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They should change the name from "Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" to "Biblical Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" because there is nothing Christian

They should change the name from "Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" to "Biblical Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" because there is nothing Christian about what they are doing. Not an expert on Jesus but from what I've read he was a pretty forgiving guy. I did read the old testament and most of the stories are about cruelty, punishment and obedience.

tr33house 5y ago
Nothing biblical about this either
- cabalamat 5y ago
  On the contrary, slavery is quite biblical.
  - tr33house 5y ago
    The whole bible is about liberation from slavery (of sin) and quite clear about being against slavery (physical). Read of Israel's salvation from Egyptian slavery? Joseph? Limits on slavery (7 year max) because people were too stubborn to accept not having slaves. The year of Jubilee?
    - SkipperCat 5y ago
      The bible has multiple verses codifying how to treat slaves. All sorts of rules and protocols. The old testament does not say "slavery is a sin" or "slavery is forbidden". It clearly says "slavery should be done this way". An as soon as you do that, slavery becomes accepted.
      - cabalamat 5y ago
        My point exactly.
      - TheFreim 5y ago
        It has provisions to help limit the harms of slavery, this is not the same as actively promoting it. It's similar to the allowance of divorce (and polygamy) in the OT which Jesus says was simply allowed/tolerated due to the hardness of their hearts.
        dkersten 5y ago
        There’s plenty of bits about fighting the neighbouring lands, killing all the men and taking the women for “marriage” (which, let’s face it, is a fancy way of saying sexual slavery and rape). The Old Testament is full of these battles of conquest...
Bootvis 5y ago
The article seems to imply they only called it Christian because the rules for 'Christian' rehab are more loose than for regular rehab.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Slap a sticker with Jesus on the can and pay off Pastor Bob to babble some nonsense and you have a “Christian” service. Things operate a little differently because you’re serving Jesus, and Jesus wants you to be rich. You can peddle anything from slave camp to variable annuities with that model.
  - soco 5y ago
    Mafiosi are also very church-going, aren't they. Maybe there's a pattern there somewhere...
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  If it falls under a church / religious organization they're tax exempt. Pay no wages, pay no taxes, but still get paid? Triple win.
  - anonAndOn 5y ago
    The Lord works in mysterious, tax-advantaged ways. Praise be.
nabla9 5y ago
You are falling to No true Scotsman aka appeal to purity fallacy with religion. Christianity is defined by Christians not how others interpret the bible. Different Christians define it differently. There is no one real way to be Christian.
- SkipperCat 5y ago
  Agreed, but aren't there ways not to be a Christian? What Janet Wilkerson is doing goes against every quote I've heard in the Bible about Jesus. Love thy neighbor, do unto others as others would do unto you and more. Christianity has a code of ethics, they vary by interpretation, but what Wilkerson is doing is so out of the mainstream that I'm giving her a red card. Same with Westboro Baptists and the other televangelists that cloak themselves in religion as a tool to rake in cash.
  - thefr0g 5y ago
    It's a religion, it's based on a work of fiction. Everyone can gatekeep it to their liking, that doesn't mean they are right. You said it yourself, it all depends on interpretation. > Christianity has a code of ethics [citation needed], they vary by interpretation
  - Igelau 5y ago
    There are only Cafeteria Christians. Their bible has been finely tuned to be full of interpretation, contradiction, and weirdness. Nothing resembling a cohesive doctrine can be formed without picking and choosing the parts you like and completely ignoring the parts that go against it.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    I mean, for a couple of centuries, one of mainstream Christianity’s big things, perhaps its _defining_ thing, was invading Palestine and doing extremely nasty things to the locals when they won (and not just to Muslims and Jews; local Christians, being the Wrong Sort of Christian, also didn’t fare well). And that was all, at the time, basically accepted as compatible with Christianity. Today, virtually no Christian would be okay with the Crusades, and certainly wouldn’t think of what was done as being compatible with Christianity. Christianity’s been historically extremely malleable, and what Jesus said has rarely been all that big a part of it for most Christians.
speeder 5y ago
Well... Jesus is also old testament God. People popularly think he is more forgiving than he is, in new testament (he isn't, for example he explicitly says he "brings the sword", he more than once displays he is at least annoyed with people, and the famous passages about giving the other face and so on are more about civil disobedience than forgiveness) And people like to portray old testament God as unforgiving (he isn't either. he did forgive people a bunch of times, and was very patient, and some of episodes that understood today as cruel, were necessary for one reason or another, for example when he told Israelites to execute the children of their enemies after a particular battle, the reason for that is the battle happened in the middle of the desert in a place with not enough food for both groups, it was either execution or abandon them to starve on the desert on their own).
