They aren’t winning on account of their superior debating skills.

In a way they are. The orthodox are frequently blindsided and unaware of how to respond to the rhetorically loaded sophistry of the activists.

“God made them that way! He created the worlds and said ‘it is good’!”

“Who are you to judge? You’re a sinner too!”

“God is love! You must be loving!”

And the one Chris skewers here:

“They are people of faith! They love Jesus. They are wonderful people! That proves you can be Christian and gay!”

etc.

And people must be falling for it, since the same “arguments” are being used again and again, and the mainlines are falling like dominoes.

Their rhetoric must be stripped bare and shown to be the dishonest, fallacious reasoning that it is. And we must present the truth with equal force when these techniques are used by the activists to infiltrate the church.

We are losing in the public square because the radicalists have Humpty Dumptyed the language to such a point that many words no longer have their plain meaning.

If they would make the same arguments in favor of unrepentant arsonists – or better yet, Zionists or people who earnestly believe in capitalism – they’d have more credibility, but you know they’ll nver do that. The contemporary left is nothing more than naked hatred toward so-called fundamentalists.

“The classic instance is the faithful older church woman—a devoted and beloved member of the community—who, at just the right moment in a congregational meeting, stands up and says, “Well, friends, I guess we can argue about all of this until the cows come home. All I know is that ________, my ________, is as dear a child of God as I will ever hope to be.” She then goes on to tell the story of she found out about ________, how they stayed close, and how her heart was changed. Bingo. Are we ready for the vote?”

I dare anyone to say the following publicly to any “faithful older church woman” in a congregational meeting:

“The point is that if it’s okay with you that an unrepentant sinner remains in his or her sin simply because you think they’re nice people or you claim to “love” them, then in a way, they’re not the ones with the problem.

You are. Because your religion is a nothing more than an emotion-driven sham.”

I double-dog dare you!

TUaD,
I have done so. The results weren’t pretty. I wasn’t on the Liturgy Committee in that Catholic parish very long after that. No great loss. I shook the dust off my feet and moved on.

A truly “faithful older church woman” will be Biblically sound and stick to her guns like Annie Oakley with PMS!

“TUaD,
I have done so. The results weren’t pretty.”

Wow! Wow.

I totally respect you for doing that. It doesn’t surprise me that the results weren’t pretty.

“I wasn’t on the Liturgy Committee in that Catholic parish very long after that.”

No surprise there.

“No great loss. I shook the dust off my feet and moved on.”

Very wise.

God bless you!

The big problem is that we have sidelined the Bible. If you can’t use the Bible as authoritative, what do you have besides the yuck factor? The question we need to ask the “older church woman” is “Do you base your views on Scripture? What is sin? Did Jesus say “anything goes” or did he say “Go and sin no more.”?

Mark Shea has a very good article on what love really is:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/love-is-not-feelings

This is one of your best ever posts, Christopher J.

T19 just posted the UMC trial of a SS partnered pastor for breaking the canons of the Church.

Any guesses as to the outcome, short and longterm?

What our host is describing here is (to put one word on it) abandonment. That is very close (if not the same) as
leading little ones astray….to love is often to have to say No, and sometimes to say No! in Thunder…

I think our view of love has been corrupted by permissive parenthood. We have lost the concept that a loving parent can be authoritarian. Consequently, we don’t have a clear view of God. We have changed Him from a loving Father who sets limits, to a big daddy-o, easy going and asking very little of us, while we beat our feet in petty tantrums….

That however is how “progressive” social change laws are being made and changed in the community at large, “I know someone who is…….” and then the usual platitudes and exaggerations.

A law based on “exceptions” is bad law.

Even abortion law “reform”, was “sold” to the community at large on the basis of now discredited “invented” statistics about “the huge numbers of women dying at the hands of backyard abortionists, when the vast bulk of abortions were being conducted by rogue medical and nursing staff in sterile conditions in hospitals and surgeries which enabled them to make vast fortunes.

