When did 34% of the current White House staffers become responsible for decades of US foreign policy?
I can sympathize, heaven seems at least better than the other place. What I don't understand is how eschatological (which are essentially fatalistic) beliefs translate into support for Israel. In a world governed by fate it doesn't matter what you do, it's all predetermined anyway. Which seems to align more with the core Christian teachings: we should not judge (because no-one is essentially free from their fatefully determined destiny).
I could be wrong.
79% of US Christians believe Jesus will have a second coming. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/04/09/christians-v...
The second coming of Jesus is not for fun times. It's for war that kills ~everyone except the true believers, who then get infinite utopia.
4 in 10 Americans and about half of US Christians overall believe we are living "in the end times," and two thirds of "highly religious" adults. I.e. we are approaching that second coming/holy war.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/17/how-religion...
Combine that with the fact that US Congress is 90% Christian –– dramatically more so than the US public –– and a pretty alarming decision-making environment emerges.
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/23/lawmakers-more-religious-ge...
Fundamentalists should at least stick to the literal scripture, but I'm not sure they will listen.
The whole thing is immune to logic, in part due to the obviously self-contradictory passages such as we've just found :)
Nice try. But I'm assuming you are just unfamiliar with the history of the Christian church. Or if you just want to weigh in on the side of orthodoxy. But there is obviously a logical conflict between the notions of free will vs the deterministic aspect of religious teaching, sometimes called divine foreknowledge.
It has been the topic of more or less heated discussion up through the ages, where some people claim they have cracked the code (St. Augustine primarily). See these Wikipedia articles for a brief overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_theology, and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_antiquity#Christi....
Or, maybe it's mainly the link between determinism and nonjudgement that you refer to as "mental gymnastics" etc (even though that's not what you are saying)? Well, granted that's not lifted from any theology that I'm aware of. It just seems a reasonable conclusion, given the premise of a predetermined world. And maybe also a way to sneak in a reminder that religion (and Christianity in particular) is mostly about keeping track of the beam in one's own eye, rather then the mote in someone else's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_and_the_Beam