Christianity and other religions
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Mendalla
Happy headbanging ape!!
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Have you read his Norse Mythology? I actually listened to the audiobook, which is read by him. Wonderful take on those stories. He was a fan of an older Norse Mythology by, I think, Roger Lancelyn Green and writing his own was kind of Gaiman's way of recapturing that magic for modern readers.
BetteTheRed
Resident Heretic
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Well, then, unsafe you are a bit tone-deaf as to how your posts "sound/feel" to other people. When you imagine yourself going to talk to Godde about the fact that the "heretic woman" has been admitted, are you laughing at me, or with me? When you constantly berate the ministers here for incorrectly interpreting scripture, because you know the right answers, and reply using LOL, are you laughing WITH them or AT them?
BetteTheRed
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I've started it, then got distracted with something else. I love his reading, but audiobooks are still not a huge part of my "reading"; I will probably wait until I go blind to really embrace audio-books, although I like them for very long car journeys.
Yes! Because we understand the need to make society relevant to the Gospel rather than vice versa!
BetteTheRed
Resident Heretic
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Would love to see some stats re this.
Except for some tiny cult-like demographic blips (and some bigger cultural blips in parts of Asia and Africa, to which I think you do not refer), it just isn't the case that youth are embracing religion of any sort, largely because their parents didn't.
First off I'm not UCCan but it's not an insult to me.
So which belief of the atonement do you think Mark was following in the 1st century? Because what I've read, not many at that time were seeing it the same way that we see it now.
Didnt realize it was a competition between churches....
Very much so ... as God designed the game ... its dark! Makes one wonder with investigation included in the quest!
Some will not go there for fear of what might be discovered ... giving up some ground?
From there it gets to be a mountain of complexity for the simple perspective ...
jimkenney12
Well-Known Member
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Gospel means good news. Jesus the Chosen One of God has been part of my personal life journey for 60 years and is the reason I have no abiding fear. If I live tomorrow, I live to the Lord. If I die tomorrow, I die to the Lord. My message tomorrow focuses on saints, past and present. In it I declare we are all saints in our efforts to share love with others, even if we do not believe in Jesus or God. I believe in a Holy Mystery so great that that Mystery has no need for us to believe particular things or say particular things or do particular things. If our faith in Jesus helps us and others have better lives, that is good.
I believe the words ascribed to Jesus regarding how we are to live with and for one another and I see the arc of his life and preaching in a particular way, a way different from how many Conservatives see it. The way he offered was one of freedom based on trust in him. If we trust in him and his wrods, it is easier to love others, no matter who they are, even when we cannot like them. We are all part of God's creation and how we treat God's creation reflects our respect for God.
Jesus's condemnation in the Gospels was consistently directed at religious and economic leaders who put control ahead of compassion, even trying to control interpretations of God's involvement in people's lives. They preached a religion in which people who were poor or sick or maimed by afflictions such as blindness or lameness were being punished by God for some kind of imagined sin. They justified their wealth and power on the basis of doing what they said God wanted them to do. They used scriptures as a weapon against people instead of as an aid and comfort.
I believe Mystic and unsafe and others like them have an important role in pushing us to keep reviewing what we believe and why we believe it, especially when our beliefs are different. It helps us refine and clarify our beliefs which strenthens our confidence and resolve to live forward based on those beliefs. They also remind us of how idolatry has many expressions including putting translated words in the Bible above God's living Word revealed to us each day in creation.
I believe the words ascribed to Jesus regarding how we are to live with and for one another and I see the arc of his life and preaching in a particular way, a way different from how many Conservatives see it. The way he offered was one of freedom based on trust in him. If we trust in him and his wrods, it is easier to love others, no matter who they are, even when we cannot like them. We are all part of God's creation and how we treat God's creation reflects our respect for God.
Jesus's condemnation in the Gospels was consistently directed at religious and economic leaders who put control ahead of compassion, even trying to control interpretations of God's involvement in people's lives. They preached a religion in which people who were poor or sick or maimed by afflictions such as blindness or lameness were being punished by God for some kind of imagined sin. They justified their wealth and power on the basis of doing what they said God wanted them to do. They used scriptures as a weapon against people instead of as an aid and comfort.
I believe Mystic and unsafe and others like them have an important role in pushing us to keep reviewing what we believe and why we believe it, especially when our beliefs are different. It helps us refine and clarify our beliefs which strenthens our confidence and resolve to live forward based on those beliefs. They also remind us of how idolatry has many expressions including putting translated words in the Bible above God's living Word revealed to us each day in creation.
Sometimes gospel is taken as truth ... a kind of weaving in the fabric to correct for the way the warp is going with controlling aspects ...
May account for the myth of the Great Weaver ... a home spinner before the hob? With a twill ... something may be stabilized in the bias ... and tartans may be worn to hide what's under the fringe ... well and better skirted than Lady Macbeth? You must agree she was a dark lass in the way things unraveled ... genes and other essences may rise ... as alien spirits? Demons grow ???? ad continuum it appears ... no end????
