Posted by hyperfocus on June 11, 2011, at 19:26:16
In reply to Christians are so...conservative. Why?, posted by Christ_empowered on May 10, 2011, at 16:05:21
Today it seems that 99% of Christianity is theology, dogma, politics, culture. 1% is actually Jesus Christ. I'm not saying those 4 things aren't important but it's the 1% that's the most important.
Christ would not have been a sportsman that's for sure. Christ was a loner and a radical. He was anti-authority from day one. All of the establishment hated his guts. He didn't have any money. He liked women (a lot) and children and animals. He hated hypocrisy. He hated the rich. He loved knowledge and was very very smart and learned. He was, using the modern connotation of the word, a liberal.
I think one thing you have to do - which is an advantage our age has over say 100 years ago - is to actually read the Bible and read what Christ actually said, and read the Apocrypha or what people outside the Catholic tradition wrote about him. Christianity was a pretty diverse thing in the early years after Christ, with many diverse schools of thoughts trying to understand what Christ said and did. The Roman Catholics exterminated the Coptics and Gnostics and anyone who didn't hold to the Pauline theology and purged their writings from the record. That's just how the Romans did things back then. But thanks to technology anyone today who wants to be a Christian has access to a huge and diverse amount of knowledge they can use to figure the whole thing out. There's a huge library in Rome filled with books on how to be a Catholic, and every day a bunch of people on the TV talk about culture wars and what side you should be on, but if you read the Bible you'll find that there's only a few specific things Jesus said you should and shouldn't do.
I'm conservative in my views because they reflect what I believe Christ's message was. However I don't actually believe that somebody has to be 'saved' or 'baptised' to be a Christian. To me Christ's message was that anybody who followed his 'way' was a Christian. Whether you're a Jew or Buddhist or Muslim or whatever. It's not an exclusive club you have to join. I also don't believe in Heaven or Hell per se. I think the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. I think practicing acts of kindness and forgiveness towards one another helps us move a step closer to it. Most people don't do this though. The way the world is today I doubt Hell could be much worse.
C-PTSD: social phobia, major depression, dissociation
Currently on 150mg amitriptyline single dose at night.
Improving.
poster:hyperfocus
thread:985024
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20101230/msgs/987791.html