gobear and Christianity

The BBQ Pit
181

Incorrect. “A Christian is someone who follows religious beliefs based on the life of Jesus Christ”. See? I just defined the adherants, and I did it without defining the specifics of Christian belief.

Hate the Christianity, love the Christian? :rolleyes:

You’re attributing tenets to Christianity that are far from universal, and insulting those. It’s insulting when somebody makes a negative generalization (and you’ve made MANY negative generalizations) about a group of people you belong to and that generalization doesn’t apply to you.

First, hate and love are not mutually exclusive. If they were, life would be much simpler. Second, even though I’m angry at your obstinate refusal to acknowledge your insults and your pattern of “insult, deny insult, INSULT, apologize, ad nauseum”, I don’t hate you. I’m just not passionate enough about you for that.

Vehement disagreement is not, in and of itself, bigotry, and I don’t think you’re a bigot merely because you have strong feelings about religion. I think you’re a bigot because you let your vehement disagreement manifest itself in needlessly insulting ways, and because your so emotionally involved in the disagreement that your incapable of being rational about certain aspects of the argument (like your insistence that your gross generalizations are not insulting).

182

The key word there is “try” (bolded). And I agree with the second part of your statement, though to me it does mean all of those things. And the first part, “From what I can gather…”, may be empirically evident to you, but it’s not the way things ought to be; and it’s not what’s taught in the Bible. Sadly, though not surprisingly, assholes seem to have the loudest voices.

183

But your definition is so broad as to be useless. According to that, a Muslim is also a Christian because they also follow religious beliefs based on the life of Jesus Christ. (Jesus is Islam’s most revered prophet after Mohammed and is featured prominently in the Qu’ran.)

I don’t hate Christianity, nor do I hate Christians. I don’t agree with their faith, but I have no strong feelings for or against them in general. I don’t like specific Christians, like Pat Robertson, but you can’t hold that against me.

What negative generalizations have I made in this thread?

Meh, fair enough.

You have no basis for stipulating any “emotional involvement.” I say that I haven;t made any gross generalizations, except perhaps for the nature of salvation, and still less have I made any negative generalizations.

The difference between us is I want to attack ideas, and you want to attack me.

184

That’s what I get for posting while I’m on the phone with my boss.

I just think it’s ironic that most of the anger against gobear for his comment had to do with the first part: “Christians don’t believe in love…” Then a bunch of Christians come in here and yell at him and call him names. Way to show Christ’s love, folks.

That’s all I meant.

185

The crux of the matter, though, is that the issues I and others have with Christianity is how it is practiced by and large, not its ideals.

186

I have just had an atheist call me a heretic.

I am a little confused. Is it the part where I don’t hate Gobear that makes me a heretic, or the part where I don’t hate someone else?

I wouldn’t want to be a heretic, and not know the reason why.

Tris

187

Being a heretic is not necessarily a bad thing.

188

There are plenty of loving, kind, and virtuous Christians, but you don’t have be loving and kind to be a Christian. I think maybe my critics read “Christians believe in power, not virtue” as saying “Christians are not virtuous.” As I’ve said before, to be saved, all oyu have to do is asssent to a set of doctrines. That’s the whole point of grace, that the goodness and virtue follow the assent, but not necessarily.

Compare the Dalai Lama and Fred Phelps–they couldn’t be more different as moral beings, right? Now if we polled Dopers and asked, “who is the true Christian?”, I’d wager that 99.9% of Doeprs would say that the Dalai Lama is more of a “real” Christian than Fred Phelps. But that cannot be true–Fred is a Christian, and the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist. Now Fred is not at all Christ-like and he is in no way representative of the Christian mainstream, but he is nevertheless a Christian because he, in his mind at least, believes in Jesus as his savior, relying upon grace and not works for his freedom from sin. It’s about obedience, not virtue.

So I guess I can’t be hard on Leander for his behavior. He’s not Christ-like, but then he doesn’t have to be in order to be a Christian.

Still, I’m sure Metacom, Waverly, and Leander will find a way to twist this post so they can claim I called all Christians “Fred Phelpses” or something ludicrous like that.

189

Huh? Did you say that you can earn your salvation through works? If not, then why do you think that referred to you?

190

A few posts later:

At this point, it’s amusing.

