The key here is how well you know them. People whom we have known for years we can rebuke...in love. If our best friend is an alcoholic and it is killing them, we can and should say something...offer help.
The first time this cropped up, they had been the best of friends for years. The guy adamantly insisted that Christian doctrine was that he couldn't take any action whatsoever even though the immortal soul of his best friend for many years was in danger.
The next time, the Christian in question only knew professionally the Christians involved in highly dishonest business dealings. She acknowledged the moral danger they were in, but explicitly stated that as a Christian she wasn't supposed to say anything to them about it.
My question is just exactly what this Christian doctrine is supposed to be and what it's supposed to be based on. Unfortunately, I cannot contact either of the Christians in question. I did question the first one about it, but received no reply.
BTW, the first case involved fundamentalist evangelical Christians, while the second involved a Armenian. Apparently this attitude crosses church and denomination lines.
The same guidelines apply {to badgering non-Christians about any perceived transgression}. How well do you know the individual? I cant really badger a non christian about "sinning" since they have no idea whom or what they would be rebelling against.
{voice=cough}Bullshit!{/voice}
Not that you yourself are being hypocritical with that, but rather that what you describe has no bearing on evangelical Christian attitudes and behavior. It doesn't matter in the least bit how well they know their victim or even whether they know him/her at all. We are talking about their accosting even complete strangers with their offensive proselytizing efforts, attacking their intended victims' most personal beliefs in an active effort to destroy them and replace them with a clone of their own beliefs.
"rebelling"? Your Christian conceit is showing. Your understanding of how the rest of the world thinks is corrupted by your Christianity. That kind of thinking taken to its extreme, as it is by fundamentalists/evangelicals, is what Dan Barker, former fundamentalist minister raised in the faith (his mother used to go about her housework singing in tongues) and now named "America's leading atheist", described as "when your theology becomes your psychology. I saw this in action during my divorce as well-meaning Christian friends got me involved with their churches' DivorceCare and singles counseling presentations which fit their own theology-driven psychologies but which are not only practically meaningless and even counter-productive to normals.
Do you remember that science fiction TV series,
Babylon 5? It often dealt with religious ideas and with religion, both human and alien. It received a lot of fan mail from very religious people who praised them for their treatment of religion. To gain some perspective, consider the treatment of religion in
Star Trek, which normally would give religion short shrift and be very quick to explain it all away.
Babylon 5 was created and mostly written by J. Michael Straczynski (JMS). JMS is an atheist. I believe that JMS proves that it takes an atheist to give alien religions proper treatment. We've seen all too often what Christians will do to the treatment of alien religions. "They're just corrupted versions of our own perfect faith." Variations of the old canard "all religions really worship the same God, just by different names", even, according to the Christians who came up with that canard, Buddhists, even though the Buddha taught against putting your faith in the gods because that would just prevent you from achieving Enlightenment. In other words, a Christian approaching an alien, whether terrestrial or extraterrestrial, religion would try to force it into a Christian interpretation because he has a vested interest in promoting Christianity. A Christian has almost zero ability to be neutral and objective about another religion. OTOH, an atheist has much more ability to be objective about any religion or religious tradition. JMS and
Bablyon 5 are evidence of that.
The vast majority of non-Christians are not "rebelling" against Christianity. They simply do not believe it. Yes, there are those who are rebelling against Christianity, but those are the ex-Christians who had become ex-Christian
because of their experience with Christianity. But your own Christian conceit requires you to imagine that all non-Christians are "rebelling" against your "true faith".
And yes...you rightly mention the double standard. I am no better than you. The only difference I see is that I am aware of my transgressions even more than you are...I should be judged harsher than you, if anything.(assuming you were a non christian)
Please pardon the loud pinging sounds from my irony detector.
Human children go through several stages of development; if you have not already, read up on the subject of developmental psychology, including Piaget's
stages of development, wherein certain cognitive skills don't appear until around certain ages -- it should be required education for all perspective parents; my ex required it of me and it was well worth it.
