Yet Another Movie That Might Change Your Life ... or At Least Make You Think

[Flymaster]

*Originally posted by FriendofGod *
Ahhhh … or, it’s possible he just grew up in a neighborhood where there were few or no Christians? Do you really think that it’s that impossible?

Yes.

[Polycarp]

FoG:

Sure! I think they’re wrong on every count as far as the issues you cited, but that doesn’t make them unsaved.

You want a round of “Christianity & Love Part IV: Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture”?

[Ben]

*Originally posted by FriendofGod *
**vanilla and Ben … you’ve got to be kidding me! Let me be honest, if I were truly a prophet and was extraordinarily accurate … I would never use it in this way.

**

You would never use it to convert people? How sad.

**
It appears to me that you are looking for a loophole for faith, but there is none. You cannot demand or expect from God, via any vehicle be it prophesy or something else, that He “prove” Himself to you. There will always have to be an element of faith.

**

Judges 6:17

‘Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me.”’

Arguably, I’m not even asking that God prove himself to me. I am asking that you prove to me that you really do speak for God. If you can do that, I will look into your claims about Christianity being the true religion. If a Muslim can meet my challenge, I’ll look into Islam. As is, you have given me zero reason why I should have faith in Christianity over any other religion.

If I believed in God, I would have total faith in him, but I think you can understand my skepticism when confronted by a person who claims to speak for God and yet:

1. Thinks that genocide can be good.

2. Thinks that if you kill a woman’s family before her eyes, kidnap her into a foreign land, and force her to become your wife, that isn’t rape.

3. States that one cannot be a Christian if one continues to sin and has no intention of stopping, and yet makes false accusations and, when confronted with evidence that his accusations are 100% false, continues to make them without even acknolwedging the evidence against him.

4. Claims to be able to prophecy, but whose only “prophecy” to date was on the level of what charlatans can accomplish and, unlike the charlatans, was wrong.

5. When asked for a prophecy that the charlatans cannot fake- when asked, in effect, for a bigger snake than Pharaoh’s wizards could make, instead of delivering no snake at all- declares, like the charlatans, that it is inappropriate to ask for such things.

6. Declares that a loving marital relationship must end in divorce if the people involved have genitals that he finds inappropriate.

7. Reacts with incredulity when told that atheists and Wiccans have more to fear from on-the-job discrimination than Christians- and then turns around and says that if he were President, he would not hire any non-Christians or non-Jews.

8. Roundly condemns a movie that he hasn’t even seen.

9. Is willfully ignorant on important and obvious matters of scientific fact.

I could go on- I haven’t even touched the sadisic incoherence of your arguments regarding salvation- but I think that will suffice. FoG, how can you expect me to respect your claims about speaking for God when you can’t even drop your false accusations against me? Your morality is plainly hypocritical in your very actions during the course of this thread. If you can’t deliver a sound prophecy, that’s the least of the factors disqualifying you! How could any rational person think that you were following anything but one of those false Jesuses you talked about earlier?

So no, I don’t think I’ll be looking into FoG’s version of Christianity today. Maybe he’s right, maybe God really is a Cosmic Caligula, but if FoG can’t even deliver on his claims that he can utter sound prophecy, I don’t think I’ll worry about that eventuality.

-Ben

[Polycarp]

Hokay, Ben. Then let me jump into the fray. I do not necessarily believe that any given O.T. passage is on target – I suspect a lot of them are people trying to justify their own actions by blaming it on God’s will. Of course, we don’t see much of that nowadays! :rolleyes:

But let me give you something that, if not predictive prophecy, is prophecy in the stricter Biblical sense (borne out by dictionaries) of telling forth God’s will. This resulted from my research into my namesake and patron saint, and is taken from his (2nd Century, and non-Biblical, but quite well attested) Letter to the Smyrneans, in J.B. Lightfoot’s accurate if very much KingJamesian translation:

Polycarp 2:2
Now He that raised Him from the dead will raise us also; if we do His will and walk in His commandments and love the things which He loved, abstaining from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness; not rendering evil for evil or railing for railing or blow for blow or cursing for cursing;
Polycarp 2:3
but remembering the words which the Lord spake, as He taught; Judge not that ye be not judged. Forgive, and it shall be forgiven to you. Have mercy that ye may receive mercy. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again; and again Blessed are the poor and they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

[FriendofGod]

Just enough time to catch up again …

Cervaise …

The arrogance is the subtle implication that you have the right or obligation to judge who is and isn’t a Christian at all.

