Re: Death of Zoya Krakhmalnikova

infowolf1 <infowolf1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:

> Perhaps these poor words may help this dispute to settle.
> Resistance to authorities in the sense of sedition and
> overthrow, is not the same thing as refusal to cooperate
> with evil orders.

     According to Rom. 13:1-6, the authorities don't give evil
orders:  they're good ministers and obeying them is
necessary "for conscience sake."  Logical enough, since if you
believe these verses, God put them in place:  "The powers 
that be are ordained of God."  Disputing them thus means doing
the same to him.

> "we ought to obey God rather than men," said Peter when
> he'd been ordered by lawful authorities to quit preaching
> the Gospel. Now, not all things are of equal im****tance.
> The Gospel is first 
> But there is plenty of "God is no respecter of persons"
> (rank, social distinctions of any kind, to validate abuse
> by some double standard) and be kind to your underlings
> that renders most of the stuff that people who fight against
> traditional societies and tyrannical governments are
> concerned about, definite sins. 

     Agreed.  The NT covers a range from right-of-Genghis-Khan
to bomb-throwing anarchism.
     
> And as such, proper objects
> of repression by governments that have become at least
> somewhat Christian.
> Failure to do so is not the issue.

     The original issue was the failure of Orthodox leaders to
repent for the Church's collaboration with the authorities.
But if they're not going to stop, their repentance wouldn't be
very meaningful.

> There have been anarchistic sounding denunciations of
> abuses and pretensions by crowned heads and rich people
> by Christian writers from early times, i.e., Orthodox. And
> Ivan the Terrible killed a monk or priest who denounced him
> to his face for his abuses of the people, and the victim was
> made a saint of some sort, if I remember correctly.

     Could be.  I've been careful to leave room for individual
exceptions.

-- Catawumpus