Politcally Correct Christ

Well, you have the Bibles as well but you don't believe that either so lets not go there.To be honest, I wouldn't place my trust in what a book or some individual on an internet discussion group says - certainly not on what is arguably the most important question you could ever get an answer to. On such matters you need something a lot more convincing than that.Don't settle for anything less than overwhelming conviction y'hear. It'll help you avoid the cults if they come a calling.

Perhaps you are a Christian afterall. Your obtuseness for one seemingly smart is evidence in favour of that view. There is (as seems a popular expression yourside) a disconnect.You know the law, whether summed up in two Great Commandments or in its expanded whole, is not given that it may be followed by all as some moral guide. You've already plumped for CS Lewis' option of Christ being deluded. Let's not now switch tracks to suppose he was some great moral teacher. You know what the purpose of the law is Mr. Schoolteacher (thats a hint lest you've forgotten)I'm not sure what you mean about desirability. Heaven on earth is what you would get and for sure it doesn't apply in real life. Its not supposed to. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Robin's not a Christian. He's simply an honest, sensitive and insightful unregenerate with a great BS detector. It's nice to know there are still a few of those around. But if we can't tell the difference, what does that say about us? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I recently got together with some of my Christian friends who were raised in the church but who are currently not religious.Sparking discussion, I played Devils advocate with them and argued from the position that the Bible was not word for word literal, nor infallible. We bantered back and forth attempting to solidify our positions, but in the end we quoted scriptures to each other and ended up in agreement.It has been said by some that quoting (or quotemining) is an inefficient way of determining exactly what it is that the Bible says.I am not an advocate of worshipping the Bible nor of savoring every word contained within.What I HAVE discovered, at least in the paradigms of my own belief, is that Jesus Christ is philosophically in harmony with truth as I see it and perceive it. I will be accused of abandoning critical thinking and unbiased thought in favor of "indoctorinated Christian fundamental propaganda" but in the end, a man has to either stand for something or fall for anything that their itching ears wants to believe.Its like this guy on the radio that I just listened to. He wrote a book called Islam Rising that presents the radically Christian fundamentalist view which states, basically, that the beliefs are incompatible.Many wish to have a P.C. Christ who cares not what people say but by what they do. Consider, however...what it is that people do?Im not saying that the United States is doing Gods will in our global power politics.I also think that the Islamic peoples want to be left alone with their religion and that this is what is causing the conflicts....assets being seized by the Islamic world are being fought for and taken back by the Western Imperialists.In Turkey in the twenties, the root groups of the Muslim Brotherhood are what now form many of the militant organizations today.Without straying too far off topic, I might ask if we as Western Christians know how much we will need to sacrifice if we are to allow our countries to take these wars seriously.Christ is Christ. He is not just another religious figure. Truly, He came to divide rather than to unite. To follow Christ, we must give up our way of life if there is to be peace in this world.(Now if only I can let the pesky union push me around, am I being Christ-like?)

I know he's not a Christian - I was using the bs mudflinging as a tool to make a point. He IS honest and insightful and sensitive - insofar as Jar & Co demand that of anyone (oh! physician heal thyself). But c'mon - talking of Jesus as the great moral teacher at this stage. There is no excuse for that. He has read the argument already...

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That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." -C.S. Lewis "Mere Christianity".

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Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I worship God. But I don't consider the Bible as "just a book" either. Any views you have of Jesus rely on "just a book" rendering them worthless or they rely upon the Word of God - rendering them worth a listen.What say ye Phat? "Just a book" or the Word of God and to be treated as such. Not idolising but with the reverence due his word.If "just a book" then tell me...from whence any view you have? Your own feelings?Edited by iano, : No reason given.

This famous quote overlooks more choices that are equally valid.It is entirely possible to believe that Jesus was indeed a good moral teacher--and that the reports we have about him are not to be trusted naively in their entirety.You don't have to believe this. But it remains a valid, rational option.We know about Jesus through documents. In presenting his proposed dilemma Lewis treats these documents as if they were not there at all. He expects us to take everything written about Jesus in the canon at face value, as he does.Nothing forces a person to do this. The pictures we have of Jesus in the Gospels far more resemble a series of paintings than a single photograph. The writers are part of the equation.The author of the Gospel of John clearly had an agenda, whatever one thinks of that agenda. His Jesus is very unlike the Jesus we find in the Synoptics. If you give more credit to the Synoptics (these are earlier reports anyway) the portrait of a wise teacher, Yeshua the Rabbi, is exactly what emerges. John's Jesus tells no parables, makes cryptic speeches, and forces confrontations about his divinity. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is far less interested in himself and far more inclined to turn any spotlight that comes his way onto the poor, the imprisoned and the sick. He does this nearly every chance he gets.And the tendency of people--especially fervent believers--to put words in their Deity's mouth is a matter of record. When I was last in the USA the tendency was epidemic. Billboards were springing up all over the landscape with messages like this:

Come over to my house next Sunday. Bring the kids. -God

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I love you, I love you, I love you! -Jesus

