posted
Agreed Dag. Many Liberal Christians also equivocate. I only added the word conservative because I had been occused of being from the "liberal cabal". I should not have added fuel to the fire.
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quote:Can Christianity be defined as adherence to Jesus' teachings, even if you don't believe in God (or Jesus)?
"Adherence to Jesus' teachings" is incompatible with "not believing in God," because Jesus makes very definite statements in his teachings about God. Following the greatest commandment requires belief in God; the way we are commanded to pray involves belief in God.
quote:Agreed Dag. Many Liberal Christians also equivocate. I only added the word conservative because I had been occused of being from the "liberal cabal".
Ah, I see. I think it's best if reference to the Cabal be kept to light-hearted threads, myself.
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quote: One might be able to be angry with ones enemy without hating them, but Jesus commanded us not to be angry with them at all.
He said love thy enemy, but did he actually say not to be angry at all? It seems to me you can be angry at someone you love.
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posted
I'm afraid that I may have acused Jim-Me of not being a Christian when I said
quote:If you do not believe that is possible, then you do not believe Jesus.
I did not mean to offend but I still do not understand how one can argue that Jesus's words are not possible to follow and still believe Jesus.
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posted
Glen, I posted this passage before. It is the passage that caused Jim-Me to say following Christ was not possible.
quote:Matt 5: 21-22 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother[b]will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Yeah, it seems to me that you accused him of not believing (or maybe not following) Christ, yet he seems to think that someone accused him of accusing someone else of not believing in Christ. As far as I can tell, no one made that second accusation.
There is a phrase "Salad Bar Christian." From my perspective it's not possible to be anything else, since each person reads the bible on their own terms. So what you take away isn't the same as other people take away. My question before obviously rejects any part of Jesus' teachings that require belief in God. But that isn't a reason to reject the rest of them.
Jim-me's belief is his own. It doesn't make any sense to tell him he doesn't believe what he believes.
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quote:It doesn't make any sense to tell him he doesn't believe what he believes.
Oh contrare. Most of us proport to believe many things which on closer inspection we really don't accept at all. It is important for us to recognize when our beliefs are inconsistant with our behavior so that we can strivee to be ethical human beings. One of the most important things we can do is to continually challenge each others beliefs.
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quote: Most of us proport to believe many things which on closer inspection we really don't accept at all.
True, but he does believe something. But as I've been saying, just because someones beliefs don't coincide with a particular aspect of Christianity isn't justification for accusing him of not believing in Jesus altogether.
In fact, wasn't a big part of this thread earlier about apparent contradictions in Jesus' teachings, with respect to war and loving your enemies? Some people can reconcile those statements, and others can't. If you can't, you have to choose between them.
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posted
By the way Jim-Me, Liberal Cabal never offended me, it was the part that followed (have suddenly gone all fundamentalist, choosing to quote a few lines of scripture and insist it's the whole truth, as it suits their point, and then turn around and question my devotion to my belief system.) In that statement, you question my sincerity. I have never posted anything that questioned your sincerity, only your consistency.
[ February 17, 2005, 09:36 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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posted
Ok... gonna try to sort this out. Please bear with and I would ask The Rabbit, Glenn Arnold, and Tom Davidson in particular to be patient enough to try to get something out of this jumble.
First off, Rabbit, I didn't mean to question your sincerity, but to criticize your argument when I said you all were being "fundamentalist". That word has a very specific definiton and I do not throw it around lightly.
You were all quoting specific scriptures and ignoring anything but what you see as the plain sense of the specific verse. It's moderately foolish to talk as if Dag or I do not know what Christianity is about, but to act as if Chesterton, Lewis, Augustine, and Aquinas do not know is to take an extraordinarily narrow and unorthodox view of Christianity. To prefer the text of a few verses in spite of examples given which contradict the blanket interpretation you give to them and *especially* over some fairly authoritative statements from Doctors of the Catholic Church (which, while far from the entirety, *does* make up enough of the Christian population to qualify as not insignificant, theologically speaking) is to be rather extremely fundamentalist.
And this is intriguing and ironic because you are all liberal enough to pride yourself on being open minded, yet you are the ones insisting Christianity has to be your way, where as I, the conservative one, maintained from the beginning that Pacifism had a place in Christianity.
