*this is satire…please remember read and interact with the comments below for more understanding.
Okay so the confederate flag offends people and because of that our government has decided it wants to ban it. Here are some offensive scriptures that the federal government will probably want to take a look at next. Be prepared to be offended!
- I’m thinking Gloria Steinem would love to take up this offense. “When a woman has a discharge of blood, the impurity of her menstrual period lasts seven days. Anyone who touches her is unclean until evening. Everything on which she lies or sits during her period is unclean.” (Leviticus 15:19–20, The Message)
- The future husband of Ronda Rousey might have something to say about this. “When two men are in a fight and the wife of the one man, trying to rescue her husband, grabs the genitals of the man hitting him, you are to cut off her hand. Show no pity.” (Deuteronomy 25:11–12, The Message)
- This is offensive period for everyone except maybe this one guy. “Finish your job: kill all the boys. Kill every woman who has slept with a man. The younger women who are virgins you can keep alive for yourselves.” (Numbers 31:17–18, The Message)
- This was an important verse in the south before emancipation. Why allow this one to stay? “Servants, respectfully obey your earthly masters but always with an eye to obeying the real master, Christ.” (Ephesians 6:5, The Message)
- Hmmm i’m sure Child Protective Services might not appreciate this one. “When a man has a stubborn son, a real rebel who won’t do a thing his mother and father tell him, and even though they discipline him he still won’t obey, his father and mother shall forcibly bring him before the leaders at the city gate and say to the city fathers, “This son of ours is a stubborn rebel; he won’t listen to a thing we say. He’s a glutton and a drunk.” Then all the men of the town are to throw rocks at him until he’s dead. You will have purged the evil pollution from among you. All Israel will hear what’s happened and be in awe.” (Deuteronomy 21:18–21, The Message)
- I think P.E.T.A. might have some of Mark 5 edited. “They arrived on the other side of the sea in the country of the Gerasenes. As Jesus got out of the boat, a madman from the cemetery came up to him. He lived there among the tombs and graves. No one could restrain him—he couldn’t be chained, couldn’t be tied down. He had been tied up many times with chains and ropes, but he broke the chains, snapped the ropes. No one was strong enough to tame him. Night and day he roamed through the graves and the hills, screaming out and slashing himself with sharp stones. When he saw Jesus a long way off, he ran and bowed in worship before him—then bellowed in protest, “What business do you have, Jesus, Son of the High God, messing with me? I swear to God, don’t give me a hard time!” (Jesus had just commanded the tormenting evil spirit, “Out! Get out of the man!”) Jesus asked him, “Tell me your name.” He replied, “My name is Mob. I’m a rioting mob.” Then he desperately begged Jesus not to banish them from the country. A large herd of pigs was browsing and rooting on a nearby hill. The demons begged him, “Send us to the pigs so we can live in them.” Jesus gave the order. But it was even worse for the pigs than for the man. Crazed, they stampeded over a cliff into the sea and drowned. Those tending the pigs, scared to death, bolted and told their story in town and country. Everyone wanted to see what had happened. They came up to Jesus and saw the madman sitting there wearing decent clothes and making sense, no longer a walking madhouse of a man. Those who had seen it told the others what had happened to the demon-possessed man and the pigs. At first they were in awe—and then they were upset, upset over the drowned pigs. They demanded that Jesus leave and not come back. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the demon-delivered man begged to go along, but he wouldn’t let him. Jesus said, “Go home to your own people. Tell them your story—what the Master did, how he had mercy on you.” The man went back and began to preach in the Ten Towns area about what Jesus had done for him. He was the talk of the town.” (Mark 5:1–20, The Message)
Have you seen this video? https://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks/videos/10152970493514205/?pnref=story
This is such B.S. Slavery was directly linked to the souther desire for autonomy. They do not like being told what to do.
lets just pick and choose. Why not ban cotton or specific slavery endorsing Scriptures?
Again why not ban the American flag? How would a Native American see our flag? They every right to make the same argument. Why do so many Natives choose to look past everything the US flag stands for to them?
https://youtu.be/MbvDRY0O30E
What you are missing is talking about the morality behind the offense. If someone were to blaspheme God, Christians should be rightly offended. There is nothing wrong in being offended, if for the right reasons.
There are different kinds of offense. If someone does something that puts me on the defense I have probably been offended. If I then decide that my personal offense needs to be everyone else’s offense that needs to be something pretty big. Now I have to be offended by a flag that to me is nothing more than a neutral image? It doesn’t mean slavery any more than the US flag means emancipation unless a person is some kind of historical revisionist. I try to be really careful what kind of offense moves me to action on something because literally everything offends someone.