These 'quotes' of God and Jesus are drawn from no Bible passage. Each is an unremarkable bumper-sticker slogan invented by a mere mortal who attributes it to the Deity to give it more heft. Maybe they wish God would say it and feel no restriction on acting out their wish. The message gets into print and is put on display--with a false attribution.When we see zealous believers today treating their Deity as a ventriloquist puppet for their own messages, it's reasonable to conclude that zealous believers in any age can behave the same way. It would be easy enough for a scribe to insert some point into the text that he thinks Jesus didn't make well enough, knowing that insertion would be subsequently copied by more scribes. Who would know? He doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. He's just helping God out, like the designers of the billboards.So it is not Jesus who restricts our choices to the three presented by CS Lewis. It is Lewis who does this.Another choice exists: Jesus was indeed a wise teacher, and the written reports about him may not all carry equal wieght.You don't have to like this choice or agree with it. But it is every bit as valid and rational an option as the others..Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Brevity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Format.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I know you know all that iano, sorry if my remark sounded like a criticism. I was just chiming in but my wording wasn't the best. Those who aren't regenerate can't tell he's not a Christian, but we certainly can. Should have said if we COULDN'T tell, what would that say about us.I don't recall his saying Jesus was a great moral teacher though. He's called him deluded and intelligent and he appreciates his teachings from a literary point of view. But you are right, that means he hasn't reckoned with the whole picture of Jesus, doesn't it?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Obviously Lewis' threefold choice for defining Jesus' character was based on accepting all the descriptions of him in all the gospels. Of course if you throw out this or that part of the Biblical portrait then Lewis' options aren't exhaustive; but if you accept the entire composite portrait in scripture they are. This is true and I agree completely. This is that deplorable tendency to sentimentalize God and Jesus. It's false in more than one way.

I don't believe that the Bible is just a book in the sense that it is entirely of human origin. I believe that there is a living character that transcends the book: Jesus Christ.That being said, I don't believe that the book is word for word literal.I do believe that the book is thought for thought literal.Each story is a parable or a lesson. It matters not whether the event actually happened (such as the Flood.) What matters is the lesson that is to be learned from the story.

Considering that the lesson one would learn from a real worldwide Flood with real consequences in the real world, as compared to a fake Flood, a metaphorical Flood, or a Flood parable, would have to be a completely different lesson, I'd say it matters a lot.But maybe you can explain.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That's the problem with the morality of the New Testament. You asked me what I found attractive about Christ and I was telling you that his moral lessons didn't mean much to me. The morality of the gospels is not something conceivable to me. I do well to love a select few and I certainly don't love them as I love myself, and I'll tell you why. Everyone ultimately remains a bit of a stranger to all others. There is an unknown part and separateness in all others that can never be completely pierced. Even with those we are very close to, we make sometimes prepared speeches. We speculate on what they will think of something that we plan to say or do. That's because we don't know for certain, even if we've been very close to them for many years. So the injunction of the Great Commandment is so abstract as to be meaningless.There are 3 parts of the Gospels that we might be attracted to: (1)the moral part (2)the religious part and (3) the literary part.The religious part--that which deals with the supernatural--I don't relate to because I have never experienced anything supernatural.The moral part I don't relate to for reasons given above.That leaves the literary part. To merely dismiss this aspect as frivolous is to make a mistake.ABE: To appreciate the Gospels or any other text from a literary point of view is not going to lead one to any sort of religious belief nor to some moral code that one might follow, but it still might have importance in one's life.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

But why do you allow it to irritate you when it has nothing to do with you? Do you go around looking at all faiths and examine their denominations to see which versions irritate you?For what it is worth, I don't think Christianity, at least the Christianity that I followed or the Christianity my interpretation of he NT suggests, is at all PC. Jesus was clearly racist, sexist, bigoted, murderer, sadist, imbicile of a creature, and if you choose to follow him then you have to accept Jesus warts and all. But, certain groups do need to reinterpret the scriptures in their attempt to make Christianity more attractive. In the developed world Christianity is dying on its arse, the only countries that there is any growth are third world countries and Alabama.But so what if people are turning it into a PC faith, who cares apart from someone involved? True version as in the version that Jesus tried to get across. There are many versions of Christianity that are in conflict with one another, take universalists for example, if they are correct people like Faith and IanO have been making tits of themselves for nothing. I don't consider Jar's version to be recognisable as Christianity as I knew it or as I interpret it. But, as people pointed out, who am I to say who is and isn't a Christian? I also do not consider that Faith, Ian, Buz, RR, Herepton and a great many more people at Evc who say they are Christians actually are. I think that Phat and Trixie are about the only people I recognise as Christians (there may be others I just cannot think of them right now).While I would say that Jar has a great deal of Christian values, there are just too many of his beliefs that I personally have difficulty in harmonising with the Bible. I think he ignores much of what the Bible says, but that's the problem when interpretation of scripture became popular, it allowed for anything to be called Christianity. Does this mean that Jar isn't a Christian? Who knows?Why would he say he was if he isn't, the same goes for all the other people I have mentioned? But, I would say that just because some people THINK they are a Christian it doesn't follow that they actually are.Brian.

But no versions are true.You just need to read the Bible to discover that Jesus was no messiah. But did he?Brian.

I don't study the history of Christianity.Sit at the back of the class, put your hand up when you are ready to pay attention and you may be allowed to join the rest of the class again. Brian.