Thanks for visiting my site. I don’t necessarily agree with your opinions but I welcome the debate.

Chinese unorthodox liberalism im guessing?jk.

@Tom: The “convert” comment was tongue-in-cheek.

For most of my life, I’ve been exposed 90% of the time to the same kind of belief system. In short, sum the beliefs of Limbaugh, Hannity, Southern Baptists, etc., take the average and you’ve pretty much got it.

Not that the entire belief system is wrong, but I think it has its blind spots and misses shades of grey.

A great example is affirmative action, which mainline conservatives reflexively reject. An argument would roughly run something like “Affirmative action is a program of race-based preferences, and treating people based on race is wrong. It’s been hundreds of years since slavery and the civil rights movement did its job, so AA no longer performs a useful role.”

I believed this way without thinking about it…or better yet, I thought about it, but never seriously considered how pro-affirmative action people would respond. The response might be something like “The lot of blacks may be improving, but despite the civil rights movement, many blacks still experience racism in their everyday lives. Black kids tend to go to worse schools, so start out at a disadvantage. The government should step in to level that playing field.”

Now, the conversative view may be correct (or more correct), but if so, I no longer think it’s obviously true.

My worldview? I’m rather agnostic about a LOT of subjects. You might say I’m a practicalist who prefers to answer “What’s the most effective course of action now?” rather than theoretical right/wrong (although that’s important as well).

Hi Tom – in my personal experience the challenge with “sticking to it no matter what the cost” is that sometimes, you discover through more experience that you were in fact wrong, and the costs were high and incurred as a result of bullheadedness, not some more admirable trait. I’m addressing myself here (I haven’t visited your blog and don’t know which issues you feel strongly about, so this is genuinely not an attempt at indirect criticism). At any rate as a result of having burned some people quite badly (including myself) I now take a more tempered approach to many issues.

I believe this is what my parents referred to as “learning the hard way”

These “grey spots” encompass a plethora of subjects, from abortion to pornography to homosexuality to cheating on a test.

As a Christian, I do not understand the need to condemn and corral. We condemn people for not following this arcane “how to be good” list and we corral people into “us” and “them”. In our misguided attempts to make people “upright”, we’ve become crooked ourselves. *sigh* Let the brimstone hail!

Annie said

As a Christian, I do not understand the need to condemn and corral. We condemn people for not following this arcane “how to be good” list and we corral people into “us” and “them”. In our misguided attempts to make people “upright”, we’ve become crooked ourselves. *sigh* Let the brimstone hail!

I think you misunderstand. Christians are not supposed to condemn…that is God’s job. Our responsibility is only to proclaim His word. He will condemn those who reject it. We are only to love others and be obedient to His commands.

Next, it is God who separates people. He does this by placing some into the Elect and the rest into the non-Elect. It is He who sanctifies (sets apart). We can set no-one apart for God…it is all His doing. If we are trying to make someone “upright” then we will always fail. He will never fail.

@Tom: We could go on for a while like this! In any case, I look forward to future conversations and some games on FICS.

@Annie: It’s probably too much to expect the correct conjugation of “i have drank” after a bottle of wine.

Christians are not supposed to condemn…that is God’s job. Our responsibility is only to proclaim His word. He will condemn those who reject it. We are only to love others and be obedient to His commands.

Tell it to the Christians who condemn. Tell it to Limbaugh, tell it to Hannity, tell it to O’Reilly.

I think the world would be a much better place if Christians worked with minds engaged. American Orthodox Conservatism has no chance in that case — but who wants to think seriously about education, health care, race and equal opportunity, science, and economics?

Happy to here thats all it was:-) your husband sounds like a cool guy.(donnie isnt your husband is he? i would have thought id have thought about that possibility before now if that were the case…)