Saturday, October 30, 2021

Is Hitler In Hell? - An Attempt To Rescue "Christian" "Conservative" Friends From Their Delusional Support For Donald Trump And The Big Lie

 

"Cruelty Is The Point": An Update On Donald Trump And His White "Christian" Base


By Aspiring To Be Like Angels Humans Sink Lower Than Beasts | made w/ Imgflip meme maker
"And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light."
St. Paul
2 Corinthians, 11-14

Compendium Of Best "Pax-Barbaria" Posts About Trump-Cult Cruelty


Dear Karen,

Many people have come across the Myers-Briggs personality profile. You may be one of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator

To be clear at the outset...

For the purposes of this communication, it does not matter to me if the Myers-Briggs questionnaire results in an accurate profile.

What does matter to me is that most people have the greatest difficulty answering the following question, one of 93 questions on the Myers-Briggs questionnaire:  "Do you prefer justice or mercy?" 

It is clear to me, Karen, that you prefer justice over mercy.

Indeed -- and this is often true of conservatives -- it appears that you have a bedrock need for justice to trump mercy.

But... because you cannot swear before God -- with the eternal souls of your children in the balance -- that justice trumps mercy, you are often unhappy (if not irate) when it seems to you that people are escaping their "just desserts", which is another way of saying people might escape a God-damning Final Judgment.

You only feel right when you feel certain that other human beings are roasting forever.

Christians And "Christians" Choose Mercy, Love & Forgiveness, Or Retribution & Punishment

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/01/christians-and-christians-must-choose.html

America's Passion For Punishment And Torture

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/04/americas-passion-for-punishment-torture.html


Without going into the fundamental New Testamental truth that "Love covers a multitude of sins" -- and the self-professed fact that Donald Trump is the world's foremost promoter of "the root of all evil" -- it is a fact that we confront Revelations, Chapter 7 which, when read literally, appears to assert that only 144,000 souls will be saved.

And so, if the world were to end tomorrow, over ten billion human souls would be lost forever - tormented endlessly in The Lake Of Unquenchable Fire. 

And that, in your view, would be Divine Justice.

I think you worship some version of that punitive God.

And so you have been re-made in "His" punitive image.

You are not a merciful person, Karen, certainly when it comes to anyone you deem to be damned.

Ask yourself this question.

What parent would design a "system" so that his or her child MUST live in a world where the overwhelming majority of children end up in your God's Hell?

You are better than your "God", Karen.

Parents all around the world are better than your "God."


What you cannot see -- what you cannot even entertain -- is that always-and-everywhere about half of humankind incline toward strict justice, while the other half incline toward mercy.

It is not at all problematic for those of us who believe in the primacy of mercy to understand that "the other half" is compelled to believe in punitive justice.

Admittedly, it is hard for you to grapple with the fact that so few people will be saved -- UNLESS THEY HAVE REPENTED -- in which case maybe more than 144,000 will be saved. 

But millions -- or even billions - of those you consider God-damned?

Or how about the prospect of salvation for "all souls" as if redemption were actually universal? (Even from your vantage, Karen, who knows what sorrow might be expressed as Hitler's soul "left his body"? )

Do you know that God's mercy is limited, and that strict justice takes precedence? 

Can you swear on the eternal outcome of your children's souls that you KNOW that there are actually souls damned to your God's Hell?

Of course, you probably assume that all baby killers are toast. 

You know, people like me.

God damn them! (To me, all this sulfurous damnation smells like you're obliging God to do your dirty work.)

Reprise: "So Banning Guns Won't Prevent Gun Violence But Banning Abortion Prevents Abortion"


Those of us who value mercy over justice -- and it really is an honest choice which side we "come down on" -- find it hard to believe that so many "Christian" "conservatives" can REALLY put the words "God damn them!" in God's own mouth, without somehow "damnaging" yourselves. 

The Perfect Photo To Epitomize The Horror Of Trump: Not Only Does He Inflame The Worst Angels Of Our Nature, HeTeaches His Followers That It's Okay -- Indeed, Virtuous - To Laugh At Murderous Cruelty


And so, having grown accustomed to "the justice of cruelty," you have no trouble cheering family separation -- no trouble torturing your enemies -- even if, as Donald Trump says, Bush was catastrophically wrong to attack Iraq in the first place. (You've never answered my question about your support for the Iraq War. Should I be surprised that you won't answer it now either?)

At bottom, you (and those of your punitive "tribe") love Trump because he embodies the retributive cruelty you perceive in your fundamentally Old Testamental "Thunder Sky God," a ruthlessly autocratic king making vengeful pronouncements from "on high." 

image.png
Nothing is more certain.
We are remade in the image of our God.