You know, here’s a point I haven’t even thought of making before. Jesus commanded us to go make disciples. In other words, find those who don’t follow Jesus and bring them to Jesus. How can we do that if we don’t discern who is and isn’t following Jesus in the first place?

You’ve said over and over that what really matters is in one’s heart. And yet you’ve also said over and over that just because somebody has all the outward signs of Christianity, that doesn’t mean that person is a “true” Christian; it’s impossible to tell what’s in that person’s heart, which is what really matters. You seem to be making this distinction as a means of dismissing and disqualifying Christians who you find inconvenient to your rather narrow definition of what Christianity means, by establishing a basis by which you can say “that one doesn’t count.”

I said earlier in this thread, basically: “Just because they say they’re a Christian doesn’t mean they are a Christian”. I’m thinking you took this to mean that I am assuming that true Christians never do or believe stupid things. I am not saying that at all. As I’ve said more recently, a Christian can be wrong on a host of issues and still be a Christian. They can have a bad attitude about something and still be a Christian, etc etc.

It seems to me a true Christian wouldn’t be so obsessed with what’s in other people’s hearts. It seems to me a true Christian would be primarily focused on what is in his own heart. It seems to me to be the height of ignorance and arrogance for a self-professed Christian to be spending so much time extrapolating his own experience onto the lives of other people and using his own belief system as the ultimate objective yardstick of what makes a Christian a “real” Christian.

Uhh … you guys are the ones who kept demanding that I explain it. I don’t think in 35 years on planet earth, I’ve ever spent this much time thinking about and discussing this point with anyone.

minty green:

I’d venture to say that 99% of all self-professed Christians have exactly what you describe as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, FoG, even in the most liberal churches in the land. Good lord, that’s the whole point of being a Christian, isn’t it? And that makes me wonder whether your “personal relationship” criterion is primarily a cover for your doctrinal differences with non-fundamentalist Christians.

Well, I would strongly disagree with anywhere near 99%. Remember the Bible says many will think they’re supposed to go to heaven but won’t. I don’t really know how many “many” is, but I doubt it’s 1%. As for doctrinal differences: no, as I’ve said, a true believer can be off in many areas and still be a true believer.

Flymaster:

Yes.

Okay.

(I love short and to the point exchanges :D)

Polycarp:

You want a round of “Christianity & Love Part IV: Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture”?

Amazing how C&L has taken on mythical proportions! It’s a checkpoint, somewhat like the famous LBMB/SDMB wars. I have it saved on my hard drive and will reread it someday. Maybe we could call the movie “FOG Wars”

Ben: I see you’ve reverted to normal

G’night all. I’ll respond to any more tomorrow, but I’m about ready to wrap it up as I said.

[tracer]

FriendofGod wrote:

If someone SAYS to me “I hate God and have no desire to do anything with him”, am I really “judging” him by saying he’s not a Christian, or just using common sense?

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who says “I hate God,” though. Religious non-Christians usually say something like, “I love God; God just doesn’t happen to be the ‘God’ of the New Testament.” Atheists usually say something like, “I neither love nor hate God; God simply does not exist.”

The only people I could think of who might say “I hate God” are people who were raised under a certain religion, and still believe that religion to be true, but are tired of following its edicts. And despite how TV shows invariably portray non-believers as “lapsed Catholics”, people like this probably fall into a very small minority.

[quixotic78]

*Originally posted by FriendofGod *
You know, here’s a point I haven’t even thought of making before. Jesus commanded us to go make disciples. In other words, find those who don’t follow Jesus and bring them to Jesus. How can we do that if we don’t discern who is and isn’t following Jesus in the first place?

Well, if I were in your position, I’d ASK said person if they are a Christian. If they say yes, then my missionary duties in that area are done–their salvation is between that person and their God. You, however, don’t seem to buy this, and would… what? Badger them? Give them some sort of litmus test? Ask if they believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and judge them from there?

Here’s what it comes down to, FoGgy. By your own admission, you can’t tell if a person is a Christian by looking at church attendance, volunteering, Biblical knowledge, etc. The only evidence you have to go on is if they identify themselves as a Christian. They may be wrong, but that’s not your call. It’s only rational that you accept a self-identified Christian AS a Christian unless the evidence points otherwise. And that evidence will never surface in your lifetime.

Quix

[tracer]

quixotic78 wrote:

Well, if I were in your position, I’d ASK said person if they are a Christian. If they say yes, then my missionary duties in that area are done–their salvation is between that person and their God. You, however, don’t seem to buy this, and would… what? Badger them? Give them some sort of litmus test? Ask if they believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and judge them from there?

