The Tension of Faith

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Looks to me like we'll become the equivalent of dhimmis.

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Funny how you constantly complain of being persecuted but can’t come up with anything beyond anti-discrimination legislation. And you even accept that anti-discrimination laws can override religious belief. So it can hardly be a serious problem. Especially when the same laws protect Christians.

Mostly it's not a complaint, it's just a statement about the reality of the situation. When a law can be written that forces Christians out of business for holding to our Christian beliefs, we've turned some kind of corner in American life. Instead of dwise's worry that we're going to force our views on others, what is happening is the exact reverse and it needs to be acknowledged. This country was formerly strongly Christian at every level, and if anyone is losing power to the other side, we're the losers. The pagans are winning. The secularists are winning. If the same laws "protect Christians" they don't protect us from THIS masterpiece of Satan's.All this attempt to deny this is happening is absurd. Give it up. It's happening and you should be cheering.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Mostly it's not a complaint, it's just a statement about the reality of the situation.

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But it isn’t. As I have pointed out.

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When a law can be written that forces Christians out of business for holding to our Christian beliefs, we've turned some kind of corner in American life.

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Anti-discrimination laws going against Christian belief are not new. By your argument African-Americans shouldn’t be protected either. Because accomodating Whites and Blacks together was against the Christian beliefs of the segregationists.

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Instead of dwise's worry that we're going to force our views on others, what is happening is the exact reverse and it needs to be acknowledged.

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And yet you ARE demanding just that. You want gay marriage ended - and you are telling lies to make it sound just. Indeed the whole business about gay marriage is one of Christians trying to force their views on others.

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All this attempt to deny this is happening is absurd. Give it up. It's happening and you should be cheering.

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I am glad that your attempts to force your views on others are failing, but that doesn’t seem a good reason to let your lies go unchallenged.

I think the larger question is why you think the difference between an unadorned cake versus one with "images or messages" is nitpicking? That's an interesting conclusion. However did you arrive there? Well, I guess that would be true if you defined "out for blood" as calling attention to the true meaning of what you've said and done. It is not within my power to do that. You can only do that to yourself. For example, you need only look to the example of Trump tweets to see how ineffective he has been at depriving women of respect. If disdain has been your fortune then the blame is your own. Again, it is not within my power to do that. Here's a wedding cake from the Masterpiece Cakeshop catalog: And just to get the facts straight, in Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips' own words, here's what happened (from Supreme Court hears same-sex marriage cake case):

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Flash forward to 2012, when same sex marriage was not yet legal in Colorado, but two men walked into the bakery.

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"The conversation was fairly short," Philips remembered. "I went over and greeted them. We sat down at the desk where I had my wedding books open."

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The men told Phillips they wanted a cake to celebrate their planned wedding, which would be performed in another state. Phillips said he knew right away that he couldn't create the product they were looking for without violating his faith.

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"The Bible says, 'In the beginning there was male and female,'" Phillips said. He offered to make any other baked goods for the men.

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"At which point they both stormed out and left," he said.

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To summarize, Phillips took the couple over to his wedding cake books, which were full of pictures of cakes like the image above, then discovered that the two men *were* the couple, a gay couple, and refused them service. They then left.Another shorter description can be found at Supreme Court seems divided in case of baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple:

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The couple arrived with Craig’s mother and a book of ideas, but Phillips cut short the meeting as soon as he learned the cake was to celebrate the couple’s marriage.

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Phillips recalled: Our conversation was just about 20 seconds long. ‘Sorry guys, I don’t make cakes for same-sex weddings.’

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A straight couple can walk in off the street into Mr. Phillips shop and purchase this cake, but a gay couple cannot on religious grounds? Could a black couple be denied on religious grounds (imagine a religion where economic intercourse with blacks was "morally repugnant")? If a baker of cakes is an artist, is a hair stylist, a chef or a makeup artist? Can an artist refuse service to anyone, say a black sculptor refusing to sculpt a cross for the Ku Klux Klan? Can the baker post a sign in his window saying that the shop does not make wedding cakes for gay couples? Is a wedding cake speech or just an item for sale by a business?Lots of questions. I can understand that Phillips wouldn't want his cake served at the reception for a gay couple and might find it morally repugnant, but I can't see how businesses open to the general public can pick and choose their customers or who they'll sell which items to.By the way, I happened to come across this letter from Jack Phillips lays out his position pretty clearly, thought you might like to read it: Colorado baker at the center of a Supreme Court case takes no guff from Duff Goldman--Percy

You mean my Message 1258. It's true that you answered some, but it's also true that you didn't answer others. In my list it wasn't that clear which had been answered and which hadn't, so here's the list again, this time with better clarity:

• Question: How can a God of love wreak vengeance on people?
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• Answered question: You have no evidence of apparitions, nor any citations to provide a Biblical foundation for their existence.
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• Answered question: You don't know how to tell the supernatural (which you say is actually just part of the natural) from the natural.
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• Question:How can the supernatural be part of the natural, since a superset cannot reside within the set it contains?
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• Answered question: You don't know that angels and demons cannot perform miracles.
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• Question: How do you know you're not one of the people seduced by Satan?
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• Question: How do you know that the miracles described at Religion's Top 10 Astonishing Miracles are not really miracles?

Why are you evading questions about your own beliefs? Your inhumanity invites criticism. It should not go without comment. Bringing your inhumanity, your callousness, your cruelty, your insensitivity, to your attention is understandably upsetting to you, but you have to take responsibility for own acts - blame lies nowhere else.--Percy

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Could a black couple be denied on religious grounds (imagine a religion where economic intercourse with blacks was "morally repugnant")?

