Essay: "A Christian Speaks of Wicca and Witchcraft"

This is an interesting bit of work, I've seen it in several places, but this is a direct cut-and-paste from http://www.wicca.com/celtic/wicca/christian.htm

Comments? Since this board is chock-full of Christian debaters, I'm curious to see if you agree or disagree. Are you, in fact, disobeying God by attempting to convert non-Christians?

 

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i do not worship the christian god, to which the Lord and Lady are not connected.

 

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Cupric, it's an excellent article, but ....

It's an excellent article, Cupric. I mean, I liked it. But that's probably something you could have guessed.

Rather, I just don't think anyone around here really cares. The posters in the Religion forum gave up trying to be intelligent a while ago. Much of my recent troubles have come from my failure to recognize this fact. (I've got a topic going on right now where people are entertained by their own ignorance. It's pretty cool in that respect.)

But as you see, it's not just Christians who wish to maintain a degree of separation; pride rules almost everybody, and we would do well to make Pride a god so that we might worship and naturally loathe it the way we do other gods.

If you take a look around at Sciforums, you'll find our Christians get jumpy when Matthew 25 is in the picture, and though it was led by T1's assertions, Christians have also rejected Matthew 5.44-ff, which says:

And this is where things get interesting. I do know a couple of Christians who waver in the face of being perfect as the father is perfect, but we all know that's mere theory and is a practical impossibility. However, the rest of the statement gets thrown out, as well, which is tragic because I actually am a huge fan of part of this passage: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you .... For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

One need not be a Christian to recognize the truth of such a statement. Likewise, being Christian is obviously no guarantee of understanding, and that in itself seems to be an offensive notion to many Christians, who, upon "finding" Christ, merely reinforce their preexisting prejudices without any real transformation of character.

The flip-side, of course, becomes that nobody can imagine another thinking of them in terms of brotherly love. It seems smartest to presume that everyone is trying to hurt you, and that you must be first to the punch. But how far have we gone that we cannot try to respect each others' differences without accusations of trying to control one another?

For the benefit of those who have admitted their illiteracy or reading comprehension problems, I shall stop here. After all, we don't want to make the ragamuffins too sensitive about their deficiencies.

It's merciful, see? Just like the Bible says .... :bugeye:

thanx,
Tiassa

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Tia, if you will forgive my saying so, your characterizing of the entire religions forum as 'giving up being intelligent long ago' seems to need more substance.

Can you justify it? And I'm not just talking about Christian posters here...


_________________________________________
There is no god, afterlife or divine love. There is only Entropy, the mother from which we were all born. She tugs our souls with the beautiful, maternal love of chaos. Why do you keep Her waiting?

-central philosophy of Zero, Sage of Chaos

 

tiassa

well said, I remember when I was here a while back, and I would expecially pay attention to your posts for they held some sort of wisdom not usually shown with others.

 

For some reason ...

the term intellectual snob just came
to mind. Funny how that works.

 

Sorry, Cupric

I guess I should have known my comments would lead to people ignoring your topic. I don't know why they would rather argue against me than give a few seconds honest consideration to your excellent topic post. If Zero and Poet would like to engage this issue in another topic, they're welcome to. But I'm not going to sit in here and fight with them about "intellectual snobbery", which word seems awfully convenient in the face of that which someone does not understand.

You have my apologies, Cupric, and I shall withdraw my further participation in this topic; it is obvious that wherever I am, people don't want to discuss the topics at hand.

thanx,
Tiassa

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I see tia doesn't feel like continuing this discussion. I'm still a bit lost here as to the reasoning behind your broad generalization of everyone in here...and what do you mean people don't want to discuss the topics at hand??? ... but oh well.

_________________________________________
There is no god, afterlife or divine love. There is only Entropy, the mother from which we were all born. She tugs our souls with the beautiful, maternal love of chaos. Why do you keep Her waiting?

-central philosophy of Zero, Sage of Chaos

 

If Poet would like to engage this issue in another topic

Although I appreciate the offer - no thanks. You assume a
lot about me without knowing me, I think that says a lot all
on its own.

Peace out,
EvilPoet

 

Zero

Well? What are you and EvilPoet discussing?

You could try discussing the topic for once. If this side issue is important enough to either of you, start a topic. I'm tired of offending people by presuming them to be intelligent.

In the meantime, Zero, read your PM's.

thanx,
Tiassa

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P.S.

Cupric--Apologies again.

Interested posters--Seriously, how many topics should I kill honoring these side digressions?

Moderators--Dave was wise to keep terms like "respect" and "disrespectful" out of the TOA, since none of us would generally qualify, but I will no longer be harassed into continually destroying other people's topics just because people would rather argue with me than respectfully discuss a topic put before them. This process is just getting stupid.

EvilPoet--See all of the above.

