I second the motion, having just read Stranger last week. Though this is substance for a different thread, I have been very personally challenged lately by Lib and Poly’s so called “Johnnish” interpetations of Christianity and Heinlein’s “grokking” and “water sharing”. It has lead me to wish that Atheists, Christians, Palestinians, Jews, Gays, Str8s, WHATEVER, would simply put down their rocks and learn to grok.
Yes, I know, I’m a bit naive and hopeful :sigh:
Mars Horizon, I’m cynical and pessimistic, but I wish for the same thing. (And yes, Lib and Poly -and others- have greatly challenged my perspective as well. It’s like having your head gently twisted so that you see the same thing you were just looking at in an entirely different way, innit?)
Yup 
Dreamer,
I have been posting here for a while, and I have observed a thing. There are people who come here, and boldly speak the Word of God, and are reviled, and despised from the first post. Others come here and proclaim their faith, and get respect and deference from everyone, including some that don’t generally have the experience of offering respect and deference to Christians.
The most common similarity among the ones who end up in the first group, in my observation is this: Whatever it was that they intended to say, what they were heard to say was “God doesn’t love you because you do this, or believe that.” At the moment when someone hears that message, they feel condemnation, not from God, but from the evangelist who spoke. And that evangelist is not God, and however much of a scholar he might be, his condemnation feels haughty and self righteous.
Saying after the fact that you didn’t mean that, and that you think God is trying to change them out of love, or that you want to help them find God, or pretty much of anything you say just doesn’t work. You have to do what you have done, which is to own what you have said, and ask forgiveness. That works. It allows people to see you as a human, seeking to do something out of love of both God and Man.
When the roman soldier asked the Lord for a miracle, Jesus did not ask him for a conversion first. He just gave him what he asked for. This man was a practicing Polytheist. A genuine heathen! Surely we must be as accepting of the nature of the differences in men as was our Lord. When sins are against you, or against the helpless, or the weak, then you are responsible to fight a sin other than your own. But aside from that, we are, or should be, too busy keeping ourselves from sinning to be wasting time trying to organize other peoples hearts.
So, let us go out into the world with our candles lit for the world to see. Let us invite judgments on our own walk; not make judgments on the walks of others. Surely this is speaking out boldly, and proclaiming the Word of God. And if our brother sees us sin, and tells of it, then we can thank him, and make that change in ourselves, whom we can control, rather than cry out that he change, whom we cannot control.
Fighting sin is a lot like fighting ignorance. You can’t really fight anyone’s but your own.
Tris
Thank You Triskadecamus. I can’t think of a better note to end this thread on. I came here at first for fun, but then realized there’s much to be learned and that’s why I’m still here :).
Polycarp, I just got back from the bookstore with Stranger In A Strange Land and JOB: A Comedy of Justice. I was only going to buy the first one but when I read the story of the JOB book, I just had to buy it too! You will be hearing from me when I’m done :).
dreamer, whenever I get to wondering if I’m “doing it right” w/r/t being a Christian, I seem to get pointed here:
Comes right down to it, that’s pretty easy, huh?
…and, hey, bonus for the fundies, it’s actually from the Old Testament!
[sub]And remember folks, Tygr gets all his Scripture from the Amplified Bible© - Where Nothing Gets Lost in the Translation!™[/sub]
OK, so that’s where that hymn comes from. Tygr, the second sentence of the verses you quoted is approximately the first verse of the hymn I cited.
dreamer, you mean you got the contract that says this business of being a Christian would be easy?! If that’s so, can we switch? That was, of course, said very much in jest. I’m surprised Polycarp and I have missed it for so long, but the Episcopal church talks about “the three legged stool of scripture, reason, and tradition.” (I may have the first two backwards,) What that means to me is, in determining how to act, we are supposed to use not only the Bible, but also logic and thought. Tradition is in there as a fallback, I suspect to be used as much for ritual or answering questions such as “Why is Christmas in winter when lambing season is in spring?” as anything.
I’m a bit radical here, but to me, Christianity is a way of getting into trouble by speaking up for those who have no one to speak for them, by trying to do just a little more, by coming up with someone no one else seems to have tried and pulling it off. Here’s an example. After last Thanksgiving, the local food bank was talking about running low on food. Instead of just buying a couple of extra cans of food myself, I took a chance and went to my HR manager and asked if we couldn’t have a collection in our office. Not only did our office hold a food drive, all four branches of our company held one and it became the first of a series of quarterly charitable initiatives. It may not be loaves and fishes, but it’s not bad.