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You don’t have to imagine it. The segregationists - the American version of Apartheid - did hold that the races should be kept apart. Whites-only establishments were a real thing. Interracial marriage was fundamentally wrong. And they thought it a part of their Christian religion (as Buzsaw demonstrated).

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Can an artist refuse service to anyone, say a black sculptor refusing to sculpt a cross for the Ku Klux Klan?

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In fact we already know the answer to this. Artists may refuse to create items they find offensive - so long as it is the item itself (construed broadly) and not who it is to be sold to. If Phillips’ objections had been limited to the decorations he would have had a much stronger case. This is why it is not nitpicking to point out that he refused to provide a cake at all.And even then only some groups are protected. The KKK are not.

A business isn't a church. Nothing is preventing Mr. Phillips from the free practice of his religious beliefs, but he does seem to be trying to prevent gay couples from the free practice of their civil rights.--Percy

OK, name that law! What law are you talking about which was written for that purpose? Please be very specific and demonstrate that it was indeed written for that specific purpose!I know of no such law. I'm certain that you cannot name any such law. Such laws do not exist!Now, if you are talking about people whose religious beliefs motivate them to violate the law, such as anti-discrimination laws, then that is an entirely different matter.I'm certain that you did not bother to read what I had quoted, so here again is what that Christian Reconstructionist writer was quoted in that pagan rag, Christianity Today, as having written (from memory):

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Insist on your own rights to religious liberty so that we can deprive others of theirs.

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Isn't that exactly what you are trying to do here? You mean Christian Sharia Law? I've been hearing about it since the Jesus Freaks in 1970 and it is still an abomination.Back in Message 1302 I pointed out to you that you have indeed known someone who espouses Christian Reconstructionist ideals, very up-close and very personally. In fact, you still know that very same person just as up-close and personal as ever before. You still haven't figured out who that is?

One lives one's Christian faith everywhere, and you certainly can't restrict us to some corner that you think appropriate. The Law of God applies to everyone everywhere at every moment, in every activity and every undertaking and every business.

I'm talking about the Supreme Court decision to declare gay marriage the law of the land. It was not a decision of Congress but of the activist Supreme Court. Really it isn't even legal but it is treated as if it's the law of the land anyway. I didn't say it was written for this specific purpose, except of course as manipulated by Satan himself. Are you all this dense that you need this spelled out? The law forces Christians when put in certain positions such as being asked to provide services for a gay wedding to violate our Christian conscience if we comply. It hasn't yet come to requiring us to swear an oath to honor gay marriages but I suppose it could happen.By defining gay marriage as a civil right the nation has committed a serious violation of common sense as well as God's Law, that was not committed by any nation or tribe on earth until recently.What do you hope to accomplish by trying to talk us out of something we can't be talked out of? There is NO argument whatever that could make us violate God's Law. What's sad is that there are so many Christians who don't think it's a problem.No, I don't know any Christian Reconstructionists that I'm aware of.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It is incredible that anyone would be allowed to say such things on a forum debate board about another member, a member who is doing nothing but affirming her Christian faith, and allowed especially by the owner of the board who wrote the rules against personal attack. Not only is it a violation beyond reason, it is done by the one person who is not subject to censure. Talk about tyranny. Heil Percy.I'm grateful, however, that I have the faith that God will judge you for it. If that's a threat, which would be a strange idea considering that I can't do anything about it myself, though I know your mind can't make such a fine distinction, I'll leave it at that. Call it a prophecy. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Please take a course in civics. Well, you are right that it's useless us to try to reason with people so incapable of reasoning.And what you believe and advocate has nothing to do with God's Actual Law. Instead, it's your own ideas and prejudices which you have labeled as "God's Law".In fact, that is one reason why a theocracy cannot fail to become a tyranny. "God's Law" is what the religious leaders and fervent followers say it is. The theocrat must interpret "God's Law" and whatever he says it is cannot be questioned, since doing so would be to question God which would usually be a capital crime. That is why any kind of Sharia Law, though especially Christian Sharia Law, is such an abomination. Again, perhaps not by that specific title, but still espousing all the same ideas and agenda. She had posted them here repeatedly and adamantly, but finally backed off enough to instead advocate creating her own country where she could impose her Sharia Law and nobody with differing beliefs could have any say at all.It is truly amazing how little self-awareness someone could have.Edited by dwise1, : "In fact, that is one reason why a theocracy cannot fail to become a tyranny."

Your report on Phillips' refusal to make a cake for a gay wedding.The cake would have to have been custom made. I don't see a problem with a cake off the shelf and from what he said Phillips wouldn't either since he said anything else in the shop was available.There is no Christian justification for denying black people or any racial group anything and it's wrong wherever it's been done. The Bible says we are all descended from Adam and Eve. Racism is unchristian.But marrying two people who are not designed for marriage, which was ordained by God for uniting the two sexes for the purpose of procreation, is against God's Law and must be refused by Christians.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Civics has nothing to do with this. I don't care what the source of the tyrannical law is, it forces a Christian to violate God's Law when pushed.If you're calling me a Christian Reconstructionist, I don't know what you are talking about. the view that I would LIKE to live in a theocracy perhaps? But in this fallen world I wouldn't advocate it. I expect to wait for God's Kingdom.What's "amazing" is the inability of my opponents to make accurate distinctions.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Fact: marriage is a civil contract.
Fact: the God you market has no say in who can or should get married.
Fact: No Christian in the US is forced to accept or approve of or like a same-sex marriage.
Fact: No decision or opinion by some Chapter of Club Christian or any member of said Chapter of Club Christian overrides civil law.
Fact: God's Laws carry no weight in the US, Thank God!