Although you are unlikely to read the following posts, please know that they contain insights that might help you break free from your Stockholm Syndrome chains.

How You... And I... And Everyone... Can Create REAL Damning Evidence To Justify "Any Damn Thing" - Divorce; One's Religious Faith As "The One, True Religion"; Donald Trump As A Godsend; The Advisability Of Provoking Armageddon, Hitler's Heinous Extermination Of Jews

Why "Absolutists" Prefer To See "Relativists" Dead... Whereas "Relativists" Prefer That "Absolutists" Just Mind Their Own Business


It seems to me that you do not read anything outside "The Echo Chamber of The Saved" because you sense (maybe you even know) that the world which "God loved so much that he sent his only son into it" is more complex than the absolutely either/or, black/white world YOU need. 

Consider the greyness... Didn't King David arrange to kill Uriah so he could get into his wife's pants?

Take that in.

God doesn't need the world to be the way you see it.

YOU need the world to be the way YOU see it.

And so you re-make God in your image.

Isn't that peculiar?

Blessedly, you don't need to think because Saint Paul assures you that "the wisdom of the world is folly before God."
You cling to your belief that "God said it. I believe it. That settles it."
But this shiboleth settles nothing.
"God said it. I believe it. That settles it" distills to your belief about what God "said," and your assumption that you understand what "He" "said" as "He" meant it.
No wonder you cling to platitudes and simplifications with such ferocity.

To maintain your absolutely black-and-white purity and self certainty, you can not learn anything new because any learning beyond The Good Book and elementary readin', writin' and 'rithmetic -- is, in your view, pretty much unnecessary. 

I don't know how you square your need for educational and epistemological oversimplification with the intellectual complexity of your physician-daughter and engineer-son, but, truth be told, we humans are extraordinarily adept at "seeing what we want to see, while disregarding the rest."

In fact, you write off any knowledge you wish to "cancel," because St. Paul said "the wisdom of the world is folly before God." 

But Paul wasn't talking about "book learning." 

The tentmaker was talking about the kind of mock wisdom most clearly seen in Donald Trump, not only a world class grifter, but an unparalleled proponent of all Seven Deadly Sins, not least of which is lust: "You know, it doesn't really matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass."


Yes, Paul was right about worldly wisdom - the hedonistic worldly wisdom embodied by Malignant Messiah.

It sure seems to me, Karen, that you just don't want to learn. 

Rather, you want to cling to your uncontextualized beliefs, the most important of which is your belief that you have no divinely ordained obligation to learn. 

And to learn deely and richily - in every domain.

I venture that your bedrock reason for not wanting to learn is that new knowledge threatens you with the need to change/alter your settled views.

image.png

Unless Truth Is Richly Contextualized, It Is Likely That Uneducated, Ideologically-Driven People (Who Never Learned How To Think In Context), Will Use Fragmented Shards Of Truths To Tell Colossal Lies


How Conservatives Use Decontextualized Shards Of Truth To Tell BIG Lies 

You want sound bites, misleading simplifications and full restoration of the patriotic, jingoistic and chauvinistic slogans of your childhood.

You want to wrap yourself in a completely unsullied flag.


You have arranged all your presumptions impeccably Karen, and you stonewall any learning that might topple your house of cards.

"God said it. I believe it. That settles it."

Which brings us to a remarkable point of convergence between deliberate ignorance ("ignore - ance") and the reality of forgiveness-without-repentance.

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

Jesus forgives those who are in the process of torturing and killing him without their prior repentance. 

Indeed, how could they repent of a sin that they don't even know they've committed?

And yet Jesus blesses them with forgiveness.

It is an inconvenient truth, but almost always we injure others when "we know not what we do."

Even the American soldiers who tortured Iraqis on your behalf, "thought" they were doing the right thing.

But once we become aware of our need to stay as honestly informed as we can reasonably be, from that moment onward "shutting out knowledge" becomes its own kind of wrongdoing - its own kind of sin.

I'm putting you on notice, Karen.

Pretending that St. Paul authorizes you to remain ignorant - or that God exempts you from learning across the whole spectrum of human experience - is unacceptable.

You could start learning by exiting your "Confirmation Bias Bubble" and recognizing that "Biden won the 2020 election," and that ever since Mafia Don has been repeating The Big Lie.
"Confirmation Bias And The Power Of Disconfirming Information"
But again...

It's not that you are unable to reach this conclusion on your own. 

Rather, it's because you refuse to reach this conclusion because, if you do, your carefully constructed house of cards collapses.
But let's suppose you're "too far gone" to acknowledge your self-deception, and consequent promulgation of lies. 

