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Author | Topic: Christianity Needs to Return to Being a Good Example | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member Posts: 19517 From: frozen wasteland Joined: Member Rating: 2.9 |
Google "Great Depression".
Trump. "Come all of you cowboys and don't ever run As long as there's bullets in both of your guns" -- Woody Guthrie
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Stile Member Posts: 4065 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.9
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Let me get this straight... Are you suggesting that since there's a slim chance some bad stuff might happen in the future... that this is a valid excuse to do bad things today? Are you sure you're on Christ's side of this?
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Phat Member Posts: 15931 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.3 |
Do I come across as forcing anyone to believe? At worst, I feel as if I try and get people (like you) to consider my positions and that their conclusions may be premature. Its a bit like a good beer. If you find one that you really like, don't you try and get your friends to try it? Forcing them to try it would be too extreme of course. Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. ~RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo Subjectivism may very well undermine Christianity.
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member
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I agree with the main thrust of his point, but then why not take it a step further and disavow Christianity altogether? Of course the bible has a set of morals, many which I and most everyone else agrees with. The abrasive, brow-beating typified by fundamentalists is obviously not only guaranteed to not get converts, but to actually create enemies out of them. I view the bible as an important collection of historical documents. That we have a mostly intact collection that offers a preview of the ancient world is of enormous value. But maybe that just appeals to my interest in history. What it doesn't certify is the validity of that historical document. I could write a novel about an alien invasion that took place on this day, bury it in the dessert, and with any luck some schmuck is gonna find it 2,000 years from adn fawn over it like it was the holy grail. It'll be a historical document at that point... but it doesn't mean anything I wrote actually happened. So it seems to me that while you understand his premise, at the same time what is even the point then of "being a Christian?" He stated that you don't need Christianity to understand morality. If that's the case, then what do you need Jesus for at this point in time? There is one argument that the fundamentalists make that does make sense to me. This push for a feel good gospel, one that is inclusive and non-abrasive, makes people feel all warm and squishy on the inside. It does promote love, inclusion and unity. But then you also exclude all the other parts that aren't so warm and squishy. In which case, why do you promote it at all? Like it or not, you have no frame of reference for Jesus outside of the bible. But this isn't a pick and choose adventure. You either believe all of it, warts and all, or you don't... or shouldn't. So why is he a Christian then at all? I can extract just as much meaning and value from Jesus' parables without having to swallow the whole thing. But if he isn't willing to swallow the whole pill, then he's not a Christian... he's just an admirer of Jesus' teachings. That's an important distinction if you ask me. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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GDR Member (Idle past 182 days) Posts: 5410 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: |
That makes no sense to me. The Bible is a library of 66 books, written in different times, in different cultures for different reasons and with different motives. It isn't at all necessary to view the Bible as a book dictated by God but IMHO, we should view it as a book that God is able to speak to us through, with parables, histories that worked out well and not at all well, where people get it right and more often wrong, and so on. We should work our way through different Biblical writings and figure out what the message is for us. As a Christian I start with the resurrection of Jesus and work from there. Also to properly understand Jesus' message we need the OT as He is constantly quoting it in the Gospels. We can understand the message in the OT through the lens of Jesus. For example if we accept on faith the accounts in the NT that Jesus embodied the Word or the nature of God, then we can come to the conclusion that when we are told to love our enemies we can more than reasonably know that we can reject the OT accounts that have Yahweh both committing and commanding genocide. Your all or nothing approach makes no sense. He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
It was written at slightly different times, but not from different cultures. The entirety of the bible was written from and written by the Jewish perspective. All of it. Of course now we're getting into whether the bible was written by God, through man, or whether it was divinely inspired by God but still has all the frailties of man interlaced in it. But either the bible has authority or it doesn't. And if we have to figure out which parts were authored by God and which parts were authored by men, then why have any regard for it at all? I am certain that I can find wisdom somewhere within the Vedic text. I can find wisdom somewhere in the teaches of Buddah. Somewhere in the teaching of the Qur'an. But do I regard myself as a Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu? No, I don't. Why? Because to make that monumental leap of faith is to buy into it wholesale. And if you buy into it wholesale, then you're somewhat obligated to believe all of it. If not, by what measure do you use to believe some of it, but not others?
Jesus may have said that he didn't come to abolish the law, but in practice that is exactly what he did. I mean, its no wonder 1st century Jews thought he was a heretic. I may personally have agreed with him and found his message so much more palatable than the Torah, but I certainly can understand why most Jews rejected it for having been so far removed by Jesus.
Ah, but are you not then worshipping a God of your choosing? You can't imagine the petulant indignation of Yahweh spoken about in the Torah and Mishnah being the same as the love of God spoken of by Jesus... but you'll use the OT when its quoted by Jesus. You have created for yourself a Mr. Potato Head God... picking the parts of God that you find palatable and excluding the parts that seem contradictory to it. Not a 'jot' or a 'tittle' shall pass away until it all be fulfilled... Translation: every apostrophe and every comma in the Mishnah is from God... so believe all of it and follow all of it. But you don't. And you've now said as much. Was it a different God that was ordering genocide and smashing Phillistine infants on the rocks? Did he change his mind? Can god in one instance command death of the first born son also be the same God that commanded us to love even our enemies? You seem to say, no. But the bible says, yes. And if you think this part of the bible was compromised by the frailty of man then what makes you think the warm and squishy parts weren't? What is your metric?
