'America For Jesus' Rally

http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-pra...NwYWNlLWFzdHJvbm9teQRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=3

Like Jesus needs that old fart to "regain" a sovereignty that he never lost to begin with.

He's using God to manipulate events and it's disgusting.

I can never stop chuckling at the raging solipsism involved with thinking enough prayer can alter God's "divine plan".

Yeah, like God has a big gameshow sized prayer meter, and when the arrow wiggles past the right marker line, he grants your wishes like a genie.


One less person at the meetup, or, one of them so much as coughs, or, they pray the right way outwardly, but think about some nice juicy titties for a couple seconds, and semi-thicken at the thought, and the whole thing goes kaput.

Mind that bus, Pat!

(Ignores)

*THUMP!!*

what's sadder still is how many otherwise intelligent folks can't see what's happening and eat it up.

I would like to frame homosexual rights reform in the context of the struggle for democratic rights. It's interesting that Robertson links gay rights with "European socialism", which is nothing of the sort, but rather simply a plan to advance his agenda of spending cuts and attacks on government progmrammes and entitlements.

Maine might very well be the first state to legalize gay marriage through voter referendum in November:

The best thing they ever did up here was protect the churches right to refuse in the legislation...that is taking a lot of independents and more liberal republicans right off the fence.

Of course the hate groups are getting scared...they are dumping money into PACS and whatever else they can try to attempt to stop this. They know this coming from the voters instead of a legislators pen would be the beginningof the end.

Where Maine goes...So goes the Nation.

I think the quotes you attribute to Robertson were actually the Master of the Mystic Arts.

And a writer at AP or UPI is the one that connected a homo agenda and Obama's desire to remake the US into Euroland-lite. Well, that writer and your inference of what the writer said. Just because "he also said" something doesn't mean the two are related. You like Floyd. You like socialism. So?

Personally, I agree with the perception about where Obama thinks America should go, he's all but said it in words if not in deeds by bankrupting the state. And, separately, I figure the gays are overdue after decades of repression, they just wanna fly their freak flag high, more or less, it only seems radical in contrast to the repression.

"Nobody fucks with the Jesus!"

I cannot emphasize this strongly enough. If God is in charge, then it should be clear that the primary purpose of prayer (which is just expressing your thoughts to God; there is no magic involved) is to align our mindset on God, not to change God's mind.

If Christians want America to "belong to Jesus," that is not done by praying about an election, or by voting for the right candidates. The first priority of Christians who want to make a difference in the world is not to change the world, but to change themselves. If the vast majority of Christians actually lived according to the teachings of Jesus, instead of behaving in a way that discredits Christianity, then the teachings of Jesus would be far more palatable to society than they are now.

You don't need to elect people who will pass "Christian" laws. A true Christian should not need laws to live according to what are supposed to be his own core values, and non-Christians don't have any obligation to live according to "Christian" values in any case.

So yeah, Pat Robertson, wanting to proclaim to America that Jesus is Lord is a very laudable goal, in my opinion. But if I may say so, I think you're going about it all wrong.

ah, yes, America for the Americans, now where's that sliders clip?

Of course. But don't put my real name on it.

And speaker Cindy Jacobs has blamed a mysterious Arkansas bird-kill last year on Obama's repeal of the policy known as "don't ask, don't tell," which allows gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.

So rather than just smite the gays, he uses the birds to send a message to everyone.

Well played, God, well played.

Send pat robertson to gitmo?

I was cruising down the freeway yesterday coming back from Washington D.C. and somewhere along the way I saw a billboard advertising a "Creation Museum".

Pat Robertson is a dangerous, anti-American radical. At least he's getting closer and closer to death.

That much is true of every living person, without exception.

Speak for yourself.

God is supposedly all knowing so he should already know your mind without you praying. Ergo praying must have another purpose. "Aligning your mind to God's" sounds nice but unless God speaks to you and tells you how he's feeling then as a practical matter that just isn't going to happen, son.

He does. The Bible even says so explicitly. That's why I didn't say anything about informing God or anything like that.

It does. Several, in fact.

How do you know? I would like to see the demonstration of that conclusion.

The absence of spontaneously splattering heads everywhere, since containing some of God's mind would be like mind-melding with V'ger times a jillion.

You probably don't mean it this way, but it's just as objectionable to say that Jesus is sovereign in the United States than to say that he should be. The people are sovereign.

Swap it out with Allah, and people lose their shit.
It being "the right", God/prophet makes it all right?

Yeah, boy, good thing white middle-Americans lucked into the right one, and it happened to be the one their parents lucked into, and so on...

Him knowing it, and you being aware of those thoughts as you express them are different things. It is, in some ways, like "taslking to yourself" (and of course the skeptic will argue that's exactly what you are doing) in the sense that we are often not aware of our own mind until we vocalize our thoughts.