 

Cupric,

Other than the attitude of superiority I detected in this statement, I really liked the article:

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Although I could have done without the spiritual snobbery, the author made some great points throughout the rest of the article. Thanks for sharing it!

 

Cupric,

Prove me you are not a false teacher and I will believe in you. One of your quotes specially called my attention... Matthew 25:40. You quoted it as:

But what is really written is:

Matthew 25:40
"40 The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' "

Explain yourself. Prove that you are not a false teacher, because unfortunatly it seems that you are...

Edit: Sorry. I forgot you didn't write it. But be careful with what you read... It doesn't seem to be true teaching...

 

logs in eyes.

whoa... i hear a bit of that in what you just wrote. funny, huh?:bugeye:

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in otherwords, why do you wanna dismiss passion for "snobbery"? maybe being passionate about one's beliefs might come across as "snobbery"...but, i think it's not. it's more..well, for lack of better word..."passion" for one's cause.

 

Re: logs in eyes.

Is it passion that causes one person to say "what I have is ever so much better than what you have", or "you happen to be on a lower rung of the spiritual ladder than me"? I disagree - I believe it is spiritual snobbery - nothing more, nothing less.

As to your remark about my post showing the same trait, perhaps there is some spiritual snobbery in me as well, or I probably wouldn't have noticed it in someone else. When we judge others, we are judging ourselves after all. Most of us posting here probably are spiritual snobs to some degree - that's why we're here debating religion, isn't it? Would any of us bother with it otherwise? So how are you better, pumpkins?

 

Nahushta

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how embarassing for you....have you ever gone back and re-read any of your posts?? they are full of hypocrisy. really. you sound like one heckuvasnob. you are scolding me for the very exact same thing you are doing. yikes.
ta ta...

 

Can you answer just one question?

And, for the 20th time, you are better than me in what way?

 

IF there is a god...surely he will show us who is right and who is trying to be right. Intellectual warfare is a practice. And that might, on it's own justify your reactions. But please, we must try to understand what is going on by observation and not prejudice.
less you are just being a ham.

 

tiassa,

I understand you...

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Speaking of disrespect and arguing out of topic...


Nehushta and pumpkinsaren'torange,

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nehushta:
Although I could have done without the spiritual snobbery, the author made some great points throughout the rest of the article. Thanks for sharing it!


pumpkinsaren'torange:
whoa... i hear a bit of that in what you just wrote. funny, huh?

in otherwords, why do you wanna dismiss passion for "snobbery"? maybe being passionate about one's beliefs might come across as "snobbery"...but, i think it's not. it's more..well, for lack of better word..."passion" for one's cause.


Nehushta:
Is it passion that causes one person to say "what I have is ever so much better than what you have", or "you happen to be on a lower rung of the spiritual ladder than me"? I disagree - I believe it is spiritual snobbery - nothing more, nothing less.

As to your remark about my post showing the same trait, perhaps there is some spiritual snobbery in me as well, or I probably wouldn't have noticed it in someone else. When we judge others, we are judging ourselves after all. Most of us posting here probably are spiritual snobs to some degree - that's why we're here debating religion, isn't it? Would any of us bother with it otherwise? So how are you better, pumpkins?


pumpkinsaren'torange:
how embarassing for you....have you ever gone back and re-read any of your posts?? they are full of hypocrisy. really. you sound like one heckuvasnob. you are scolding me for the very exact same thing you are doing. yikes.
ta ta...


Nehushta:
And, for the 20th time, you are better than me in what way?
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I see that you guys had a lot of misunderstandings for a long time...
Instead of hurting each other to see who will win, why don't you solve your differences by forgiving each other? Isn't that much better?

Think about it....

 

No misunderstandings, TruthSeeker - and certainly not for a long time. Pumpkins gets a kick out of trying to get a rise out of others. I suppose I should just ignore him/her, but I am known to enjoy taking the occasional poke back myself. I'll try to keep that to a minimum from now on since I know it bothers you.

Regarding your statement that we were arguing out of topic, I have to disagree somewhat. I was responding to the letter that was reprinted in the opening post, and was simply expressing my opinion that although most of the letter was pretty good, I detected a bit of spiritual snobbery. Since I am asserting that this is the case, I do not consider discussion of this aspect of the letter to be too far off-topic, as long as we don't dwell on that issue throughout the entire thread. But I do apologize for my part in any annoying detours in the conversation.

In an effort to get the discussion back on track to everyone's satisfaction, I would like to state my opinion that, generally speaking, any efforts to convert non-Christians to Christianity are wrong. It's perfectly fine to answer the curious questions of others about your religion, or to invite anyone who shows an interest to attend church with you, but Christians should not pressure others in any way or be invasive about sharing their beliefs with others.

 

Nehushta,

Most of us just do that because we don't want to see anyone in hell... we want salvation to everyone, so we start to speak...