

Now of course sodomy is against God's law...and is in a different category, since by definition, it involves behavior...but the same thing happened in desegregation.

Did majorities in the South (or anywhere) favor passing laws to recognize the equality of blacks & Jews? NO. But a determined minority--convinced of the righteousness of their cause--led the way, and eventually, the majority went along--and today, I'm sure, a majority does not want segregation to come back. Were the majority of people 60 years ago evil, rapent racists? No...but neither were they convinced that blacks were equal.

The problem is, using that good model above, the anti-God crowd has convinced certain majorities, but mostly governors and judges--that poor, pitiful homosexuals are a class, a different set of people.... just like blacks, when really homosexuals are just people following degenerate behavior patterns... THAT is a huge difference.

But Mr. Hillman's main point is that should Christians get a foothold in culturally significant places--like Hollywood, or the Academy (where they definitely do NOT have significant places now), as well as in government, we can change society by the influence of leadership--and not worry about whether a majority are real Christians.

Change ALWAYS occurs through leadership--not in a Marx-imagined sense of the rising up of the masses.

84 posted on 05/28/2013 10:23:59 AM PDT by AnalogReigns (because the real world is not digital...)
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To: stuartcr; IronJack

“You have to have the desire to change the culture don’t you? What would do that?”

Yes, I don’t think it’s an either/or proposition. It’s a both/and.

Share the gospel, and disciple those believers, each of us taking dominion where we are called. No quarter.


85 posted on 05/28/2013 10:25:58 AM PDT by Persevero (Homeschooling for Excellence since 1992)
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To: xzins

“I believe we have withdrawn from the battlefield. “

Many have. Maybe even most. But not all.


86 posted on 05/28/2013 10:26:26 AM PDT by Persevero (Homeschooling for Excellence since 1992)
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To: xzins

All this article does is show that the amount of saints in America is extremely low.

Those who follow Jesus don’t have cable or go to the cinema. If they feel the need to watch a program they rent a Godly one.

Those who follow Jesus don’t send their children to the anti-Christ government school. They home school them. They don’t send them to anti-Christ Scouting, they find a Godly organization instead.

Those who follow Jesus don’t send their children to anti-Christ college. The only reason for college is for engineering, medical, science, or law, and they either find a school staffed by fellow saints that teach these disciplines, or they use internet schooling.

The most important thing in this world to do, other than accepting Jesus’ sacrifice in your name, is to marry, have a lot of children (13 or more) and to teach them morality. Morality comes solely from the Bible, it is another way of saying, ‘teaching the Bible’. Nothing is more important than teaching them morality and if they learn nothing else, it is still a complete success. There is no civilized society without morality.

People in America don’t want children, and they don’t want to raise the child they have. They tell themselves that the best thing to do is to send their offspring to government school so that they can be socialized in wickedness. These ‘parents’ don’t believe that morals are important enough to teach anyway. The truth is that it is almost impossible to learn morals from any other source but from the example and teachings of one’s parents. If it is not learned there, then a person must spend the rest of their lives studying the Bible and trying to teach themselves.

Those who follow Jesus don’t subscribe to anti-Christ magazines or listen to anti-Christ radio or play anti-Christ games. If they feel the need for these things they partake of Godly sources.

If the anti-Christ government forces a follower of Jesus to perform some action that is against Jesus, they simply sell their business and find another way to make a living. If their money is stolen via taxes to perform anti-Christ activities, they would do everything in their power to avoid these taxes and to change the tax system. They could do subsistence living in a state without property taxes, for example. Or, they could run for government on a fair/flat tax platform (and they won’t change into an anti-Christ when they get to Washington.)

If the majority of people in a society were actually in the Body of Christ, then anti-Christ content sources would quickly go out of business. If these sources are funded by tax money stolen from the saints, they would be doing everything in their power to avoid and change that system, even leaving the country or rebelling.

