Popular Christianity

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An article from Daily Wisdom

This is apparently a so very Christian a thing to say, but to me it as far apart from what a true Christian is, as the east is from the west.

But this is very typical of so-called Christians, namely, “I become a Christian, I chose Christ, etc because ‘I care about myself too much to want to be in misery’”. (And they also conveniently forgot that you dont and cannot choose God. God chose you.)

Indeed the “why” you are a Christian is the very mark that separates you from the world. For do not all the world love themselves and their happiness and well being? And they will worship anything that gives them these, be it money, or the devil, and maybe even bet on the Christian God.

There can be no reasons to be a Christian but one: that you love God, and God alone. To love yourself is idolatory!

If being happier and a ‘better person’ is what you seek, you had better see a psychologist then to seek the Christian God, for his call is one of trials and tribulations, and of rejection and pain, and not of ‘happiness’.

The reason Christianity have been so water-downed, so popularised, made to appeal to the base instincts, is to make the numbers grow. There is not a little truth in Futureman’s view that money is the driving force in today’s churches, their true god.

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pascal’s wager is bunk

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Pascal’s Wager isn’t actually “bunk”, as you put it. It is very valid and sound if and only if one notes that it is only a wager and nothing more. This is why it is so easily refuted.

It is interesting, however Chan, that you mention popularized Christianity. I have been reading a book, and the author makes the claim that Christians no longer do those things that are necessary to get into Heaven; they merely do enough to stay out of Hell.

On another token, though, Christianity is not really full of rejection or unhappiness. It is very rewarding to those who believe it is rewarding. If you love your job then you won’t work a day in your life, right?

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It depresses me when I encounter such lazy apprehensions of the Christian message. Unfortunately, ‘scare tactics’ like this are often an effective mode of proselytism among people who dont know better. This is what makes them doubly frustrating.

It is the mission of the educated to inform those cut off from education, not to suggest the abandonment of spiritual education on the premise of Pascal’s wager: this is pure and simple lazy, power-crazed ministry. Beware.

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that’s fine I think it’s lazy to believe that you are saved from sin just by believing in christ. or that your faith will lead to good works. (I’ve seen people with strong faith in christ do some questionable things.)

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pascals wager is bunk because god can read your mind.

all he wants you to do is treat your neighbor like yourself. evangelicals hate gays because they selfishly want god to recognize their correctness. they dont care that gay people want things and that they are stopping them from getting what they want, they care that god will smile upon their righteous hatred and reward them with fewer hurricanes.

they are selfish animals, the fact that they are selfish in the name of god just makes them stupid.

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i agree (pascals wager is bunk) but if God is supposed to be all knowing and all powerful then he would know that all Pascal is saying is that it is your best bet and not because you naturally love God. shouldnt God respect the fact that you chose to believe that?

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What I don’t understand is HOW one can gain faith through this train of thought. I personally don’t like how if I’m wrong about god I’ll be punished in hell for it, and if I COULD convert to christianity and cover all my bases, I just might do that.

The problem is, deep down inside me, I would still know that I really don’t believe, I’m just trying to convince myself I believe so that all my bases are covered. I can’t force myself to believe something I just simply don’t believe.

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Paskal’s Wager is automatically, 100% flawed, because it acknowledges the only possible God that could exist is the Christian/Judeo God. Someone could believe in a god rather than the C/J God, and they would be exempt from P’s Wager. But the Wager tried to embrace everyone into the pathetic equation. Therefore, it is 100% wrong, for it’s aim is way out in left field!

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I agree completely, but it seems to be the kind of 'apprehensions that we are going to be up against for a long time - unless fundamentalist christianity takes a plunge. But that would mean that America would be in turmoil - which is less good for the rest of us.

This is another example of an assurance of faith being dressed up as ‘knowledge’ - something for which there is no a priori evidence of. It is simply a deduction that comes from scripture and is a faith-based statement.

This is an example of how the ‘logic’ of evangelical belief actually contradicts scripture:
37 And Jesus said to him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thine understanding—
38 this is a first and great command;
39 and the second is like to it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;
40 on these—the two commands—all the law and the prophets do hang.’

If I should love my neighbour as myself, then surely I must love myself first?

Shalom
Bob

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I recommend you read ‘Jesus of the Apocalypse’ by Barbara Theiring, an ex Professor of Theology. It contains, among other interesting things, a complete glossary of the New Testament showing it to be no more than a complete history of the Essene movement disguised in such a manner as not to fall foul of the Romans. They merely did everything in the manner, and at the times predicted by the ‘prophets’. This is just what the Jehovahs Witnesses are doing today with the Book of Revelation. God (excuse the expression) knows who’ll be doing what, and in whose name in another thousand years; and how many thousands of people they will have killed in that name in the meantime.

