False Christians?

Huck finn,

Stop trying to spam me off this board.

I'm well aware of The fudemental christians intolerace for individual thought already.

But not everyone who calls themselves Christian is a bible thumping intellecual bigot.

The questions stand.

 

Intolerance for individual thought? Try dealing with the links I provided, instead of just dismissing them.

Intellectual bigot? Think about intellectual honesty for a moment. Should biblical teaching not have any bearing on how "Christian" is defined? (I'm not talking about creationism here, but core doctrines about the nature of God and man.)

 

BBB, seems like the things you won't put up with, are the core of the gospel, the core of the biblical message. and "Krishna, Buddha, Nanak, Ramakrishna and others are similar divine teachers who appeared at other times and places." doesn't that contradict big?

Then what is a christian? A christian means one who follows Jesus Christ, wants to be like Jesus Christ etc, hence the name christian. But if one chooses to pick what one likes in the Bible, and leaves behind or doesn't bother about the things not liked, then do you follow that one or follow only some of the things that one says?

please keep in my that I try to say this full of love, so don't take it wrong, but I keep in mind also this scripture text:
"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." (2 timothy 4:3-4)

hope to hear from you, dude!

 

huck finn,

I can read on my own. The pupose of this thread is not to be converted, nor is it to define a christian.

Since I cannot go unharrased, I guess I'll have to spell it out (although I'm reasonably sure this will cause slanted answers).

I'm a writer. I'm currently working on a FICTION project that requires one of the characters to be a "modern intellecuall christian" who finds himself in decidly un-christian circumstances. (Hey, not my choice. I'm working from a play book, and as such must follow the descriptions given me.)

The purpose of these and other questions I am posting in this forum is to help me build a believable character.

You see, I'm not a christian, and so I seek some substance to build into the character.
Rest assured, he will not be a parrot of fundemental dogma.

 

Dear Dutch Disciple,

You, at least, are courteous on this forum. That is very admirable.
I will have to explain to you that I don't actually see these points as the core of Jesus message. For many reasons, I don't place any credence in the OT as anything more than a book of mythology, some of which is found at an earlier date in other ancient middle-eastern cultures. The account of God it gives in general, seems to me to be the polar opposite almost of Jesus. He is vengeful, Jesus is all forgiveness, He is a harsh judge, Jesus is all love. As William Blake, the english Christian poet said " the Father! how unlike the Son!"
But I suppose that what is more contentious is my saying I don't believe Jesus died for our sins. But the plain fact is that I cannot believe God ever really required such a sacrifice. Rather, I see the death of Christ as an act of murder by the ignorant priesthood and so on of his day, abbetted by the Romans, for motives of their own.
Jesus came to give knowledge and love of God. That is my opinion. The pharisees and temple elders knew nothing of God, as they were wholly corrupt, and anyway, their religion amounted only to mass sacrifice of animals.

Where the gospels are concerned, there is an enourmous amount of great value in them. I have read them many times. But I don't think they are necessarily correct in all details, and are only a selection of 4 among a much larger number of gospels that were in circulation during the early years of the Christian era. Most of the others were suppressed and destroyed, some, such as the gospel of Thomas have now been rediscovered. They paint a quite different story. In our new testamant, there is also much else, which is not directly attributed to Jesus but followers, notably ST. Paul. I do not think Paulism, which is what we got, is what Jesus intended at all.

It seems that Paul thought that this Divine Human sacrifice was to replace animal scrifice. My problem is that I don't believe at all in a vengeful being who demands such sacrifices - animal or human. God is all-loving. There is no anger in Him. That is a petty, ignorant human weakness.

If you ask me what is wrong in this world if not sin, I would answer ignorance. Ignorance of God. And it is just that ignorance that Christ and the other Divine Incarnations I mentioned came to dispell.

Love & Peace.

 

hmmm, obviously you allready noticed that we fundamentaly do not agree. I'll continue talking later, I'm going to sleep it's getting late here in Holland. See you around!

 

what a great post! thanks for sharing your views, I'm finding myself drawn in the same direction, as well!

His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
Jesus said, "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
-The Gospel of Thomas

 

Thanks Fulmah, and thats a great quote.

 

Jesus said plenty about judgment. (For example, see Lk. 13:1-5.) He also spoke more about hell than he did about heaven.

