Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 15, 2021 11:06:09 GMT -8
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 15, 2021 11:54:17 GMT -8
That last phrase is what so many faux-Christians or just ignorant Christians seem to have forgotten. Love, love, love, love. Forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. But one has to acknowledge one's sin/s to seek forgiveness.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 15, 2021 12:39:50 GMT -8
There are some interesting (and some not-so-interesting) theological discussions in the comments section. Prager is said (as a Jew) to have missed the point of “God’s unconditional love on the cross.” But if God’s love had no conditions, then universal salvation (something discussed on these boards before) would be the logical culmination. Jesus on the cross would then have no meaning. It would have been unnecessary. God's love might be yuge and indulgent, cut clearly not unconditional (from a Christian perspective) if belief in Christ, after all, is the condition of salvation.
Universal salvation would mean right and wrong don’t matter. Good behavior gains you nothing extra. Bad behavior costs you nothing. The essence of morality itself would come into question. It is common for people to split theological hairs while affirming their own beliefs. But clearly “love” as the end-all, be-all value of The Therapeutic Society shows its vacuity. Hitler loved his dog. There are other values than love. And “love” itself is fashioned and conditioned (conditional) by some of these other values. You may love your children, but if you know your child is a serial killer and you don’t turn him in, what is your love worth, particularly in regards to other people? In a culture that fixates on self-validation, unconditional love is the crack cocaine of The Therapeutic Society. Although one certainly could quibble here and there with Dennis Prager from a Christian perspective, they would be minor quibbles, at best. Dennis is right.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 15, 2021 12:51:59 GMT -8
I don't think Prager missed God's universal love. It is contained in the above verse. God sacrificed his son to redeem the world and those who take advantage of this chance of redemption gain everlasting life. I find that pretty straightforward.
Now, one can get into many different discussions regarding sin and salvation, but John 3:16 makes it clear that God's salvation is conditional. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything in life is a choice. Everything we do or don't do has consequences. It's "if I do this, that will likely happen." I can have both strawberry cream pie and vanilla ice cream, but I will have to accept the extra 3 lbs that come with the two desserts. I can't simply love away cause and effect.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 15, 2021 13:44:31 GMT -8
In the pagan (whose gods are often female) culture, we want self-validation. The predominate mode is “touchy feely”. Those who impose standards are called “haters.” What people want is to do any damn thing they are inclined to do and for this to be accepted. If they eff-up, they take on the persona of the poor fellow who killed his parents. Have pity on him for he is an orphan.
Large swaths of the black community are highly criminal. But it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of “white privilege” and other racist hokey. Women kill the unborn in the millions. But it’s not their fault. It’s just a “choice.”
And, yes, Libertarians are central to this moral rot. They want to do any damn thing they want and the consequences (as with liberals) are always pushed downstream onto someone else.
I’m convinced the only reason people hate Jews is because their pact with God brought the “shalt nots.” Even the Jews themselves during the Exodus showed how much people resist the idea of the “shalt nots.” People want the therapeutic Golden Calf in its many forms … including drag queens.
The human ego and propensity for self-deception and self-validation is a very poor means to organize society. If everything is allowed then anything decent will eventually be marginalized if not outright prohibited.
Seeing the consequences our our foolish touch-feely values, I would be astonished if God Almighty shared this moral vacuousness. He might abound in mercy but that doesn’t mean he has no standards.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 15, 2021 14:41:51 GMT -8
I don't know if it is even that. Have you noticed that pagan gods did not impose much of a moral order? I don't recall ever seeing a "pagan" Ten Commandments. I have never heard any pagan religion which preached, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Paganism was and is all about trying to avoid personal/familial misfortune and buying personal/familial good fortune. The question of morals is one which is not very clearly addressed. Today's paganism is even more degenerate than that of ancient times. Nowadays, the "familial" side of things is passe'. It's all about "ME."
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 15, 2021 17:18:16 GMT -8
I can no longer find this article at Townhall.com. I wonder if they took it down for going against the "love" mantra which is part of the present American psychosis?
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 16, 2021 6:47:47 GMT -8
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 16, 2021 7:06:17 GMT -8
Here’s an interesting comment from the PJ media article:
The above is typical. We are to love unconditionally….but here are some conditions (requiring repentance, etc.). I think Prager’s bluntness is difficult for the fuzzy-headed crowd to absorb.
What about the admonition to love your neighbor as yourself? To turn the other cheek? Love your enemies, bless those that curse you, etc? To me, this is an attempt to break mindless tribalism whereby morality is parsed strictly according to what is good for you or your kin (which isn't objective morality at all but relativism). Jesus himself said he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. And the Ten Commandments alone contain a whole lot of lines-in-the-sand. As Dennis Prager notes, Jewish law was a major advance beyond this tribalist thinking. They helped established universal law.
Are we to submit and “love” those who would murder us or make war on us? We can see how actively immoral the pacifist movement has been in our time, embracing Saddam Hussein while demonizing America and the West. Love, yes. But unconditional love just means for people to become a doormat and approve of anything that anyone is doing. As a commentor noted, “unconditioinal love” as used is today’s context simply means approval of any damn thing. That hardly sounds like God Almighty or Jesus who talks about branches that bear no fruit being cut off and cast into the fire. We are not to “stay as we are” which is what "unconditional love" facilitates.
You have to have sympathy for God and Jesus who must instill good morals into a people who are inherently dishonest, tribal, and treacherous. One commenter writes:
“Grey areas” can produce a lot of gobbledygook.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 22, 2021 19:20:11 GMT -8
Now they have found "genes" responsible for obesity. Genes make you fatI have found "jeans" which accentuate obesity.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 14, 2021 20:43:52 GMT -8
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 20, 2021 12:45:20 GMT -8
Great point by Teddy.
