What qualifications are required?

i thought so. nope, but that would have been interesting. yes. it's the 10th and 11th thoracic vertebrae of the human spinal column. no real reason. i had a website that used an image from gray's anatomy as the basis for the layout back in the day, and this is taken from that.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 07-27-2005 05:47 AM

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אָרַח

my only real problem with my sleep issues is that i feel a lot more accomplished when i actually get up and do something during the day. like i have to tomorrow, for class and work.

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אָרַח

Well yeah, that too. Not much I can get done in the middle of the night EXCEPT work - and play - on the computer. Don't even make it to church very often lately because I'd just fall asleep in the middle of it and be too sleepy to drive back. I keep trying to get back on a normal schedule but for some reason it's almost impossible lately. I just keep reverting, wide awake through the night.

Well, yes, Jesus was always correcting the exclusivity and snobbery of the Pharisees, and He got that across pretty pointedly by picturing a Samaritan as a good man, which the Pharisees were not willing to believe, and eating with people the Pharisees scorned as sinners. Jesus was always showing that God extends His salvation to all mankind and not just the Jews, and to sinners and not the righteous which the Pharisees considered themselves to be. But nevertheless the ones who ACCEPT it are the ones who belong to Him. Yes, they are of every nation, tribe and class, but the gospel itself -- what is to be BELIEVED -- is not subject to a wild variety of interpretations. Some views are simply outside the pale of salvation. That is shown in the history of Christianity with all the debates about what's orthodox and what's a heresy, and the passing down of creeds and catechisms - it matters what we believe. I don't get that "tainted" idea, but yes, all that is true but there's some fundamental confusion going on here. Jesus WAS an exclusionist but on another level. Perhaps it IS mostly -- or all? - in the gospel of John where this is spelled out most clearly? That is, Jesus prays for "those the Father has given Him" and explicitly NOT for the rest. But in any case what the gospel is and what we believe it is does matter. Otherwise why so much effort to make doctrinal distinctions that Paul and the other letter writers of the New Testament went to? I guess that's a good idea. They'd have to prove Jesus was gay for instance. Not sure that would stop anybody though who thinks they can ferret it out of a few NT passages. Just another endless debate about nothing.

i suggest that christianity itself has two qualifications:
1. belief that jesus is the messiah/christ/son of god, and that he died and was resurrected so that we could be closer to god, or saved.
2. an attempt to follow christ's examples, teachings, and philosophy.the first being more important than the second. but sitting around and excluding people as "not TRUE christians" is just picking fights, and being condescending and judgemental. not something christi promoted in his day. he called the people who did that hypocrites. it comes from a lengthy experience in the church, and a close relationship with an extremely evangelical friend. she has habbit of removing people from her life that she feels are a bad influence (or just plain not christian enough). it's the attitude of avoiding temptation, basically. she doesn't put herself into situations that could possibly influence her in ways not accepted by her church.it's kind a cult-like mentality actually -- her particular denomination is on a cult watchlist. but it's also not what jesus did. jesus ate with and befriended the people who needed him most. as christians, we should follow his example. can you imagine if jesus only came for the pious? who would have been saved?no one. that's who. i suspect you will find that is the case. john is clearly different than the synoptic gospels in a good many ways. paul was trying to make christianity its own religion instead of an offshot sect of judaism. paul was a divider. jesus did not seem to have been a divider. he told his diciples to preach to the world. meaning everyone. what's the point of preaching to the choir? they've heard the good news already.you have to tell it to people who haven't heard it. and more importantly, you have to SHOW it to people who haven't. we are to be emissaries of god's love -- showing love, acceptance, compassion, and understanding. god showed those things to us through his son, and we didn't deserve them either. we are to show them to other through ourselves.and that means getting your hands dirty. that means talking to and accepting the heathens, pagans, athiests, wiccans, and satanists. we're really talking far beyond the slight differences between protestant and catholic and mormon and anglican and evangelical. we're talking everyone.the number one thing that pushes people away from christianity are the christians. we're not doing a good job of showing christ in our actions. we can't be holier-than-thou or condescending or exclusionary. we have to be welcoming and compassionate. yes, but it'd be a step in the direction of fairness.

