I am sorry if you feel it's exploitation. If it is, then so are many things in life.
I don't feel that it is, it simply is. The fact that many other things are as well does not excuse the activity. I am sorry that you don't feel that it is exploitation, because it is.
Oh, and I titally agree with you that we should show love, and then let others then ask us about God. I believe that people should see Christ in me, and then ask on their own.
This would not be so bad except that you are in a sense lying to yourself. Look at all of the materials you linked to. If that is not pride and "making a show of it" I don't know what is. When you set out to help people it is with a background reason of pride and vanity, self vanity.
Let me ask you this, if you were unable to ever discuss your God, nor mention your deeds in relation to that God, how many would be disheartened and give up helping altogether? Before you answer let me remind you that the whole point of Faith Based programs, and recent moves to make sure they can discriminate in their hiring practices is that Xians do not want to work to help people unless they can do so in a spirit of evangelism and unencumbered by disbelievers.
In other countries your family will dis-own you for becoming a Christian.
And this is unlike Xians?
Nobody on a mission is opressing anyone, they are just telling them the good news. It is a choice of the individual.
Again, if you are telling people the "good news" then the bad news is you aren't helping anybody for honest reasons, but in a subterfuge to spread your faith.
When people are weak (poor, starving, uneducated) and you give them material wealth, food, and education then you have put them in a precarious position. You make anything else you demand of them seem like something they should submit to, as well as creating a stock dilemma regarding their culture and yours. Do you tell them about the wonders they might find in Buddhism, Judaism, Shintoism? You are supplying them with a false perception of the world (and choices within the world) when they are at their most vulnerable.
Cargo Cults perfectly demonstrate the nature of cultural contamination based merely on perceived "betterness" given that they are aided materially.
Regular Cults which we roundly condemn when they are not Xian, use the methods which you just described for yourself, only they artificially create the poverty situation for their new recruits. In your case you are taking those whose material situation has naturally rendered them weak. In either case, the rest is brainwashing.
This is why we must be a vessel to show people who and what Christ is all about.
If the Devil can do as you say, how do you know that you are right and not merely being deceived? Why is it others that must be wrong?
I am telling you must accept what I believe to be right, as well as I have to accept what you believe is right, then the majority rules... If I get my belief's from my religion, that is my business, and has nothing to do with if I feel it is right or not. You cannot tell me what is valid to get my belief's from.
But I do accept them, I am even saying they should be accepted by law. You are saying mine should not be accepted by law. In any case, majority does not rule and it is in particular when religious beliefs are used to guide them.
If the majority was jewish then it would be okay for the gov't to force all men to be circumcized, wear yamulkas, and not to allow the sale of pig meat or shellfish? After all their belief may come from their religion, but it doesn't matter?
Don't you understand that it becomes important when the proscriptions you are talking about are the extension of your religious (or metaphysical) beliefs, and are not based on general rights issues all can partake in?
It's no great secret, that if you have vaginal intercourse, you can create life.
Yes, but the idea that life is sacred in general (such that it cannot be ended during gestation), or that zygotes and fetuses are conceptually like persons, drives your idea that the situation is sex with risk of pregnancy and birth, as opposed to sex with risk of pregnancy followed by birth or abortion.
You are artificially cutting off abortion as one of the natural options.
So you get hit by a car, and the doctor helps you, should we kill your child to save you?
I thought you already said yes to this.
Hold on to your old history books, and compare them 30 years from now to the new ones.
Oh I realize that a major revisionist history is in the works from the evangelicals. It is the only way they can foster the illusion that this nation was founded on their brand of Xianity or a religion in general, instead of being one of the first secular nations.
Of course that won't mean anything to me, unless you are suggesting you guys will be burning the original documents our founding fathers wrote?
Remember I didn't tell you to look at history books. I said to go to the source. See that is the difference between you and me. I don't read what others of my generation have crafted so I can understand what this nation is about, I read what the authors of this nation wrote and left for us to read so that we might know what this nation is about.
The lack of patriotism of evangelicals is always insightful.
My belief's on abortion, comes from my respect of human life. It was then later confirmed by God to me.
I repeat, that this is a religious position, even if it is not a specifically Xian religious position. To believe a mass of cells is equal to a person and so of competing rights with the woman that is feeding the parasitic growth, stems from a wholly religious/spiritual/metaphysical belief.
