Un-conversion

Interestingly enough I was raised in a Christian home, not fundamentalist, (Anglican), but we went to church on Sundays. In my mid teens it just became irrelevant in my life. In my thirties Christianity was presented to me and so after reading C S Lewis' "Mere Christianity" I accepted the faith and started back to church.I went along like this for about twenty years and then decided to really sort out what it is that I believe. Since then I have read numerous books on theology, read Dawkins, Hitchens, Sagan and others and also started reading non academic books on science such as Hawking and Greene.What I have found is that what I believe about Christianity has changed considerably but on the other hand my faith is much stronger for it.You ask this question:

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It seems to me that if this God does exist and he is indeed the God of the Christian faith, then he's done himself out of a soul. Now why would he do that?

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In asking the question this way you are making an assumption about God and the Christian faith that I suggest doesn't represent the orthodox view nor the Biblical view of God. If we base our views on Scripture, reason and tradition we would find that the idea that you are to be damned to hell based on what you give intellectual assent to, does not hold up in any of the three with the exception of the tradition of a minority of churches that have existed primarily since the reformation.JMHO Edited by GDR, : sp

People crucified Jesus. It was God that resurrected Him.

You are absolutely right IMHO. That isn't reasonable and it isn't scriptural.Look at this quote of Jesus' from Matthew 9:

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12 On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

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The fundamentalist response is that Paul says that there is no one righteous. Well yeah, if we are comparing ourselves to Jesus.Firstly He is repudiating a system, that connected forgiveness with bringing sacrifices to the Temple. (They tried that again with indulgences.) Jesus is saying that it is mercy, which equates to loving hearts - that is what is desired.He is also saying that the point is to change hearts so that those that are self serving become the servant of others. I can't find the exact quote right now but C S Lewis writes that if I become a Christian, I should become a nicer person than I had been previously, but not necessarily as nice as my atheistic next door neighbour.My point is that it is the condition of our heart regardless of our theological beliefs that make us right with God. As I've said before, if you as an atheist goes out serving the poor without any earthly agenda it is IMHO more pleasing to God than some Christian who performs the same service in order to get in good with God. It is the difference between selfish love and unselfish love.I contend that what I have said is completely consistent with the overall message of the Scriptures and if you read the "Sermon on the Mount" in Matthew 5-7 and the separating of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25: 31-46, I don't see how it can reasonably be understood any other way.I'm not saying that this proves that Christianity represents truth, but I do think that from what you have told us on this thread, the Christianity that you rejected is not what Christianity is about. I don’t know you or all of your reasons for rejecting your faith, but in my view I would say that in rejecting a Christianity that consigns all non-Christians to hell you understand better, and are closer to, the heart of God than those that believe that it is all about personal theology, and that believing a specific dogma is what it’s all about.As Rob Bell titled his recent book, Love Wins. As you can see by some of the comments at the end of this video there are many Christians who feel threatened by this and I would suggest maybe with good reason.

That is hardly the reason He was here. Primarily He came to establish His Kingdom that is supposed to be characterized by humble sacrificial love. He went to the cross because that is what generally happened to people that upset the authorities at that time. Christ's message that the temple could be replaced by human hearts and that those hearts were to love their enemies put Him in opposition to the powerful people in that society. (Sorta like walking up and down Wall Street with a sign saying that capitalism is dead.)Jesus was saying that the enemy wasn't the Romans, but that the enemy was evil itself and the only way to defeat evil is with it's opposite, which is love. He confronted the evil that was brought on Him and God resurrected Him in an act of love.As I said, it was people that killed Jesus but it was God that showed that the evil inflicted on Jesus by people was not the final chapter in the story.