Naw, I imagine an exchange more like this:
FriendofGod: “Are you a Christian?”

Passerby: “Yes.”

FriendofGod: “You’re lying!” [bangs passerby on head repeatedly with hardcover copy of the King James bible as he says:] “Lord, drive out the foul demons of ignorance in this poor wayward soul and bring him to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ!”

[vanilla]

FoG: I AM a christian(by this I mean I have a personal relationship with God…
But your comment was if you were a prophet and accurate. Well.
If you were a prophet, you WOULD be accurate.
They used to kill them back in the biblical days if they said they were a prophet, and the prophesy didn’t come true.

[Pariah]

They used to kill them back in the biblical days if they said they were a prophet, and the prophesy didn’t come true.

Killed 'em either way, didn’t they?

[Cervaise]

FoG, re the arrogance question, quixotic78 has it right.

You are required to evangelize. Check. You must carry the word of Jesus Christ to the unbelievers. Check. Got all that. Okay, so, obviously, it would be a waste of time to witness to those who already believe. Therefore, you decide you need to identify non-Christians, so you can best target your efforts. Under your interpretation of Christianity, according to the tenets of your sect, most people who call themselves Christians actually aren’t, because they don’t have a “personal relationship,” whatever that means.

So whenever you meet people who call themselves Christian, you have to wonder whether or not they “really are,” according to your rules. You’ve said you can’t tell by looking at them. That means you have to talk to them. Do you quiz them? Do you badger them to explain, in detail, the precepts and foundations of their faith? Do you subject them to an interrogation, the results of which determine your judgment as to whether or not this person is truly a Christian?

Or do you hold your tongue? Do you recognize that this sort of behavior is patronizing, insulting, and divisive? Do you see that it’s this kind of smug, condescending superiority that gives fundamentalism a bad name among mainstream Christians? And do you therefore keep quiet, not wanting to create a scene and cause an argument, while trying to somehow reconcile your silence with your stated requirement for evangelizing? And all the while, do you wonder in your heart about this person’s faith, acting nice to the person’s face while internally doubting their true love of Jesus, and making a mental note to add them to the list of people you’re praying for just in case?

It doesn’t matter which one you choose, because they are both arrogant. Why? Because you establish yourself as the arbiter, as the judge, of what is in this person’s heart. Only God and the individual know for certain what is between them. How can you presume to insert yourself into this relationship so that you may judge its worthiness and therefore determine whether you must teach this person how to be a “true” Christian? How can you justify comparing the worthiness of your faith to theirs? Do I even need to explain how arrogant it is to evaluate someone’s spirituality, using yourself as the benchmark? How dare you, sir, how dare you.

Call me crazy, call me a heathen, but I believe Christianity is perverted the moment someone goes from “I feel” and moves into “you should.” This is a separate debate, perhaps, but I’ve always felt that witnessing should be, simply, living as an example. You don’t call attention to it, you don’t trumpet your own purity and perspicacity, you simply live as a good Christian without advertising it. It makes you feel good. Great. It makes you happy and provides guidance for your life. Wonderful. You can say, “I love God, and I know he loves me, and I know my relationship with Jesus has helped me to be a better person and is an aid and comfort every day of my life.” Fantastic. But the moment you add, “…And you should feel this way too,” you are judging them. You’re implying they don’t measure up to your example, and you are setting yourself as a positive comparison to their spiritual failure.

This, this, is why I reject and abhor the extreme, fundamentalist form of Christianity and, in fact, any religion, because I believe it to be a corruption of the central message. When a group sets itself apart and above, using its own specific definition of faith as a means of judging its superiority above others, that group’s reason for being is no longer love, peace, and tolerance: It has been perverted into competition, insecurity, and defensive judgmentalism.

I consider myself a “questing agnostic.” I don’t have all the answers. I know what makes sense, and I know what seems logical. But at the same time, my mind is not settled. I continue to look and think and feel and examine and consider and debate. My eyes, my mind, and my heart are open to possibility.

But I refuse to get involved in, or even consider, a faith that relies on judgmental separatism for its strength, because that, to me, is nothing more than backsliding into selfish, tribalistic egotism. I will have nothing to do with that brand of spirituality, because I know it appeals to my cheapest, most negative impulses – my need to be right, my desire to be superior, my infantile yearning for shallow, blinding reassurance – instead of the truly positive, worthy things that give me value as a human: my capacity to love, to learn, to grow, to nonjudgmentally offer help and support to people, and to make this world a better place.