Reach out. Try something new. Reach out to the person no one wants to speak to. They may be an idiot, but then again, there was a time when that person was me. “Be wary as serpents and innocent as doves.” Listen, learn, love. And keep teaching. I have learned a lot from you, and I hope to continue to do so. This seems to be a good place to teach and learn.
By the way, it’s nice to know you!
CJ
Wa-a-a-it a minute!!! I finally hit the Post of the Beast and that’s it?!!! So much for any attempts at even pretending to be evil! [sigh!]
CJ
CJ you rock! Glad to hear you passed the “Post of the Beast” without incident
In continuing to think about the questions in the OP, I remembered something that has bearing on it, and on something Tris said:
To address this difficulty, I figured if Polycarp can quote liturgical text, I can surely quote Martin Luther, in a letter to his colleague, Philip Melancthon who taught Greek and what would now be called “Systematic Theology” at the University of Wittenberg. Philip was accused of sin because of doctrinal positions he was taking in following Luther. Naturally he felt guilty because of the divisive controversy. Philip’s way of handling it was to not speak out much for reform.[sup]1[/sup] Luther, who knew something about such anxiety answered, in part, in this way:
It appears Luther is exhorting Phillip to not let the fear of sinning drive him to inaction. If the choice is between making mistakes and doing nothing, remember you are forgiven already for mistakes you make, so you might as well hurry on out and make them!
If you are interested, and want a better explanation of the concept of “Sinning Boldly”, in searching for the exact quote, I found this website, which is a fascinating sermon explaining the depth of it’s meaning, regarding living as a Christian. Some quotes from it:[ul]liobody can order a particular way to please God from anybody else. When it becomes an order, it ceases to be gospel.[/li][li]“Bold Sinning” means recognizing the reality of our own sinfulness that is always present but not always obvious. To recognize and to own it gives us some limited control over its effects while God is at work doing the cleansing.[/li][li]To equate Christian faith with certain prescribed life styles and actions harms our ability to see faith as essentially an inward and unobservable inclination.[/li][li]The (L)aw can be an attractive savior – do this, don’t do that, follow steps A, B, and C and you will be saved. But like all easy and attractive saviors, it will suck the life and humanity out of us.[/li][li]Brave sinning…means freedom from using the law or ourselves as measuring rods and punishing rods against others.[/ul]All in all, it’s a great reminder not to fear being ourselves.[/li][sup]1[/sup]From here.
And to not be afraid of who we are means we must always be willing to grow and learn in the constant search of finding out who it is we want to be.
Or something like that…
I’m not sure exactly what’s being said here. Although, I agree that Christians are sinners saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; I don’t consider that a license to just go out and do as I please and deliberately sin, sin, sin just because I’m under grace.
**What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Romans 6:1-4 **
If I’ve misunderstood the posting please let me know. Perhaps I’m not getting what you’re saying.
His4Ever, I think what Tygr and Dr. King were getting at is not that we should deliberately go out and sin, but that we sin each day as part of our normal lives. I don’t think I’ve broken any of the 10 commandments today, but when I saw someone weaving in and out of traffic this morning making a driving a bit more dangerous for me and everyone else, I’m afraid I was not loving him as I did myself. [rationalization]Why should I? It was my life he was endangering![/rationalization] Haven’t you seen the greeting card which reads “Lord, I’m doing ok. I haven’t sworn, I haven’t [various sins]. . . but sooner or later I’m going to get out of bed and it will be a whole new ballgame.”?
My take on Christianity is the standards set for us human beings are perfect law, but we are imperfect creatures. Since we cannot obey the law with the perfection it demands, Christ came into the world that we might have forgiveness and that our imperfect natures may be reconciled with perfect Divinity. Christ’s having come into the world become fully human, complete with embarassing defects such as having to go to the bathroom at the most inconvenient times is one of the reasons I am Christian and not some other religion. Flesh is imperfect. Christ knows – he’s been there. Just because he was able to transcend imperfection does not mean he doesn’t know what it’s like.