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Hi Avocet,

Professor Geza Vermes wrote the following about Barbara Theiring’s thesis:

Professor Barbara Thiering’s reinterpretation of the New Testament, in which the married, divorced, and remarried Jesus, father of four, becomes the “Wicked Priest” of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has made no impact on learned opinion. Scroll scholars and New Testament experts alike have found the basis of the new theory, Thiering’s use of the so-called “pesher technique,” without substance. The Qumran pesher—the word itself means "interpretation"—is a form of Bible exegesis which seeks to determine the significance of an already existing prophetic text by pointing to its fulfillment in persons and events belonging to the age of the interpreter. Professor Thiering, by contrast, turns the sequence upside down, and claims that the authors of the New Testament composed the Gospel story so that pesher technique could subsequently be fastened to it. If so, the clue must have been quickly lost, but now for the first time after nineteen centuries of universal misunderstanding it is revealed afresh in Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Is there any evidence for a procedure of the kind which Barbara Thiering assumes? Among the 813 documents found in the eleven Qumran caves not one verifies her recipe of composition. The Gospels (supposedly produced on the shore of the Dead Sea and understood à la Thiering) provide the only “proof” that books written with a view to practicing “pesher technique” were devised at Qumran! Readers who require more detail are invited to turn to Professor Thiering’s volume. Can I be fairer than that?
nybooks.com/articles/2065

Geza Vermes is emeritus professor of Jewish studies at Oxford and the author of The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Since 1991 he has been director of the Forum for Qumran Research at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He lives in Oxford, England.

Shalom
Bob

13 
Pascal's Wager as commonly formulated doesn't address this issue- the Wager, as such, just provides a rationale for taking the claims of Christianity seriously, it's not proposed that one can become a believing Christian simply by thinking about the consequences of [i]not[/i] believing. 
Rather, what Pascal [i]actually said[/i] was that once a person realizes the seriousness of religious claims (because of the wager), one ought to go through the motions of living a Christian life- adopting the ethic, singing the songs, performing the rituals, and what have you.  While this will at first seem disingenuous, Pascal claims that experiencing a Christian lifestyle is a key part of coming to believe in the teachings of Christianity, especially for the person who realizes that he [i]ought[/i] to believe, and yet finds that he doesn't.  
This part of Pascal's reasoning is key, it's unfortnunate that it's unknown to most people who discuss the 'wager'.
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Just to add, or rather reiterate what I have written elsewhere, the wager is something like this.

(I am going to use a soccer example, you can substitute with something more familiar to you)

Early this year Greece won the Euro 2004 competition making them the soccer champions of Europe. Very few people would have betted on them at the start of the tournament. I do not know their starting odds, but I think it is some hundreds to 1, at the least.

Now suppose you have prophetic insights, or you have a time machine and have gone forward in time and then returned to the present, and you now know, with absolute certainty, that Greece will eventually be champions.

The question then is what will you do? What will you bet?

I bet you bet all your money you have and more. You go beg, borrow, scheme, steal, to get more money; mortage all you have, sell all you have, and maybe even try to persuade those you like to believe what you knew, and to ask to bet too. And the evidece you can offer to them that what you know is true, is your crazy, out-of-this-world behaviour. Maybe some would put a tentative bet or two. Most will just think you mad.

Now I do not know Pascal meant this by his wager. But this is the true characterisation of what betting on eternal life means.

But really, the wager was a side track. It was not the main point in this thread. What I am trying to say is that there are people who become Christians for self-serving reasons, for their own flesh, and for their own pockets. This then makes them no different from any other human beings on earth. Only the gods and rituals are different, but the human is the same. This to me is not what Christianity is about.

[size=75]Edit: Greece starting odds was 80-1.[/size]

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If Christianity is right about the nature of mankind, then perhaps appealing to these selfish drives is the only way some people could ever come to Christianity. I think what’s important is whether or not people mature from these views once they are ‘in the fold’, so to speak.

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If Christianity is right about human nature, then it is impossible for humans to choose right from wrong, life from death, blessings from curses. [See Moses final exhortation in Deut 28 and consider historical Israel]. And thus unless you are chosen you are not empowered to be free and to be able to choose. Humans by nature have self-destruct built into them. And this is called sin.