- kazoomonger 5y ago
  > it was either execution or abandon them to starve on the desert on their own Yeah, that's cruel and unforgiving. Surely an all-powerful deity could've sprouted a few plants and let the kids join the conquerors with enough food. The much more reasonable explanation is that this was purely human cruelty created by a lack of resources because there never was a higher power helping them out in the first place.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  > Well... Jesus is also old testament God. The Gnostics would disagree with you. :-)
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    The diversity of philosophy in early Christianity is really interesting, I'd advise anyone from the most evangelical of Christians to the most evangelical of atheists to study it with an open (but not uncritical) mind. At the very worst, you'll have gained new insights into what might have been had history worked out a bit differently which is always really interesting in my opinion. Love it or loathe it, Christianity has had an enormous influence on Western civilisation so if that's where you hail from it will always be something worth knowing about and knowing about from a neutral perspective.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
I'd go further than that, using Jesus's name to enslave and abuse for the benefit of private companies is nothing short of blasphemous. I have a lot of time for Jesus's teachings, but no time for institutions using his name as an instrument of control and abuse. Would the man who famously threw the merchants and money-changers out of the temple and went to his death with the intention of attaining forgiveness for all mankind want abusive slave camps built in his name? The mental gymnastics required to make that work would be worthy of Olympic gold. I hope the people behind this awful system really do have a powerful spiritual/religious experience and seek forgiveness for the horrors they've inflicted on their fellow human beings.
HKH2 5y ago
I am not a Christian, but the Bible is quite clear that forgiveness is conditional. "Go and sin no more." "Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye would have no sin: but now ye say, We see: your sin remaineth." Also, if you reject the Old Testament then you cannot accept the New: "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil."
- whiddershins 5y ago
  Mmm this forum isn’t that place for fierce theological debate I think. He came to fulfill the law. That may not mean what you are saying it means.
  - HKH2 5y ago
    What do you think I am saying it means?
whiddershins 5y ago
No he wasn’t such a forgiving guy. Seriously, he forgives those who repent. Important distinction.
- goldenkey 5y ago
  You're reaching. I suppose you got your information about Jesus from the Neckbeard Nexus?
  - handrous 5y ago
    He eternally curses whole cities in Matthew because they got sick of him bugging people on the street and told him to leave. Shrug The Bible's pretty weird.
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woes_to_the_unrepentant_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woes_to_the_unrepentant_cities Doesn't seem much more than a warning/observation. I wouldn't call it cursing.
notquitehuman 5y ago
You may not like their interpretation of scripture, but they’re just as Christian as any other Christian organization.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Well, no, if they aren't following the authentic way of Christ, they aren't. Of course, who that applies to is a problematic thing to apply, but the fact that it may be difficult to authoritiatively assess the degree of Christianity of different groups just means that that degree is indeterminate, not equal among them.
honkycat 5y ago
Please spare us the "there is nothing christian about..." or "jesus was a forgiving guy..." because this is what Christians do over and over again. There is no special innate morality that Christianity imbues in people. If anything it feeds people's narcissism and makes them behave even worse. "I am important b/c god speaks to me, I can do no wrong because I have the word of god and am surrounded by people who say the same." Christianity is constantly on the wrong side of history. Christians were overwhelmingly pro-slavery, and used the bible to justify their owning of slaves. Women's rights, accepting of homosexual and trans individuals. Heck, look at today: The republicans whose absurd agenda are prolonging the pandemic are overwhelmingly Christian. Maybe it's time to stop pointing at "bad Christians" and saying "well they are doing it wrong." Maybe YOU are doing Christianity wrong.
- SkipperCat 5y ago
  I can't be doing Christianity wrong because I've never done Christianity at all. But if Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, which would make sense since they named the religion after him, they're straying pretty far from the rulebook.

