If you are born again, you are spotless. You have been washed. Your sinful fleshly nature died with Christ. It is no longer you who live, but Christ living in you. You are a new creation. The old self has passed away. You are being transformed by the renewing of your mind into the image of Christ.
Yadda yadda yadda.
Then you go on to say...
No one who has been born of God continues to sin. Christ said, "Be ye perfect," and you let him make you perfect. You don't sin anymore, never again.... BUT... IF YOU DO SIN, you repent and turn back to God.
So we can throw out all the stuff about Christians not sinning. They do.
QED
Next you pull up some Paul as though it supported your position. Let's look at what YOU say about the passage.
Okay, here we have some Christian people who are doing wrong. What does Paul say about it? He says, don't deceive yourselves, you won't inherit the kingdom of God if you keep it up. And then he reminds them that they WERE all those things, but NOT ANYMORE only IF they continue in the faith and hope of the gospel.
You won't inherit the kingdom of God.
Yup, likely.
But does that say anything about how they're not Christians? No. Only that they may not be saved.
If a Christian brother falls into sin, we don't tell him he's not a Christian, we remind him of the hope that he's not a sinner, but he must repent to remain under the covenant of Christ's love and grace.
See, once again you support my position. I'm simply pointing out that Christianity has sinned. It has been violent, intolerant and oppressive. It needs to change its ways.
Christianity needs to repent of its ways. There is a rite that covers that. It's called Confession.
The steps involved first requires an admission of sins, and acknowledgement that you really did those things, a desire to change, and an attempt to behave better in the future.
When people look at past events and toss out the bad, allege that "they were not real Christians", then all that's happening is Christianity saying "Those sins weren't really mine so I don't have to repent".
It's a denial of reality. A cop out. The easy way.
When Paul chastized the Corinthians he is not saying that they are not Christians any more, he is saying their behavior is wrong and needs to be changed.
Well, a lot of time has passed since then. Christianity has screwed up on many, many occassions. And it is still screwed up today. It is intolerant and oppressive.
In
another thread I discuss the barbarity of Christianity (not my title, but rather one chosen by Faith). It began as a spin-off when Faith made a statement about Islam and I objected.
Faith writes:
I would consider it a useful reminder of the barbarous nature of Islam, and hope that that is what would be conveyed to others who are under the delusion that all religions are the same -- same as I view these riots against the cartoons to be a revelation of the same barbarity that is at the heart of Mohammedanism.
I responded with a short list of a few barbarous acts that were done by Christianity.
- when the conquistadors arrived in South America they burned all of the religious tracts they found and outlawed the practice of any religion except Christianity.
- North American Indian children were forced from their homes, their clothing changed, hair cut, language forbidden and the Christian religion forced upon them.
- Jews were expelled from England in 1290 under the Edict of Expulsion. They were barred from the Isles until the mid 1600s.
- in the 1400s all Jews were expelled from Spain. Interestingly, it was the Islamic world that opened its arms to them, even sending fleets of ships to take them back to the Islamic world and providing them with homes and opportunity.
- Jews were required throughout Europe to live in Ghettos, and were restricted in what positions or emplyment they could hold.
- throughout the Christian World, witches were killed, usually through burning.
- as far back as 1215, the Fourth Council of the Lateran required that Jews wear identifying marks or clothes.
- the Crusades which were attempts to redirect internal violence towards a non-aggressive outside neighbor.
- a continuing practice of outlawing other religions such as the banning of the old ways that happened in Hawaii.
- the Wars of the Reformation including the Peasants War which began in 1524 and on through the Thirty Years War.
- the four Great Inquistions beginning with the Middle Ages Inquisition of 1184.
I pointed out that Christianity continues today to be intolerant, for example Faiths quote about Islam. It is also oppressive, supporting denying human rights to homosexuals.
I ended the message with the Confession.
Most merciful God,we confess that we have sinned against thee
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved thee with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in thy will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.
The first step Confession is to acknowledge what you've done wrong. As long as Christians continue to deny that they have done wrong, by simply denying that the Evil done in God's name was actually done by Christians, Christianity will remain indicted by GOD.
Edited to fix spelling, changed Do to So.
This message has been edited by jar, 02-19-2006 09:44 AM
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