At least try to understand that many people who pay studious attention to the problematic nature of human existence see the plausibility (if not the probability) that societies which offer readily-available shame free contraception, 2.) biologically sound sex education, and 3.) legal abortion, are societies that have lower rates of abortion than societies that don't. Right now, the United States has a lower rate of abortion than it did on the Row v. Wade, mostly because the rate of teenage pregnancies has been coming down since the sixties when sex education took root and contraception became much more readily available.

But because your absolutism deludes you into thinking that abortion can be eradicated, you don't even consider that abortion is inevitable, and that certain cultural norms contribute to higher -- or lower -- rates of abortion. 

At least in modern industrial (and post-industrial) societies, a remarkably dependable way to insure a higher rate of abortion is to make abortion illegal, while nixing sex education and the ready availability of contraceptives.

But yet again, you cannot let yourself believe that such data are true because then you won't be able to God-damn "the baby killers," which is your ultimate justification for self righteousness and your eagerness to damn people to The Lake of Unquenchable Fire.

Ultimately, your self-righteousness -- in tandem with your "iffy" conviction that you are "saved" and the baby killers are destined for eternal torment -- depends on your need for punishment, condemnation, damnation, and the rush you get from playing God.

I believe God is ultimately merciful and you believe God is rigidly just and punitive.

But neither of us can be certain. 

Or, can we?

Luke 6:37
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned.

John 3:17
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

So... 

Will it be rigid justice and neverending condemnation?

Or, will it be mercy?

Christians And "Christians" Choose Mercy, Love & Forgiveness, Or Retribution & Punishment

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/01/christians-and-christians-must-choose.html

America's Passion For Punishment And Torture

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/04/americas-passion-for-punishment-torture.html

Brother Gerald, 2020 ICON Award Winner: "Homeless, Addicted, Poor, And Hungry..." /// "My Family's Transformative Experience With Nuns - The Sisters Of St. Joseph, And The Mercy Sisters"


What is compassionate about God designing a Universe in which most people spend eternity in an Unquenchable Lake of Fire?

Concerning your fear that Hitler is going to get a "free pass."

Nobody gets a free pass.

All of us endure suffering.

But we are not punished for our sins.

We are punished by our sins.

In the end, I do not believe anyone is punished endlessly -- without possibility of reform -- because endless punishment without possibility of reform is the modus operandi of a sadist and a horrifically twisted torturer.

Compendium Of Best "Pax" Posts Concerning The Damnation Of White, Conservative Christians (Assuming There Is A Hell, Which I Don't Believe)


At minimum, the merciful God in whom I place my faith, would design a Universe in which people "pass out of existence," rather than design a Universe predicated on eternal torment just so people like you can feel good about the infliction of limitless pain on others, while looking over the parapets of heaven to jeer at "the damned."

That said, maybe you're right.

I doubt it.

But if you are right, your God is not my God.

I will not worship a creator God who does not provide "mechanisms" by which all souls eventually learn from their horrific mistakes.

Learning and re-forming may require purgatorial pain, or even suffering through multiple incarnations (on who knows what planes of existence).

But I will not worship a God who chooses to create a world in which all but 144,000 human beings roast without end.

At minimum, a God who is Love -- or even a God who embodies "mother's love" -- would create a world in which any "irredeemable" children would - at least - pass out of existence altogether. https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/1129-2/

Could you - would you - sign off on any of your own children being cast into a Lake of Unquenchable Fire, even though their sins be "scarlet"?

"G.K. Chesterton: On Charity, Hope And Universal Salvation"


I encourage you to take Hoffer's observation to heart.
It explains "conservative" "Christians" passion to elect -- and re-elect -- Trump better than any other "principle" I've come upon.

Postscript: Only rarely are people convinced by argument.

On those occasions when we do "change our mind," it is usually because we were "converted" by a story.

Here are two stories for you.

"The Story Of Jonah And The Whale" Retold For The Righteous By Anne Herbert 

A Faithful Christian Consults With Jesus... And A Pertinent Parable


"There is no fear in love. 
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. 
The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
1 John 4:18

You are afraid, Karen, because you believe in the necessity of eternal punishment.

It Is Important To Know These Things So Religion Doesn't Do You More Harm Than Good

What Too Many Christians Get Wrong

Jesus: Festive Tippler And Friend Of Whores, Publicans, Tax Collectors And Sundry Sinners

"Plank In Eye Disease," Humankind's Most Common Affliction

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/05/plank-in-eye-disease-humankinds-most.html

How "the plank" got there.
(An inside job!)

Franciscan Father Richard Rohr Meditation: 
Is Heaven The Goal? Or A Byproduct?

Christian Supporters Of Deplorable Donald Are Addled, Untrustworthy People

Compendium Of Best "Pax" Posts Concerning The Damnation Of White, Conservative Christians (Assuming There Is A Hell, Which I Don't Believe)

"The Pharisees Are Always With Us. They Are The People Who..."


