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Post by Cornflake on Mar 11, 2024 14:01:58 GMT -5
"I see quite a number people who always identified as Christian, writing that they are no longer Christians. Instead they identify as followers of Jesus, a designation that I think can be quite different that what is today called Christian."
I don't know that I care about the wording but churches in the popular sense, including my own, erect a lot of barriers to those who want to follow Jesus. On the other hand, they can offer the significant advantages of a community of faith. Life isn't perfect.
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Post by Cornflake on Mar 11, 2024 14:04:25 GMT -5
"I suppose a 'follower of Jesus' could be someone who has extracted the moral precepts from the Gospels without accepting their metaphysical foundations."
It can be someone who decides to follow Jesus and does not acknowledge any human authority concerning what following Jesus entails.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,852
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Post by Dub on Mar 11, 2024 14:41:26 GMT -5
Well, pretty much the entire history of the organized Christian church, since early in the fourth century CE, has been more about control than anything else. Control of doctrine, control of behavior, and control of social standing. The Protestant Reformation aimed to ease some of that but Luther still favored the execution of heretics by burning. Each new sect or denomination seems to have formed largely to enforce their own version of the Truth.
I don’t know how writers view Jesus’ divinity if they haven’t spelled that out in their work. I just thought it was an interesting idea.
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Post by millring on Mar 11, 2024 17:01:22 GMT -5
Draconian environmental policy dictated by unelected bureaucrats is not only pretty darn undemocratic, it's darn authoritarian. And it doesn't get much more authoritarian than shutting down the entire economy for a year. It just doesn't feel authoritarian when the boot isn't on your throat, or you agree with its necessity.
As to "Christian", because it includes believers in antithetical tenets, it is a meaningless word. In today's culture it's more often a bludgeon, brag, or blunder. Sometimes a humble admission.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 11, 2024 17:29:25 GMT -5
Just wondering where the lines are for "authoritarian" in matters of general health and welfare. In public health matters, for example, is it authoritarian to close a restaurant or food-processing facility that is producing tainted food? To require vaccinations for highly-contagious diseases in schools? (I'm thinking of the smallpox vaccination I needed to be admitted to public school in 1949.) To forbid the release of toxins into waterways?
At what point should details of public health and safety require specific legislative action and language? What happens when a novel threat appears or is recognized? Do we wait for the legislatures to write them into the regulations?
I understand skepticism about and impatience with bureaucracy, but the "unelected" part is central to the deal. (And just because a decision-maker is elected doesn't mean he can't be bought, bullied, or bullshitted. Bullshat?)
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Post by Marshall on Mar 11, 2024 18:06:16 GMT -5
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Post by theevan on Mar 11, 2024 18:14:09 GMT -5
Just wondering where the lines are for "authoritarian" in matters of general health and welfare. In public health matters, for example, is it authoritarian to close a restaurant or food-processing facility that is producing tainted food? To require vaccinations for highly-contagious diseases in schools? (I'm thinking of the smallpox vaccination I needed to be admitted to public school in 1949.) To forbid the release of toxins into waterways? At what point should details of public health and safety require specific legislative action and language? What happens when a novel threat appears or is recognized? Do we wait for the legislatures to write them into the regulations? I understand skepticism about and impatience with bureaucracy, but the "unelected" part is central to the deal. (And just because a decision-maker is elected doesn't mean he can't be bought, bullied, or bullshitted. Bullshat?) All good points. If the legislative bodies would do their jobs, the unaccountable bureaucratic edicts would be curtailed, though never eliminated. I'm afraid that's not going to happen. We are well into Orwell's 1984. I increasingly feel like a disgruntled colonial bucking at the abuses of George III.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 11, 2024 20:42:57 GMT -5
Evan, bureaucracy is as old as city-based civilization--it's a kind of division of labor and any social organization bigger than a village is going to invent some version of it, almost certainly organized along hierarchical lines, with a rulebook, and rules are generated from the top down*. I don't know where Orwell comes into this--his nightmare was the totalitarian authoritarian system, not the health department or the vehicle-licensing department.
* I'm not excluding ecclesiastical organizations, either. The Catholic Church has an impressive bureaucratic machine.
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