Why do Christians feel like they’re under attack?

[Jennjenn]

I was listening to Joyce Meyer’s podcast and she said that a college student can’t be openly Christian on campus without being attacked. She said that “who would have thought that one day Christian’s would be persecuted in America”

I can’t understand why she’s leaning towards these conspiracy type of ideas. 

I’ve been listening to her podcasts sporadically for quite a few years, mostly because I admire Jesus’s teachings a lot. I find Jesus to be the most liberal/ socialist teacher of our time and I always enjoy listening about him. Even though I don’t consider myself a religious person at all, I’m very spiritual. 

I’m also a college student, I understand college education is very green, so that’s exactly why she’s wrong. Green people won’t attack Christians or religious people, they pride themselves on being inclusive and accepting. 

She seems confused and paranoid. But she’s not the only Christian feeling that way. A few days ago I heard another “Christian” saying the same thing. 

What is going on??

[Opo]

@Jennjenn They like to bend the truth. No one will have a problem with you being a cristian. Conflict starts when christians start preaching to others how what they are doing is immoral(abortion is murder, sex is sin, dont say the God's name in vain...) u can sprinkle some racism in there and then when someone calls them out they say im just a Christian why are they being so mean to me. 

[Jennjenn]

@Opo I think they’re  fear is deeper than just feeling judge because they’re anti-gay and anti-choice. 

Edited July 4, 2020 by Jennjenn

[Jennjenn]

@Opo and that’s also my point. How can they says Christians are being persecuted when Jesus was basically a radical leftist.  

[Artsu]

Tertiary educational institutes are also a place where science is focused on a lot, and there is a conflict between science and religion. Also the prejudices that many Christians suffer from (homophobia and so on) are grounds for attack in the eyes of many.

I'm personally more on the spirituality side of the science vs religion debate. Sure, science can build technology, but it misses so much, and I would rather rely on a mythological account of creation than the scientific one.

[Opo]

21 minutes ago, Artsu said:

I would rather rely on a mythological account of creation than the scientific one.

I never understood that can you please explain why? 

[Opo]

42 minutes ago, Jennjenn said:

@Opo and that’s also my point. How can they says Christians are being persecuted when Jesus was basically a radical leftist.  

Christians and Jesus have very little in common. For them their community, values and their way of life is more important and that stuff is going away so they are right to feel afraid. 

[Opo]

@Jennjenn They aren't developed enough to understand what Jesus was saying. It will go straight over their heads. 

[Leo Gura]

It's simple: because stage Blue Christianity IS under attack. It is becoming more and more of an untenable ideology to hold in the 21st century. Stage Blue Christians are correct in their fear that stage Blue Christianity is slowly dying and will soon die.

2 hours ago, Jennjenn said:

How can they says Christians are being persecuted when Jesus was basically a radical leftist.

You see Jesus as a radical leftist, but that is not how a stage Blue Christian sees Jesus.

There are many different versions of Christianity. Don't assume that just because someone values Jesus that their worldview is the same as yours. Not at all.

People don't see Jesus as he was, but as he fits into their worldview and personal needs. This has always been the case. We have no objective accounts of how Jesus actually was. It's all interpretations by people who admired him.

[Forestluv]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It's simple: because stage Blue Christianity IS under attack. It is becoming more and more of an untenable ideology to hold in the 21st century. Stage Blue Christians are correct in their fear that stage Blue Christianity is slowly dying and will soon die.

Methodist churches split up early this year over wether LGBTQ can become pastors. A clean Blue vs Green break. With the recent SCOTUS and cultural shift, the churches that chose green are probably feeling good now.

[Preety_India]

Blue Christianity will eventually vanish.. 

 

Btw, Jesus doesn't reflect blue Christianity. Some Christians just like to see Jesus through their own lens. 

 

Welcome green Christianity of the future. 

 

[Leo Gura]

34 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

Methodist churches split up early this year over wether LGBTQ can become pastors.

Oh yeah? I did not know that.

100 years from now they'll split again over whether a robot can be a pastor.

 

[Epikur]

@Leo Gura

 

 

[Leo Gura]

@Epikur Hey! Stop making me insecure about my job.

[Epikur]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Epikur Hey! Stop making me insecure about my job.

