(09-27-2023, 05:33 PM)Snarl Wrote:
(09-26-2023, 08:11 PM)Ninurta Wrote: Religion and politics should NEVER be mixed, no matter what your politics or religion are. We are seeing the results of that attempt right now, before our very eyes.
Somehow, the government got into people's homes and families. Got into the business of helping people break their marriage vows (a religious oath). We The People allowed it because 'exceptions'. What an absolute mistake that has turned out to be.
I think that got started back in the Dark Ages when religion WAS the government, and the two were interchangeable. There is a reason it was called "The Dark Ages", and personally I think that WAS the reason.
We have moved on since then, society has changed, and thinking folks realized the dangers in mixing the two - religion and politics - and set out to separate them. That was the reason for the religion clause of the First Amendment. Government and religion were de-coupled, and the Founders decided to codify that and guarantee the right of every person to follow their own religion, banning the State from making any one of them THE religion.
But, back when religion and State were the same thing, getting State permission to marry was the same as getting Church permission to marry, and it seems to have stuck. The State retained the power to say yeah or nay over marriages, and since they license them, they think that also gives them the right to dissolve them.
Since the State issues marriage licenses, marriage is no longer a religious thing. Oh, it may have a religious component, but that is separate from the state-controlled licensing.
Just wait until the State figures out that since they issue licenses for marriage, they can unilaterally revoke them without your permission same as driver's licenses or business licenses... fun times ahead!
=================================================================================
Now, we found the flaws in mixing politics and religion during the Dark Ages, and we grew out of it. But if anyone wants to see modern examples of the folly of that notion, they have to look no further than the Middle East, because Muslims have not yet figured out that folly, and regularly confuse the two. Matter of fact, Islam is not a "religion", it's an entire, intertwined, religio-political-social construct... and it's not working out that well for them, but they have yet to develop the intelligence level to see that. Christianity was the same, in Europe, during Medieval times. We grew out of it, but I don't know if Islam ever will. I reckon it's always a good thing to have negative examples of folly however, so that the rest of us can see with our own eyes what we need to avoid.
Not everyone can see that, however, To this very day, even with that negative example right in their faces. The "Christian Nationalists" are a good example of that. They are hell bent on mixing religion and politics, and for the life of them cannot see the volatile and explosive nature of that combination.
There is a certain class of "Christian" who cannot fathom the idea that God's Kingdom is spiritual, not of Earth, and they are hell-bent on making it an Earthly kingdom in spite of what God wants it to be.
I don't see them making out too well with that, not in this life, nor the next. Never a good idea to spite a God, nor is it ever a good idea to think YOUR plan is a better one than God's plan..
.