In looking at it that way though you are going back to the reason you say that you rejected Christianity in the first place. In essence you are saying that the whole point of religion is to avoid going to hell.I agree that the one part of the Christian church, particularly in North America in recent years has tended to go down that road. My point is that view is a major misunderstanding of the Bible. In effect what it does is incorporate a particular misreading of Paul and ignore the Gospels.The primary message of Christianity is that we are to be the wise stewards of God's creation and that there is a point in doing that. Jesus came to establish a Kingdom that is for the now and through to eternity, characterized by unselfish, sacrificial love. Jesus didn't just wash the disciple’s feet for the heck of it. It was a demonstration of how authority is to be exercised. As wise stewards we are to govern creation with humble kindness and justice. In Christianity the message is that that there will be a great act of re-creation of the cosmos just as there was once an act of creation and that somehow, (in ways that are beyond me), what we do as stewards will be incorporated into that re-creation.The way we treat our neighbours, our enemies, our animal life and our environment all matter and all have eternal consequences. Paul writes in Ephesians 1:

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9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment--to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

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The mystery of His will is that it isn't about getting your theology right so that God is on your side and it isn't about following a particular set of laws for the same purpose. It is about having a heart that is able to find its joy in the joy of others. By becoming followers of Christ and taking His message of unselfish sacrificial love on board we will be given the gift of the Holy Spirit that will in ways that are well beyond my knowledge help us to make that change of heart and create in us a greater awareness of the life that we are to lead as part of the Kingdom He established. And again I'll repeat, that doesn't necessarily make a Christian more Christ like than his/her atheistic neighbour but if there is a genuine desire to serve Christ as a humble, kind and just member of His Kingdom, (or church if you like), it will make him/her a more Christ like person than we he/she was and establish a trajectory that will play itself out over a life time.

I'd go with Keats. Sorry no secret esoteric knowledge here, but as for lack of absolute certainty may I suggest that is exactly what we should expect if my view of God is anything close to correct. (Again I can't offer certainty but only a certain expectation of uncertainty.)It is my contention that we are creatures who have been given free will and the knowledge of good and evil. As things stand we can objectively say that we can make moral choices. However, with certainty about God and His true nature we would in practice be unable to exercise that free will as we would know the consequences of our actions. We could never just go down to the food bank to help out for no other reason than we simply want to help someone less fortunate without any thought of reward for doing it, or punishment for not doing it.There can be no free will with certainty. The fact that we don't have certainty is completely consistent with God as I believe Him to be.

Just because I don't believe that the Bible is a series of books dictated by God does not mean that I don't believe that it should be taken seriously. I think that it is fairly obvious that the writers of the NT intended that what they were writing was to be understood as an accurate description of what Jesus said and did. I can't prove that they were correct and obviously as in some cases the Gospels don't agree on some of the minor details. However we can see that to a very large degree the accounts are congruent.If you agree with me that the writers intended them to be read as accurately depicting what Jesus said and did, then other than for the minor details they were either correct, wrong or lying.Personally I can see no reasonable motivation for lying and considering the amount of detail it is hard to come up with a plausible explanation for them being that far wrong. I know that there are many who have come up with various explanations such as cognitive dissonance but IMHO that answer just doesn't seem likely considering the number of people that would have had to experience the death and resurrection of Jesus that way.If they were correct in their accounts of the resurrection, as I believe they were, then we have to take very seriously the words and actions of the life of Jesus as they have recorded them.

I'm not tossing it aside as being irrelevant and I'm not saying that salvation isn't important. The point I'm trying to make is that salvation isn't at the heart of the Gospel that is being espoused by either the writers of the Gospels or the Epistles. The gospel message is about Jesus establishing His Kingdom. If the message is just about what Jesus did on the cross and what happened after that then we have in effect ignored the 4 gospels.I'm not saying that the crucifixion was an accident. Jesus would have known what the outcome of His taking His message into Jerusalem, and in particular what He did in the temple, would be. Through prayer and through His understanding of what his mission or vocation was in the Hebrew Scriptures, He went ahead as an act of faith that in the end He would be vindicated. The Biblical message does tell us that He was indeed vindicated through the resurrection.Salvation then is important but it isn't the main point of the Gospels. Actually the idea of making salvation the focus of Christianity turns the faith into something that is all about love of self as opposed to the love of others.Here is a talk given by N T Wright who is likely the best known N T scholar in the world today. His teaching is featured in the Apr 16 edition of Time. N T Wright - How God Became KingAs far as being guaranteed a place in heaven, (and I would suggest that it is finally about new creation and not heaven), the Bible is very clear that it is about our hearts and not our theology. In fact Matthew says this in chap 7.

