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Fantastic interview by Bari..as usual…informative and and reliable…never does she interject her her beliefs or ideals…simply allows the person being interviewed to say what his ideas and beliefs are…she neither agrees or disagrees with the individual….just allows him to explain his thoughts and ideas…i myself was raised in the Roman Catholic religion…12 years of Catholic schooling…then went off to college during the “wild” 1960’s…I didn’t reject the teachings of Catholicism but merely wanted to experience the world outside that world. I accepted all, but refused to criticize the church. To this day, as a non- practicing Catholic I often see the world as a place that truly needs the basic tenets of Christianity…love thy neighbor as thyself, turn the other cheek and as I approach the last days of my life….in my late 70’s….always wondering if there is an afterlife. The non-christian life or secular world was”fun” but had little directives, or purpose…So here I am and thank you Bari for showing me this bit of information

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Yet another thought, this Christmas Day. Why, as Bari says, is Christianity “sticky”? Because, Peace. Does any other body, religion or institution revere the Prince of Peace? Argue about whether or not Christians put it into practice—we are all human beings, after all—but Peace is the eternal draw.

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Thank you so much for sharing your story. It gives me great hope for my prodigal children. Merry Christmas!

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I entirely agree that the friction between Church and state ultimately resulted in the West surpassing the East. I think it's a stretch however to equate past revolutions to the trans movement. I have found nothing in my study of history that leads me to believe that Martin Luther suffered from mental stability or misplaced self-identity and that is the root of the Trans movement, along with the $ the medical practitioners that work in that space collect.

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And they're not so Christian in their flagrant contempt for women, the sanctity of motherhood, and respecting women's spaces. They're authoritarian gas lighters. That's not Christian.

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What I find interesting is that we always try to explain the unexplainable in human terms.

The Jewish people chronicled unexplainable events in their history and never question its source. Moses parting the sea, Elisha bringing down fire, David killing Goliath and countless other examples of an intervention in Human affairs. Christ’s feeding of thousands with just a few pieces of bread and some fishes, his healing lepers, curing the blind and addressing the marginalized.

Why would tens of thousands of people refuse to submit to pagan powers and be eaten by lions or killed in other horrific ways if not because something unexplainable in human terms has happened.

Christians and Jews are united in this unexplainable universe therefore it is unexplainable.

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If religion is about discovering God, then how? And if religion is about inventing God, then why?

Christianity may struggle in answering the first question, but it exists because it doesn't believe it is answering the second.

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Regarding Christianity and Western politics:

Governments exist to protect the property of the dominant social class. Property concepts are the basis for every governing system. America is based on Judaeo-Christian concepts of property. God gave the earth to man and placed man as a steward of the earth. Man, by being a steward, acquires rights to the earth. Through our work upon the land, we acquire rights to that land. That was the justification for the Doctrine of Discovery which made "legal" the conquest of the New World.

The American legal system is based in the Judaeo-Christian concepts of said conquerors. Those concepts provide a framework that allows individuals to build good lives for themselves as long as they work within that framework, as in not stealing, not having multiple spouses, not murdering their neighbors, etc. In other words, whether Americans are Christian or not, our legal system is.

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"To join a community not based on the lineage of your family or where you are born, but based on a belief—that still feels so radical to me, even in 2024."

What a fascinating statement to me. As someone who was an emotional orphan, I had to walk away from everyone I knew and loved to make my own family. As a Western American, I live in a part of the country where people came to reinvent themselves and leave geographical connections behind. The idea that someone would think of themselves as "Italian," "Irish," "Mexican," etc. rather than simply "American" with no hyphen or any other overriding community loyalties is something that is still foreign to me.

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Wow. What a steaming crock of pseudo intellectual bullshit. Everything in life can be explained, in one way or another, by a completely ridiculous origin story that defies even the most cursory of logic tests.

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I am drawn to the love of God that’s why I am a Christian. I don’t get caught up in sanantics of Christianity - man made details I go solely by what Yeshua says: “My sheep they know my voice.”Glory to YHVH in the highest and on earth peace.

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The more I study and learn about the Christian faith and experience that faith, the more it’s clear that it’s historical, it’s rational and logical, and it works to change lives for the better.

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Tom Holland is a huge reason I am Christian today, even though I grew up in an agnostic family that avoided religion. Thank you, Mr. Holland, for showing me as an adult that I was already Christian in all of my basic assumptions! After that, I became much more open to the idea of God. That was a whole journey in itself, with which Jordan Peterson’s online course on the Bible, and particularly on the idea of God, was very inspiring and revolutionized my thinking on the matter. One night during a very difficult time, I was at the end of my rope and said out loud, simply out of utter exasperation with myself and my situation, “I can’t do this alone anymore.” And, I can’t explain it, but I felt that Jesus came and touched me on my arm and it stunned me. I knew I wasn’t alone after that. 3 months later I got baptized. My life is so much richer and more meaningful today than it was before Christ came into it. The world literally looks differently to me now; the colors are brighter, and each moment has vast meanings that I can’t fathom, but I know that they are there. And now I know that this verse is true, because I’ve lived it: “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.”

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Fantastic conversation.

Can Tom Holland become a regular FP contributor?

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Wonderful episode. Thank you Bari and Tom!

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The concepts of charity, justice and compassion existed 400 to 1000 years before Jesus learned them for himself from listening to the Torah being read.I do not see the logic between a loss of original sin and our fragmented society. People who hate never think of themselves as sinning anyway.

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Linda is it possible that Jesus didn’t read them but wrote them?

There is evil in the world why I don’t know but I can see it

There is good in the world I don’t know why but I can see it as well

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Thank you for this, Bari.

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Why are the last two episodes of Honestly not showing up in my RSS feed? They aren’t even showing up in the Honestly Podcasts section of this website? The only option is Spotify, which I don’t have and don’t plan to use. Are these Spotify exclusives?

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