Back in the eighties, when I was involved with evangelical Christianity, it troubled those people when I made these observations about the teachings of Christ. I remember once, after preaching in a congregation of a “free” church as part of a mutual exchange, being thanked by the women and stopped at the door by the men. When I moved from the evangelicals to the more liberal Protestant church, I found the doctrine less radical and ultimately a weak version of liberal politics. I was also an elder there, and when I approached the pastor about it, he referred to his “audience” being unprepared for such a revolutionary message. Needless to say, I found no one who believed enough in the true teachings of Christ to renew the church. I went into nursing and lived out my faith there.
There was a kind of admiration among Pietists for American evangelism, and to some extent some people agreed with conservative values, but Germany was too far to the left at that time, and even the conservatives were “Christian Democrats.” When I watched some televangelists, I could see that the Atlantic Ocean did not separate us only by distance.
They’re not using words correctly. They mean Marxist.
Communism is only found in geographically isolated tribes. We’ve slaughtered almost all of them.
They didn’t wear clothes. They had no government (because the got along naturally) and they never technologically progressed because anything they invented was buried with them.
Thank you for your “thoughtful” words, but they are talking about him being a “revolutionary socialist”, and if there was communism in the Christian community, it was when they are said to have “neither said any one of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.”
And, this was admittedly 2000 years ago, and was probably either stamped out or the normal survival instinct got the better of them …
He wasn’t a fool. A charitable reading of him would notice that. He had pretty harsh words for some folks who would not consider those harsh words to be accurate.
According to the Book of Acts, subsequently the original sect of Jesus followers in Jerusalem became so poor that Paul was moved to take up a collection for them among the churches in Greece and Asia-minor. Did holding all in common contribute to their poverty?
My “thoughtful” words are about brainwashing and misappropriating words.
Anyone who calls countries that are totalitarian or democratic or socialist … if they call them communist; they’re not speaking correctly.
I mean seriously!? Was Jesus really born at 12 AM on December 25th?
No. It was a pagan holiday … paganism had pantheons of gods… not authoritarianism … They needed to be seen as the supreme ruler of all … and Christianity was the perfect platform for that, so they misappropriated a pagan holiday and called it Jesus birthday.
That a “loving, just and merciful” God would allow even one entirely innocent child to suffer grievously is unacceptable to me.
He must be either, as Kushner suggested, a God who was never or is no longer omnipotent, or a sadistic monster.
And the way those here with their own “private and personal” Christian Gods rationalize it is to fall back on His “mysterious ways”.
After all, what other possible explanation can there be?
That’s why they are uncomfortable in discussing theodicy, in my view. There must be a part of them that recognizes how terrible their God must be if He is both omniscient and omnipotent.
But there is just too much at stake for them to call off the wager.
K: for me personally, I cannot accept a god who is, given to harm others,
unethical/immoral… to torture his son on the cross… regardless of the purpose,
is to torture another… any reason given is rationalization of that action…
in other word, god is just another one who is unethical and immoral because
he allowed, even encouraged his son to be tortured… it doesn’t matter why,
the reasons are irrelevant… think about some justifications long enough,
it become the reality… torture for any reason is wrong… regardless of the reason…
to toss out Adam and Eve is unethical/immoral as it harmed them…
the reasons given for tossing them out are irrelevant… it is simply a
rationalization of actions taken…there were other possibilities
and god picked the one that harmed… thus, god is immoral
and unethical… and not worthy of our time, effort, or praise…
the body count in the bible is unreal… thousands die at the hands of god…
and that prevents us from any rationalization of belief in god…
it doesn’t matter why those people died, they died, they were
massacred… and the reasons don’t matter… they are just
more rationalization of actions taken…
why do you believe in a god that actively engages in torture
and the death of thousands… for torture and murder are wrong,
for they harm others… the reasons are irrelevant… god is immoral
and unethical…
“The first utterance of the word “Christian” occurred when Paul was preaching in Antioch more than a decade after the crucifixion.”
__ “Jesus Christ is most widely recognized as the founder of Christianity as His life and death are the foundations of the faith. However, there is an opinion that Paul founded Christianity as a religion by setting its doctrines and sharing the word of Jesus among the early church”.
Would there have been Christianity without Christ? It takes a martyr to start a movement, and not all philanthropists are poor and homeless… most philanthropists I’ve met don’t seem to be doing it for da love or compassion.
__ Explanation: “The roots of Christianity can be traced back to the Hebrew culture, as the belief in the Christian God existed many centuries before Jesus. However, the origin of Christianity, in its modern form, starts with the life of Jesus Christ. According to the Christian belief, Jesus was God’s son who came to the Earth to teach people and to offer them salvation through the sacrifice of his life. His teaching is the basis for the New Testament, which is believed to set the beginning of the Christian faith. The role of Jesus is fundamental to the formation of the main principles of Christianity. The main message that he sent to people is that nobody can save his or her soul without accepting Him as their savior and without having complete faith in Him. Although he said that people are sinful by nature, and it is impossible to get salvation only by good deeds, He still taught people to share love, kindness, and help each other.”
What’s wrong with wanting to conserve things? “Everyone seeks to conserve what they know best” as the saying goes.
Leftists are all into conservation, but then lose their shit at “conservatives”. Funny.
Politics and ideology breed misinformation and contradiction. This is intentional. Try to get past the surface layers and see things how they are.
Right vs left are mostly just attitudes and inclinations with respect to change and “progress”. And this “progress” is largely a function of technological innovation. Progressives worship technology and are swept into the change it brings, they give themselves to the inertia and the entropy that is released by technology multiplying force for less and less effort; conservatives don’t want to do that and see the things in life that shouldn’t be subject to that kind of change and deconstruction.
In my experience conservatives are much more reasonable and easy to talk to than progressives. Most progressives are fairly emotionally rabid, short-sighted and narcissistic. Which isn’t to say many conservatives don’t also have their own personality issues. Keep in mind too that a decent amount of the variability in political inclination is heritable, and not something we choose or “know” just because we have some special access to the truth.
A large part of politics reduces to personality, and much of our personality reduces to the genes we inherit from our mother and father.