Thomas Merton: Our job is to love others – When did you last feel ...

Fr. Thomas Merton Explains -- In 16 Words -- Why "Christian" "Conservatives" Are Always Wrong

Living As If God Is Love - Pope Francis And The Inviolable Wholeness Of Love... And Nothing Else. This Postulate May Not Be Objectively True, But If It Is Not True, What Other Bedrock Value-Choice Offers More Greater Goodness?


On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 7:49 PM Karen Kolbinsky <karenkolbin@gmail.com> wrote:

Wow. The unrepentant Hitler gets a free pass into Heaven? Really? Like unrepentant Clintons and Bidens? But Trump and his supporters are what? Please explain. 

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 2:18 PM Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks, Marsh.

I love the Maimonides quote, which was one of my Dad's fundamental principles.

I may have told you before that, back in the fifties, the Mercy Sisters taught us at St. Thomas the Apostle "grammar school" (as we called it back then) that: "Catholics are under no obligation to believe that a single soul is in hell. In fact, we must pray for the salvation of all souls, including Adolf Hitler's."  

Pax

Alan

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 11:57 AM Marsh Hardy <mhardy@ara.com> wrote:
The case of Carlos DeLuna in Texas (among several such) is a notorious example of confused, false witness, ending in his preventable death. See The Phantom on Netflix.



Law students everywhere learn...

"It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." - Maimonides

who argued that executing an accused criminal on anything less than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens of proof, until we would be convicting merely "according to the judge's caprice". With DNA, statistics, computers, and discovery of DAs' suppressed evidence, all sorts of caprice are found today. Maimonides' concern was maintaining popular respect for law and saw errors of commission as much more damaging than errors of omission.

Executing under our current system only adds to our errors of commission.

  --  M. B. Hardy, statistician, retired, sorta
work: Applied Research Associates, S. E. Div.
      8537 Six Forks Rd., # 6000 / Raleigh, NC 27615-2963
    
home: 1020 W. South St. / Raleigh, NC 27603-2162
     
From: Death Penalty Focus <information@deathpenalty.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2021 9:02 AM
To: Marsh Hardy
Subject: Executing Innocent People is Irreversible
 
Clearing the federal death row is the best way to ensure that the U.S. government does not risk the irreversible horror of executing innocent people like Carlos DeLuna, whose case is documented in the film The Phantom. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
Death Penalty Focus
 
 

Executing Innocent People is Irreversible

Clearing the federal death row is the best way to ensure that the U.S. government does not risk the irreversible horror of executing innocent people like Carlos DeLuna, whose case is documented in the film The Phantom. 

Sign Our Petition
 

As of Sept 30, The Phantom — a story of how the State of Texas recklessly sent Carlos DeLuna, a young Latino man who was innocent to his death in 1989 and left a serial killer at large — is available on Netflix. The Phantom reveals new evidence of DeLuna’s innocence through on-the-record statements by eyewitnesses, prosecutors, and trial attorneys, and is a searing indictment of the prejudice and discrimination faced by the Latinx community.

The film comes at a time of growing unease with the use of capital punishment. Now, in the wake of the Trump administration’s unprecedented execution spree, there are urgent calls to the Biden administration to commute the sentences of people on federal death row. A new petition to President Biden urging him to fulfill his campaign promise to end the broken federal death penalty system has been launched. 

The call to remove people from federal death row is the best way to ensure that the U.S. government and the nation do not risk the irreversible horror of executing innocent people like Carlos DeLuna as documented by The Phantom.

Urge President Biden to Commute Federal Death Row 

President Biden says he supports eliminating the federal death penalty but hasn't taken any action yet. So we’re asking you to join us in urging him to commute the sentences of the 46 men currently on federal death row and eliminate the possibility that we will witness again the killing spree that the Trump Administration committed in the last half of 2020.

The federal death penalty system is deeply flawed. It reflects the misguided “tough on crime” policies of the 1990s and early 2000s and shows the same racial bias that we see in state death penalty systems. Of the 46 men currently on federal death row, 39 percent are Black, compared with about 13 percent of the U.S. population. Seven of the 13 executions carried out last year were people of color. In addition, several of the men on death row, including those among the 13 who were executed in the last half of 2020, were not the accused killers, and their culpable or equally culpable co-defendants were not sentenced to death.

Urge President Biden to commute the sentences of the remaining men on federal death row, and take an important step toward abolishing the federal death penalty.

Sign Our Petition

Death Penalty Focus
1215 K St, Fl 17  | Sacramento, California 95814-3954
415-243-0143 | information@deathpenalty.org

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