That does not make it wrong, but it does mean that it is not factual and basing laws off of it will oppress those who do not share that position.
there is obviously bad things happening to them over there, and if we come in and do good things, isn't this enough for them to see the difference between what they believe in, and what we believe in?
Yes this is exactly what I am talking about. You help weak and vulnerable people and then exploit them for your own emotional needs, by fostering an illusion that they should pay homage in some respect to your religion.
See what good you are getting now? It is because of brand X religion.
Unless their religion and culture were specifically destroying them, rather than fate of economic and environmental circumstances, then your merging your aid with your beliefs is subterfuge. It is one of the lowest forms of predation.
They are going to die, and will probably never get to tell others of what we would show them about Jesus. I hardly find that exploitation... The word exploitation means to use someone for ones advantage. What advantage do we get having some kid in a jungle on the other side of the world become a Christian?
God the imagery is so disgusting to me. Can't you see what the problem is yourself? Look at the very articles you quoted to me, or how you explain what you are doing for these poor dying girls. What are you getting out of it? Emotional satisfaction of pride and vanity. You are forcing conversion on people reaching their deathbed... and at early ages yet.
Do you think children have any conception of what God and Jesus really are? Is there some reason that Buddhism (which is the native cultural religion) would not have sufficed to help them through their suffering?
This is ghoulish activity.
It's not like we are asking them to send us all their banana's or something.
You get money from the gov't remember, as well as from private individuals that feel sorry for the kids. You don't have to get bananas from them (by the way, nice insult).
So you get money from others, and gloat above dying young girls that you are sharing this money with them in order to convince these kids who have little capacity to understand what they really believe, that your religion is great for them. What is the sound of one hand clapping?
I know these are not things you will see on CNN, because it is not bad news, and does not bring in the ratings.
You realize that none of that showed that changing their religious beliefs were necessary to end headhunting? Nor did the specifically have to become Xian. I love this particular quote...
The converts grew in faith and became leaders of a new, energetic church. Within two generations, the entire Hmar tribe was evangelized. Headhunting stopped and "heart-hunting" began.
Same as it ever was... predation.
Oh by the way...
In 1971, God gave Hmar tribe members Rochunga and Mawii Pudaite a dream: to give a free copy of the New Testament to all the families of the world. They founded Bibles for the World ministries and have since sent more than 16 million copies of the New Testament, translated in the appropriate local language, to homes everywhere.
Who paid for 16 million copies? Them are a lot of bananas.
We are not exploiting these children, we are saving them from it.
Let me make this clear, I have no problem with the physical/economic/social aid which many Xian organizations bring. I don't even mind some of the incidental cultural contamination which would naturally result.
It becomes exploitation, that is you are saving them from one kind only to deliver them to another, when your aid is specifically tied to ulterior motives. It is quite clear that you have ulterior motives and it is your emotional gratification which is important. This is proven when you are not helping them live in order to continue their own culture or find their future for themselves.
It really is insulting to treat cultures so condescendingly.
ADDED SECTION: I don't want to keep having a split post debate, so I am including the malformed child debate within this one.
Let me start from scratch. If you believe that God creates everything, then men cannot override his desires can they? Was that child a creation of man because it wasn't what men like? But if it looked as if what men liked then it must be from God?
That seems to be a circular argument.
The medical assessment is that it was naturally occuring and not caused by pollution, though your "spiritual pollution" could still be a possibility. The fact is that pregnancy does not always go as expected, and things like this can happen. It is part of the refutation of glib commentary such as "fetuses are babies than need to be given a chance".
Since your position was the LIFE was sacred and should not be played with, or harmed, and indeed should be protected, then I do not see what your argument is in this case.
The second head was not necessarily posing a physical danger to the child at all. It would form an inconvenience but not a harm. At least that was not in anything I read. Given that there are living twins joined at the head shows that it is not inherently dangerous.
The reason they gave is that it was not going to be capable of independent life, whereas in those other cases the joined twins had separate sets of organs.
Thus this was all about defining personhood based on wholeness of body and possibility of independent existence, rather than parasitism.
It would seem then that it would still count as LIFE according to all of the rules you have expressed and therefore demand protection... whether viewed as a deformity or not. If the mother and doctor have a choice over that beings life here, then why not earlier before any such functionality was possible in the gestational being?
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
"...don't believe I'm taken in by stories I have heard, I just read the Daily News and swear by every word.."(Steely Dan)
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