May account for the myth of the Great Weaver ... a home spinner before the hob? With a twill ... something may be stabilized in the bias ... and tartans may be worn to hide what's under the fringe ... well and better skirted than Lady Macbeth? You must agree she was a dark lass in the way things unraveled ... genes and other essences may rise ... as alien spirits? Demons grow ???? ad continuum it appears ... no end????
BetteTheRed
Resident Heretic
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I thought you were not. And I don't get throwing around "UCCan" as if it were some kind of generic insult. I don't see any intersections between my faith and that of RevJohn's (just for an example, because he's the most different in theology, I would think, to me), so what the "offending" beliefs are is a mystery?
unsafe
Well-Known Member
Well folks ----we are not all Saints as stated in above post ------that is false information --and is a dangerous Statement as it gives false hope to people of having eternal life ---and that is very sad to tell people that they are heaven bound when the Scripture says otherwise -----
We need to be careful to listen closely to the Ministers in the Churches today so we don't get led astray --We are born with a Corrupt Nature and Spirit ---that is what the Scripture really says ----and only after we change that to an Uncorrupt Spirit which is by receiving Jesus in our hearts can we change the sin Nature we are born with ------only then are we considered a Saint by God --
The Greek word Saint ---
40 hágios – properly, different (unlike), other ("otherness"), holy; for the believer, 40 (hágios) means "likeness of nature with the Lord" because "different from the world."---set apart for God, to be, as it were, exclusively his;
in the N. T. transferred to Christians, as those whom God has selected ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου (John 17:14, 16), that under the influence of the Holy Spirit they may be rendered, through holiness, partakers of salvation in the kingdom of God:
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I say
Many Clergy tell their Church that they are all God's children -----The Scripture does not say that either-
The Scripture calls us ---Children of the Flesh until we are adopted back into God's Holy Family --only then are we called Children of God or Children of the Promise -----and that is really what the scripture says -----we don't have to believe it or like it but it is there ----Romans 9:6-9
And yes Scripture says we have to be adopted back into God's Family ---Galatians 1:3-10 ----
Greek word for adoption ----------------Please NOTE____-My suggestion is that YOU READ the Whole Chapters of the Scripture posted below so you get the Context of what the Scripture is saying ---
I. Biblical usages of "adoption"
A. Greek word, huiothesia. From huis = "son," and tithemi = "to put or place"
B. New Testament references:
Rom. 8:15 - "you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Abba!
Father!'"
Rom. 8:23 - "we groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption
of the body."
Rom. 9:4 - "Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the
covenants..."
Gal. 4:5 - "redeem those under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And
because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'"
Eph. 1:5 - "He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself."
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This is from Strong's Concordance on Adoption ---
huiothesia: adoption ----nature and condition of the true disciples of Christ, who by receiving the Spirit of God into their souls become the sons of God
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I say --we need to be students of the Bible so we can discern what we are being told by others ---just saying
We need to be careful to listen closely to the Ministers in the Churches today so we don't get led astray --We are born with a Corrupt Nature and Spirit ---that is what the Scripture really says ----and only after we change that to an Uncorrupt Spirit which is by receiving Jesus in our hearts can we change the sin Nature we are born with ------only then are we considered a Saint by God --
The Greek word Saint ---
40 hágios – properly, different (unlike), other ("otherness"), holy; for the believer, 40 (hágios) means "likeness of nature with the Lord" because "different from the world."---set apart for God, to be, as it were, exclusively his;
in the N. T. transferred to Christians, as those whom God has selected ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου (John 17:14, 16), that under the influence of the Holy Spirit they may be rendered, through holiness, partakers of salvation in the kingdom of God:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I say
Many Clergy tell their Church that they are all God's children -----The Scripture does not say that either-
The Scripture calls us ---Children of the Flesh until we are adopted back into God's Holy Family --only then are we called Children of God or Children of the Promise -----and that is really what the scripture says -----we don't have to believe it or like it but it is there ----Romans 9:6-9
And yes Scripture says we have to be adopted back into God's Family ---Galatians 1:3-10 ----
Greek word for adoption ----------------Please NOTE____-My suggestion is that YOU READ the Whole Chapters of the Scripture posted below so you get the Context of what the Scripture is saying ---
ADOPTION. What the Bible says about adoption.
Biblical outline study of adoption
www.christinyou.net
I. Biblical usages of "adoption"
A. Greek word, huiothesia. From huis = "son," and tithemi = "to put or place"
B. New Testament references:
Rom. 8:15 - "you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Abba!
Father!'"
Rom. 8:23 - "we groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption
of the body."
Rom. 9:4 - "Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the
covenants..."