<rambling rant> Were I to imitate your style and argument, I could point to the end of John 6, stories of the last supper, and a passage in 1 Cor and ask how you could be Christian without recognizing the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation because not only were Jesus's words unequivocal in the statement, but you can't find me a passage where he says or does something that contradicts that sense of the reading as I have with your examples. Further, I could question Dana's credibility as a minister, since there are passages in the bible, unequivocal ones, about church leaders being male.
But you don't see me doing that, do you?
Not only are all the words in the bible impossible to follow, there are some that, in the plain sense of them, should NOT be followed. I'm reminded of an old Christian comedy routine in which the person opens a bible to random scriptures and reads "and he hanged himself" and "go ye and do the same". Peter, in one of his epistles, says of Paul's writing that there are subtleties in it that are best left to what we would now call "the theologians". Incidentally, I think this is the only place in the bible where any New Testament work is referred to as scripture. But back on subject, scripture is, by it's own hand, not meant to be just read and then mimicked. One of the beauties of Christianity is that to apply it to your life requires the littlest understanding, yet there are mysteries and subtleties for the greatest intellects to spend a lifetime exploring. </rambling rant>
As for where someone said I was claiming others to be un-Christian, Tom said:
quote:Jim-Me, I think you are missing a huge point: not all liberals are atheists
(which he did smile about, in all fairness to him, but it seemed a condescending smile as his point was "you poor boy, don't you know that I'm not the one you are fighting here?") and The Rabbit said
quote:If you had been around long enough, you would know that I have always been devoutly religious and that Bob is about to marry a minister.
which was doubly galling because I am not only not a newbie, but my original member number (381) is just over half what hers is. I think I have already explained how my "suddenly gone fundamentalist" did not imply that they didn't have faith before that point but was more directed towards a shift in arguing tactics for the convenience of the point being made. Not that they were being religious to suit the argument, but that they were being *fundamentalist* to suit the argument. If I failed to explain it this time, I'm not likely able to do so properly.
For being able to follow all Christ's directives perfectly, then we all need to work on our mountain-tossing and camel-squeezing skills, too, don't we? Striving for perfection is great, but when we can't even agree on what perfection is (as manifest by this thread) it is natural that we should strive against each other, isn't it?
I meant to compliment you, Rabbit, on emphasizing that we should ask more often "what would we do to Jesus?" than "what would Jesus do?" as I think that is a very astute and deeply Crhistian observation that many Christians miss entirely. That is not all, however, we are also admonished to "be imitators of Christ" and He is set forth as our example... so it *is* relevant that He was capable of Anger and Violence without sinning.
Finally, if you needed an example of anger without hatred, last night should serve, as I was quite ticked off, but never once wished ill toward you.
posted
First, Jim-Me, let me apologize for assuming you were a newbie. My visits here are sporatic and so I had no idea that you were a long term Jatraquero under a new name. Please do not take offense because I did not recognize you.
Second, I think our disagreement here may stem from a disagreement on the meaning of anger.
The OED defines the word in the following way
quote:Anger: The active feeling provoked against the agent; passion, rage; wrath, ire, hot displeasure.
To me, the words passion, rage and hot are intergral to the feeling of anger. I know that it is possible to feel displeased, offended or indignant, with out feeling heated passion. I don't really consider those anger. Perhaps my definition is too narrow, but if you use my definition then the scriptures and my comments are fairly consistent.
Certainly, when Christ drove the money changers from the temple he expressed strong displeasure with their actions, but the scriptures do not say he was angry or give any reason to believe that he felt hot displeasure, wrath or rage. There is no indication that he lost control or that anyone was injured by his acts.
Some translations of Matthew, read "angry with out cause", evidently there is a discrepancy between some of the greek texts from which the translations were made. The older texts, omit the without cause and I prefer this version because I have never been angry when I did not think there was a cause. This phrase makes it far to easy for people justify an unjust response. If you understand anger to include feeling displeased or offended, then I believe the "with out cause is necessary". Although I don't believe that there is any justification for the hot displeasure and rage I associate with the word "anger", I do believe that there are many things which should displease and offend us.
Finally, Jim-Me if you will accept my apology I will believe that you did not intend to question my sincerety. Evidently we both took offense where no offense was intended.
[ February 18, 2005, 06:39 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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