As to the appeal to selfish drives, is not the motive itself self-serving? namely the increase in numbers which, if tithing is enforced, then correlates to money …

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Is there something inherently wrong with caring about yourself? I have never known a person who did not serve him/her self on some level. It is quite impossible.
More specifically, is there a Chrisitian out there that is not trying to get the recognition of God Himself? If that is not “self-service” I am doubtful that anything could be.
Christians need to be a lot more honest about pretending to be “self-less.” Their language is so clumnsy.
As for being “chosen,” show me the passage in the Bible that teaches that being chosen is merely a unilateral decision of God without any contribution of the chosen individual in question. If anything, the New Testament teaches that God will “choose” those that choose him.
“For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gala. 3:27 KJV)
I so loath straw men. If you are going to criticize Christianity you ought have a working knowledge of its fundamental texts.

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Don’t get me wrong. I never said it is inherently wrong, but only that it is very human and entirely common.

Agreed. Categorically.

Well you can just do a search on “choose” or related concepts on any electronic concordance to see for yourself. I just quote a few:You did not choose me, but I chose you …
[John 15:16 (NIV)]

And those he predestined, he also called;
those he called, he also justified;
those he justified, he also glorified.
[Rom 8:30 (NIV)]

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight …
[Eph 1:4 (NIV)]

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
[John 3:5-8 (NIV)]I do not think in any of these verses there is indication of the necessity of the chosen’s work, at least not before he was chosen. For can anyone do anything before the creation of the world [Eph 1:4] before anyone even existed?

And regarding baptism, if it is the bapitism of the Holy Spirit, that is not something of your own choosing is it? In any case baptism is after the fact of salvation: you baptised because you are saved and not to be saved.

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This is good. The problem is that if I do not in some way choose God for myself and all “my” salvation is a unilateral work of the Maker, then how is it that I have merited anything, heaven or hell. I have to in some way be responsible for what happens or I can in no be held responsible for what happens.
Furthermore, it is all fine and good for us to talk about being “Chosen,” but I think we have over simplied the value of these passages. What is God saying then when he says that he has chosen us and not us him? I think that it is too simplistic to say that he is denying the importance of our using our agency to choose to obey. There are simply too may passages to the contrary.

John 15:16 I think you are taking this passage out of context. Jesus chose the Apostles who would lead his followers when he was gone. He did not choose his believers. He invited all Jews to believe in him without discrimination. This is a major distinction. This is also one of the major arguments that the Jewish leaders made against him, namely, that he kept company with some less than respectable people such as harlots and publicans. Jesus accepted anyone who would believe in him and follow him.

Rom 8:30 This passage is more troubling. I think you would have to solve a couple of mysteries before you could unravel this. (1) How can He predestinate someone who has yet to exist in any non-arbitrary meaningful sense? I mean, if God was up there predestinating people who had yet to exist determining who would go to heaven or hell, then God is the arbitrary one, not us. This would be a denial of free agency. (2) So really you have to back up and answer how it is that God could “foreknow” someone who has yet to exist sufficient to determine their fate on earth. This is in the previous verse 29. If God is responsible for all these decisions, then who really cares what we do. It was all predetermined. Even if I want to go to hell, if God has predestined me for heaven it would seem that I do not have a choice according to your interpretation of these passages. Help me, if I am misrepresenting your position. Eph 1:4 holds the same mysteries.
Truly, it seems that we can not demand the Spirit to descend upon us, but it sure seems as though we can decide for ourselves whether or not to obey the commandments and be baptized, go to church, pay tithes, etc. This is the choosing of the Chosen toward their God. I viewing this idea of being “chosen” as a reciprocal covenant between God and his people, rather than a unilateral decree of a distant Being. I believe that is the strongest overall message of the Testaments.

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Simple. You dont! You have absolutely no merit. Heard of something called Grace?

If you love God you will be responsible. If you dont nothing will make you responsible: no rule, no law, not even the threat of death and punishments, again consider historical Israel.

And these are? Just quote me one unequivocal example.

And why cant it indeed be simple? Jesus spoke very simply and plainly didnt he, eg I chose you, you didnt choose me.

Have you not heard God said, “Esau I hate, Jacob I loved”? and “I have mercy on whom I have mercy”? Sure God is arbritary, or else God is not God. As to free agency, are you sure you are truly free? or are you a bond slave to sin, inescapeably destined to do its bidding that leads to death?

Love, my dear, love … I care because I love, and not for rewards or merits. I dont care for those. I already have everything. No merit can compare, if at all you dare compare.

And I dont care if God send me to heaven or hell, for all I know is that I love God, for he loved me. And I will go to hell myself for those I love, for heaven is not heaven unless ALL those I loved are with me.

I shall leave the last word to the bible: Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
[Col 2:20-23]