Or we get insecure. Maybe you are replaced already. Non dual techno gods leading us.
 

[Artsu]

3 hours ago, Opo said:

I never understood that can you please explain why? 

It's not that I believe that the mythological account is correct, or that the scientific account can't be correct, but rather than I don't think the scientific account IS correct, whereas I believe that the mythological account has more truth in it comparatively.

[Parththakkar12]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Epikur Hey! Stop making me insecure about my job.

You'll be fine. You need an intuition and creativity to do your job. That's not systematizable.

[mandyjw]

People react to any message that challenges their ideas of what they and the world is. We often have a knee jerk reaction of fear and anger, rather than of curiosity. 

Most liberals are completely ignorant about Christianity and jump to conclusions that being Christian is equivocal with being patriarchal, homophobic, etc. Sometimes, maybe often, it is though, so...  Stage green can be absolutely brutal. They often take their level of development for granted thinking that education and having good loving intelligent parents is something they can take credit for the results of and not simply luck of the draw. 

Christianity studied for oneself is much different from having grown up in a church and the culture. The societal pressures and brainwashing with interpretations other people have assumed from Biblical texts are what often influence the majority of Christians more than actually reading the Bible itself. Most Christians don't seek, even within their own religion because it's generally discouraged. The religion is tailored for security, it aims to solve the fear of death but also claims conditions and exclusivity to this "salvation", which creates a lot of fear around questioning and seeking. That makes it fertile ground for closed-mindedness and judgment. Because the religion is for people who seek security, it makes sense that those who seek security most will also feel under attack the most.

The deeper I've gotten into enlightenment, the more I've realize that many of Jesus's pointers are brutally direct. He was not an Eckhart Tolle, he was more like Nisargadatta Maharaj. He would not have been invited on Oprah.  “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Does not mean that Jesus was reflecting on his life as a traveling teacher, like I assumed most of my life.  Little do Christians know the lion waiting to eat them is in the very book they hold so close to their hearts. 

[Yog]

Green Christianity, Jesus hippies, plz less of that.

At least blue had some epicness behind it. Deus Vult!
Too bad it gotta go.

[Boethius]

Christianity has traditionally had a very demanding sexual ethic, one that is now at odds with the sexual norms of contemporary US culture. This would include prohibitions on fornication, cohabitation, oral sex, abortion, & homosexuality. Also, there would be no support given for individuals who wish to undergo gender reassignment surgery & transition from one gender to another -- let alone explore more gender expansive forms of identification.

The theology of these teachings has been worked out in some detail in Christianity. You can read the Catholic Church's Humanae Vitae from 1968 to get a flavor for this type of argument. The basic thrust, so far as I understand, is a high respect for the "givenness" of the human body along with an Aristotelian understanding that the human body was created by God with a specific set of Ends in mind (procreation being first and foremost amongst them). Deviations from these norms then is indicative of humanity's tendency toward selfish rebellion, a mere symptom of our being sinful creatures in a fallen world.

Rod Dreher (author of The Benedict Option and the upcoming Live Not By Lies) is one of the best proponents of these views. His articles on The American Conservative give the reader a sense of the concerns of Traditionalist Christians, and possibly the shrillness of their catastrophist complaints. Quite a few people -- and especially those centered at Green -- would read his work and be repulsed by his writing & believe him to be full of "hate". I myself used to believe this back in the first half of the 2010's when marriage equality was being contested. After marriage equality was settled in 2015, however, I started to read his work and the work of other conservatives and came to understand that he wasn't quite the "enemy" I understood him to be.

As a gay man, I can actually understand some of the concerns he has for society and have sympathy for at least some of them. For example, I don't think that scantily-clad drag queens should be putting on shows for children that are rich in sexual innuendo. I would not be willing to celebrate being urinated on in public (as apparently happens in Brazil) as a form of personal liberation. And I have seen in my own community how the hedonistic pursuit of objectifying sexual gratification can tend to degrade and dehumanize people. So to my mind some sort of Balance is required between acceptance/embrace of the wide diversity of human beings & understanding that we are all bound by some sort of moral/dharmic code of conduct. Coming to understand this was probably the main thing that helped push me beyond Green with its comparatively naive ideas about "love vs. hate" and "acceptance vs. bigotry".