I belong to a Church. That is, a group of believers. People striving to emulate Christ through acts of Love towards our fellow man. Christ instructed us to pray that "Frogive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Such that if we do not actively forgive, we will not be forgiven. The once saved always saved principal may not be so, but I feel that the “unless you confess to another human being” principal to be just as untrue.
If you belong to a religion, you belong to a set of rules and doctrine, contained within is a judgement. Such that failure to follow said doctrine results in a negetive result on your afterlief experience.
Perhaps, our definition of religion is wrong, or maybe I am religious and all those whom I would seek to separate my self from with this post are something else, something that we have yet give it’s own word. However I would contend that in fact Religious is the word for them, and the word for me is “Little Christ” the literal meaning of “Christian”.
Cyrin, what is your interpretation of Matthew 5:17 (KJV):
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
Also, are you sure that you understand Catholicism? Have you ever been a Catholic?
I am a Protestant. One of the most cruel and unChristlike actions that has happened within my family came about from two “devout” Baptists that I know:
When their son, raised as a Baptist, married a compassionate and devout Catholic. The parents refused to even attend the wedding. Whenever she visited their home she was “assaulted” by their very unloving words of ridicule and scorn for her beliefs. When she died from a sudden illness, her mother-in-law refused to attend the service or to even come to give comfort to her son.
Their anti-Catholic attitudes lead to a family torn apart for twenty-five years. It affected grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
What a waste and misinterpretation of the teachings of the Christ!
In no way should my comments reflect on the Baptist as a whole.
My intrepretation, as previously stated, is that if Christ came to fufil the law, then did, and we are no longer bound to it.
Also, having been raised as a Baptist, I feel deeply for your friend and ANYone who is acted upon in such a way which does not reflect the Love christ would show them. I do believe that this is just another example of how religion (Baptists in this case) causes people to do things which part them from Christs message of Love. Were they to actually act out of Love in the sitiuation, they would have disagreed with, but continued to respect and love the other person. Christ would have done that… why didn’t they?
. . . Not from what I’ve read . . . The inmates of her so-called “hospitals” got no medical or pain treatment, just prayed at. And her campaigns against birth control, divorce and abortion resulted in more, not less, misery. She couldn’t even keep nuns or nurses working at her hospitals, because the conditions there were so appalling—but noitice when she needed treatment, she went to the best hospitals in the U.S. and Europe!
Oh, well, pardon the hijacking, it’s just that that little Albanian freak pisses me of . . .
Yes, but their role is not entirely analogous to the old relationship between the pope and, say, the Patriarch of Constantinople. There were five or six Sees, prior to the splintering of the Church, that were apostolic and above the other Sees. One went West at the Schism, the others all went East.
I’ve been to Eastern Rite Catholic services before. Most enlightening.
If you’re trying to imply that this is a Catholic doctrine, you are wrong. However, Jesus did give the leaders of his followers the power to fogive or retain sins in his name.
Within your own statement was judgement, when you said you must forgive others to be forgiven. That is a judgement.
And any group of faith that doesn’t have rules or doctrines cannot be Christian. To be Christian you have to believe certain things. Therefore, by definition, it is a RULE that you hold to certain DOCTRINES to be Christian, regardless of what denomination you are.
YOUR definition of religion is politically motivated and twisted, and most certainly wrong. You take everything you don’t like about religion, and limit the term religion to that, while trying to claim everything you do like about religion as being not actually part of religion. That’s nonsense.
Oh, so Catholics are just religious, and you’re a perfect little Christian. How fucking arrogant is that. Without the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, you wouldn’t even begin to know how to be Christian. You owe your entire faith to them, every doctrine and every belief of any value. Instead of spitting on the historic Christian religion, you should be investigating it.
So? What does that have to do with anything? The Law that Jesus fulfilled was a specific set of precepts incumbent upon those of the Jewish faith. We are not bound by those. However, that does not mean that there aren’t rules and expectations within the Christian faith.
I find it hard to come to the assumption that without the Catholic or Orthodox church, the teachings of Jesus Christ would somehow have been lost forever, as if needing such a spesfic support system of man to carry on the WORD of God…
Therefore I am quite content to disagree with the Catholic churches interpretation of the Bible, think for myself and follow Christ alone.
Despite what you may think, to disagree with Catholic docterine does not necessarily make me a Catholic hater… I still love you.
But what makes you qualified to discern the meaning of the Bible? And how would you ahve a Bible to read were it not for the work of the Catholic Church?