I don’t like to jump to conclusions about people. I participated in this and previous discussions in the hope that you weren’t the kind of person you seemed to be at first blush. I did not attack, I did not minimize. I went to great lengths to be fair, and to try to get you to see things in a different way so you could understand where I was coming from.

I have concluded, sadly and belatedly, that this is a waste of time, and I give up.

I do, however, look forward to continuing these kinds of discussions here on the SDMB, where there are many, many people whose minds and hearts are open, who offer insight rather than dogma, and who can help me expand my worldview instead of asking me to blindly, unthinkingly accept a narrow, pre-existing belief system.

So, thanks for a few laughs and a lot more headaches. Whatever you thought you were accomplishing by coming here, rest assured, it didn’t work on me.

[Ben]

*Originally posted by Polycarp *
**
But let me give you something that, if not predictive prophecy, is prophecy in the stricter Biblical sense (borne out by dictionaries) of telling forth God’s will. This resulted from my research into my namesake and patron saint, and is taken from his (2nd Century, and non-Biblical, but quite well attested) Letter to the Smyrneans, in J.B. Lightfoot’s accurate if very much KingJamesian translation: **

Thank you, Polycarp. Could you elaborate your views on this passage further?

-Ben

[FriendofGod]

tracer:

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who says “I hate God,” though. Religious non-Christians usually say something like, “I love God; God just doesn’t happen to be the ‘God’ of the New Testament.” Atheists usually say something like, “I neither love nor hate God; God simply does not exist.”

Fair enough, “I hate God” was overly dramatic. More realistic might be, “I’m not very religious” or something along those lines. There are a million ways to say it really.

quixotic78

Well, if I were in your position, I’d ASK said person if they are a Christian. If they say yes, then my missionary duties in that area are done–their salvation is between that person and their God. You, however, don’t seem to buy this, and would… what? Badger them? Give them some sort of litmus test? Ask if they believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and judge them from there?

Believe it or not, except in certain situations, I never ask the question, “Are you a Christian?” for the very reason we are discussing. The answer doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about the person in this day and age!

To be totally honest, when I meet someone, Christian or non, I really don’t ask them anything related to religious stuff. I just get to know them and find out what makes them tick. Only when they trust me do I just ask them this question, which to me is one of the best I’ve ever heard:

“Would you mind telling me where you’re at spiritually?”

And then I’ll just listen for however long they want to talk. Finding out where a person is coming from does wonders for knowing how to minister to them and help them, whether they’re Christian or not.
vanilla … suffice it to say, I’m not a prophet, so let’s just leave it at that ;).
Cervaise … well! Lots to say I see. I read you whole post and I won’t comment on everything, but here are a few choice portions:

Under your interpretation of Christianity, according to the tenets of your sect, most people who call themselves Christians actually aren’t

Not “most”. Just some, and I don’t know how many “some” is.

By the way, as to how I relate to people, see my response to quix earlier. I basically do a LOT of listening. If the person knows and trusts me, I have more probing spiritual questions I might ask. It’s like being a good doctor … if you can’t diagnose a person’s current spiritual condition, how can you help them improve it? I can say that for myself, I’ve grown a lot spiritually when someone took the time to ask me probing questions about where I was at, and then encourage me forward.

It doesn’t matter which one you choose, because they are both arrogant. Why? Because you establish yourself as the arbiter, as the judge, of what is in this person’s heart.

No, it’s not even a little bit arrogant. And you’re assuming that I establish myself as a ‘judge’ of what’s in their heart. All I do is listen to their heart. Let me ask you this Cervaise, suppose you know someone who is an alcoholic, but they don’t believe they are an alcoholic. Is it “judging” them to observe and take note that they are, in fact, an alcoholic, or is it just common sense observation? And is it “judging” them to go to them and try gently to get them to see their deception?

How can you justify comparing the worthiness of your faith to theirs? Do I even need to explain how arrogant it is to evaluate someone’s spirituality, using yourself as the benchmark?

That’s something I’ve never done, nor would I. The Bible is the standard, not me. I have to submit to it like anyone else. You’re making some sweeping assumptions here.

I don’t like to jump to conclusions about people. I participated in this and previous discussions in the hope that you weren’t the kind of person you seemed to be at first blush. I did not attack, I did not minimize. I went to great lengths to be fair, and to try to get you to see things in a different way so you could understand where I was coming from.

To be honest you’ve been more than fair and no you did not attack, and I appreciate it :). I’m sorry you took my point of view to be so harsh.