Either you are a Christian or you are an admirer of Jesus. Its okay to be an admirer of Jesus if that's what you are. I am too. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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GDR Member (Idle past 182 days) Posts: 5410 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: |
The word inspired also gets way overused in this context. I think that CS Lewis was inspired to write what he did but that doesn't mean that God dictated it to him. Yes, I think that the Biblical authors were inspired but neither does that mean that God dictated it to them. In some cases in the OT the stories were written by scribes that were obviously motivated to write accounts in a way that would please their master who had the power of life and death over them. What we do have though is a narrative of a progressive understanding of the nature of God with the Israel story climaxing in Jesus. In the Gospels, and particularly in the Sermon on the Mount we can see where Jesus corrects many of the laws from the Torah and criticizes the multitude of laws that the Pharisees tried to load on the nation. Sure, you can find wisdom in all sorts of religious texts including the Bible. As John says in Chap 1, the Word became flesh. He didn't write that the Word became a book or more precisely a collection of books. The Christian religion is centered on the belief that God resurrected Jesus and that when we want to understand the nature of God and what it means to our lives we look to Jesus. Of course when we want to understand Jesus we turn to the Bible. We can read there about the accounts compiled by the the different authors of the Gospels and then we can read the epistles written by the first theologians such as Paul who had access to Jesus' contemporaries.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
Then why is it revered as if God wrote it? Jews certainly believe that every word in it was authored by God, spoken through Moses, or David, or Daniel, or whomever.
While your point is well taken its important to remember that without the bible there is no framework in which to know Jesus -- as the bible is the only measure to know who he was and what he was about. And then of course, he himself had stated "I AM," which assuredly was very much intentional given his audience. This was his way of saying that he didn't merely come as a messenger from God, but that he IS God. And all of this is context of the Torah, which, in his roundabout way was him saying trust the Torah and also trust in me, for I am the summation and the fulfillment of the Law. But the point is, you obviously can't have one without the other, seems to me. They are inextricably linked... as you said from John's gospel, the Word became Flesh and Jesus was the Word... the living embodiment; the living testament; the living validation that what was written is a preview into the mind of God. So how do we reconcile that with all the heinous savagery that is also contained therein?
Yes, I agree it propagated from that central tenet, but it does not mean it is accurate anymore than it is the belief that Noah's Ark saved only 7 people in the entire planet to repopulate earth filled with inbreds. At some point we have to ask rhetorical questions. Was this event meant to be believed in a literal sense, was this something akin to a parable, and how should we be able to know in either direction? "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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GDR Member (Idle past 182 days) Posts: 5410 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: |
I would question your comments about the Jews. Jews like Christians have various views about the Scriptures. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount corrected what was in the Scriptures. When he talked about divorce he went so far to say that it was Moses who said what he said and not God who said it, and then went on to say that it came from hard hearts but that He was correcting it. He also said that it wasn’t about an eye for an eye but that we were to love our enemies.
Christians have so often focused on the point of Jesus being God that they forget about Jesus being a flesh and blood human being. He suffered the trials and tribulations of being human, including His torture and excruciatingly painful and humiliating dehumanizing death on the cross. He went into Jerusalem as an act of faith knowing what the authorities would do to someone doing what He was about to do. Remember He prayed to the Father that He could be spared the whole thing, but through prayer and through His understanding of the narrative of the Jewish story as told in their Scriptures, and that this was His calling. He also on faith believed that the Father would affirm and vindicate His life and death.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Stile Member Posts: 4065 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.9 |
Well, if we follow the thread connections back, you can see that the things I was discussing with Faith were along the lines of those that were "logically justified." My examples given were: quote: So - maybe those? "Forcing one's views" can cover a rather large range: 1. Look at my views on the internet as long as you do a similar search and click around a bit. Where do you think the scale stops from being "acceptable" to being "too much?"
You come across somewhere between #3 and #4.
Perhaps that's what you intend, but what you actually do is mis-characterize others a lot in an attempt to shame them into agreeing with you.
Now it's your turn to be specific.
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Phat Member Posts: 15931 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.3 |
Your scale seems ok for the purpose for discussion. Politics is another strong topic, and we both know that it can land quite squarely on #4 much of the time. and whats odd is that the way that Christ is perceived through the eyes of many apologists is strikingly like #6! I see you as an advocate of more of a live and let live type of Deity (or Deityless human spiritual reality) You might see Jesus..if He existed...as empathetic to the individual feelings, beliefs, and preferences of His audience rather than One sent by an authoritarian God to warn us of our inability to achieve the necessary standard. You are nearly a #1. You believe strongly that humans *should* eternally and always have free will, even to the point of freely rejecting an authoritarian God, should One exist. One thing is appearing increasingly probable: People tend to *know* what conforms most closely to their pre-existing beliefs. Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. ~RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo Subjectivism may very well undermine Christianity.
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AlexCaledin Member (Idle past 696 days) Posts: 63 From: Samara, Russia Joined: |
It's not time to force any view/example, it's just "let the one who is filthy still be filthy and let the one who is righteous still practice righteousness".
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