Ergo, the amount of saints in America is extremely small. What kind of society is it that can’t even imagine not watching the filth on TV? What kind of society is it that makes an article crying that the Body of Christ cannot avoid anti-Christ society? Of course the saints can avoid wicked things.

This article’s purpose is to tell the saints to stop spreading the Good News. To get them to stop all that worthless witnessing and spreading of the Gospel and to instead focus on becoming a TV station owner. What part of the Bible is that teaching from?

Why is TV so important to these people? Is their sexual brokenness so severe that they cannot imagine giving up that source of continual soft porn? Are they so seeped in wickedness that they need to watch crude cartoon characters curse and blaspheme in order to be able to laugh? What kind of society even finds that something to laugh at? An anti-Christ society. A society who’s majority is not in the Body of Christ.


87 posted on 05/28/2013 10:28:42 AM PDT by Outership
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To: Romulus

History tells us that members of the Catholic denomination vote pro-abortion/pro-homosexual democrat.

Since the democrats changed the immigration laws in the 1960s we have imported 10s of millions of Catholic immigrants and the left depends on that immigration for it’s survival, it does seem that it makes a difference which denomination Christians belong to as far as the culture is concerned, like the article mentions.


88 posted on 05/28/2013 10:30:42 AM PDT by ansel12 (Social liberalism/libertarianism, empowers, creates and imports, and breeds, economic liberals.)
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To: marron; All

See my post above. It’s not about imposition of the will of an autocracy on the majority—it’s about the importance of leadership, in EVERY society...even democratic ones.


89 posted on 05/28/2013 10:31:18 AM PDT by AnalogReigns (because the real world is not digital...)
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To: ansel12

Right, see what I mean about the jokes and the inability to answer anything hard. Same thing over and over.

There’s no lack of whining about the problems, but no one even attempts to answer.

Feel free to answer in your usual way, I’m done responding for today.


90 posted on 05/28/2013 10:33:57 AM PDT by stuartcr ("I have habits that are older than the people telling me they're bad for me.")
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To: Persevero

What do you mean by no quarter wrt sharing the gospel and discipling those believers?


91 posted on 05/28/2013 10:36:49 AM PDT by stuartcr ("I have habits that are older than the people telling me they're bad for me.")
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To: stuartcr

LOL, we aren’t your daddy, start participating and quit asking everyone to answer your endless questions while you waste everyone’s time.


92 posted on 05/28/2013 10:41:47 AM PDT by ansel12 (Social liberalism/libertarianism, empowers, creates and imports, and breeds, economic liberals.)
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To: stuartcr

“What do you mean by no quarter wrt sharing the gospel and discipling those believers?”

I mean to be unashamed and unabashed to take dominion. Tell those who ask for donations to Boy Scouts that they should be ashamed to seek money for an organization that tries to defend buggery. Ask them, why would you want that for young men? Don’t you think young people should be protected from evil?

If your daughter is invited to a Britney Spears concert, don’t let her go. Don’t apologize. Tell her it’s vulgar and cheap and we don’t live like that and that’s not what you want for her.

If your son is in a public school and the have Abortion Education where the young people are taught to put rubbers on cucumbers and encouraged to take his girlfriend to the clinic is she is pregnant, don’t let him go. Complain. Agitate. Put them on the defensive.

Etc. Stand up. Make them stand down. Don’t apologize.


93 posted on 05/28/2013 10:45:30 AM PDT by Persevero (Homeschooling for Excellence since 1992)
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To: ansel12

Sorry, had to respond. I see you had to get some little joke thing in their...still can’t answer huh?

Apparently you haven’t the ability to understand that my questions are my participation.

People say we have to do this, we have to do that. I ask how do you propose to do this or that...but no one can answer how.

Ok, go ahead, you got the last word today, I know how much it means to you.


