Christians Indoctrinate Children, Too

[Barnabas]

Suicide bombers are not martyrs, they should be compared maybe with kamikazes, not with martyrs

[Wycoff]

I went to a church summer camp as a teenager. It preached the same type of stuff that the camp in this story preached. This story makes the camps seem really sinister, but in my experience it wasn't that bad. They're not brainwashing kids, they're preaching to the choir. If they weren't already relgious and from relgious families, then they wouldn't be there. If anything, I found the camp to be corny.

It'd be a whole different story if these camps were giving paramilitary training and teaching kids that they had a duty to kill for Jesus, but this stuff seem pretty much innocuous.

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
So a Christian martyr is different from a Muslim martyr?

Gatekeeper

In christianity a martyr is someone who is killed because they did not abandon their faith,

think of this










Not someone who kills another man

[Blaupanzer]

Everyone seems to feel a need to indoctrinate children, even atheists.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Everyone seems to feel a need to indoctrinate children, even atheists.

One man's teaching is another man's indoctrination. these children's parents are just teaching their children the family religion. As long as they're not teaching their children to kill others (and, as others have pointed, martyrdom in the Christian sense doesn't have violent connotations), then they're not doing anything wrong.

[Gatekeeper]

Hmm. Well, then, I guess a martyr needn't be Christian, either. If anyone dies for their beliefs, without harming others in the process, that makes them a martyr, correct?

I might actually admire those folks, then. My main beef is with those who claim to be martyrs, yet in doing so they maim or kill others.

It's always refreshing to see genuinely faithful folks who aren't hellbent on controlling, maiming or killing others. Working in the news media ... well, let's just say that one of the drawbacks is it can make a person grow armor so thick that it literally becomes a drag on life.

Gatekeeper

[Drake Tungsten]

Nowadays, a "martyr" seems to be more hellbent on killing and maiming others while, at the same time, instilling fear in people. All in the name of God, Allah, Artemis or whatever.

Cut "God", "Artemis" and "whatever" out of that last sentence and you will have hit the mark. Otherwise it's just a facile attempt to create a moral equivalency where none exists...

[chequita guevara]

Yeah, cuz Catholics and Protestants never kill anyone for their faith.

[Jon Miller]

But those weren't martyrs.

JM

[germanos]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride


In christianity a martyr is someone who is killed because they did not abandon their faith,

Not someone who kills another man

I think that's a bit narrow definition. Christianity certainly has it's martyrs who died in the armed struggle for God, King and Country.
Think the crusades: one of the big rewards was the promise that those participating would be absolved of their sins.

Read up on the old testament. God isn't exactly Mister Niceguy. Whole cities get whiped away taking children, women and the elder with them without a qualm.

And who was it that said "kill them all and let God sort it out in the end"?

Islam is not inheritly more evil then christianity.

[Jon Miller]

We weren't arguing that it was. And I don't remember hearing the people in the crusades refered to as martyrs.

JM

[Jon Miller]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr

M

[germanos]

Originally posted by Jon Miller

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr

M

Seems like a case of 'lost in translation' to me.

[Barnabas]

In the classical Christian view, a martyr is an innocent person who, without seeking death (suicide being seen as sinful), is murdered or put to death unjustly for his or her religious faith or convictions. An example is the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire. Christian martyrs may decline to defend themselves at all, in what they see as an imitation of Jesus' willing sacrifice.

[ajbera]

Deliberately seeking your own death is pretty much a one-way ticket to Hell in Christian doctrine. It wasn't always thus - a millenium or so ago people were so happy to deliberately die for Christ that the Church had to establish the suicide = eternal damnation rule. But that is the rule today.

Even the secular miltary frowns upon suicidal military operations. There is the occasional "suicide mission" where the chance of survival is so small as to be practically nil, but we don't kamikaze ourselves.

Even by normal Islamic standards the suicide bomber is an aberration (which is one reason why it would good to have constant repudiation of suicide tactics by moderate Muslims.) Martyrdom is a willingness to die for your faith, not a desire to do so, and taking out the enemy is not a factor at all.