It seems there are many people who are fine with Christians, until the Christian actually demonstrates they follow Christ’s words. “You’re a Christian? Great! Oh, wait, you actually believe and follow what Jesus said? You’re bad and judgemental!!!” It’s like they think most Christians worship “Buddy Christ” from ‘Dogma’.
First off, thanks tdn. Thanks to a good therapist and better friends, I actually do have self-esteem and self worth these days, and I’m quite fond of the person I’ve become. That person does have a streak of religious fanatic though. My religion continues to do pleasant things for me, including things like getting a chance to sing Handel’s Messiah this past Christmas, so I’m afraid it’s non-negotiable.
I’m an unorthodox Christian. I admit that. I also don’t intend to come off as preachy, but when I read someone giving such a lousy impression of a faith which has done a great deal for me, I have to speak out. I’m also fascinate by what people do and do not believe and why. My father, an agnostic to the core, said many times, “If God can’t tell the difference between someone who goes to church every Sunday and does terrible things the other 6 days of the week and someone who never darkens the door of a church but does good things 7 days a week, he ain’t worth worshipping!” I’m inclined to agree, and I’ll use that passage from Matthew I cited earlier as back up.
I’ve come to suspect that people who have the sort of mindset Vanilla’s been espousing recently need to feel that they’re better than someone, that they’re Right about something. After all, if everyone gets into heaven, how can they be better than anyone? What’s the point of it? Meanwhile, I’m coming at the question from the opposite direction: if everyone doesn’t get into heaven, how do I know I will?
Revtim, I wanted to address your question about “No one comes to the Father except through me”. I’m going to sound a bit like Bill Clinton here, but to me it comes down to your definition of “through”. Through the efforts of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others, I’m able to vote. I didn’t have anything to do with that directly, yet the fact exists. The Nicene Creed states “Through him [God] all things were made.” I take “through” to mean “by way of”. By Christ’s sacrifice, man was reconciled with God. Through Christ, we are saved. It’s not my place to say who “we” are or are not; it should be sufficient for my faith to know that the atonement was made. I’m with jlzania. Being mortal and limited, I cannot begin to completely know God, nor do I want a God who has limits. It’s entirely possible that the hardest core Fundamentalist there is and I might both be right, if God truly has no limits. I can’t see how that could happen, but hey, I’m a very limited mortal.
By the way, Aries28, jlzania, kalhoun, calm kiwi, and of course Steve Wright, I have enjoyed reading what you have to say very much. Thank you.
CJ
Ah, OK. Good to hear it!
But Jesus did spell it out for me,loudly and clearly.
When questioned about the law he said:
Striving to obey the two primary laws should pretty much take up this life time.
Yeah Siege I was always told that “through” Jesus meant to emmulate him. To live your life as he did not that absolutely had to accept him as your savior. Of course I never bought into the whole thing and have been atheist for almost 30 years so what do I know. 
You know I couldn’t care less what vanilla believes but when she starts in with this “I am right. You are wrong.” crap, she deserves what she gets. It is just arrogant and dismissive of the billions of people that don’t believe in her version of god. She thinks that I am going to hell. She may as well say I’m going to Atlantis. Don’t believe it. Don’t care what she thinks. It means nothing to me but to the people that believe in a different version of god her attitude is an insult and deserving of the current dogpile.
Revtim, we’re not saying Vanilla shouldn’t tell people they’re going to Hell if they don’t believe in Jesus.
We’re saying she’s going about it in the completely wrong way.
-
We’re saying she’s being tactless and judgemental, instead of being tactful and understanding.
-
We’re saying she’s taking an issue that ought to be dealt with one-on-one, face to face, and is instead dealing with it en masse.
-
We’re saying that she has chosen a supremely poor venue for her thundering denunciations of people en masse–an Internet message board. The SDMB has often been compared to a rowdy bar. Well, she’s performing the virtual equivalent of walking into Cecil’s Place on a Saturday night wearing a “Repent!” sandwich board and shouting, “Jesus is the Way! You’re all gonna burn in Hell!” at the amazed folks at the bar. And you wonder why they start hollering, “Fuck off!” at her?
The Gospel is not getting preached here, Revtim. Vanilla, by telling people here in this thread that they’re going to Hell if they don’t believe in Jesus, is not “preaching the Gospel”. All she is doing is merely posting a loud and judgemental opinion on an Internet message board, and as such it receives the same merit and consideration from the SDMB that all of the other loud and judgemental opinions that are posted here receive, whether it’s “Fat girls are ugly” or “SUVs are destroying the world”.
Context is all, Revtim. These people–“the good ones”–are being what I would call “polite”. :rolleyes: “Being polite” doesn’t qualify as “picking and choosing which words of their savior they decide to follow”, no matter how you, the Atheist, may choose to interpret it as yet another perceived inconsistency of Christianity.
In the context of a message board conversation on a topic other than anything to do with religion (which BTW, this thread isn’t–it’s a thread about loudmouthed celebrity activists at a pro-choice rally, remember?) it’s totally inappropriate to suddenly inform the rest of the participants in the thread that they are all going to Hell if they don’t believe in Jesus.