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אָרַח

I think it is very important to correct false doctrine among people who call themselves Christians, who are only confusing everybody, and has nothing to do with hypocrisy, which, as Jesus used that term against the Pharisees, referred to their preaching but not doing what they preached. But arguing this further doesn't get us anywhere, and I'm now at the point where I think it is completely futile and am ready to take another direction.As for following Christ, yes of course, but that can't be done "in the flesh" but only through the Spirit. That's another long discussion though. Yes, but he provides another dimension of understanding, he doesn't contradict anything. Same with Paul. I don't follow you. Paul was the one commissioned by God to take the gospel out FROM the "choir" as it were TO the world. The different emphases in Paul's teachings have to do with the situations he had to deal with. The Gentiles were a completely different challenge to a preacher of the gospel than the Jews were, as the Jews had been raised in the Law of God, and the Gentiles had to be TAUGHT the Law for the gospel to make sense to them. The first scriptures used in all the churches were of course the Old Testament. There was no collected New Testament for quite some time, so what they had of the gospel after the initial preaching by the apostles was the letters of Paul and Peter and John and others, plus various copies of the gospels, and not all churches had all of these for a while. But they did have the Old Testament.If you believe Paul was personally sent by the risen Christ, as I do, you know this was of God, not something Paul made up. And how could Paul the Pharisee make such a thing up anyway? The idea of saving Gentiles contradicted everything he was raised to believe. The complaints people have against Paul simply make no sense if you understand the actual historical situation. What on earth do you think Paul was DOING? Precisely THAT! Yes, absolutely, but it is not love to allow people to believe they are saved when they aren't, to believe false doctrine about salvation that is only going to lead to their destruction. I'd call that hate myself. True, but many of us do talk to these groups. You seem to be making a lot out of the attitude of this one friend of yours that doesn't apply as widely as you seem to think. That's PARTLY true I will agree. Perhaps part of the problem is that Christians are so much engaged in political and doctrinal issues these days -- because these are such conspicuous areas of attack on Christianity, and are arenas of tough-minded disputation -- and it MAY be -- I've been thinking in this direction a lot lately -- time for all Christians to cut the debate altogether and fast and pray instead. I'm trying to shift in this direction myself. NOTHING good happens unless it's done in God's will and power.However, the BIG BIG problem with this view of yours, which is in fact terrifically common among Christians these days, is that "love" is defined as something that refuses to contradict wrong ideas, or is simply sweet and soft when strong words are needed.Yes, what WOULD Jesus do? His first recorded words are "REPENT and believe the gospel" --exactly the sort of message so many call "hate speech" these days. I'm sure we could use quite a bit more of His strong words TO the established church as well, taking the whip to the moneychangers for instance and rebuking the Pharisees, but let's be clear just who the Pharisees are first. And for those of us who believe that Jesus is YHWH incarnate, there's plenty more that we can attribute to Him that is aggressively rejected as not fitting the popular idea of a loving God.By the way, are there any Christian writers you particularly admire?

(from an earlier post) How is the above statement made by you, not an opinion? I do not agree with your statement and know hundreds of people who would not agree with your statement.Are we automatically wrong and you automatically right?Are we not also entitled to an opinion?Are we not able to reason differently or are we to be automatons, subject to the exact same line of reason you have chosen to employ?Allow me to answer. We are all quite capable of using common sense, logic, and reason, albeit at different levels according to our own abilities.Yes, crashfrog, you did state your own opinion and not an established, undeniable fact.Please allow the rest of us to form our own opinions, apply our own line of reasoning, and integrate the tools given to us by God in a manner that seems most logical to us as individuals. Thank you.

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

Thank you. I appreciate that. I had the fortune of finding enough extra time to visit the library so that I could have a short visit here at EVC. I hope to return again soon.

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

Could you explain, in detail, your line of thinking here? Thanks.

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

Well, my time is up but I hope to return soon.Gods' continued blessings to all.Sincerely,EltonianJames

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

In the sense that factual statements are not "opinions", but facts. In the sense that my position is factual, yes, if you hold a counterfactual position, you're automatically wrong.That's how it works, remember? If you hold a countefactual position, another way to describe that is "wrong." Unfortunately that's an inaccurate characterization of my statements which were, in fact, factual and correct. Any time that you'd like to actually begin doing so would be fine with me.

