eChurch Blog

I posted over in the US about atheists suing for the removal of the World Trade Center cross. As a result I received the following email from a Christian who thinks I’m an atheist.

I’m leaving this one completely unedited:

If you stupid people do not like the fact that a huge cross has been made and placed at the museum then please do us CHIRSTAINS a huge favor.Do not go anywhere near it.Your beliefs of Christmas also stinks,what makes you think that you take our beliefs away,our country was built on CHRISTAINITY!!!!You take prayer out of school and that is our fault cause we sat back and did nothing but listen to this we still have prayer,you want In God We Trusttaken off of our money but you spend it don’t you?You want One Nation Under God taken out of our pledge then pi– on you don’t say it.What you Wierd and Stupid people need to do is go an island where you rule it and leave us alone and when you go take the gays and lezies with you,they are such a sinner as you are!
Krinkle from Texas(God’s Country)

Oh dear.

Whilst Guido’s hang ‘em high ‘Restore Justice Campaign’ gets into full swing, he notes in favour of the death penalty those that have committed atrocities, spent years in jail, and yet ‘proved beyond rehabilitation’.

I assume that what he means by ‘beyond rehabilitation’ would contain an element of repentance and contrition.

On an aside, I note in the comments section of Guido’s blog, that his ‘eye for an eye’ justice comes across as support for sharia type law. In this regard, it’s interesting that the BBC is carrying a story involving an Iranian woman voluntarily foregoing her right to Qisas. She has pardoned the man condemned to be blinded, for blinding and disfiguring her with acid.

Against the backdrop of the recent horrifying murderous acts perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik, some have become concerned over the leniency of the Norwegian judicial system, and to be frank with you, in the instance of Breivik, there is a part of me that would simply like to see him executed and removed from this planet.

I remember being surprised back in 2009, when Premier Media reported that just over half the British population wanted the death penalty reintroduced.

Personally, I am torn on the issue of the death penalty, as I view it as intimately related to the issues of forgiveness and repentance. The problem with the death penalty, is that it may rob the offender of any opportunity to move towards true repentance and contrition.

Perhaps you don’t think this important in certain circumstances, however, the issue of forgiveness is intimately related to repentance and contrition. So much so, that Jonathan Romain posited in the Guardian:

Under what circumstances should one forgive? For many, a key condition is that the person who perpetrated the hurt shows remorse. This means that they regret their words or actions, they appreciate the damage they have caused and they seek the forgiveness of those affected.

Yet some are prepared to forgive a wrongdoer whether or not he/she shows any contrition. They consider that forgiveness is purely dependent on the feelings of the person hurt.

It is part of a culture of self-sacrifice akin to the idea of turning the other cheek, when actually it is sometimes much more sensible to duck or even hit back.

Instead, forgiveness has to be earned. Why should one absolve, for instance, a mugger or rapist from what they have done if they are either unaware of the deep hurt they have caused or simply do not care?

It devalues forgiveness to hand it out lightly like a present-giving Father Christmas who has no interest in the children who pass through the shop that has hired him for the day. Forgiveness is based on relationship: a person responding to someone who is trying to undo an act that they realise was hurtful and wrong.

And Norman argues that forgiving the unrepentant is akin to:

……a willingness to forgive everything in advance, which seems to me a bit like condoning it.

And so this is my conundrum. If forgiveness is dependent on repentance, and executing the offender may rob them of achieving repentance – I’m not talking of sorrow that they will be executed – then how can one argue for the death penalty, as you may rob the victim of reaching the point of forgiveness, and all the benefits that go along with that.

Of course, if we were to know in advance that the offender would never reach the place of repentance, then perhaps the argument for the death penalty would be solid, but we don’t know do we?

And then of course the issue is further complicated for Christians. Should we offer our forgiveness dependent on repentance? Does God operate on this basis?

I’ll leave it there, but let me know if you have any thoughts on the matter.

There’s an interesting poll conducted by ComRes on behalf of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community looking at British attitudes towards Islamophobia.

On an aside, am I the only one who tires of the term Islamophobia? A phobia is an anxiety disorder.

Anyway, the main finding is that people are twice as likely to say the media is to blame for Islamophobia (29%) than far-right groups (13%), or Muslims themselves either abroad (14%) or in the UK (11%). Also, Just 14% of the British public agree that the Quran justifies the use of violence against others.

Interestingly, people who say that they do not belong to any religion (33%) are more likely to say that the media is responsible for Islamophobia than people who say that they are Christian (27%).

You can read it all here and a hat-tip to BRIN.

Vic the Vicar has a post that’s slightly critical of the blogging world:

……it was sad that people who were political painted the same picture as all those who were of the same persuasion. Some of the Christian blogs all seemed to draw upon the news items and used them as their post with little opinion and nothing to make them theirs.

