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Quote by: Isherwood Individuals are responsible for their acts of faith.
Religion provides the motivation for their acts. |
I'm unsure that religion always provides the motivation for acts, but it definitely provides an amount of certainty to the decision. Gott Mit Uns.
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Quote by: LetThereBe Indeed. And if such displays are an obligation of the faithful, do you then criticize the religion? Or is it the fault of the followers? |
Which followers? Catholics? Baptists? Lutherans, Methodists, Pentacostalists, Quakers, Mormons, etc. etc. One can define their faith based on any number of selected readings of the Bible, and they obviously do.
The fact is that Religion teaches a great number of things, many of which seem to contradict one another, depending on how you look at them. It strikes me that followers are quite adept at picking and choosing what lessons from the Good Book they're heeding.
On this board I constantly hear from good Christians that those
other Christians aren't really Christians. Not the way Jesus meant. But then who's to say? When someone selfrighteously holds up the Good Book and justifies their cause with a few well chosen passages, who's to say they're not following the word of God to the best of their belief? After all, believers can quote chapter and verse about how homosexuality is an abomination to the Lord. So regardless of how crudely put, isn't
"God Hates You" a correct understanding of God's teaching, there in black and white for all to see?
That young lady holding the signs is smiling cheerfully, joyfully confident that she is sharing the truth as God told her through prayer and God's shepherd.. Who is one Christian to tell another they have it wrong?
Or perhaps it's simply that people make their own judgements and then convince themselves of it's correctness by selecting arcane passages from a 2,000 year old collection of chronicles that teach whatever one needs to best suit their circumstances. If someone can show in scripture that God himself advocates their cause -- and almost anyone can -- then how can anyone professing to believe say they're wrong?
When moderate Muslims quote from the Qu'ran to demonstrate that Islam is actually a peaceful, loving religion, they're absolutely correct. But then so are the fanatics quoting from the same Qu'ran to demonstrate that Islam is the Wrath of Allah.
Apologies to John Kenneth Galbraith,
"The modern (Believer) is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
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