Bret,
You will always, within any given group, find extremists who want to eradicate others who aren’t like them — Christianity has those too — but I very much doubt most Jews, at least today, care about Christianity except to the extent of wanting it to leave them alone. But suppose I’m wrong about that. What then?
In that case Judaism would be no different from either Christianity or Islam, each of which seeks to bring about “peace” by killing off, converting (forcibly if necessary), or intimidating into silence all non-conformers. I’ve read enough of your Christian nationalism to know that that’s essentially your end game, even if you might quibble with how I just described it. I’ve read enough world history to know that that’s pretty much what Christian nationalism looked like when it had power (the Inca, Celtic pagans and Native Americans would like a word). So why are you criticizing the Jews for doing the same thing? Other, I mean, than the bald, naked and unsupported assertion that you’re right and they’re wrong.
And here, ultimately, is the societal choice that needs to be made: There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching as the result.
As for your claims about the inquisition and the holocaust, and the books you recommend, I was raised by anti-Semites so I’m already familiar with them. An elder in the church I grew up in once said, in a sermon, that his only real objection to the holocaust was that it wasn’t 100% successful in destroying all Jews. Having been raised in that, I’ve already heard your arguments, and they’re garbage. There really was a holocaust, it really did try to kill off Europe’s Jewish population, and it really was a continuation of the inquisition under a different name, even though Catholics weren’t the only ones involved. If you want to buy into historical revisionism, that’s your right, but that’s what it is.
Kathleen,
All that you’ve sent me is hot garbage stew. You keep pining for Pluralism/multiculturalism without realizing that is a religious conviction that requires a monotheism that says … “No God can be uniquely worshiped in a social order except for the God that requires no other singular God.” Sorry… that’s why I said pluralism is a myth. You want to force that “pluralistic” monotheistic religion on me and you want to force your God upon me. Not happening.
And of course you are wrong about Jewish people wanting to just live and let live. Jewish people HATE Biblical Christianity because a social order governed by Biblical Christianity would not allow porn … would not allow anti-Christ films being made in Hollywood, would not allow the attempt to marginalize Christianity as the Jewish faith of multiculturalism/pluralism has successfully done,. would not allow children to be brainwashed with your propaganda in Government schools. Pluralism = Jewish Nationalism.
If you look and learn your history you will see that Christianity did not seek to kill the Jewish people. By way of official Church policy Roman Catholic teaching early in the Church, w/ its policy of “Sicut Judaeis Non,” taught a doctrine that stated no one had the right to harm the Jew, but at the same time, the Jews were — like Christians and Jews living under Islam — required to accept second class status and refrain from undermining the Christian cultures in which they lived. This is hardly a doctrine that encouraged the killing of Jews as you so wrongly think. It is either have that kind of social order or a social order of your pluralism where Christians living under your pluralism are required to accept second class status being restrained from undermining your filthy pluralistic/multicultural social order.
Again, I say, Kathleen, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. God has provided you the opportunity to learn aright. Will you not take it? And before we leave this you might want to read a Jewish author named Ariel Toaff who wrote; “Passovers of Blood: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders.” This book has the potential of cleansing your cheery view of what happens when Christians allow pluralism in their midst.
Your grasp on World history is what I might expect from someone who has read only the court historians with their official anti-Christian narrative. Have you never learned that the official history is written by the winners? Wise up and realize that it is typically only in revisionist history where the truth is buried waiting to be discovered. Again, I recommend Rodney Stark’s “Bearing False Witness,” as an antidote for your gross misunderstanding of history. Another book that would help you see straight again is Wm. T. Cavanaugh’s, ”The Myth of Religious Violence.” You are operating under a strong delusion that these kind of books can help you disburse.
Next we speak briefly to your laughable appeal to the ill treatment of “Incas, Native Americans, and Celtic Pagans.” The peoples under the thumb of the Incas and Aztecs praised God for the work of Cortez. Have you read Cortez’s diaries? Have you read Christopher Columbus diaries? I have. You are absolutely clueless when you suggest sympathy for these murderous people. The Native Americans were so busy killing one another, that I’m surprised they noticed when the white man begin to kill them as a defensive measure to stop their raping, murdering, and pillaging.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1y_0NfhF9c
Next, my conviction that I am right and the enemies of Christ are wrong are not in the least bald, naked, or unsupported. I have God’s own Word to substantiate all of my claims about Christianity being the truth. All you have is the bald, naked, unsupported, assertion that Christianity is not true and that because Christianity is not true therefore everything else is true. You are not wise.
Then you write this hilarious bit that is worthy of a stand up comic routine;
“There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching (sic) as the result.”
1.) There are so many worldviews therefore there must be no true worldview?
2.) Really, there are, in the end, only two Worldviews. Christianity or Humanism. It’s not that hard. Though I concede humanism can wear any number of masks.
3.) Or, there is another option, and that is people and nations recognizing that religio-ethno states are inevitable. This is what you are arguing for Kathleen. You are arguing that America should be a religio-ethno state that is a place where all colors bleed into one (ethno) and where the religion that rules is the religion that allows no other singular religion or God then the religion of all religions and all gods.
However, where all religions are allowed then the God is really the state (man in his corporate expression — Humanism) so that the God-state can dictate to all the other gods how far they are allowed to go in the public square. You are not a pluralist Kathleen. You are a raging monotheist who desires that this social-order outlaw people like me who desires a different god besides your multiculturalism god to rule over the social order. Can you not see this?
I could care less about the de-churching of the church if that is happening because people don’t want a clear alternative between your god and the God of the Bible. Elijah was alone on Mt. Carmel against all pagan comers. I’ve no problem standing alone. McAtee contra Mundum.
I quite agree that the Jewish people suffered greatly during WW II. However as Jewish people were understood as being the ideological champions of Communism, then we understand why many people in Europe were concerned about the enemy in their midst. That it went badly for too many rank and file Jewish people I weep over. It is one reason I am so adamantly opposed to war when not waged on a Christian basis.
Please repent Kathleen. Your understanding of History has been fed to you by Dr. Mephistopheles and his imp culinary school of chefs. Christ will receive you and teach you a better way … a way not characterized by your bitterness and hate against Him.