See http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0088a.html.

Jesus repeatedly told his disciples that he came into the world in order to die for the sins of mankind, as prophecied in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Really? The holocaust shouldn't should arouse divine wrath? If God is not angry about the evil of this world, then he is not loving!

You don't think such ignorance is ever willful?

 

Why would Jesus' death wipe the slate of man's sins clean? Just because?

If Jesus did in fact die for our sins, why do we have to be 'moral', your implication means that I have a free ticket into heaven, no? And what purpose have we for hell if Jesus' death absolved our future misdoings?

 

Since this thread has drifted effectively tuned into a debate on Jesus...

I submitt that he didn't die on the cross, that crucifixion WITHOUT death was a common punishment, and that Jesus engineered his crucifixion as a way to step out of the movement he started, knowing full well the power inherent in martyrdom.

 

He came to reconcile us to God. This involves not only forgiveness of our sins, but also transformation of our lives by his Holy Spirit, as we are united with him by faith. (Rom. 6-8)

Were his disciples part of the conspiracy, or were they all duped?

 

Do you doubt his ability to enlist them or dupe them as he saw fit?

If memory serves, Mark tells the story of jesus sans virgin birth and resurection.
Or am I wrong?

 

The Gospel of Mark does not mention the Virgin Birth or Resurrection.

[Thats almost 'scary' you would know that from memory Geckopelli.]

 

I think you are entitled to your own opinion on this, your own understanding and reading of the Bible. I don't share your opinions, for reasons I've already explained, but you are entitled to hold them.
I will only add that to attribute human emotions such as anger to God is clearly wrong, because even humans can rise above anger and so on.So if God can't, He's on a lower level than us. And Christ forgave His murderers.

And what good does anger do regarding the halocaust, or abuses of Iraqi prisoners, or any of the other million abuses enacted on this earth? None at all. It usually leads to a reaction which causes even more problems.

Anger is a wholly un-Divine quality.

 

I seriously doubt his ability to fake his own death by crucifixion in front of religious and political authorities that desperately wanted him dead. I also find no reason at all to suspect him or his disciples of such grand deceit. Not only is this suggestion an unwarranted character assassination, it's also completely illogical. What could have possibly motivated them to stage such a massive deception, when it only brought them intense persecution and deat? Unlike many TV preachers today, they certainly didn't gain any wealth or political power from preaching the gospel. Their lives would've been much easier if they'd recanted their story, which at least one of them would've done if it were a fabrication.

His Gospel includes plenty of supernatural elements pointing to Christ's deity.

You've provided no objective historical or textual support for your opinions. Are they based on anything more than personal preference?

He forgave those who "knew not what they do" and those who repented of their sin, but he also issued numerous dire warnings to those who stubbornly persist in sin and unbelief. However, you don't seem very interested in the totality of his message.

Were the Nuremburg trials just petty vengeance?

Says who? Certainly not Jesus. He was quite perturbed when he drove the money changers out of the temple!

 

I don't believe that to-days so-called Christians have any idea of the totality of His message. They rely purely on the Bible, which I've already said I consider to be un-reliable for several reasons. The 4 gospels give only one side of the thing - the other 'banned' gnostic gospels give a wider picture.
It is not really possible to force oneself to believe in that which one thinks to be incorrect, or ilogical. I suggest thet the Bible, and in particuar the OT is not logical in its structure. It's not a matter of stubborness, but discrimination.

 

With the logic that perhaps Christians reject science because it threatens their world view...does it mean that Scientists reject religion for the same reason?
Roly.xxx

 

Well said, my dear

 

Religious People invented Science.

Scientific thinking (which Christianity did a nice job of fostering and popularising) rejects those things which are false.

Things like Evolutionism, Racism or the belief that a Fetus Baby is not really a living human.

So why are so many people living in the age of Scientific enlightenment (Brought to you by Religions) so willing to reject scientific evidence?

Because what they WANT to have faith in is troubled by 'Facts' or 'Evidence'.
They WANT to feel they have no God.
They WANT to feel THEY ARE GOD.

So they reject evidence which 'gets in the way' of the blind faith they CHOOSE to maintain.

Thats my theory.. and so far the facts continue to fall into supporting roles.