Vic is right in that it can get a little repetitive out there.

I do try to mix things up a little, but the trouble for me is that I’m not terribly good at original thinking and so find I have to feed off other sources, which makes me a little dependent.

OK, that said, I thoroughly enjoyed a post over at ProBlogger detailing 23 types of bloggers. I found it fairly easy to classify myself mainly as:

1. The Machine

Blogger machines know how to pump out content … like a machine. They post on a daily basis and sometimes multiple times per day. Microbloggers fall into this category as they write very short, frequent posts.

And in the mix would be: 9. The commenter, with a tendency towards: 12. The Statistician, certainly: 16. The Grammatical Failure and maybe a hint of: 21. The Passion Purist.

What kind of blogger do you see yourself as? What kind of blogs do you prefer?

In light of the Irish government’s proposal to introduce legislation that would make it mandatory for priests to reveal details of child abuse if it became known in the confessional, Fr. Tim Finigan has a superb blog post detailing why this will not be possible.

There is also a proposed bill in Australia to force priests to break the seal.

Let’s face it, the legislation would be ineffectual purely on the grounds that if a person suspects their confession will be revealed to the authorities, they’re simply not going to confess are they.

There is a currently a ‘Protect the Seal’ blog campaign and Catholic bloggers are being urged to feature this ribbon on their blogs:

I already suspect the nature of some of the comments this post may generate, so this is to let you know in advance, I’ll be censoring such comments.

Lucy over at Looking Deeper is reading a book entitled: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. The book majors on how the Internet and related technologies change the way we think. This quote particularly caught my attention:

“I missed my old brain,” comments Carr near the beginning of the book, when he’d started to perceive how he was thinking differently – how he was skimming rather than deep reading, how it got harder to read longer pieces and still maintain concentration.  We are used to the world of snippets, of hyperlinks, of immediacy.

This is very pertinent to me personally. I watch over 400 websites and blogs in my RSS news feeder – I’m an RRS hoarder – and estimate in the region of 1000 articles per day. As you can imagine, I have developed some serious scanning skills.

The flip side of this is that I’m finding it increasingly difficult to read long articles. I find myself drawn to soundbites and lacking the concentration for verbose pieces, even if they are undoubtedly worthy of reading and I’d probably learn from them.

I’m constantly hunting for the crux or punch line and I think this is one of the reasons why I’m so drawn to Twitter.

This has even knocked on to my writing and blogging style. I’m constantly refining my ability to express as much as possible with concise paucity. On one forum I was even described as the ‘one line king’.

The trouble is of course, if you’re prone to scan longer articles, it’s entirely possible to miss or misconstrue the premise.

I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult of late to think of original content for this blog and I certainly attribute this to not being willing to give the time and concentration to absorb more complex and lengthy pieces.

I will say though that my reading pattern does coincide with my mood state. As I’m more ‘up’ than ‘down’ right now, I want quick hits of information and don’t have much in the way of patience or concentration power.

What about you? Have you noticed similar patterns? Do you prefer lengthy detailed blog posts, or shorter concise ones? Taking this a step further, do you prefer to absorb information from a platform like Twitter rather than blog posts?

Stuart has asked if I wished to write a blogpost, I share regularly on forums, but never quite had the courage to go ‘public’. So forgive me if my post  is not very polished, as I’m not a writer but more or a reader who likes to ponder.

Recently I had been pondering on mystery and how easily the words ‘divine mysteries of God’ roll off the tongue. To borrow from St Augustine, ‘my faith seeks understanding’  and yet so often I am too quick in trying to define the mysteries, through thought and language.

I think that at times, I begin to lose the flavour or essence of mystery, in my concerted effort to understand God and then define Him in such depth within dogmatic and theological terms. Strangely or not so strangely, depending on one’s viewpoint, the deeper I go, the less certain of certainty I become, the simpler my faith becomes.

Take recently, I have been reading just about anyone’s and everyone’s commentaries and exegesis on the 1st three chapters of Genesis, from the Early Church Fathers, to the writings of the Holy Father. Yet after copious amounts of study, I have come to the simple conclusion of the mystery of Creation is just that, a divine wondrous mystery, and when this hits one afresh, it is breathtaking.

I am so blessed that we are able to reach into the treasure trove of wisdom and revelation of the faithful that have gone before us. And we could spend many lifetimes pondering on the mysteries of God, and still not understand. I know that our faith seeks God like a newborn seeks and finds comfort, security and love nestled at her Mother’s breast, our faith yearns to be united once again from whence it came.  So although God is the Unknowing Cloud, when we seek Him this means to enter into a more mysterious, more incomprehensible, and a more hidden place.