This is one of the central tenets that come out of the Darwin/Freud/Marx dark trinity: Man is just a machine and has no moral responsibility for what happens to him...at least concerning those who eat too many donuts.
This is very good:
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Post by artraveler on Nov 21, 2021 10:03:41 GMT -8
I have been reflecting on the vast wasteland we call media. In an effort to appease our Black brothers and sisters over the last few years dramatic changes have been made from television commercials to regular series shows. Suddenly, there are many more Black families in all of the above, there are many couples shown where one is white and the other black, notably white male, black female. Shows on HBO like Watchmen feature almost all black casts and recently Star Trek Discovery features almost all black cast complete with deadlocks. Are we really supposed to believe that? Apple has released the Foundation in a 10 part series again with the main characters being exclusively black.
If a man from mars were watching these and other shows he/she would believe that the majority population of there the US is Black and Whites were the minority. I have no problem with actors selected for a part because they have the ability to portray a character but I have a lot of problems with that selection being made on the basis od skin color only, as seems to be the case in everything from hemorrhoid medication to Star Trek.
If I were a member of a minority group, which BTW, I am. I would bitterly resent the condescending, patronizing attitude the media has taken. To allude that all will be well just because some low talent actors make commercials, and tv shows is a greater insult then just saying nothing.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 21, 2021 10:57:58 GMT -8
What you say reflects reality which is astonishing enough in this day and age.
No doubt there is a lot of "woke" one-upmanship going on as production companies try to outdo each other in "wokeness." Probably there are even a few (very few is my guess) who truly believe blacks are under-represented in the arts (they are not) and thus this is their kindly form of affirmative action.
But there is little doubt that characters are being chosen because of nothing more than race. That's the main check box and it's often clear that acting ability has little to do with it.
That is another way of saying that much of entertainment isn't concerned with entertaining as it is with flattery or political considerations.
And don't underestimate the flattery aspect, even as distinct from the racial quotas aspect (which is, at heart, a form of flattery). I started noticing 20 years ago (or more) that movie makers had little desire to explore the past (or even the what-if of science fiction). Instead it was as if they were catering to a thin-skinned, immature, and decidedly unimaginative audience who had no interest in imaging another time, space, or place. They must ever and always see themselves reflected in their entertainment.
So we began to see "period pieces" (of any kind) become little more than fluff with modern attitudes cut-and-pasted into period characters.
Much of entertainment (to my practiced eye) became little more than an embarrassingly hilarious series of cinematic anachronisms. Good examples of that are the horrible Sherlock Holmes movies that Robert Downey Jr. starred in. They turned Holmes from an intellectual to an ass-kicking superhero.
And Avatar is a wonderful example of how sci-fi or fantasy can be so embarrassingly made shallow with the insertion of modern, short-range, attitudes. The larger and more timeless themes of life are expunged, thus most of this crap has little meaning and will be quickly forgotten (although oft repeated in new productions).
The shallow catering to the shallow. Is it any wonder we here tend to read the classics and are aware that most of the stuff made today is garbage? In fact, I expect any production made today to be garbage and am surprised when it isn't (and am rarely surprised). "Wokeness" is in such high gear now, I draw a line at about 2014 or so when anything of substance had a better than even chance of being produced in America. But today, you generally have to go overseas for anything good. Russian films, for example, are improving at about the same rate that Hollywood decays.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 21, 2021 16:40:02 GMT -8
I believe appeasement is only part of this. The leftist media spews lies and improbabilities in order to create a false narrative. That narrative reports things which are not reality, rather as the left believes reality should be. This is one of the problems with leftism and why it is impossible to reason with leftists. They live in an alternative universe. All the films with beautiful-petite females kicking the asses of big, strong males is part of this narrative. "Charlie's Angels" was perhaps the first such nonsense. I Do not recall ever having seen a full episode, but admit that I wouldn't have minded Kate Jackson kicking my ass.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 21, 2021 17:06:51 GMT -8
Yep. Creating and propagating a false reality. No question about it. But you know my shtick. The first crack in the dam was feminism. It required everyone to get used to the idea of ignoring reality and accepting a false reality.
So...you're a Kate Jackson man. And, really, she was probably my first pick until Tonya Roberts came along. Woof.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 21, 2021 17:20:28 GMT -8
Yes, I always found her more appealing than Farah Fawcett. Jacquelyn Smith was too fragile looking for my taste. Almost artificial, like a piece of porcelain.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 21, 2021 17:42:02 GMT -8
Farah was Farah. The whole poster phenomenon and all that. She certainly wasn't hard on the eyes.
I started writing maybe 10 years ago about the phenomenon of the AKF (ass-kicking female). Things have only gotten more absurd. As my brother and I are firm about: We don't mind strong women in movies. They just need to make sense. Two of our favorites are Ripley from the Alien franchise and Sarah Conner from The Terminator franchise. No problem with that. I like them. But Keira Knightley in King Arthur? I hadn't laughed so hard in a long time when I first saw that. Oddly enough, I did like that movie though. At least good enough to watch once.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 21, 2021 18:45:26 GMT -8
Keira Knightley in King Arthur? Well, she did look sexy in blue paint and sports bra. But not convincing as a Druid princess, Bodicita she is not.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 21, 2021 19:23:35 GMT -8
Thinking like a man, not a movie critic. Well...that's entirely okay.
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