#4 Richard L. Hardison | 2005-01-30 21:24
Hi Bob! I'm finally back on line and catching up.
The problem with your thesis in this piece is the biblical definitions of life and death. Life is connection with God, death is the lack of it. The statement God made to Adam about the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil illustrates this idea well - disobedience of God's law/commands leads to separation from God and, therefore, you are dead. Those who are consigned to the lake of fire after final judgement are, therefore dead by this definition.
The real point, that the church worries about things it shouldn't, should be well taken. The mission of the church is not to create a utopia. but to reach those who do not know Christ. Society is in the condition it is in because of that little hated fact. Imagine the United Methodist Church suddenly losing interest in gun control and instead begins reaching the lost instead. The Mary Knollers? Persbyterian Church in the USA? Not this guy. Those groups, and more, are riven with the idea of heaven on earth rather than the Kingdom of God which can not be made by man, but can be entered by those who accept Christ for who HE said He was.
This country was founded by Christian who saw the dangers of Church inspired conflict and sought to separate the Church leadership from the reigns of power. The idea of church/state separation was foreign to the founders because they knew such an idea would mean the disenfranchisement of every sincere Christian in the country - the very people who made the revolution possible (the American Revolution was known as the Parson's Rebellion in Great Britain). However, the church began to sicken shortly after the so called "great awakening" as Unitarians took over from the Calvinist Puritans (a process that surprises no one familiar with Calvinist doctrine and ideology). This was the same lot that gave us abolitionism and Lincoln's war - by the 1850s there was no denomination with the moral strength to stand up to the government being taken over by heretics and functional agnostics who screamed for southern blood and freedom for the slaves - whe then quickly abandoned them when it was going to cost them money personally, much as modern leftists do.
Historically, agnostics are some of the worst religious fanatics alive. Man is their god, or whatever they choose to set up at the time. The current PC rage, evolution, psychobabble, the holocaust, Michael King (the real name of MLK), are simply the religious symbols these people have set up.