@Nathaniel It doesn't have the power to actually accelerate the breakdown of families. That's just people, not government.
@Nathaniel To the extent that someone demands the protection of their individual liberties over hearing arguments for curtailing them for the good of others, what I said is true. I'm sure you've seen the people I'm talking about in the gun debate
@Nathaniel I understand that's your position, but I haven't heard an actual good argument for it. And you seem to have missed my point: you can't say that government provided help leads people to stop trusting God unless you accept that your government provided international security has lead you yourself to trust God less
There's a huge anthropological difference between a tribe and an empire, and another huge difference between the Roman empire and the post-globalisation empire we live in now.
In many places community died with commuter suburbs. People are lonely and desperate now. Mental illness affects 20% of Australians each year. Up to 75% of the homeless and 40% of prisoners. 90% of indigenous Australians in one youth detention centre have some form of brain impairment such as fetal alcohol disorder.
And I suspect that personality disorders such as narcissism are on the rise, which especially affects family break downs. reddit.com/r/JUSTNOMIL is a fascinating but terrifying site
People need the gospel, and Spirit given wisdom will definitely help.
But you're deluding yourselves if you think that tribal style community care will be adequate in our society.
@Nathaniel Or you could think of it as state welfare allowing the church to care for people's spiritual needs and not their material needs guilt-free. The tension between evangelism and social justice is greatly lessened in a society such as mine. Even more so than yours with your lack of universal healthcare.
@Nathaniel Churches are sometimes too effective at bringing people out of generational poverty - they enter the middle class and move to better suburbs before their Christian maturity is at a level where they understand that it is good to sacrificially live in less desirable areas to help others.
@Nathaniel What kind of anti-church incentives are you talking about here?
@curiousdannii If the state were actively imprisoning Christians, and some left the church to avoid it, is that "just people," or is it government? Incentives matter, though to some extent they do reveal the true church.
@curiousdannii The gun rights activists on CNN and BBC probably act like that. But the majority of gun activists believe that gun rights increase the ability of the poor to protect themselves, and reduce the risk of draconian tyranny, for example. If they don't listen to arguments for gun control, it's because the same tired arguments are trotted out every time there's a mass shooting.
@curiousdannii There's probably something to this, that even this is an area where people idolize the state ("wow, my country's army is so awesome; we can handle those ruskies"). Personally I don't trust the US military to do much more than create messes around the world, but others a bit more nationalistic than me might argue that the appropriate (and biblically sound) "tool" for dealing with international conflict is the state.
Whereas the state is not the appropriate tool (per the Bible) for taking care of every individual's material needs.
@curiousdannii Hmm, that is an interesting take. I realize that local churches deal with a lack of expertise; hence the huge growth of parachurch Protestant organizations. I believe that one of secularism's strong tendencies is to cast sin issues as "illnesses" – if I'm sick, it's not my fault! So I question the premise that true mental illness is exploding.
But still, there's something to that; in order to be effective in a global society, the church can't be as "tribal" as it might have been a hundred years ago.
@curiousdannii So I as an individual am no longer responsible for caring for the poor... As long as I vote for other people's money (via taxes) to be used for that purpose, I'm doing my part.
@curiousdannii Primarily social welfare programs. Other things play a part too, like anti-discrimination laws.
@Nathaniel No one has ever said so, not for everyone's every need. But it seems to work well for most people here.
@Nathaniel Can you explain how they're actively anti-church, not just secular? And anti-discrimination law doesn't sound like an incentive
@Nathaniel Mental illness is real, with real physical causes in most cases. Sin can cause serious physical problems. The gospel will be a real benefit. But no one is helped by being sceptical about mental illness's prevalence and severity
@Birdie Shooting from the hip here a bit (ha!), but I'd categorize them as civil laws for a theocratic society. I don't believe they would apply to our secular states, but they serve as useful indicators of God's priorities.
@curiousdannii My experience and reading indicates that alcoholics and those in other addictions tend to prefer "illness" to "sin" when the latter is a more appropriate diagnosis.