True, even though I can never remember them all. Rome, Constantanople, Alexandria, Armenia, Antioch, Jerusalem, and then I always forget if there’s another one? Ravenna? The modern patriarchies are more rite based than locational, though, you’re right.
In my quote, I used the word “therefore”, meaning that prior to that statement, I made a statement which brought me to the point contained therin… perhaps if you had read the WHOLE post…
How would I have had a bible without the Catholic Church… I’m not sure, that is not the reality in which I find myself, however I am quite confident that I would have, were the Catholic church never to have existed.
Whatever it is that qualifies me to interpret the bible for myself is the same qualifications which YOU grant to those who have previously intrepreted the bible for you. The Word was for Gods Children, as one of his childern, I feel qualified to read and come to my own conclusions regarding it. Just as Catholics do.
Maybe, but it was the Catholics and the Orthodox who wrote the New Testament of the bible, and picked which books made up the bible, as well as developing a lot of the doctrine, like the trinity, Jesus being both G-d and man, and the sacrifice of Jesus being neccesary for the forgiveness of sin, that is common belief among most of modern Christianity.
It is also common belief among most of modern Christianity that the writing and compiling of the new testament was inspired by the Holy Spirit. As such, the bible stands alone…
Afterwards, intrepretation gives us many different options on what to believe. All of these intrepretations are just as valid as opinion goes and not shared by each other (necessarily, there is lots of crossover). As such, I feel it would be rather pompous to claim somehow that MY intrepretation was the RIGHT one and that all others are invalid. There is nothing that sets me, a human being, above anyone else, and I resent the fact that the Catholic church can tell me that those who have intrepreted the bible, and formed catholicism, have been humans of greater importance thanm me. I BELIEVE that my interpretation is correct, because it is MY intrepretation, but I do not disrespect other intrepretation, by telling them that I am the be all and end all of intrepreters. As such, I intend to follow this path, and share my views with others, in a loving, non-judgemental way. The way I think Christ would have done it… that is after all my whole point.
This is completely incorrect. The darkest era of European history were the so called “dark ages”. This is the period from around 500 A.D. to about 900 A.D., or the first 400 years of the “middle ages”.
Religion demanded and achieved the near complete erradication of knowledge of medicine, anatomy, and science in general. It was a HUGE step backwards, and it took nearly 1000 years to reach parity with the pre dark ages understanding of the world.
Hippocrates had very nearly achieved the modern scientific method in his study of medicine and disease. Though the knowledge of the time was quite primitive, the mode of thinking
was very powerful, and was certainly leading in the correct direction. This was completely erased.
Literacy in the average population went to near zero. Literacy before this period was quite high. Most children by the age of 14 could speak and write in latin and greek.
I would say religion came as close as any other thing to extinguishing that spark.
Well, I know that common belief is that the writing and compiling of the NT was inspired by the Holy Spirit, but my point was, if that was the case, the Holy Spirit used the Catholic/Orthodox Church to do it, and in fact, a lot of those works not accepted as part of the bible were rejected because they were only used by small, isolated splinter groups.
As for interpretations, obviously various interpretations exist, but that doesn’t make them equally valid. For example, elsewhere in GD, there’s a discussion about the parable of the Prodigal Son, and different people have interpreted the parable differently. However, no one has interpeted the parable to be describing ancient Etruscan fiscal policy, for example, or that Jesus meant that G-d hates jugglers. If someone tried to interpret the parable in that way, it would seem clear to me that they were wrong.
Obviously, different people have different skills and training. Someone might be a skilled carpenter, or a skilled doctor. That doesn’t mean they’re a better person than the person who isn’t. It just means they’re better in one specific area. Likewise, a person can learn how to study and interpret the bible. It doesn’t mean they’re better people. It just means they have certain skills and training that makes then capable of doing it well.
Maybe, but rampaging barbarians plundering cities, toppling centralized governments, destroying communication and trade, and forcing surviving settlements to establish armed camps had a lot to do with it too.
New thought: If the Catholic church was responsible for the Bible as we know it, why are there so many people who disagree with the Catholic intrepretation?
If I wrote a book, would I not be the source for accurate intrepretation?
God wrote the book, perhaps He is the one to go to for intrepretation. Christ was granted the authority to speak on behalf of God. He made himself quite clear (as far as I am concerned) that a religious hierarchical system, was not the way to go. And here I am, with many others, resisting religion, acting out of Love, and following Christ.
All those things were allowed by the collapse of the civilization, not causes of the collapse. or… These were thing that happened during the “dark ages”, not the cause of it.