[jab1]

*Originally posted by Flymaster *
**I can’t help but notice the lack of response to the 2 posts about FoG’s lying pastor. **

I’ll bet that pastor meant, “I didn’t meet any Southern Baptists.” A lot of Southern Baptists believe they are the only True Christians[sup]TM[/sup]. (Though to be fair, I bet a lot of Catholics think Catholics are the only True Christians[sup]TM[/sup]. And so on, through every denomination, you’ll find folks who think they alone believe The Truth.)

[quixotic78]

*Originally posted by FriendofGod *
No, it’s not even a little bit arrogant. And you’re assuming that I establish myself as a ‘judge’ of what’s in their heart. All I do is listen to their heart. Let me ask you this Cervaise, suppose you know someone who is an alcoholic, but they don’t believe they are an alcoholic. Is it “judging” them to observe and take note that they are, in fact, an alcoholic, or is it just common sense observation? And is it “judging” them to go to them and try gently to get them to see their deception?

Well, I’m done. I’m exasperated beyond belief (well, as much exasperation as I can muster for a poster that I will never meet anyways). You can tell an alcoholic if he still drinks. There are no meaningful criteria that you can apply to tell if she is a Christian. Your inability to grasp this simple fact (it almost seems willful inability) despite the fact that so many people have told you… well, I’m done.

Quix

[Cervaise]

Ditto for me, quixotic. I was holding out one last hope for something resembling a coherent response, but the comparison of Christianity to alcoholism is only the latest in a long line of s.

[Polycarp]

Ben:

As you requested, here’s my comments.

In general, a “prophet” is not supposed to be a soothsayer, providing Jeane Dixon-style suppositions about what’s going to happen next week. To the extent that he does any of that sort of work, it’s (theoretically) from a personal revelation of what God has in store, in the event that a certain eventuality occurs. Fer example, most conservative scholars would see the repeated statements of “If Israel does not repent of its sins, I will cause the great kingdoms of the East to conquer it and take its people captive,” repeated time and again, as “get your act together, or else” warnings. (Those who do not accept predictive prophecy see this as written back after the fact to cover what in fact did happen, of course.) My own warning that “if the Christians of this land continue to follow the evangelists who cloak their lust for political power in robes cadged from the Bible, and businesses support their platforms in return for business-favorable policies, then that unholy alliance will threaten all our freedoms, contrary to God’s will, in just a few years” is precisely that sort of thing.

True prophecy, however, is not predictive, but setting forth God’s word and will, usually expressed as imperative statements regarding the behavior and attitude expected of one who follows him. So:

St. Polycarp begins by promising, subject to certain conditions, the general resurrection at the end of time: “Now He that raised Him from the dead will raise us also…” While this is a highly debatable doctrine, we are not in a position to say anything more than Occam’s Razor suggesting its improbability, given our own knowledge of how things occur naturally.

Then he gets into the guts of his prophecy:

[quote]
[li]if we do His will []and walk in His commandments []and love the things which He loved, []abstaining from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness; []not rendering evil for evil or railing for railing or blow for blow or cursing for cursing;[/li]but remembering the words which the Lord spake, as He taught; [li]Judge not that ye be not judged. []Forgive, and it shall be forgiven to you. []Have mercy that ye may receive mercy. []With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again; []and again Blessed are the poor and they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.[/li][/quote]

I cannot really feature anybody taking serious umbrage at the idea that one ought to avoid unhealthy desire for another’s property, focus on money to the exclusion of people, slandering, lying to the harm of another. And the positive points, to be non-judgmental, forgiving, merciful, kindly and generous, strike me as an excellent way to live.

These are partially quotes from Scripture and partially Polycarp’s own words, but the gist of them is that he’s telling the Philippians (my error in my earlier attribution of his letter; he was writing from Smyrna to Philippi) what to avoid and what to espouse in their life styles.

I’d welcome your feedback on this, both on the desirability of this behavior from a humanistic standpoint and from your views vis-a-vis religion.

[FriendofGod]

Well gang,

For the record I’m outta here. It’s been an interesting couple of months being back at the SDMB, and I’m sure I’ll come back again at some point. To reiterate the OP one last time: I hope that if you ever get a chance, you guys watch the movie Judgment. It is a movie that makes you think about what you do and don’t believe.

It’s been interesting to say the least ;). Peace.

[Tuckerfan]

Let’s see here, you show up, spout a few comments, and then when people DARE to question some of your preconcieved notions (some of which, by your own admission, you haven’t thought much about), you pack your bags and go home. Hmmm… Doesn’t say much about your faith to me.

[Monty]

Good riddance!