For the believer, who professes to hold a certain worldview reflective of a belief in the existence of a God, and a god who actively is interested in their life vocalizing and processing their thoughts can be, if done properly, an exercise in reconciling their thoughts with their professed faith - and in that sense reconciling their mind with the mind of the creator they say they believe in.

now, it is true they have no more evidence that he hears and answers than they do that he exists at all....BUT given that they already have accepted the proposition that he exists, and that he cares, then those beliefs imply certain things to them and sometimes - just human nature - we let our way of thinking get out of alignment with the things we say we believe (and indeed, this is true not only of religious thinking)

As an example - if you believe in a god who "works all things together for bood to him that believes" then you turn around and, say, lose your job and are consumed by worry...then your thinking - worrying - is not in alignment with what you say you believe - that God is in charge and will bring good out of it.

So then prayer for that person is not so much about saying "God please give me a job" as it is about training your own mind to believe that God is in control of the situation.
That's what he means when he says aligning your thoughts with God's - or at least, that's what it means in the natural side of the equation. IF one believes in the supernatural component of prayer, then there's no great leap of faith to believe that God does not have to answer in an audible voice in order to lead your mind into thinking as he would want you to.


Also, note for the record that this is an example only and I do not wish to debate the premise that God actively involves himself in human events to the extent of giving a person a job or a raise or whatever.

Within the context of an all-powerful God, he would certainly be able to influence the thinking of a mere mortal without "getting carried away" and overloading the circuit. That is, he could impart a few drops without pouring out the whole jug.

On a very basic level, it isn't hard to understand why people have prayed to God or gods throughout time and throughout the world.

There is so much in our lives that we have no control over. In ancient days, people prayed to gods to make it rain, make their harvest fruitful, make their offspring healthy, etc.

It is no different today. People still pray for those same reasons.

And death is one of those great unknowns that people fear because we don't understand it. People are so scared of the idea of permanent loss, they come up with various beliefs regarding the afterlife (reincarnation, heaven/hell) to satisfy their minds.

Its not rational, but its not necessarily harmful either. Spiritual beliefs can give people great peace of mind in their personal lives and I have no problem with that. And many enjoy the fellowship that comes with it.

But people take it too far and religion gets out control. Eventually it becomes an instrument to force other people to believe as you do, or force people to act in certain ways. Or a group of like-minded believers become convinced that their way is superior to the ways of others. And they try to convert or murder these other people. Jihads, crusades, witch trials, abusive cults, theocracies...

Organized religion becomes a horror unto itself. I would be perfectly happy if organized religions went away yet people were still free to hold whatever personal spiritual beliefs they wanted.

These 'America For Jesus' people are scary as hell because they want to force their beliefs on others or force society as a whole to conform to their beliefs. Ironically, I consider these attitudes very un-American.

I'm sure as individuals, most of the people who attended the rally are harmless and friendly people. But you cannot underestimate mass psychology. Even harmless individuals can collectively become something harmful as a group. Group-think is an interesting phenomenon. In groups (pehaps because of the anonymity) people may behave in ways totally foreign to their normal personalities. Inflammatory speech and incendiary individuals can convince normally reasonable people to act in uncharacteristic ways.

In modern orthodox Christianity, of which these folks seem to be unmindful or unwilling to accept, Jesus/god does not claim or desire dominion over nations, but over individuals.
Laying aside the broad general sovereignty over all creation that is implied in the definition of the term "God" as used in the Bible, the only supernatural sense in which any nation could be a "Christian nation" is if the great majority of the individuals were authentic Christians and lived like it. he would still not be sovereign over the nation itself but over the citizens as individuals (the ones who had acknowledged him).

The only sense in which the term "Christian nation" has ANY application is in the cultural sense, not the religious sense. It 's arguable that the only time in recorded human history that God claimed sovereignty over a nation corporately would be the pre-Christ nation of Israel and they certainly didn't conduct themselves very well as the priests of God on earth.

I have a theory that IF the Bible is in any practical sense a revelation of God's interaction with men, that the whole point of that exercise was to provide a case study example of WHY it's a bad idea for any group of people to style themselves a "Christian nation" and how thoroughly humans fail at that role.

it is, of course, not necessarily true that everyone who finds it unwise and oppressive that such a thing exists as a "Muslim nation" which enforces the will of Allah on every citizen is also a believer in the Evangelical conception of "Christian nation" and "America belongs to Jesus" and all that rubbish.

However, two other things are true:

1. virtually everyone who DOES beat the "this is a Christian nation" drum and tries to legislate doctrine by force of law IS a person who is horrifed that Iran (for example) does EXACTLY the same thing with their religion; and

2. I'm not sure to what extent it is at least somewhat orthodox Islamic belief for the government to impose Allah's will by force of law - maybe that's a perfectly normal Muslim thing to do....but it is manifestly NOT a biblical thing for Christians to do.

Well, that's not disturbing at all.