site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There's a reason God generally has us call him Father rather than Friend, Boss, or King.

God is referred to as the Lord far more then he is referred to as the Father. If you include Jesus it's even more lopsided in favor of king or lord. Lord is substituted for the name of God in the bible not father. You can hardly go a passage without someone talking about the Lord.

That's how the scriptures refer to him, but my understanding is that that's not how he generally asks to be referred to. The Lord's Prayer instructs us to refer to him as "Father".

I'll admit my knowledge here is much more cultural than I realized. My church refers to the Father as "Heavenly Father" much more often than any other name, besides perhaps "God", and emphasizes the familiar terms perhaps more than the scriptures themselves do.

The new testament seems often to use the term lord (κυριος) most frequently apply to Jesus. (And since you are asking for verses instructing to call us that, Phil 2:11: "and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father".) At the same time, it was typically also used as a translation for the Hebrew יהוה, the proper name of God.

Our own ability to call God Father isn't really seen much in the old testament. I imagine it's probably also only a thing because we're adopted as sons of God in Christ.

The Lord's Prayer also talks about the coming of his kingdom on Earth. I don't know why you hide the fact you are Mormon. I assumed you were coming at this from the perspective of a Christian or Jew whose religious texts and practices I am familiar with. "Heavenly Father" makes more sense in the context of Mormonism's theology, but in the context of more standard Abrahamic faiths, Lord is more common.

He said "my church refers to God as the Heavenly Father most times", which is both a factually accurate statement and hardly hiding the fact that he's mormon to anyone who's moderately familiar with it. That is not "hiding" his mormonism, unless you think online mormons should preface discussion of their religion with "My church (THE KOOKY HERETICAL MORMON CULT, WE'RE NOT NORMAL CHRISTIANS) calls God Heavenly Father"

FWIW, I was raised (catholic) christian, found his remark about God mostly being referred as Father weird & didn't recognize his Mormonism since it's not very common in Europe. I would have preferred if he had been specific.

I was referring to his earlier post. Where he talks about how God is referred to in scripture. Mormon scripture and it's interpretation differs from the Trinitarian majority a lot. He was making claims that only make sense in the context of his Mormonism. The LDS aren't some church, they are a very particular group with very different background assumptions from a standard church that only uses the Bible.

As I said, I didn't realize how much of that was specific to the LDS church, which places extreme theological emphasis on family. I think there's a good scriptural basis for this, but really am not interested in starting another theological debate lol.

Not trying to hide it, I just talked a good deal about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints recently here and don't want to be That Guy lol, at least any more than I already am.