tr33house 5y ago

Nothing biblical about this either

cabalamat 5y ago
On the contrary, slavery is quite biblical.
- tr33house 5y ago
  The whole bible is about liberation from slavery (of sin) and quite clear about being against slavery (physical). Read of Israel's salvation from Egyptian slavery? Joseph? Limits on slavery (7 year max) because people were too stubborn to accept not having slaves. The year of Jubilee?
  - SkipperCat 5y ago
    The bible has multiple verses codifying how to treat slaves. All sorts of rules and protocols. The old testament does not say "slavery is a sin" or "slavery is forbidden". It clearly says "slavery should be done this way". An as soon as you do that, slavery becomes accepted.
    - cabalamat 5y ago
      My point exactly.
    - TheFreim 5y ago
      It has provisions to help limit the harms of slavery, this is not the same as actively promoting it. It's similar to the allowance of divorce (and polygamy) in the OT which Jesus says was simply allowed/tolerated due to the hardness of their hearts.
      - dkersten 5y ago
        There’s plenty of bits about fighting the neighbouring lands, killing all the men and taking the women for “marriage” (which, let’s face it, is a fancy way of saying sexual slavery and rape). The Old Testament is full of these battles of conquest...

Bootvis 5y ago

The article seems to imply they only called it Christian because the rules for 'Christian' rehab are more loose than for regular rehab.

Spooky23 5y ago
Slap a sticker with Jesus on the can and pay off Pastor Bob to babble some nonsense and you have a “Christian” service. Things operate a little differently because you’re serving Jesus, and Jesus wants you to be rich. You can peddle anything from slave camp to variable annuities with that model.
- soco 5y ago
  Mafiosi are also very church-going, aren't they. Maybe there's a pattern there somewhere...
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
If it falls under a church / religious organization they're tax exempt. Pay no wages, pay no taxes, but still get paid? Triple win.
- anonAndOn 5y ago
  The Lord works in mysterious, tax-advantaged ways. Praise be.

nabla9 5y ago

You are falling to No true Scotsman aka appeal to purity fallacy with religion. Christianity is defined by Christians not how others interpret the bible. Different Christians define it differently. There is no one real way to be Christian.

SkipperCat 5y ago
Agreed, but aren't there ways not to be a Christian? What Janet Wilkerson is doing goes against every quote I've heard in the Bible about Jesus. Love thy neighbor, do unto others as others would do unto you and more. Christianity has a code of ethics, they vary by interpretation, but what Wilkerson is doing is so out of the mainstream that I'm giving her a red card. Same with Westboro Baptists and the other televangelists that cloak themselves in religion as a tool to rake in cash.
- thefr0g 5y ago
  It's a religion, it's based on a work of fiction. Everyone can gatekeep it to their liking, that doesn't mean they are right. You said it yourself, it all depends on interpretation. > Christianity has a code of ethics [citation needed], they vary by interpretation
- Igelau 5y ago
  There are only Cafeteria Christians. Their bible has been finely tuned to be full of interpretation, contradiction, and weirdness. Nothing resembling a cohesive doctrine can be formed without picking and choosing the parts you like and completely ignoring the parts that go against it.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  I mean, for a couple of centuries, one of mainstream Christianity’s big things, perhaps its _defining_ thing, was invading Palestine and doing extremely nasty things to the locals when they won (and not just to Muslims and Jews; local Christians, being the Wrong Sort of Christian, also didn’t fare well). And that was all, at the time, basically accepted as compatible with Christianity. Today, virtually no Christian would be okay with the Crusades, and certainly wouldn’t think of what was done as being compatible with Christianity. Christianity’s been historically extremely malleable, and what Jesus said has rarely been all that big a part of it for most Christians.