94 posted on 05/28/2013 10:48:05 AM PDT by stuartcr ("I have habits that are older than the people telling me they're bad for me.")
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To: Persevero

That sort of thing just never comes up in my life. I guess that’s why I didn’t understand your comment.


95 posted on 05/28/2013 10:49:49 AM PDT by stuartcr ("I have habits that are older than the people telling me they're bad for me.")
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To: Alex Murphy; xzins
IMO we got into the position we're in, because some Christians have been raised to believe that "You don't polish the brass on a sinking ship!", quoting evangelist Dwight L. Moody in the 19th century. These Christians believe that the culture will not (and cannot) be redeemed by anything - not even by a wholesale repentance and conversion of the population. In their view, nothing short of the physical return of Christ will have any lasting impact on it, and thus the most a redeemed man can hope for is that the cultural rot might be delayed, making a future generation deal with it instead.

IMHO, I do believe the progressive rise of certain schools of eschatology (or, at least, their gain in popularity through vehicles of both fiction and new media) has also had an effect here. I've seen first hand multiple times over a willingness to let the culture degrade in the belief that it is merely hastening the Second Advent, giving rise to a "love the citizens, hate the society" sort of mindset.

96 posted on 05/28/2013 11:00:13 AM PDT by Frumanchu (God's justice does not demand second chances)
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To: xzins

We have more than enough Christians now to affect necessary changes. The problem is that the Christians are not voting or thinking as Christians, they are thinking as union members or the coattails of union supporting parents, and voting for whomever the DemocRAT’s run for office. Catholics in this country alone could completely change the face of government in one election cycle if they would unite to think and vote with a correctly formed Catholic conscience. The trouble is getting them to listen to reason when they are so steeped in a generational DemocRATic mindset, they simply won’t listen to reason...


97 posted on 05/28/2013 11:01:42 AM PDT by OriginalChristian (The end of America, as founded, began when the first Career Politician was elected...)
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To: stuartcr

Hey, get out there. Storm some gates or something :)


98 posted on 05/28/2013 11:01:53 AM PDT by Persevero (Homeschooling for Excellence since 1992)
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To: AnalogReigns
I think Mr. Hillman's point is not advocating autocracy, rather acknowledging the role of leadership--in EVERY society, be it democratic not....Mr. Hillman's main point is that should Christians get a foothold in culturally significant places--like Hollywood, or the Academy (where they definitely do NOT have significant places now), as well as in government, we can change society by the influence of leadership--and not worry about whether a majority are real Christians.

For clarification, see my post #40. Repeating what I wrote there:

If the majority doesn't like what the leadership is doing, they will find a way to get different leadership. To your point, I don't have a strong opinion re which group starts things off first. What I'm saying is that there needs to be a cultural influence coming from both groups, or else the influence of either will be short-lived. It's my view that focusing growing the "majority" should be today's priority. IMO we can't elect and sustain Godly leadership, without having the support of a statistically influential voting base.

99 posted on 05/28/2013 11:03:41 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
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To: Romulus; ansel12
There’s no such thing as “your truth” and “my truth”.....One or the other is wrong, defective, inadequate.

Of course I know that. Yours is wrong. I would hope you could someday put your full faith in Christ's sacrifice alone (and not your own worldly tributes to Him) but this is not the proper time to convince you.

The problem that I have is with people going around picking fights over this. There is no need to introduce this intra-Christian mudslinging on a thread that is about Christians vs. the secular world in regard to politics. This is doubly true in light of the graph I posted earlier which doesn't cast a very good light on the political consequences of having more Catholics.

Again, I can deal with the endless stream of Catholic threads on a "conservative" forum. Go ahead and celebrate your religion. I know there are many Catholics here who enjoy it. Just don't start (unprovoked) saying my faith is invalid.

If you want to do that start a new thread specifically debating Christian vs Catholic beliefs and see what happens.

100 posted on 05/28/2013 11:05:15 AM PDT by nitzy (You can avoid reality but you can't avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.)
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