It's not really a line of thinking, it's reading the texts. The order of creation is different in the two texts as are the methods of creation. Not only are both wrong from a factual point of view, they do not even agree between themselves on either order or method.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

today i saw a homeless man. i thought about buying him a sandwich, but i didn't. i'm a hypocrit. i don't follow my doctrines of compassion on the needy. true. it's an unattainable goal. i think the idea is intent though. we can't go around calling people "not true christians" because they're hypocrites, or because they're a little confused. i think you're confused about a great many things -- but i never question the validity of your faith. it's just rude and insulting.doctrine this and doctrine that are debatable. christianity should not depend on the intricacies of doctrine. it should depend on the love of god. yes, in his established churches. his letters are not taking the message to the world, they're refining the doctrine of the people who have already heard the gospel. and his refinement is rather isolationist, especially from judaism. i don't get it either. one possible conclusion is that paul is not who he claimed to be. does salvation rest on faith, or the law? if you have faith, does it not stand to reason that you are saved? even as a sinner? and someone who continues to sin, as we ALL do? i've been to just about every kind of church there is that calls itself christian. i've been to lutheran. anglican, baptist, methodist, undenominational, pentecostal (though not the kind that drinks poison). i've been to several mormon services. i think i'm basically only missing catholic, jehovah's witnesses, and amish.my opinions are drawn from my own experience with christianity. i used my friend as an example.many of us DO talk to other groups. and many of us talk down to other groups. i've seen christianity from the eyes an outsider too, and it's primarily the christian attitude that pisses people off. i've had a lot of friends that were utterly against christianity in every way, yet when i spoke about my religion, it commanded respect instead of anger.of course, then again, i'm not a REAL christian, am i? personally, i want my religion back. the fundamentalist christian movement (of which i was indeed a part of) has always been a little nuts, but lately it's just gotten insane. this isn't what this faith is about at all. it's not political. they executed christ specifically BECAUSE it wasn't political. two problems:
1. i'm contradicting what i think are wrong ideas.
2. it's not our place for the strong words, and the judgement. in their day, they were the established church, and said much the same things you are. i can't really think of any off the top of my head. i read some c.s. lewis as a kid, but the narnia series hardly counts...

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אָרַח

But if you have seriously wrong doctrine, then you have a wrong view of who God is and what He is like which means you are not loving the true God but a figment of your own imagination which is idolatry. Judaism has departed very far from the spirit of the Old Testament, and had in Paul's day too. That makes fools and devils out of so many people in the history of Christianity that the mere thought ought to be unthinkable. Depends on what/who your faith is in. If your faith is in a wrong understanding of God then what kind of faith is it? Seriously wrong I mean, since none of us knows all doctrine all that correctly. But a really false view of God can't save you -- such as the Mormon view or the Jewish view or the Muslim view. And if your faith hasn't radically altered your life it is not genuine faith either -- unless you grew up always having faith. Yes we continue to sin, but on the other hand huge areas of sin usually fall out of one's life almost instantaneously upon submitting to Christ and more and more continue to be left behind as we grow in the faith. Beware of self-righteousness. Mormonism commands respect too. Very nice people the Mormons, but very wrong about God and salvation. They do admirably try to live up to the standards of Christ, however, which makes it all very poignant. Sometimes people are right to be put off by Christian attitudes, and you may be correct in your judgment in particular cases, but sometimes it's really only the hatred of Jesus that He said we'd encounter from the world. I'm not sure yet. Very possibly not, given much of what you seem to believe, but it's possible to have the right saving view even in the midst of a lot of doctrinal confusion. It's just hard to tell. Yes I think I agree with you about the overemphasis on politics these days, including my own, although I do believe that Christians must interact politically with the world too. But the problems that need solving are only going to yield to supernatural means, through prayer and living the Christian life as you say. When people preach God's condemnation of sin that's not judgment in the sense of the teaching "judge not lest ye be judged." That kind of judgment means personal condemnation of a person's particular sin. It is possible for instance to have gay friends and yet let them know that God condemns their sin, and pray for them rather than condemning their sin yourself. It is wrong to condemn them personally and it is equally wrong not to tell them that God condemns their sin. See above.By the way, the Pharisees still exist, they are today's orthodox Jews, and they follow the same practices that Jesus condemns, the strict restrictions around the Sabbath and other observances and many obsessional rituals that Jesus condemned as adding to the burdens of the people. I am friends with an orthodox man. Very nice man. Good discussions. He follows all the rules that Jesus condemned.