speeder 5y ago

Well... Jesus is also old testament God. People popularly think he is more forgiving than he is, in new testament (he isn't, for example he explicitly says he "brings the sword", he more than once displays he is at least annoyed with people, and the famous passages about giving the other face and so on are more about civil disobedience than forgiveness) And people like to portray old testament God as unforgiving (he isn't either. he did forgive people a bunch of times, and was very patient, and some of episodes that understood today as cruel, were necessary for one reason or another, for example when he told Israelites to execute the children of their enemies after a particular battle, the reason for that is the battle happened in the middle of the desert in a place with not enough food for both groups, it was either execution or abandon them to starve on the desert on their own).

kazoomonger 5y ago
> it was either execution or abandon them to starve on the desert on their own Yeah, that's cruel and unforgiving. Surely an all-powerful deity could've sprouted a few plants and let the kids join the conquerors with enough food. The much more reasonable explanation is that this was purely human cruelty created by a lack of resources because there never was a higher power helping them out in the first place.
FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
> Well... Jesus is also old testament God. The Gnostics would disagree with you. :-)
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  The diversity of philosophy in early Christianity is really interesting, I'd advise anyone from the most evangelical of Christians to the most evangelical of atheists to study it with an open (but not uncritical) mind. At the very worst, you'll have gained new insights into what might have been had history worked out a bit differently which is always really interesting in my opinion. Love it or loathe it, Christianity has had an enormous influence on Western civilisation so if that's where you hail from it will always be something worth knowing about and knowing about from a neutral perspective.

BoxOfRain 5y ago

I'd go further than that, using Jesus's name to enslave and abuse for the benefit of private companies is nothing short of blasphemous. I have a lot of time for Jesus's teachings, but no time for institutions using his name as an instrument of control and abuse. Would the man who famously threw the merchants and money-changers out of the temple and went to his death with the intention of attaining forgiveness for all mankind want abusive slave camps built in his name? The mental gymnastics required to make that work would be worthy of Olympic gold. I hope the people behind this awful system really do have a powerful spiritual/religious experience and seek forgiveness for the horrors they've inflicted on their fellow human beings.

HKH2 5y ago

I am not a Christian, but the Bible is quite clear that forgiveness is conditional. "Go and sin no more." "Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye would have no sin: but now ye say, We see: your sin remaineth." Also, if you reject the Old Testament then you cannot accept the New: "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil."

whiddershins 5y ago
Mmm this forum isn’t that place for fierce theological debate I think. He came to fulfill the law. That may not mean what you are saying it means.
- HKH2 5y ago
  What do you think I am saying it means?

whiddershins 5y ago

No he wasn’t such a forgiving guy. Seriously, he forgives those who repent. Important distinction.

goldenkey 5y ago
You're reaching. I suppose you got your information about Jesus from the Neckbeard Nexus?
- handrous 5y ago
  He eternally curses whole cities in Matthew because they got sick of him bugging people on the street and told him to leave. Shrug The Bible's pretty weird.
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woes_to_the_unrepentant_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woes_to_the_unrepentant_cities Doesn't seem much more than a warning/observation. I wouldn't call it cursing.

notquitehuman 5y ago

You may not like their interpretation of scripture, but they’re just as Christian as any other Christian organization.

dragonwriter 5y ago
Well, no, if they aren't following the authentic way of Christ, they aren't. Of course, who that applies to is a problematic thing to apply, but the fact that it may be difficult to authoritiatively assess the degree of Christianity of different groups just means that that degree is indeterminate, not equal among them.

honkycat 5y ago

Please spare us the "there is nothing christian about..." or "jesus was a forgiving guy..." because this is what Christians do over and over again. There is no special innate morality that Christianity imbues in people. If anything it feeds people's narcissism and makes them behave even worse. "I am important b/c god speaks to me, I can do no wrong because I have the word of god and am surrounded by people who say the same." Christianity is constantly on the wrong side of history. Christians were overwhelmingly pro-slavery, and used the bible to justify their owning of slaves. Women's rights, accepting of homosexual and trans individuals. Heck, look at today: The republicans whose absurd agenda are prolonging the pandemic are overwhelmingly Christian. Maybe it's time to stop pointing at "bad Christians" and saying "well they are doing it wrong." Maybe YOU are doing Christianity wrong.

SkipperCat 5y ago
I can't be doing Christianity wrong because I've never done Christianity at all. But if Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, which would make sense since they named the religion after him, they're straying pretty far from the rulebook.