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21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' 23 Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'

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Just worshipping Jesus as Lord is not what it’s about. As we see in chap 25 it is about feeding the hungry giving water to the thirsty, visiting those in prison, housing the homeless etc without understanding that there is any reward for those actions. Once again to quote Rob Bell - love wins. I think that quite likely the majority of N. American evangelicals might disagree but I believe that my beliefs are pretty orthodox as far as worldwide Christianity is concerned. Strangely enough my views are pretty consistent with one of the heroes N. American evangelism; C S Lewis. We all have the freedom to reject, twist or believe the message of the Bible and there is no one that understands it perfectly. As I said in one of my earlier posts, if we have certainty we lose our freedom to freely embrace God's desire that we love unselfishly.It also isn't a case of disbelieving most of the Bible but it is a matter of understanding the context in which each particular book is being written, as well as the context of the entire narrative of the Bible.If I had been part of a fundamentalist church I too would likely have come to the conclusion that I just can't buy into this either. But again, I'm not accepting that by rejecting that theology Tangle is destined for hell. In fact I reject that idea completely and I'm even suggesting that by rejecting that theology he might have even brought him closer to God, but that is between Tangle and God.

Matthew relates the same account this way. Matthew 26:

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38 Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me." 39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

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Jesus understood His death and resurrection, and what it all meant through Isaiah 49 and primarily through the Daniel's vision of the "Son of Man" being presented to the "Ancient of Days" in Daniel 7. He believed this on faith. He also knew that what He was doing in Jerusalem was going to upset the powers that be. He was aware of what they did to people that did that. He wasn't any particular threat to the Romans but He threatened those who were making a comfortable living through the excesses of the business in the Temple, and He was also a threat to the Herodians. On top of that He was a threat to the revolutionaries who were keen to have a messiah that would lead them in the overthrow of Roman rule, (likely this is what Judas was about), and Jesus' message of peace and love your neighbour wasn't at all what they had in mind.Through faith in the scriptures and presumably answered prayer Jesus understood that although He was going to face a pretty certain death, that His Father would vindicate Him and that through this vindication God would establish His Kingdom on Earth. Remember that Jesus taught His followers to pray that "Thy (God's) kingdom come on Earth as in Heaven". Jesus was inaugurating a "Kingdom of God" movement and that kingdom was for the salvation of all creation. He taught that the kingdom would ultimately be complete on His return at the fulfilment of time.Again from Ephesians 1:

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9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment--to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

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That's all things on heaven and earth. Jesus came to redeem all of creation. (Yes, the Bible tells us that there will be those who choose to opt out but that will be there choice.)So yes, you can talk about personal salvation but the point is that in this life people are saved because there is a job to be done. That job is take Christ and His message of forgiveness, peace, love, kindness, mercy, justice etc to the world. Jesus established His Kingdom for the whole creation and to turn it into a message of me and my personal salvation is completely missing the point of what He was doing and preaching.Happy Easter Chuck

Who knows where our thoughts come from. I’m always highly suspicious of people that say God told me to do this or that. I’ve also listened to some Christian musicians who talk about a song that God has given them and I come away thinking that God isn’t a very good song writer.I think that there is a deep meaning and truth in the idea that we are made in God’s image although I wouldn’t want to be definitive on how to explain what that actually looks like. I think though that what flows from that is the view that we have been given the power, the ability and the responsibility of caring for our part of creation. I do think that God speaks through human imagination but obviously I don’t think that all that we imagine comes from God. It is just something that we have to sort out in life in if we come to the conclusion that you have that there is no god.Sure I can agree that in many ways the rituals are daft, but Jesus’ message is that we are to serve within communities that reflect His love into the world. Humans have come up with ways of doing that that have become traditions. Yes, they are human inventions but the after all we are humans. Sometimes they seem a bit silly, (I look at the get up the Bishops wear and shake my head ), but then again as these traditions date back to a distant era I suppose that what we expect and it does connect us to those who have gone before. We have all sorts of similar secular traditions.I actually don’t agree that we become Christian to Revelation. I’m not sure what it is and no doubt it is different for everybody. For me I just came to the conclusion that it was the truth and it makes sense of the world I live in. You have just come to a different conclusion although I think we would agree that the Christianity that you rejected is not the Christianity that I believe in. (Not that this in any way is to say that my views are the right ones. They are just that — my views no matter how firmly I believe them.) In my view it all depends on the resurrection. If Jesus was not resurrected then I’m wasting my time in church as Paul tells us. I would be much better off in Synagogue or at the Rotary Club. I am convinced of the truth of Jesus’ resurrection and in believing that it then becomes important to sort out what He was and is all about. The reason to live a decent life is not because the church says so, or even that Jesus says so. The recent to live a decent life is because that is where our heart should be. Well I suppose Chuck or Buz would consider me a liberal but in many circles I’m considered conservative. There are a large group that are advocates of The Jesus Seminar whose views I pretty much completely reject.

