This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
As a black person...I really really really don't want HBD to be true
This doesn't mean I think it's wrong. It's just that I think that the conclusions you'd have to draw from it being correct are just so awful for me.
I view it as nothing short of tragic that a people who suffered so much due to being viewed as inferior, who struggled for so long to be viewed as equals and treated with dignity, who endured all kinds of injustices in the hope that we would overcome...only for science to prove that it was fruitless all along. It's so dispiriting the possibility that all the problems in our community: crime, poverty, ignorance, are intransient. How are you supposed to deal with that without becoming utterly nihilistic?
I'll probably have a longer more essay-type post for next week's thread but I just want to get my raw emotions about it out here before then.
It's just so unfair. It fills me with anger and sadness and rage and I can't stop thinking about it. I don't want it to be true...I don't want it to be true. It's so unfair
The easy solution is to simply reject the idea of "our community". I happen to be an uppity big-lipped nigger myself. But I do my best to refrain from feeling any sense of community with the "urban youths". Rather, I exist primarily online, as a being with no face and no race. When I am forced to exist in meatspace, I think of myself primarily as a competent and diligent employee, not as a black person.
Individualism!
This may be an ideal solution, but I do not believe it is an easy solution. A community collectively and instinctively puts people in categories, assigns default characteristics to people in these categories, views the categories as part of the identity of its members, and views the categories as competing factions. If you think you can easily (or totally) escape buying into that factionalism, I think you are under an illusion. The trick is not to eliminate identity groups as functional units of society, but to make the competition between them honest, healthy, and based on furthering interests that are shared among the identity groups.
I feel the OP's pain. But the closer you are to God, the less it will matter to you whether you are a member of a group that happens to suffer from an epidemic of foolishness (whether it is biological or cultural). Moreover, if your people are acting like fools, you dissociate yourself from the foolishness precisely to the extent that you call it out. For example, as a white Christian Republican, my people have a history of irrational and immoral hatred for gays. As a Southerner from Alabama, my people have a history of hypocritically identifying as Christian while also having racist contempt for blacks. If I call those sins out, I am not stained by them. I can actually feel my conscience being freed when I acknowledge them. But, to the extent that I remain silent about those corporate sins of my own people, and at the same time identify as members of those groups, I am truly guilty by association (whether I am individually an offender or not).
The same thing goes for other groups. If you are a Muslim and that is part of your identity, that does not make you part of the problems of Islamic fascism, genocidal antisemitism, and terrorism -- but, if you aren't talking about those problems in the Muslim world and calling them out, then you are part of the problems -- even if you don't advocate for Sharia law, or hate jews, or fly airplanes into buildings. Similarly, if you are black, and you aren't talking about the problems of black supremacy, anti-intellectualism, deadbeat dads, serially pregnant welfare moms, gang violence, or whatever you honestly see as the problems in your community, then you are part of those problems. On the other hand, if you are vocally calling them out and trying to address those issues, then you are not part of the problem -- and also, you are fundamentally part of a bigger identity group called "Honest, caring people".
Not to derail, and it's possible that you're still right, since I don't know what exactly constitutes hatred for you, but I do think the scriptures are pretty clear that homosexual sex is bad.
Important enough question for a derail, IMO. What constitutes hatred, for me, is taking carnal delight in the pain and loss (or prospective pain and loss) of another person. This is as opposed to indignation, by which I mean making a judgment that someone's conduct is immoral and, if it rises to a certain level, calls for punishment. In that light, my case is twofold. First (as I think @Felagund anticipated),
Jesus doesn't say "I was in prison for something I did not do and ye visited me not", or "I was in prison for a minor offense, and you visited me not". The people who count as the least of our brothers include people who have actually committed a major offense. So I think it is consistent, and indeed only right, to judge an action as a sin without hating the person who committed it. If my brother drove home drunk from a night on the town, or even murdered someone, I could acknowledge that as wrong, or gravely wrong in the latter case, without hating him.
Second, the Bible does condemn homosexual sodomy. Just as strongly, it condemns witchcraft, idol worship, working on Saturday, cursing your parents, eating meat of an animal that been strangled, consuming animal blood (e.g., blood sausage), premarital sex, and many other things which call for the death penalty under Mosaic law. Some of these prohibitions, including idol worship, consuming animal blood, and eating the meat of a strangled animal, carry over explicitly into New Testament law [cf. Acts 15]. Bible believing Christians, as a rule, do not take all of those seriously as sins, let alone call for death by stoning for all of them -- so they have to square with that one way or another.
But of all ways to square with it, to arbitrarily pick one of those alleged sins and lift it up as an abomination on Biblical grounds, while discounting or ignoring the rest, and then to use that capricious choice to justify hating another person, is not only hypocritical but blasphemous -- insofar as it also recklessly puts your bigoted words in God's mouth. Yet, as a group characteristic, that is what Evangelicals [my people] have historically done, and to some degree continue to do, in large numbers by comparison with the general population. I'm not saying we all do it or ever did; I am saying that (1) we did/do it significantly more than our outgroups in the Western world (e.g., white collar Democrats), (2) those of us who do not vocally acknowledge that are part of the problem.
Yes, certainly. Jesus associated with prostitutes and tax collectors, etc.
It's useful to understand what's going on under the mosaic law. Laws are conventionally divided into three sorts: moral laws, which apply universally (e.g. Thou shalt not murder); ceremonial laws, which were for Israel as a church, roughly, and so no longer apply post-Christ (e.g. food laws); and civil laws, which were for Israel as a government (e.g. cities of refuge).
I take it you would argue that the law against homosexual sex is a ceremonial law, and now longer applies, whereas I would argue that it is a moral law. The biggest reason I would argue that is the repeated affirmation of the same in the new testament (Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, Jude 7, 1 Timothy 1). I'll note that I don't think that the prescription of putting them to death is necessary, as we are no longer living under the civil law of ancient Israel.
You bring up the case of the various commands in Acts 15.
I think Paul illustrates that he treats some of those differently from others. 1 Corinthians 10 is illuminating: Paul speaks against partaking of what's sacrificed to idols, but not because there's anything problematic about it itself, but for the sake of others. Compare that to early in the epistle, where Paul talks about sexual immorality as inherently problematic.
So it's at least plausible to me that some of the commands in Acts 15 are intended to be for the sake of peace and people's consciences, but I'm not entirely certain. But I think other parts of the new testament are sufficiently clear that sexual immorality is bad, and homosexuality shows up in lists forbidding things that are clearly considered to be inherently bad, not bad for the sake of others.
Is this really a depiction of what is going on typically?
I'm young, so I can't speak to what was common decades ago, and it's entirely possible my circles are unusual, but in most cases where I've heard people condemn homosexuality, they're usually quick to affirm that heterosexual lust is also bad, lest they be misunderstood.
Not so much. I don't emphasize the distinction. I think the need to emphasize the distinction arises from a position that the Bible is infallible and that its stated precepts are invariably eternal, which I do not believe. Do you?
The former, not the latter.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link