Slashdot Mirror
Unique ID In India Causes 'Fear of the Beast'
bhagwad writes "India's attempts to tag everyone with an ID number has run into a roadblock is some Christian villages. Apparently the villagers fear they will be associated with the devil since according to the Bible, everyone having the 'mark of the beast' will go to hell. These people are not afraid of punishment. They relish this opportunity to prove their faith because the Bible also proclaims that they will be persecuted."
How could they possibly believe that is actually the mark of the beast? Everybody knows those grocery store "loyalty cards" are the real Mark of the Beast!
If you meant that it takes years of indoctrination before a normal human being is willing to let other human beings tag him like an animal, then yes, I suppose these people need more "educating".
They may be wrong about WHY consolidated power is dangerous, but they are absolutely correct that it IS dangerous.
As a long-time minister I can tell you two things that are commonly misinterpreted by the nominal Christian crowd.
1. Revelation is almost entirely using symbolic language (it says so in the first paragraph).
2. Nearly everyone goes to hell. Hell is just the state of being dead, nothing more. Even Jesus is spoken of as being in 'hell' when he died.
The 'mark of the beast; is not a literal, physical mark. Rather, it is some kind of behavior or trait associating one with the Devils machinations (i.e. participating (or tacitly approving of) in genocide)
Wait, it's india. Wouldn't they relish the chance to be treated like cattle?
>>>Always good to see uneducated crazies are all over the world.
Always good to see people who are intolerant of Christians. If you can be tolerant of gays, and tolerant of people speaking ideas you disagree with, why can't you be tolerant of Muslims, Jews, and Christians too? They have as much right to "pursue happiness" as anybody else, even if you disagree with their religious philosophy.
Maybe it's because gays just want to enjoy the same rights that you enjoy; whereas Muslims, Jews and Christians want to remove the rights they feel disagree with their beliefs.
Their right to "pursue happiness" stops when they try to impinges on the rights to pursue happiness by others.
Except that they don't. At least, no more than anybody else. Possibly less, actually.
In the US, Christians are about 80% of the population, but over 90% of convicted criminals.
And churches pay no taxes. Those who give money to churches get tax breaks for doing so. Assuming Christians also give to actual charities as much as everybody else does, that would mean they actually pay less taxes.
As for the "Mark of the Beast", we've had this in the US for a very long time now. Every citizen of the U.S. is given a unique ID number at birth. A number which you need in order to get a passport, or drivers license, or credit card. So we're already regulating the buying and selling of property without it. And have been since before most of us here were born.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
I'm rather fond of Scotsmen, not to mention Ghandi when he said "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
China rolled into Tibet, slapped the Dali Llama in the face, stole his country and kicked his ass out, and he hasn't gone all Che Guevara to get it back. Or those Vietnamese monks that burned themselves alive to protest the war. Although, if you were to walk up to a Rinzai master, he'd probably cold-clock you with a stick, laugh, and tell you when you understand only then will you be enlightened.