@Nathaniel There's also the issue of the size of the church. Here in Aus it's probably about 8% monthly attendance. In parts of the US it's higher, parts are lower. Both countries are probably weighted older
@Nathaniel Part of it is a greater understanding of the illnesses, and so greater rates of diagnosis. My guess is that loss of purpose is a large factor if there is a real increase.
The post scarcity world of Star Trek would be filled with people with depression
But even strong Christians with good Gospel life goals can have depression. Lots of people in my college do. It's very complex.
@curiousdannii It wouldn't surprise me if Christian ministers in the US are someday stripped of their ability to officiate weddings unless they are willing to officiate same-sex weddings. Certainly some would call for that.
@Nathaniel I think it's also likely that the coddling of students alongside the extreme pressure some parents put on them is a factor. Many parents don't allow their kids to fail
@Nathaniel Okay, that's not the kind of thing I thought you were talking about. Of course there's no need for churches to sign government marriage certificates. In many countries they have been separate forever. So it's hard to really see it as a problem. I think it may be better - it would more clearly separate Christian marriage.
Wouldn't a libertarian encourage that? ;) To reduce government overreach into church ceremonies?
Yeah, that's a bad example; I'd cheer if they were split. But there is more legal pressure in general on churches to make sure they are covering their bases when they refuse to hire homosexuals, or don't have transgender bathrooms, etc.
@Nathaniel I don't think either will really be issues. Hiring choices rules will mostly affect schools etc, which are hindrances to the church IMO, and it would be easy for churches to just have isolated stalls (at least for new buildings, and I doubt laws would force old buildings to change)
Yeah, we should be okay in the short run at least. The legal advice my church has received has pushed us to document some things more carefully to avoid getting sued. But in theory that's unlikely.
@Nathaniel Ah, yeah probably similar here. I haven't seen any stats on city attendance rates here, but they're probably slightly lower than rural rates. But then rural here is much lower population so many people don't have good church options
In NZ we used to have ~30-40% attendees weekly, and 99% professing Christians. A quarter of that now attend weekly, and professers dropped to I think 45% or so. I think in 50 years there will be only ~20% professing Christians maybe, if the current trend continues.
@Nathaniel They're intertwined of course, but I think secularisation has had some direct impact on attendance rates. Sunday trading and sports hit attendance rates. Their childrens' sports are a major idol for many Christian parents.
But I think the bigger cause is unbelief. Australia has always been more secular and less Christian
I personally hold out hope that in 50 years we'll be back to 40% church attendance. Can't control God, though.
My stats are over a ~120 year period, btw.
Those who are in attendance are going to some pretty shoddy churches in general, too. There are very few attending what I would call Bible-centered churches.
In Australia monthly church attendance fell from 41% to 24% in the 25 years of 1960-1985. The census recorded the growth of “no religion” from 0.3% in 1947, to 6.7% in 1971, to 16.6% in 1996. In 1992 only 4% of teachers in Catholic schools were from religious orders.
No religion was up to 30.1% in the 2016 census
But most of this is really just the dropping of nominalism for overt non adherence
@LeeWoofenden I'll be surprised if she has other than a positive response. Even though we do not have the scriptural points as well supported as your blog article, our own views on the goodness and the manifestation of spiritual unity/oneness in the physical sense is almost a one for one cut and paste for how you described it.
Insofar as what the Catholic Church teaches, I don't think their view will align well since what seems to be taught is 'since you are free of your mortal body (shed the mortal coil) you won't ever desire that since your ability to be in pure spiritual communion will be at all times present' or something like that. And then there's the glorified body bit, and I cannot say that I have sorted out the theology on that to my own satisfaction.
@KorvinStarmast That view among not only Catholics, but others as well was why I added (after having already composed the first draft of the article) the line about sex in heaven not being some wispy, "spiritualized" version. In researching mine, I scanned several articles from various perspectives that, though they thought sex was great, just couldn't quite bring themselves to say that we'll have sexual intercourse in heaven just as we do here.
I really don't think God made a mistake in designing us to be male and female, and to become one not only in spirit, but in body as well. How much more "one flesh" can you get than making love?