To me, what “Sin Boldly” means is, instead of sitting around worrying about whether your actions are in perfect accordance with every jot and tittle of God’s law, act when you are called to. There’s a protest song from the days of the civil rights movement by Malvina Reynolds called It Isn’t Nice which puts it well. Out of respect for the SDMB’s policies, I won’t quote the full lyrics (here’s a link to the full set – it’s about the 6th song down) but they run in part “It isn’t nice to block the doorway . . . There are nicer ways to do it but the nice ways always fail.”
Acknowledge your sinfulness (Good Lord, now I’m sounding like a Fundamentalist :rolleyes:! ), but don’t let that sinfulness stop you from acting like a Christian. If you don’t do the first, you come across as sort of “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah nah! I’m going to Heaven and yo-o-ou’re no-o-ot!” If you don’t act, however, eh, enough quoting. Read the book of James.
I hope this helped. Tygr, I hope I got your point right.
CJ
Okay, thanks for clarifying. I’m not always sure I understand what’s being said. And in order to know if I agree with something, I need to be sure of what the person is saying.
dreamer, if you’re still interested in further input I’ve got a quote from a pagan on the meaning of Christianity that I can post…
but it’s at home and I’m at school. It could be a while.
Yes SisterCoyote I would like to see that.
Well, sinning boldly doesn’t sound all that great to me. Then I look around at the other side of it, and I see sinning furtively. Well, I really hate that! It sounds extra yucky. One of those little twists of mind that let me convince myself that God won’t notice it if I sin just a little bit, so I won’t get into trouble over it.
Sigh.
OK, maybe this sinning boldly thing has something to say for it. It at least leaves me looking into the Face of God, for all that I have, once again, screwed up real bad. I have spent a lot of effort trying not to screw up really bad so much. It doesn’t seem to be working, though, in my particular case. So, I suppose it ends up being pretty bold sinning, whatever I might have thought it was.
Man, I hate it when I fall prey to the frailties of the common man! It would be so neat to be special. But, I have to face it, for all that might be special about me, there is that same old tired, ordinary sloth, gluttony, pride, and avarice that is entirely ordinary. Loving me must get tedious, huh Lord?
Thank you for doing it.
Tris
Nice contributions, gang.
This is a little tangential to dreamer’s central concern, but I thought I might add it anyway.
This agnostic has always been a little uneasy with using 1 or 2 sentences from the Bible to articulate a certain theological position. IMHO, context is always important, especially when it is at least possible that the source is using metaphor or hyperbole.
So let’s take a look at the 2nd chapter of the First Letter of John, written c. 100 C.E. The chapter opens with some advice as well as some good news: don’t sin, but if you do know that “…we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
The third to sixth verses state that those who know JC will obey his commandments (and those who don’t obey his commandments don’t really know Him). This, IMHO, addresses those who interpret JC’s dying for our sins as a sort of get out of jail free card.
Conveniently, verses 7-16 clarify what sort of commandment John has in mind. It is -you guessed it- the commandment to love one’s neighbor (or actually one’s brother in this chapter, but that seems to be pretty much the same thing).
So, according to my reading, when 1 John 2.6 says that those who abide in Him should “…walk just as He walked”, it is referring especially to Christ’s commandment to love another.
**dreamer wrote:
I know it’s not right to say “the bible is truth so you must believe it too”, I understand that. And I have no problem with people who disagree, that’s their choice. I also understand that it sounds very condescending to sit here and tell you to stop doing what you’re doing because God says so. But, I also cannot sit back and do nothing because if you are doing something I believe God says to be wrong, I would want you to figure that out for yourself.
Dreamer**, let me offer you some of my experience. I tried being a Christian. I invited Jesus into my heart and opening myself up to Him. After 3 days of wrangling over the issue of homosexuality and what He had to say about it, I said, thanks but no thanks! I gave up on it.
Years later, Freyr (the Norse god) entered my life. It’s not been the easiest path, but it has worked for me. I’m happy. I have the answers to my questions and my life makes sense to me.
To directly answer your point: *But, I also cannot sit back and do nothing because if you are doing something I believe God says to be wrong, I would want you to figure that out for yourself. *
My soul and my life are mine to live, as best I can. I’ve found my answers and they work, for me. I do know that Christianity doesn’t work for me. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. shrug
What you have to realise is that while it works very well for you, it doesn’t for everyone else and you need to realise they have to find their answers elsewhere.
diZerega, Gus Ph.D. Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 2001
Love and forgiveness? I can handle that. I’m not always so very good at it, but I can handle it.
And (reminder - 
) I’m not even Christian.
I am late, though.