You are still missing the big picture. You seem to have defined offense around whether you get or someone else gets offended or not. We need to to move away from this self-centered approach to offense.
If God has been blasphemed, everyone needs to be offended. To not be offended means that person is in the wrong place. If a rock that has just been dug up is called useless, no one needs to be offended at it. If someone is offended, then there is something wrong. Behind these examples of God and a rock, there is a moral value which might or might not cause the offense. That is what we need to talk about.
We need to have a deeper conversation on the morality behind the offense. Simply talking whether a person has been offended gets to nothing. Keeping the conversation shallow probably points to an unwillingness to acknowledge certain truths.
So if you want to have a thoughtful conversation, we should start by asking if the confederate flag is truly a neutral image.
I appreciate you taking the moral high ground and deciding that i’m missing the big picture Samuel (sarcasm). My article though it is satire makes a very solid reasonable, logical, point.
You said…
“We need to have a DEEPER conversation on the morality behind the offense.”
“Simply talking whether a person has been offended gets to nothing. Keeping the conversation SHALLOW probably points to an unwillingness to acknowledge certain truths.”
“So if you want to have a THOUGHTFUL conversation”
I find these comments to be belittling, disrespectful and i’m offended. 😉 I think you should be censored without discretion regardless of your meaning and intention.(sarcasm)
The problem with saying “If God has been blasphemed, everyone needs to be offended.” is that this is a very subjective issue. If one of my children blasphemes God in our home they will learn that dad desires a reverence for who God is under dads jurisdiction. If my believing neighbor blasphemes God according to my interpretation of what blaspheming is than I will confront him on a much different and less personal level than I would my son. If my unbelieving neighbor blasphemes God I will think to myself… “hmmm well i guess he’s consistent but he has that right”.
My argument is not whether or not the confederate flag is offensive to some my argument is twofold.
1. What goes around comes around. If i’m offended by a historical article such as the confederate flag and decide to cross a HUGE line that takes my offense to court so that it becomes everyone’s offense I should expect others to be offended at my action. I should imagine and expect a future time when one of the things that I love such as perhaps lets say the Bible becomes offensive to a majority of folks (which honestly is about 1000x more offensive than the confederate flag) and winds up on the same sociological chopping block as the confederate flag. The same logic that makes the confederate flag a sociological offense should make the Bible (or cotton for example) an even greater offense. Right?
2. I am not offended by the confederate flag because of its historic significance. It is absolutely NOT a racist emblem. It has been used as such by idiots. But that does not mean we need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Should we stop using the cross because because of the way the KKK or Hitler used it? No. Because they are crazy idiots that should not dictate our interpretation of history or law.
Sorry for offending you. It was part of my passive-aggressive
approach to people. It is something i picked here in the mid-west where
it has been refined and polished 🙂 …. but back to sarcasm …. i
can’t believe you were offended by my neutral words! What next are you
going to claim the whole Bible is offensive, including John 3:16?!?
You go into detail into what the confederate flag means to you. So you have got to admit, contrary to what you said before, the flag is not a
neutral symbol to you. I think you have to be honest, even to yourself,
where you are coming from.
Now to a deeper conversation about the flag.
Why do you think race is the red-herring? Why not southern secession and pride be the red-herring?
Why can’t racism and southern secession go together? After all when the
Governors in the southern state chose to secede, they explicitly said in
their legislatures that it was to preserve slavery. So secession,
slavery and racism need to go together. History show us that. Anything
short of that is not acknowledging the truths of history.
As far as making the comparison with the American flag, i have no problems with that. We should take an honest look at all history. I did not grow up in the US and have been to a lot of other churches outside the US. No flag should have a place within the Kingdom of God, but here in the US, flags tend to be idolatrous within churches. If people within the
church are defending any flag, something is wrong. Then they are trying
to bring their worldly baggage into the church.
If God has been blasphemed then everyone should be offended. That is not subjective. Paul has no problem in Acts telling unbelievers, that his
God has commanded everyone to repent. If people are not offended at
blaspheming God, then they are on their way to destruction.
Slippery slope arguments are based on the fear of the unknown. Therefore tend to more emotive than thoughtful. While they are popular to use, they tend to be less rational. So saying that if the confederate flag gets banned means that the Bible will eventually be banned should not hold much water.
if you think there is something that i have not answered to, let me know. It should be obvious that you and i come from very different world views. They need to be reconciled.