I think there is more to it than that. Of course I agree that children are likely to assume the faith of their parents up to a certain age. Just a couple of points though. Most religions have a basic belief in the Golden Rule. Why is that? Did that concept just evolve from what was originally a total non-moral and even non-intelligent source or is there an intelligent moral source for this idea that has spoken it into human imagination? I contend that the latter is more plausible but that is just my opinion.As virtually all world religions seem to agree on a basic level, (whether or not the adherents of these various religions actually put it into practice of course is another story), in the fundamental belief that the Golden Rule is a good thing, then it seems to me that we have to consider the possibility that this is as a result of an intelligent moral entity implanting the notion into human imagination. After that I would agree that there are a lot of things added on to religions that have very human origins. (I would suggest that the idea of being made right with God based on theological beliefs would be an example of that.) AS I said earlier there is no certainty and within religions there are huge differences in doctrine. There was a thread last year asking the question of whether different Christians worship different gods. IMHO the answer was yes.As far as Christianity is concerned it came into existence based on belief in the resurrection of Jesus. If it didn't happen then Christianity is irrelevant, but if it is an historical event, as I believe, then it is hugely important.

That was my point. It is in all religions and it is in the secular world as well. The question I’m asking if it is more plausible that the concept of treating others as we would like to be treated came from an intelligent and moral first cause or a non- intelligent non-moral first cause. I believe the first is more plausible whereas you presumably believe the opposite.

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empathy
n.
1. Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives. See Synonyms at pity.
2. The attribution of one's own feelings to an object.

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Actually empathy is just the ability to sympathize with someone. That isn’t the same as doing for others as you would have them do for you. What we are talking about is acting on empathy not empathy itself. If I drop a 20 dollar bill on the sidewalk I would hope that whoever saw me do it would pick it up and return it to me. So if I follow the Golden Rule and I see somebody drop a 20 dollar bill and just pick it up and stick it in my pocket then I’m not following the Golden Rule. It means that I’m not the greatest of people and I should be ashamed, but somehow I don’t think that qualifies me as a psychopath. Actually, societies work all the time with very little empathy. That’s why we continue to have wars. I have certainly never suggested that Jesus instituted the Golden Rule. I agree that it taught in societies long before Jesus walked the planet. Actually I think altruism is a better word than empathy but aside from that I don’t see where the idea that that God instilled it in human consciousness and that it has continued to evolve is contrary to Christianity. It may be contrary to the Christianity that you rejected but I don’t see as contrary to orthodox Christianity any more than I see physical evolution contrary to Christianity. Just as I don’t know how abiogenesis occurred I don’t know how the first seed of altruism was planted either but if we look at the course of human history I contend that the world on the whole has evolved into a more altruistic place than it was in the past. Once again — is the root cause intelligent and moral or has it all evolved from a random collection of atoms?

If you read what I said you would see that I made the point that the GR is in virtually all world religions. I would also agree that it is part of secular societies or institutions as well. I think you missed my point entirely.When Jesus responded to the question of which was the most important law He drew His reply from the Hebrew Scriptures. (Leviticus 19:18 for one) There never was a claim that this was an original idea of His.

So what? What is your point? What has the resurrection got to do with the Golden Rule? Why is it necessary to put "Duh?" at the end of your posts?

Thank you. I was dealing with the two issues in one post and had never intended to imply that there was a connection between the two issues.