191

Why? Because I stated twice that your intent is to attck me, not my ideas? What’s amusing is that you don’t even get my point.

192

Amusing and a little sad…

Seriously, do you think no one actually reads what you post?

This one makes even baby Jesus cry. :stuck_out_tongue:

Except for that huge chip on your shoulder, and the fact that you like to make little swipes at Christians all time, no, I wouldn’t say there’s an “emotional involvement” on your part.

And if lying were verboten, you’d be outta here.

I could not have juxtaposed this one with your next post any better…

193

Sorry, but I’m calling bullshit here. Unless you have some great, amazing power to read the minds of others and know their deepest thoughts or can pull up some well, recognized and respected academic research on this, all you’re spewing is garbage.

Yes, I know, this is just your opinion, but aren’t you also the one saying we need to challenge other’s opinions?

Please put up or shut up.

194

Fair enough. And much easier to discuss when both parties (including me!) aren’t acting silly. Though sometimes silly is fun…

I would say this: It is difficult for me as well (perhaps even moreso what with my “emotional attachment”) to sit back and watch so many so-called Christians act in such thoroughly nasty, hateful ways. And I mean down to the core, not just acting like an ass on a message board. Hate and bigotry towards gays is just one of the many things that drives me nuts, and it’s quite obvious that this is the root of gobear’s lashing out. So on the one hand I can understand his pain and need to blame us all; but on the other, the dishonesty, hatred and bigotry he has is not justified.

One more thing: There is, in fact, a lot of good that Christians do in the world, even today. And if you ever have a chance to visit a church (I won’t “endorse” any denominations, but you can probably figure it out) that truly spends its time, energy and efforts towards following in the love of Christ (instead of twisting and distorting it), I think you may see that there is still something quite remarkable, charitable, kind, compassionate, inclusive and loving about the faith.

195

Leander, for all your snideness, you haven’t yet done what I asked–show me where I made negative generalizations about Christians. It’s that simple. Can you do it or not? You made the accusation, so back it up. I have already made my position as clear as I can. Did you not understand the Dalai Lama/ Fred Phelps example? Should I try to explain it to you more slowly?

196

GAH! What does gayness have to do with anything? I am not lashing out or expressing anger towards Christians. I have explained and repeated myself, and tried to be as direct as I possibly can to explain that Christians are defined by their assent to a set of beliefs, not by their virtuous acts. (And I don’t care what the Catholics here say, the Catechism agrees with me, not with them). One is saved by grace, not by deeds.

So? I never denied it. You keep thinking I said that “Christians aren;t loving”, yet I said no such thing. My statement that you objected to in the other thread was “Christians believe in power and control, not love,” and that’s the nature of faith. It is about being obedient; virtuous deeds come from grace, not the other way around. How you manage to find that a generalization about Christian behavior, let alone a personal insult, is beyond me.

Again, this has nothing to do with gayness any more than it has to do with ketchup or lawn chairs. It also has nothing to do with my views on Christianity’s validity–even if I were a devout Christian, I would say the same thing. One must obey God and agree to a set of beliefs to be a Christian. Mere virtue doesn’t count. Anyone of any faith or no faith at all can be virtuous, but that doesn;t make them Christian (or Muslim or Jewish or. . . )

The Dali Lama may be Christ-like, but he isn’t a Christian. Fred is not remotely Christ-like, but he is a Christian. Not a good one or one who should be emulated, but he is a Christian because of his beliefs, not his deeds.

197

A Christian doesn’t try to practice love in order to win his salvation; he does it because his Lord commanded it, because it’s the right thing to do, and a wide variety of altruistic and selfish motives connected to them.

In fact, according to both Jesus and Paul, there’s only one thing you can do to “earn your salvation”: Keep the Law, absolutely perfectly, from earliest childhood on, without one single sin marring your record. And that includes such add-ons as Jesus’s “Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”

You have to be 100% as perfect as God above, to “earn your salvation.”

What else they say is, you don’t have to do this. God loves you, and all your fellow men and women. He’s willing to accept you, just as you are, because He loves you. It’s His free gift to you, a matter of unearned grace and mercy.