TUaD — I’ve done it, too, and I still get nasty looks from the lavender folks in the parish many years later. They’re not nice people.

Their arguments are not, in fact, superior. That’s why they don’t work. Emotions are all they have, and they use that weapon very effectively among people whose real religion is “nice.”

Gregg the obscure,
“The contemporary left is nothing more than naked hatred toward so-called fundamentalists.” A liberal individual on this site called my comments, “Tired fundamentalism”. What that person meant was they were tired of hearing my views.

Most of those “faithful older churchwomen” are actually aging hippies (church womyn or even wimmin) these days, and the very much older churchwomen can’t really hear or see anymore……

Well said, Chris. Very well said.

Time and niceness erode our moral treasures. That’s why we have a Book – it is not tainted by time and niceness.

“And, just as massive rocks along the shore repel the pounding waves and reduce them to mere mist, our adversaries—especially our religious adversaries—pay not the slightest attention to our remonstrance or declaration, no matter how rock-solid our reasoning.”

Wait — I thought we were rocks and they were waves? Untangle that metaphor, buddy.

And btw, what did the Lord found his Church on — a rock or a wave?

God is “logos”–the Word, thought, the root of logic. Satan from the beginning in Eden preyed on “feelings.” Basing actions on feelings when they contradict the Word cannot end well.

Me: “I dare anyone to say the following publicly to any “faithful older church woman” in a congregational meeting:

“The point is that if it’s okay with you that an unrepentant sinner remains in his or her sin simply because you think they’re nice people or you claim to “love” them, then in a way, they’re not the ones with the problem.

You are. Because your religion is a nothing more than an emotion-driven sham.”

Flambeaux: “TUaD, I have done so. The results weren’t pretty. I wasn’t on the Liturgy Committee in that Catholic parish very long after that. No great loss. I shook the dust off my feet and moved on.”

gppp: “TUaD — I’ve done it, too, and I still get nasty looks from the lavender folks in the parish many years later. They’re not nice people.”

————-

Both of you have impressed me with your bravado and courage. I totally respect what you have done and believe that you both knew there was going to be a social cost to you in contradicting the “faithful older church woman” publicly.

Q: If the situation presented itself again, would you still do the same thing as what you did before?

A: Yes, and probably more forcefully than I actually did.

BTW, I was on the vestry, and my wife was the treasurer, at the time.

Guilt trips can be turned the other way. I haven’t done it with SS marriage, but have with pro-life issues. Whenever the subject of fetal cell transplants came up, I would ask “and how do you feel about the prospect of all those little people giving up their entire lives so you can have a few more years of comfort?” People were of course shocked. How could I be so insensitive! However, since I was the support group leader, and nobody else wanted that job, they let it go. How to do that on same sex? How about: how do you feel about letting those people live a lie, living in a state of mortal sin?

“Guilt trips can be turned the other way.”

There was an earlier MCJ post about voters in Frisco voting on whether to ban male circumcision.

So consider this:

There are Libs who want to ban the severing of male newborn babies’ foreskin and yet who will heartily endorse the permissibility of severing the same babies’ heads just 5 minutes before.

Go figure.

How about: how do you feel about letting those people live a lie, living in a state of mortal sin?

Exactly. The activists want a self-righteous buzz, approval of homosexuals, or in the case of homosexual activists themselves, they want to force people to be accepting of their actions, and they value all of this over the real harm that it will do to the people with SSAs that buy into their lies.

They want to convince the person with SSAs that they must act on them, and that they are condemned to live their lives enslaved to this sin. They may never be free of their impulses, any more than a heterosexual man may be free of adulterous impulses, but they can still be set free from bondage to sin.

But from self serving motives, the activist wishes that the homosexual be defined by their impulses. They want to shout down and gag any who would preach the Good News to them.

I loved the bit about their “superior arguments.” In their dreams!

Of course, the writer/speaker (whatever) had tho throw in the old “Let’s just tell our Stories” technique, which is nothing more than relying on feelings over rational thought.

Same stuff, different day.