The flag is neutral in that it has done nothing to someone (this is what I meant by neutral). The flag is an inanimate object. To make it anything more than that is idolatry. It is not neutral in its meaning. It was made for a purpose and that purpose was not to remind people of slavery. As far as I am concerned the flag is a wonderful reminder of our history warts and all.
You said “we should take an honest look at history”. Really? How will we do that without reminders? In this case flags. We have a flag in our church and we don’t worship it how is it an idol if we don’t worship it? We don’t pledge allegiance to it over and above God. See here is the thing flags do belong in the kingdom of God as reminders. Scripture has probably more than 100 positive references to flags in it. These flags were to stand for something as reminders. They were not idols.
I have never met a person who defends the flag. I have met people who have a reverence and respect for what it stands for but never the flag in and of itself. So in Exodus 17:15 when it says “Moses built an altar and named it The LORD is My Banner” I think it is fare to that the Children of Israel had a reverence for Moses altar. I think it would be fare to say that any vandalism of this altar would have been frowned upon without being considered idolatry.
Flags are great reminders of our past. To see the American flag flying next to a confederate flag says something to a person who knows their American history. It says something about much more than slavery.
You said… “If people are not offended at blaspheming God, then they are on their way to destruction.” So I am on my way to destruction Samuel? Really. Lets see. I love Jesus. I believe he lived, died and rose again and I cannot wait for the fullness of His kingdom but you are saying I’m on my way to destruction? DO you really mean that? So now only the people who are offended by blaspheme are those who will be saved? If a person has blasphemed God in some way I usually think God please have mercy on them because they do not know what they are doing but I do not take up offence and think to myself hmmm well they are going to hell. Its by Gods grace that I am not on my way to hell not my ability to avoid blaspheming him. If a person blasphemes God by rejecting Him I am still not offended.
You said… “Slippery slope arguments” Help me out here I cannot see my slippery slope argument. Unless you are referring to my article. Which is satire. This is what I am trying to point out in my article.
The irony.
And by Irony I mean “a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.”
The irony that I was trying to express in my article is what I would expect folks to be offended by compared to what they actually are offended by. My point in doing so was to display the inconsistency of this whole mess.
Sorry for the late reply.
About idolatry
I find that Christians in the US don’t understand idolatry. Because it not present in a physical form, Christians here live like it is a minor problem. Just like how you claim the flag is neutral, idol worshipers will claim their physical idols to be neutral. I know this because of talking to Hindus about idol worship. They will say that the idols are only symbolic of something else and that they are not really worshiping them. Paul in 1 Corinthians says something similar, that idols are nothing. But if you sacrifice to them, you are sacrificing the devil. While idols are nothing, it is the meaning that we put in them that make it an idol. This is the part where most people seem to miss. So when you put meaning into something, especially selective meaning into it, it has become an idol. There is a famous saying in India, the country that has many different idols. “If you want to know who worships which idol, start kicking the idol and see who screams.” The saying has a very revealing nature to it. It overcomes pretenses. It exposes the idol worshiper. Doing this with any flag including the confederate flag, will expose the idol worshiper.
About new Israel
In the US there was a form of theology that was popular before but was heretical. It is where people assumed that the US was the New Israel. Even today along the East Coast you will see a lot of towns and cities given Biblical names, because of that theology. even though most Christians will not claim to believe in it anymore, they still somewhat live it out. So when you use Israel building an altar as an excuse for flag waving, you are confusing the US for Israel. If anything the Kingdom of God is the New Israel. The only altars or flags that should be used in the Church should pertain to the Kingdom of God. Anything else is foreign to the Kingdom of God and should be not only kept physically out of the church but also out of people’s hearts. Think of the parable of the Kingdom where the merchant finds a precious pearl. He then goes and sells all that he has and buys that one precious pearl. Christians should be ready to sell all that they have (including Kingdoms) in this world for that one precious pearl which is the Kingdom of God.
About Blasphemy
I think here you and i are far apart. We are commanded to love God. When someone you love has been maligned, it should offend. If blaspheming God does not offend you, well i don’t have much to say here, except that you and i are far apart.
About Slippery Slope
You used it in making your first point, in one of your replies. That if the confederate flag could be banned, then you expect the Bible to be banned eventually. Also somehow you seem to have married the confederate flag with the Bible.