Now here’s where the part you object to, gobear, fits in: You accept that gift by trusting God’s goodness to you, i.e., by having faith in Him. That faith includes trusting that somehow, Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection make a difference in how God and Man are able to relate. That’s the Atonement. There are any number of theories about how that “somehow” works; you’re familiar with the one that says that it bought off God’s justice condemning everyone to Hell, the “substitutionary sacrifice” version. But explain that one to yBeayf, and he’d laugh in your face; the Orthodox have never subscribed to it, nor will they. In their eyes, God’s love planned out the Atonement from before the beginning of the world, as a sort of cosmic drama enacting the lengths to which God was prepared to go in order to get through to us. (I hope yBeayf will fine-tune that half-assed description of Christus Victor theology into something more coherent.) But having faith in God and in Jesus Christ as the mediator whose atonement brings God and man back into communion with each other, one then is obliged to keep His commandments, not out of moral or prudential reasons, but for love of Him. That’s the meaning of “faith without works is dead” – if you actually meant anything by confessing faith in Him, if you’re willing to let His love for you beget love for Him within you, then you’ll act out who He wants you to be in your life, out of love for Him.

I could not care less about trying to “earn my salvation.” Either I can trust His promise, and have always had it as a consequence of His free gift of it to me and to all men, or I cannot, and it’s pointless anyway. Because I trust and love Him, I choose to believe it’s there, and always has been, and to act accordingly, in keeping with what my beloved Lord wants.

But “earn” it? No way! I respect and honor zev and chaim for trying, but I don’t envy them the task. :eek:

And, though it’s a moral failing in me, I despise the attitudes of “Chevy Chase Christians,” with their “I’m Saved, and you’re not! Bwahaha!” attitude, as if it were a one-shot event that somehow makes them better than anyone else, and exempt from the human decency God commanded.

198

gobear, I agree with a lot of what you say. I often find myself nodding at your posts. I can even understand overshooting the mark in anger – me condemning all Christians, and you condemning people of faith, myself included. We’re expected to put up with a lot of bullshit.

And I understand not respecting people who do not respect us.

I guess what I’m not entirely sure about is why you’re doing the fundamentalists’ work for them. They’re the only people besides yourself that I know of that insist that a lack of Biblical literalism is heresy.

Frankly I prefer my Christians as unliteral as possible. And there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be. Many of the more liberal Christians I know just assume that the Bible was a book written by human beings who made mistakes, and the litmus test of whether a particular passage is correct is whether it matches their intuitive sense of their God.

Ultimately, these things are epistomological choice and are equally irrational – fundamentalism, personal intuitive understanding of the divine – and rationalism/positivism – are equally valid, because none can be proven by information outside their own system of thought. Until one has decided (irrationally) what constitutes a valid sort of knowledge, one cannot accumulate valid evidence for or against a system.

There is no way anyone – especially no one outside either system of knowledge – can compare the comparative validity of two different systems.

So why hand the laurel of True Faith[sup]TM[/sup] to the ones who take every word in that book seriously?

As for me, I’m a solitary Wiccan practicioner. I’ve taken some of the language and something of the basic framework from authors I like – and the occasional idea – but I pick and choose and much is taken from my own intuition. I do not believe in hell or any equivalent.

I have no single Sacred Text, and no Church. I’m not part of my religion because of an implicit threat should I become apostate. I’m a part of it because I find it fulfilling. I almost never mention, even in threads about religion. It’s a private thing. I do not go door to door, not do I preach. I do not seek converts – I believe, as many Wiccans do – that if anyone needs us, they’llfind us.

Where’s the obedience here? Where’s the power relationship?

199

:smack:
Sorry – so wrapped in my ideas that I didn’t check to see if my roommate was signed in. That last post by matt_mcl is mine.

200

Well, you’ve backpedalled quite a bit since that first page, but here’s a few:

You seemed to have done your best to qualify this one. Let’s not bullshit: no one starts a sentence that way if they’re not meaning to be insulting.

“Far less”? I guess that’s your opinion, but it’s also a generalization to state “Christians” without a qualifier and diminish the importance of virtue. But you knew that.

I guess this one covers all religions, though the one we’re “saddled with” just happens to be “Xianity”.

What exactly were you trying to say with that one?

So it’s “par from (sic) the course” for Christians to act that way? Nope, no generalization there.

See above.

And I hate to break it to you, but even your some of your pals might have a hard time with, “I am not lashing out or expressing anger towards Christians”. It’s so blaringly obvious that either you’re deep in denial or just plain lying.