And, “the bad ones” are being damn rude. And are quite rightly attacked for it. In a social context, it’s being a jerk to walk up to a group of people and bluntly inform them, categorically, and out of the blue, that they’re all going to spend eternity burning in Hell if they doesn’t accept Jesus as their personal savior. And the SDMB is no different.
CONtext is ALL, Revtim.
Look.
|
|
|
V
There is a time and a place for witnessing. There is a time and a place for telling people that Jesus is the only Way and that folks who don’t accept Him are going to Hell. That’s the entire point I’m trying to make here.
Yes, I suppose that if a Christian took the mandate to “save the world”, and that Bible verse, totally seriously, then that Christian would be telling people they were going to Hell if they didn’t believe in Jesus non-stop, 24/7 365. And there are people like that in the world, God help us.
But–here’s the point–we don’t want them on our Internet message board doing that. According to this MB’s rules, both written and unwritten (“thou shalt not be a jerk by bringing up Jesus in every single thread thou posteth to”), if she wants to open a GD thread in order to tell her fellow Dopers that we’re all going to Hell if we don’t believe in Jesus, then that’s fine. But she’d better not bring the matter up constantly, in every thread, even though, according to your simplistic interpretation of Christianity, her Bible may tell her to.
And it’s naive, to say the least, for you to sit there and say, “Well, that Bible verse says she’s supposed to tell people that they’re going to Hell if they don’t believe in Jesus, so why flame her for saying so?” Because that’s not how the SDMB works. And you know it perfectly well. Think of the other one-trick-ponies. Are any of them welcome to come into a thread and bring up, say, the failings of George W. Bush, or of liberals, or of the SDMB administration, again and again, in completely unrelated discussions? Certainly not. And are you going to argue that her religion requires her to bring up Jesus and Hell in every post, at every possible opportunity? In other words, that the Bible requires her to spam the SDMB? That would certainly be an interesting question for the Admins to deal with.
Context is all. There’s a time and a place for telling people they’re going to Hell, and a wise person will pick the venue for that particular message carefully, not merely spew it out at every possible opportunity, even though the Bible may seem to command it. The rules of civilized conduct are against it, and Jesus told us to be sheep among wolves. Sheep are polite.
If the word “except” wasn’t in the Christ’s quote, I’d think maybe that interpretation was possible. Since He said “except through me”, I can only interpret it as meaning only via worship of Christ can one get to heaven.
Of course, we’re looking at a translation, so maybe the original text allows enough leeway to make your interpretation possible.
That’s admirable, but how do you reconcile it with Christ’s “only through me” statement? Your quote and that statement seem to contradict each other.
Duck Duck Goose, are all your problems with vanilla from the Jesus sig, or was she witnessing or something?
I’m not a bible student, but as a thinking, reasonable layperson, I could interpret it as “by following my example.”
So, you interpret “only through me” as meaning “only by acting the way I do”, and not “only by worshipping me”?
Well, yes. I’m certain it could be interpreted both ways, but I (not being the worshipping type) can easily see it as Christ simply wanting to set an example.
Well, I’m still leaning towards the “only by worshipping me” interpretation, but that’s actually a fairly plausible interpretation too Kalhoun, now that I’ve thought about it. I stand corrected on my previous statement that there was no room for interpretation in the line.
May I borrow this, Siege?
It’s definitely sigworthy.
Can ya feel the love? Sing it!
“All you need is love (bbrrrup bbrrrup badada)
All you need is love (bbrrrup bbrrrup badada)
All you need is love, Love…
Love is all you need.”
My boyfriend has been known to express this as, “If I have to tell you I’m a Christian, I’m doing it wrong.”
Me, I’m not a Christian; I’m not even a monotheist. But when I look at my faith’s principles for right behaviour and Christian principles for right behaviour, I find myself thinking that, all in all, the essences are quite similar. I can find community among Christians and call them brother; I am always delighted when I find Christians who can see in me, a pagan, a sister of faith.
I was discussing this sort of thing with a Catholic friend at one point, who basically came down with the opinion that the face of the divine presents itself in a multiplicity of forms so that it may reach the most people. Truth is a complex thing, multi-layered, multi-faceted.
This seems entirely plausible to me, but then again, I’ve got a religion that pretty explicitly states that the divine loves differentiation, diversity, and multiplicity of experience. (I commented to my father last night that my religious position on cosmic truth tends to approach the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant.)
???
You haven’t read this entire thread? Oy.
The sig aside (which read, “Jesus is the only way to Heaven.all other ways are wrong.”), which is no longer there…
Page 1:
Page 2:
Page 3:
Page 5:
“Witnessing”? Um, yup. :rolleyes:
I did read the whole damn thing yesterday, but the witnessing didn’t stand out, I guess. Thanks for the elaboration.
Why not? Sunday’s Dad’s 75th birthday and, while no doubt he’ll harumph about silliness on a message board if I tell him, I suspect down deep he’ll be flattered. Need I say things have improved between us since I was a teenager?
CJ