Gal. 4:5 - "redeem those under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And
because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'"
Eph. 1:5 - "He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is from Strong's Concordance on Adoption ---
huiothesia: adoption ----nature and condition of the true disciples of Christ, who by receiving the Spirit of God into their souls become the sons of God
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I say --we need to be students of the Bible so we can discern what we are being told by others ---just saying
I hope you know I was defending and not putting the United church down.
I will start a new thread entitled "The Rationality of Jesus' Atonement" in which I will explain the prophetic perspective of sacrifice and the Jewish background of Jesus' "ransom" theology and self-understanding. The ultimate result is the well known wordplay
"atonement" means an "at-one-ment" with God achieved through His death and resurrection.
There is no escaping Jesus's divisive focus on who He actually is and what His atoning death will accomplish:
"Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division (Luke 12:51)!"
For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother.;...and one's foes will be members of one's own household (Matthew 10:35-36)."
Just think of how one family member feels about a sibling that is gifted with light humor (humor once being a metaphor for phlegm and what one spits out under stress)!
There is: black .... abstract and mysterious
white ... all washed up
yellow ... psss 'd
red ... bloody insane as it seems most of the domain is by times!
Are we not an angry bunch as always ready to go to Mars (the place of red dirt in one myth)?
We additionally do not have much sensitivity for the alien! Thus some strange folk are very regressed ... like dippy!
There is: black .... abstract and mysterious
white ... all washed up
yellow ... psss 'd
red ... bloody insane as it seems most of the domain is by times!
Are we not an angry bunch as always ready to go to Mars (the place of red dirt in one myth)?
We additionally do not have much sensitivity for the alien! Thus some strange folk are very regressed ... like dippy!
unsafe
Well-Known Member
Christianity gives people nothing in today's world -----Christianity is just a man made and man driven Religion ---it hasn't got the authority or the ability to do crap for people -----it is like every other Religion --it is a dead Faith Religion ---it has nothing to offer people ---it needs to be done away with as do all Religions -----in my view
Take Christ out of the word and all it is --is ianity which is not even a word -----and Christ has been taken out of the word today big time ----It use to be the focus of the word but not anymore -----it is just a haphazard word today meaning all kinds of twisted things -----very sad but true -----
Take Christ out of the word and all it is --is ianity which is not even a word -----and Christ has been taken out of the word today big time ----It use to be the focus of the word but not anymore -----it is just a haphazard word today meaning all kinds of twisted things -----very sad but true -----
jimkenney12
Well-Known Member
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Division happens when some choose culture and some choose Jesus who rejected the culture of his time and invites us to reject the culture of our time. That culture is sometimes the church and sometimes not. The intensity of the division depends in part on how threatened a person may feel by the division.
Behaving saintly has little to do with whether or not we go to hell or heaven. I do not know what waits for me after I die, though I believe it includes some kind of experience I probably cannot imagine. Behaving saintly includes those times when we succeed at acting in the spirit of self-giving love, and I do not see it as being limited to any particulalr group of people. The times we follow in the way of Jesus in terms of giving of self for others are times we are saints at that time by my definition of saint. I realize many others have different definitions, and that is okay.
Churches today are feeding the hungry, providijng shelfter for the homeless, and healing for the ill. They are also helping people celebrate the presence of the Holy Mystery, explore and develop their faith, and grow peace in themselves and others through relationship with the Holy. They are opening doors for people to find connection with the Holy Mystery/God/Jesus. And they are doing much more. Most importantly, they are helping people experience the Gospel as Good News. Like the diversity of trees in an eastern Ontario forest, they provide a diversity of faith communities helping people with a diversity of personalities and experiences. There are very few, if any, monocultures in nature and Christian faith should not be a monoculture either.
Behaving saintly has little to do with whether or not we go to hell or heaven. I do not know what waits for me after I die, though I believe it includes some kind of experience I probably cannot imagine. Behaving saintly includes those times when we succeed at acting in the spirit of self-giving love, and I do not see it as being limited to any particulalr group of people. The times we follow in the way of Jesus in terms of giving of self for others are times we are saints at that time by my definition of saint. I realize many others have different definitions, and that is okay.
Churches today are feeding the hungry, providijng shelfter for the homeless, and healing for the ill. They are also helping people celebrate the presence of the Holy Mystery, explore and develop their faith, and grow peace in themselves and others through relationship with the Holy. They are opening doors for people to find connection with the Holy Mystery/God/Jesus. And they are doing much more. Most importantly, they are helping people experience the Gospel as Good News. Like the diversity of trees in an eastern Ontario forest, they provide a diversity of faith communities helping people with a diversity of personalities and experiences. There are very few, if any, monocultures in nature and Christian faith should not be a monoculture either.
Redbaron
Pirate fan since the dark ages
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Doesn't John's Gospel tell us that God so loved the world that God sent God's Son, not to condemn it but to save it? Did God not look at all of creation in the beginning and see that it was good? How can you be so dismissive of what GOD has created, what GOD sees as good, what GOD is still actively engaged in trying to make better? Seems to me God hasn't given up on the world yet. Why have you?