Moral reasoning also goes through stages of development. Young children are in a stage where right and wrong completely depends on the arbitrary rules that an authority figure, such as a parent or a teacher, sets. Right or wrong depends entirely upon adherence to the rules, regardless of the results -- that's "rules-based morality". A further stage of development for moral reasoning looks at the consequences of the rules -- "consequence-based morality". A typical test of which stage of development a person is at is the "Jean Valjean" test. That's not the test's actual name, I'm sure, but it's the basic moral question of stealing food in order to keep one's family from starving to death which triggers all the drama of
Les Misrables.
There is also that infamous psychology experiment whose name I unfortunately cannot recall. You're a subject in this learning experiment that is supposed to test the effects of punishment on the ability to learn. A subject is "randomly" selected to be the "student", but he is actually the experiment's confederate. The "learner" is placed in a booth and has electrodes attached to him, while you, the teacher, are placed at a control panel with switches to administer electric shocks of increasing intensity to the "student" when he gives the wrong answer. In some versions, the teacher is given a sample of the lowest level of electric shock and it is very painful. Then the "teacher" administers escalating levels of electric shocks to the "learner" as he makes one mistake after another. As the "lerner's" distress increases, the "teacher" doesn't want to continue, but the experimenter in his white lab coat and with his clipboard, the consummate authority figure, tells the "teacher" to continue with ever escalating shock levels. The "learner" says that he has a heart condition. The authority figure says to continue and so it goes. The learner complains of chest pains and screams for the experiment to stop. The authority figure says to continue and it continues. Dead silence from the "learner's" booth. The authority figure says to continue and it continues, up to the most ominously labeled switches. At a certain point, different for each "teacher" subject, the subject refuses to proceed. At that point, the experimenter authority figure says, "I take full responsibility.", after which the experiment continues.
Remember the Nrnberg trials? "Ich bin nicht verantwortlich. Ich befolgte bloss meine Befehle." "I am not responsible. I merely followed my orders." How could they have committed such atrocities? Because an authority accepted all responsibility. Were they so inhuman? No, they were completely human, albeit at the rules-based morality level. The level that fundamentalist Christianity demands they be at.
In a young child's rules-based morality, the rules are the rules. Right and wrong is determined solely by whether you follow the rules or you do not. The outcome of following the rules is not your concern, but rather it is the sole concern of the one who gave you those rules. Stealing bread or medication is wrong because your authority figure told you that it is wrong. If anybody dies because you enforced those rules, then it is not your responsibility but rather the responsibility of the authority figure who told you that stealing bread or medication is wrong. You are not responsible for the consequences. You are only following your orders. You are only responsible to the rules-giver for following the rules.
Rules-based morality is a young children level. Many if not most children grow out of rules-based morality after their first decade of life.
Christian morality is rules-based morality. God has given you arbitrary rules that you must follow. Why? That is not for you to ask. You are responsible
to God to follow those rules. Oh! Look! People are being hurt because you are following those arbitrary rules. Should that concern you? No, of course not! You are not responsible to those other people. You are only responsible to God, the giver of those rules. Even if your following those "God-given" rules causes unimaginable suffering, you are not responsible, but rather God is responsible. Even if your following those "God-given" rules causes horrific death, you are not responsible, but rather God is responsible. That is the nature of rules-based morality.
Christians seek to escape responsibility for their actions by assigning all that responsibility to their invisible friend, God.
Atheists live in the real world. Atheists are not responsible to any invisible friends, but rather to real people. Instead of avoiding responsibility by assigning it to invisible friends, atheists accept (or don't accept) personal responsibility to themselves and to others. We are not perfect. We are no better than anybody else. But at least we do try to be responsible, rather than assign all responsibility to invisible friends.
The question at this point remains: what is this Christian double standard supposed to be based on?
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