Trump Wars

Events occurring and how they relate/affect Anabaptist faith and culture.
GaryK
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by GaryK »

Bootstrap wrote:
GaryK wrote:If this is going on within the Kingdom there is much more going on than political warring. IMO it's a matter of mixed allegiance and unless this and other deeper issues are worked with as the real problem, political warring will continue.
I absolutely agree. This is about finding our identity and calling as Christians, and returning to what Jesus said and did.
GaryK wrote:I agree this is a problem and I think the best way to have credibility in trying to root this out is to not be involved in the political process by voting, etc.
I can appreciate the witness of those who do not vote, but sometimes it seems that people strain at the gnat of voting and swallow the camel of political warring. Not you, Gary, I think you are very consistent here, but I do see people who do that.
GaryK wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:Here on MD, political controversies are among Christians. Ignoring political warfare threads in the Kingdom doesn't seem like the right strategy for me. Worse, the clearest calls to action, here and in many other places, are political. If we stopped fighting about politics, what would we talk about? We had better get a lot better at answering that question.
Why don't you try it?
I may not be trying it the right way - and I'm happy to learn how to do better - but I am definitely trying it. Please teach me if you have things I should learn, and let's learn from each other. I do see a difference between opposing political warring and taking sides in the political wars.

Maybe it starts with Paul's frequent approach of looking at who we are in Christ and who we are as God's children. It is not right that we, as God's children, take our identities from the political factions among us, often repeating the memes they give us and the words carefully designed by their marketing geniuses, and bite and devour each other.
I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph. I just feel it's going to be difficult to address this in a meaningful way if we have a dog in the fight such as having voted for someone the other person has voted against. The very nature of politics is divisive and has always been intense.
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Dan Z
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by Dan Z »

GaryK wrote:I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph. I just feel it's going to be difficult to address this in a meaningful way if we have a dog in the fight such as having voted for someone the other person has voted against. The very nature of politics is divisive and has always been intense.
Well said.

This is yet another way that abstaining from voting helps serve as a firewall from the partisanship that so quickly gains our allegiance and divides. The psychology behind choosing a candidate tends to exacerbate things, as "confirmation bias" kicks in and we begin to subconsciously use "motivated reasoning" to think well of our side and poorly of the other.

We who are of God's Kingdom must do all we can to guard our allegiances...and that includes maintaining an ideological independence from partisan politics (preaching to myself here as well) :).
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ohio jones
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by ohio jones »

Valerie wrote:Trump did not bring marital infidelity into the White House while serving the country
So long as Melania remains in New York, you do have a point here.
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Dan Z
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by Dan Z »

One big part of this is our penchant for idealizing (& villainizing) our leaders. It was certainly true for Obama - and is for Trump as well. Both pro and con, we end up with a caricature of reality that is more emotively created than rationally created.
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mike
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by mike »

Bootstrap wrote:
mike wrote:Stay out of such discussions.
But I think we need more than that. I think we need to actively discuss how we relate to politicized warring around us, because a large portion of the church is paralyzed by it. And I think we need to - carefully - examine ourselves and question each other about our own political warring.

I'd guess that this is at least as common a problem as sexual immorality. And while staying away from sexual immorality is important, if the church is full of it, it's not enough for an individual to stay out of it. The culture of the church needs to be changed. We need to build an understanding of why sexual immorality is wrong.

The same is true for political warring.
They say that the best way to detect counterfeit currency is to be familiar with the genuine. I'm not advocating for passivity. I'm advocating for following Jesus by living out his commands in a real and genuine way, and letting the contrast with the political warriors be apparent. If you want to start calling them out on their warring, feel free. But I would like it if people were so busy doing the right thing that they just didn't have the time to post 18 negative posts about Donald Trump on Facebook in one day (this just happened the other day on my feed).
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by Bootstrap »

mike wrote:They say that the best way to detect counterfeit currency is to be familiar with the genuine. I'm not advocating for passivity. I'm advocating for following Jesus by living out his commands in a real and genuine way, and letting the contrast with the political warriors be apparent.
Amen on that.
mike wrote:If you want to start calling them out on their warring, feel free. But I would like it if people were so busy doing the right thing that they just didn't have the time to post 18 negative posts about Donald Trump on Facebook in one day (this just happened the other day on my feed).
I like that approach for a lot of sins, but addressing the sin more directly seems important too. In the same way that pornography has become normalized, so has political warring and character assassination. And I suspect one of the reasons it has become normalized is that those who see what's going on are often too passive.
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KingdomBuilder
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by KingdomBuilder »

Bootstrap wrote:I like that approach for a lot of sins, but addressing the sin more directly seems important too. In the same way that pornography has become normalized, so has political warring and character assassination. And I suspect one of the reasons it has become normalized is that those who see what's going on are often too passive.
It's a different ballgame, if you ask me.
Any warring and character assassination is shallow billowing that is quite normal for humans- it's about pride. It's ugly, public, and loud.. That's how people like it.
Pornography/ sexual sin is rooted deeper though, as its not against others, but our own selves. I think Scripture is specific to this for a reason.
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MaxPC
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by MaxPC »

KingdomBuilder wrote:
It's a different ballgame, if you ask me.
Any warring and character assassination is shallow billowing that is quite normal for humans- it's about pride. It's ugly, public, and loud.. That's how people like it.

Pornography/ sexual sin is rooted deeper though, as its not against others, but our own selves. I think Scripture is specific to this for a reason.
The title of this thread is a form of declaring war and character assassination. It impugns a specific person.

Re porn and sexual sin: well said KB.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by Bootstrap »

MaxPC wrote:The title of this thread is a form of declaring war and character assassination. It impugns a specific person.
Nope. Take another look at the original post, which clearly explains how the title is meant.
Bootstrap wrote:People around me have very strong feelings about Donald Trump, and a wide variety of opinions. Depending on the person speaking, he might be the only man who can save us or the one man that we most need to be protected against, the master negotiator who can get whatever he wants or a demagogue who doesn't do his research before negotiating and uses tactics that alienate the very people whose support he needs, a disrupter who casts down what is bad about America and builds up what is good or a disrupter who casts down what is good about America and builds up what is bad, a hero for the little guy against the rich and powerful or a hero for the rich and powerful at the expense of the little guy.

This thread isn't for settling those questions, it's for another issue. People are at each other's throats about Donald Trump. I've heard of spouses divorcing because of their political disagreements, and political affiliation now divides more than race or religion in America.

What is the place of a peacemaker in an America like this?
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump Wars

Post by Bootstrap »

KingdomBuilder wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:I like that approach for a lot of sins, but addressing the sin more directly seems important too. In the same way that pornography has become normalized, so has political warring and character assassination. And I suspect one of the reasons it has become normalized is that those who see what's going on are often too passive.
It's a different ballgame, if you ask me.
Any warring and character assassination is shallow billowing that is quite normal for humans- it's about pride. It's ugly, public, and loud.. That's how people like it.
Pornography/ sexual sin is rooted deeper though, as its not against others, but our own selves. I think Scripture is specific to this for a reason.
I think the biggest difference is simply that most Christians would be appalled if someone came in and urged us to start looking at pornography, but in many Christian settings it is perfectly acceptable to fully live out the fruit of the flesh via politics - sometimes it is even encouraged from the pulpit.

To me, both sins are sin against others, but also sins against our own hearts. Both are sins that confuses us about who we are and whose we are.
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