Perhaps to be there is to be within the essence of God Himself.

Pax Caral 

A recent study, which is consistent with several other studies, found that “people–from early childhood–have a tendency to accept purpose-based explanations for natural states of affairs AND that such purpose-based explanations are linked to thinking that someone (e.g., a god) accounts for the purpose. Even young children have the intuition that purpose is best accounted for by someone willing that purpose to be.” So, perhaps it is a part of human nature to accept purpose-based explanations which also supports belief in a God or gods.

SOURCE

Stacy – Accepting Abundance – has a blog post asking: What is a blog? Where is it? Why do we do it?

Stacy examines soul, language and communication and relates this to the Trinity.

Well worth a read.

Cross-post by Joseph W – Harry’s Place:

Anders Breivik was described by the chief of police in Oslo as someone with ‘Christian fundamentalist’ views, and since then, the label has stuck, and he has been widely described in the media as such.

However, Breivik is not a Christian fundamentalist.

Fundamentalism has to do with how you interpret your holy scripture and understand God.

Usually, it doesn’t mean “a really fervent Christian”, but it is a specific term to refer to a religious movement in the USA. But we can still see if Breivik matches up to the definition of a fundamentalist, as a fervent believer.

Breivik wrote this:

If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.

So, nothing to do with theological beliefs or knowing God.

Being a Christian in a social sense is one thing – in the way that atheists can self-identify as “cultural Christians”. It is impossible for a cultural Christian to be a Christian fundamentalist.

There’s an obvious difference though, between Breivik’s concept of a cultural Christian, and most people’s. We are not talking about smells-and-bells church life, or singing Christmas carols. This guy thinks a “cultural Christian” is someone who fights the Muslims and the Marxists as a “Templar Knight”.

His Templar Knight ideology does not draw on any principles about belief in Christ, or any serious Christian theologian. He is not tapping into any stream of Christian thought, and is certainly a long way from Aquinas’ just war theory. His resolve is not to look into the theology or scriptures of Christianity, as a fundamentalist might.

Breivik seems to be the only person calling for a modern, “urban” Knights Templar, whose duty it is to kill Marxists and Muslims and die as a martyr. He justifies this by his own understanding of politics and society, but not by religious concepts. That is why we should caution against calling Breivik a “Christian fundamentalist”. It is inaccurate.

A Christian fundamentalist would not say this:

The cultural factors are more important than your personal relationship with God, Jesus or the holy spirit.

A fundamentalist would say the exact opposite.

These are hardly the words of a Christian fundamentalist either:

“I have reserved 2000 Euro from my operations budget which I intend to spend on a high quality model escort girl 1 week prior to execution of the mission. I will probably arrange that just before or after I attend my final martyrs mass in Frogner Church. It will contribute to ease my mind as I imagine I will get tense and very nervous. It is easier to face death if you know you are biologically, mentally and spiritually at ease.”

He also says this:

Religion is a crutch for many weak people and many embrace religion for self serving reasons as a source for drawing mental strength (to feed their weak emotional state f example during illness, death, poverty etc.). Since I am not a hypocrite, I’ll say directly that this is my agenda as well. However, I have not yet felt the need to ask God for strength, yet… But I’m pretty sure I will pray to God as I’m rushing through my city, guns blazing, with 100 armed system protectors pursuing me with the intention to stop and/or kill.

So the first time he would have prayed to God, would have been during his killing spree. I really think you would struggle to find a genuine Christian, who would pray for the first time when committing murder.

Does this “Christian fundamentalist” even believe in God?

He continues:

It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past

So after all that, he is an agnostic. Nor does this seem to be a Christian wrestling with his doubts about God, or anything of the sort. I do not think that an agnostic of Breivik’s ilk can be aptly described as a Christian fundamentalist.

This is a point that even the leading new atheist thinker Sam Harris makes.

Breivik imagined that all Muslims should have to convert to Christianity by 2020, and change their name too. He said he was a Protestant, but he wanted the Protestant Church to merge with Rome. A Protestant fundamentalist would not say this!

His form of Christianity was only ever an identity marker, not a system of beliefs or a way to connect with God.

The other theory, if Breivik is not a Christian fundamentalist, is that he could be linked to the Christian Identity movement. The thing about Christian Identity, is that they believe they are descended from the 10 tribes of Israel.

So if Breivik held to Christian Identity beliefs, you would expect him to say something about how the Nordic tribe are the lost house of Israel, something like that. Nothing appears in his thinking, though, about Christian Identity politics.

You could make the argument, I suppose, that Breivik is a Christian because he said so on his Facebook status. But he is not a Christian fundamentalist.

UPDATE: For more on Breivik’s ‘Crusader Christianity’ and its similarities to BNP ideology, see this post.