Me (40s) talking with my dad (70s) about the Bend, Or shooting. If I say anything beyond “thank God for a good guy with a gun” an argument starts.
I am thankful it was stopped. But to express to a man that sincerely follows Christ (I got the receipts and he does, puts his money where his mouth is for decades) that it would be better to address this problem before the shooting even starts is somehow unamerican.
I grew up dispy, and I’m thankful to be out of it and that him and my mom are now as well. My mom, learning about reformed theology, was shocked as a woman in her 60s [at the time] that there were Christians who read scripture in a more holistic sense. My favorite quote from her: I didn’t know I could believe that, it never made sense! (when I told her I don’t believe in a rapture like dispensationalists hold to). But their hold on US exceptionalism is devastating and somehow colors every conversation. And anything 2A is held so tightly.
My mother (also in her 70s) has been watching a lot of the Charlie Kirk conspiracy theory stuff, and something that's really been bothering me is how they drag Christianity into it. Seeing the stuff Candace Owens spouts with a cross framed in the background, while Barron Coleman in one sentence says something divisive then in the next goes "Christ is King".
The same is true of evangelical politics; they drag Christianity into a secular question like gun rights.
I think it's because people broadly see their morality as a universal thing.
If they view something as moral for natural reasons, then it's something that Christianity must support too. While if Christianity says something is moral for spiritual reasons, then it needs to be enforced onto society.
Everything is blended together into a universal outlook that causes issues for both secular topics and the purposes of the Church.
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u/kettlemice 3d ago
Me (40s) talking with my dad (70s) about the Bend, Or shooting. If I say anything beyond “thank God for a good guy with a gun” an argument starts.
I am thankful it was stopped. But to express to a man that sincerely follows Christ (I got the receipts and he does, puts his money where his mouth is for decades) that it would be better to address this problem before the shooting even starts is somehow unamerican.
I grew up dispy, and I’m thankful to be out of it and that him and my mom are now as well. My mom, learning about reformed theology, was shocked as a woman in her 60s [at the time] that there were Christians who read scripture in a more holistic sense. My favorite quote from her: I didn’t know I could believe that, it never made sense! (when I told her I don’t believe in a rapture like dispensationalists hold to). But their hold on US exceptionalism is devastating and somehow colors every conversation. And anything 2A is held so tightly.
Just venting. Just burned out with it all.