I see on here a split of opinion with Christians on Austin Metcalf's dad, here and elsewhere.
I think both are incorrect in their own way.
One side says you don't forgive the unrepentant. Wrong, extremely wrong. Were the ones stoning Stephen to death repentant when he cried out for God to forgive them? No. The Bible puts no qualifications on who to forgive, only that you do.
The other side says he's being a Christian by forgiving the killer, and didn't do anything wrong and what I'd say is it's not wrong to forgive the killer, but I'd say that going on national TV and trying to make sure everyone complies with the cultures values on race has little or nothing to do with forgiveness, and so this side misses the mark.
You see, here's the biggest problem with what Austin Metcalf's dad did.
The black ghetto community needs to repent. They are like, in a way, a seperate nation like Ninevah who is told by all parties, including the church that they're not destined to hell.
Calling to repentance is an act of mercy in the Bible. Jonah didn't want to tell the Ninevites to repent because he didn't want them to experience God's mercy. When John the baptist comes on the scene preaching a message of repentance, it's repeated over and over that God's mercy has come. You want to love black people? Call the violence glorifying culture to repentance and warn them that huge swaths of their culture is akin to something like the Ninevites.
Essentially the dad is saying without realizing it "make sure you don't have any conversations that could be difficult for the inner city to hear, lest they realize their sins and turn and be saved".
Many black people will be going to hell unfortunately because even the church tickles their ear and never calls out their behavior even though the church is more than happy to call out their mostly white congregants behavior (which the church should).
Anyone who objectively looks at the black community can see that they fit the definition of a fool found in proverbs and yet no one wants to touch that subject, including Christians.
So, the dad should forgive the killer, even if it takes time to do, and it's odd that he would be so lacking in paternal instinct that he'd unemotionally virtue signal, which seems less like Biblical forgiveness and more like this modern day utter capitulation and celebration of black culture, and the next thing the father could do, which would be the loving thing and also an extremely dangerous and scary thing, which would be to absolutely address the racial issue. Look, it's not about race. Jesus said go preach to all the nations. By all accounts, the black culture is a foreign nation. They share no values, and their values that are taught from birth are completely leading people to hell. They qualify as a nation that needs repentance.
And as we see in the Bible, in order for people to accept Jesus, they first need to be told what they're violating, where they're astray, and what the consequences of sin are.
I don't see the church doing this with the black community. The exact opposite.
So the "don't forgive the unrepentant" Christians are wrong, as are the Christians who are failing to realize that the black, inner city, thug culture needs to face some extremely harsh facts for their eternal good.
This whole obsession with forgiveness, and the constant debate over which flavor of cuck God wants us to be is precisely why I am not a Christian. I cuck for nobody, even God.
It is infuriating to watch the right wing constantly roll over and spread their cheeks for evil people just because they think they will be rewarded in the afterlife for it. Marx was partially correct when he called religion the opiate of the masses. The bonus that comes with Christianity is that it's also the fencing used to keep us in line as they herd us into the slaughterhouse.
None of you will be praying your way out of this, so pull your heads out of your asses and accept that already.
Did you miss the part where I said the church needs to address what's wrong with the black community and the black community needs to face harsh truths?
Forgiving individuals you hold unforgiveness to and having righteous anger at the unjust scales and doing what you can to address those scales are not mutually exclusive.
I think the reason you're predominantly seeing pushback is in a large part of what you say about the church and its relation to the black community. Canadians have a similar case with their indians, kiwis with their Maori, and Aussies with their Abos. The thread connecting all these disparate groups is the boomer churches operating in these nations.
It would be much easier to tolerate a voice saying we need to forgive if the body we were a representative of actually dealt with these problems instead of immediately bending over and self-flagellating every single fucking time. You say the church needs to address the black community and I agree. It also needs to be, in a secular democracy, advocating for Anthony to receive the death penalty immediately.
You and I of course know this is never going to happen, because every Christian church and every denomination has been dominated by boomers with post-racial, civil-rights-era, "racism is the greatest sin" propaganda. This is a generation so fully invested in the Hitler Man Bad meme that proper justice, like the swift incarceration and execution of Anthony, is seen as racist fascism first, which they then hastily cloth in Christian martyr garb so they don't appear racist.
We all know that on some level it is in a Christian's duty to forgive, but even that forgiveness is heavily poisoned by the worship culture we have surrounding blacks and other minorities. We need to change that reality first.
You and I are on the same page.
People think I'm a "boomer Christian" who bends over for everything because of this arbitrary redefining of forgiveness with categories being twisted to and fro.
The entire reason I stopped attending my church and now just attend a Bible study is because of how they responded to BLM's "summer of love".
I'm not at all down with the current church's even most subtle liberalism.
But the church having issues (every generation has its own issues in the church which is why in Revelation, the majority of the 7 churches get chastised) isn't a reason to throw out the Bible and interpret it in a foreign manner.
It makes it sound closer to Islam than Christianity when the interpretation is stretched so far.
Did you miss the part where you are posting this on a middle of nowhere forum with a few dozen users, while the people actually doing the preaching in churches are saying the opposite?
The purpose of a system is what it does. What you think it should be is irrelevant. "Real
communismChristianity has never been tried" is just cope.I'm replying to this post to inform the Christians downvoting that you better get used to attitudes like this in the years to come, because the more you cling to dying boomer "Christianity" the more you're going to see it and have to contend with it.
Look man, try to broaden your perspective to more than the last few decades. If boomer Christianity was the true essence then America wouldn't even exist.
So if the Church is not doing the job of helping the black community we're back at black people are never responsible for their own actions. All of us are actually at fault, including the dad whose son died?
Do we just forgive ourselves now and just move on?