What is Christianity?

Let us know the next time you are crucified, dead, resurrected 3 days later, and sit at the right hand of God the Father as Lord.I don't expect you can understand the truth of Christianity, but Christians do.

Oddly, I think that Bob Bobber is intuitively right on this one. i always liked this logic, for whatever reason.

Yes, most people can accept that God was in Christ, and most Christians agree that Christians died for our sins. But your original proposition seemed to be that Christ was Yahweh. What you say above is not the same thing. Are you backing off? What does John 3:16 say is the essence of what Jesus did?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Let us know the first time you can demonstrate that anyone was crucified, died, resurrected 3 days later, and sat at the right hand of God the Father as Lord.I don't expect you can understand the light of reason, but rational people do.

In John 3, when Jesus talked about being "born again" He implied that Nicodemus ought to know what He meant since he was a "master of Israel". So being born again must be something related to Judaism, not what you claim it is.

Believe it or not, I remembered this question---even though I never answered it in 2015. Tonight, while checking in with my facebook social media, I was introduced to an online article by one of my high school classmates who is now a film producer in Hong Kong.The article, Icons Matter by Michael Critzer, explains how important it is--at least from his viewpoint--that cultural icons maintain the character that they were initially created with,rather than be changed at the whim of a new author.

quote:

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If filmmakers want to tell a story about the realistic struggles of popular stars, then they should choose an appropriate character or create one for their purposes. Folklore, our culture’s mythology, is a reflection of the values and principles of our culture. It’s not malleable on a storyteller’s whim. If you take a beloved, safe, and moral character and corrupt his universe until he’s broken and morally ambiguous, you’ve not only corrupted the character, you’ve corrupted our culture and, through eventual repercussions, you’ve corrupted our future. You’ve taken away one of the few characters that made us reach higher just so you and audiences could feel better about not wanting to stretch.

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My point is that the character of superman has been fairly consistent throughout the past 50 years, and I will argue that the character of Jesus Christ has also been rather consistent in Christianity and, I will argue, should not be changed into something less than what humanity expects. Because we want and need a superhero. Yes, I believe that we are morally obligated. It helps to be morally obligated to a leader who is human and yet who has conquered the sins, addictions, and weaknesses that we all struggle with. It doesn't make much sense to have a leader who is no stronger than we are. It means that the strength and the character of our leader--being stronger than anything we ourselves can emulate--saves us from failure. Jesus is alive because we allow Him to be alive in us. (if nothing else) Do you see where I am coming from?

Just more word salad and in fact evidence Jesus is not alive.What you are saying is that Jesus is a figure in your imagination and exists only to serve you.

I am confused here. You don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus or in his ascending to heaven? In the divinity of Jesus? Isn't Jesus alive in the same sense that you are?I understand that people's beliefs differ, but isn't what I recited the mainstream Christian belief? If you hold that belief would you deny it here?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

While that might be a mainstream position it really never made much sense to me. Jesus alive and pre-death makes sense but Jesus resurrected and yet alive gets fuzzy and Jesus alive post ascension just gets totally weird.To say God or Jesus are alive in the same sense I am alive is where I have a problem. Do they have to take a shit regularly, eat to continue living, breath air, get hungry, need sleep? If God stops eating will God die? Does God get old? Will God die in the same sense I will die?

That doesn't mean anything unless Jesus was resurrected into a new physicality. This is absolutely fundamental to Christianity. The whole NT is written trying to make sense of the fact.If Jesus was not resurrected then he simply dies a criminal's death as a failed messiah who had accomplished nothing and was highly delusional to boot.You cannot read through the NT without seeing that the writers firmly believed in Jesus' bodily resurrection. There is no motivation for them to lie and the NT if they had the Gospel stories are not what they would have told.Many 1st century Jews believed in a ultimate mass resurrection for the Jews themselves at some point in time, presumably the end of it, but none of them anticipated it happeneing in the middles of time.Simply put - no resurrection - no Christianity.

It has been consistently inconsistent.What did you think that the different Christian denominations were disagreeing about?

But there's plenty of reason for them to be mistaken. You don't need to turn every mistake into a deliberate lie.The resurrection was also a convenient fiction for spreading the word. (In The Last Temptation of Christ, Paul is aware of the fiction but deliberately uses it for the greater good.

I understand. And I would not have asked you the same question I asked Phat.

They had just seen Jesus brutally tortured and killed by people who were really good at it. They either saw Jesus alive and well but different after that or they didn't. It would be pretty hard to be mistaken about that.To use the "Last Temptation of Christ" as an argument against it is just a tad peculiar. It is a work of fiction based on nothing but the writer's imagination.Amongst a zillion examples do you really think that a woman would have been able to take him off the cross before he died? There is no evidence for anything in that story. It is simply conjecture built on conjecture.Edited by GDR, : dumb mistake

I think the whole resurrection of Jesus cheapens the story. The whole point of jesus was forgiveness, when he forgives the people for torturing and murdering him it brings the story to his highest possible conclusion, he forgave and then died.But he gets resurrected the message becomes weaker as what he forgave them for wasnt as bad as it was before he died. The same way attempted murder isn't treated as actual murder.And it also cheapens the torture the people put him trough as would a being to whom death means nothing also laugh at the prospect of pain, at worst its a short inconvenience in an immortals time frame a flea bite to you or me. Or more plausible he could go and ust shut off his pain receptors.Im just saying the story would be better without all the magic.