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And I likewise thank you for your honesty and humility. It is sincerely respected and appreciated. Grace manifested.

And therein lay the formation of the toxic religious zealot, using his own understanding of God, and his own clan's holy books to appoint himself the right hand of God. Inerrant and unquestionably righteous in his own eyes, now, and free to mete out divine vengeance as he sees fit. It's a very...

Go where? I don't see where this post is going.

Someone needs to accuse the "brethren" because they clearly have decided not to accuse themselves. They've decided to make excuses and wallow in their own imagined self-righteousness, instead. No. Which is why I don't presume my sins to be any less loathsome than anyone else's. And why it's not...

You can think what you want, but all I'm seeing here are just excuses for why we (and maybe you) aren't doing better. Being Christlike was always an impossibly difficult challenge. Love, forgiveness, kindness, and generosity are difficult to embody in a "dog-eat-dog" world. And yet it seems a...

I.e., to serve those who are suffering, not to rule over them, condemn them, and punish them for their weakness. Seems a lot of self=proclaimed Christians these days want to rule over their fellow humans, and judge and punish them and even blame them for their suffering.

I fully agree. But Godliness and religion are often estranged from each other.

Right now, all America honors is money. Money is the measure of all value, here. There are lots of people trying to live a good and honest lives, but they have to constantly struggle against a system that’s completely controlled by greed, and a culture that glorifies selfishness as a birthright...

Secular humanism is not a religion, it’s an ideology. The difference is that the secular humanist doesn’t see himself as an anointed and approved extension of God.

But many do force their religious beliefs on others. Or they try to. Placing their religious symbols in public buildings, forcing prayer in public schools, denying medical procedures to women and banning homosexual unions. These are all examples of religious believers trying to force everyone...

Worse then that, doubt is anathema. Forbidden, even. How can one have a conscience without the ability to doubt one’s own motives and behaviors?

That all depends on how you try to do it, and why. Like forcing women to adhere to the particular belief that abortion is murder? Or forcing homosexuals to adhere to the particular belief that homosexuality is a sin?

Some do, and they could certainly be wrong. Especially when they assume that force is acceptable in that quest. Yet it's precisely because they believe this that it will not accur to them that they might be wrong. A man that cannot be wrong is a man that thinks he is a god. Or an extension of...

Does the failure of other nations somehow justify the failures of our own? Especially when we specifically spelled out these goals (for the first time in history, I think), and then failed to achieve them because of our own collective greed , stupidity, and selfishness? It's sort of like a child...

And so far, they have failed to achieve their intention. As half-measures were never the goal. And we are all to blame for this. Because in our selfishness and fear, we become willing to let those with the least among be sacrificed to the delusion that we are a great and moral nation.

Our nation did not abandon those principals, it simple never achieved them to begin with. And we have been struggling since our beginning to do so. Hence, the Native American genocide, the Civil War, and the many civil rights battles since then. And we are still fighting for the right to be...

The religious zealot, as opposed to other kinds of zealotry, is peculiar and especislly dangerous because they believe they are being mandated by God to achieve their moral obectives, so they cannot/will not even entertain the idea that they may be wrong in doing so. Or that others have a right...

It's nearly always antithetical to the right of other people to deviate from the zealot's "objective". And to the degree that this right is considered a social imperative, the zealot then becomes a toxic entity relative to that imperative, and within the society in which he seeks his objective.

It kinda seems like you do care. But it's not just about the mask. It's also about washing hands more often, and keeping a few feet away from people in a crowd. I only wear the mask, now, in specific situations (at work in a medical facility or on a plane, crowded bus, subway, etc.). These...

This isn't about Christianity. It's about religious zealots. And Christianity has it's share of them, same as any other religion. When, how, and why do you think religious people cross that line into toxic zealotry?