God really hates his creation sometimes. We’ve all heard about his early regret of creating man, which inspired him to send a global flood to kill all the animals and people on the earth (see Genesis 6). And then a little later, his creation decided to build a skyscraper and God got so worried they were getting too technologically savvy, that he confused all their languages so they couldn’t communicate anymore (see Genesis 11).
He acts exactly like a man with too much power would act. So I’m not sure why I find it surprising that God commands some people should not be prayed for and that he will starve and punish their children to punish them. I mean, when he will kill almost everything on the planet because of a little regret, what is it to him to starve a few thousand children to death? Yet I am still surprised when I read things like this:
As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you…. They pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger….
Therefore thus says the Lord God: behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched. (Jer 7:16-20)
God gets so angry over people worshipping other gods that he even takes it out on the animals and trees! But lest you think this is just one obscure out-of-context example, God says it again a few chapters later:
Therefore do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble…. The Lord of hosts, who planted you, has decreed disaster against you, because of the evil that the house of Israel and the house of Judah have done… Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Behold, I will punish them. The young men shall die by the sword, their sons and their daughters shall die by famine, and none of them shall be left. (Jer 11:14-17, 22-23)
That’s lovely. And again another few chapters later:
The Lord said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” (Jer 14:11-12)
It seems they’ve crossed the line. They can’t do anything to make God repent of this evil, even if they cried out to him and offered him blood, which he adores.
So if you don’t worship Yahweh or sin against him by not keeping his thousands of laws (which is impossible not to do), then Yahweh is very, very angry with you. In the Bible he’s gotten so angry he forced people’s sons and daughters to starve and die of sickness, and forced enemies to come in and commit genocide on his chosen people — all because they couldn’t live up to his standards or refused to acknowledge him as the One True God.
But don’t get the wrong idea! He’s actually a very kind, loving, just God. He loves you. He sent Jesus, who is his Son but also himself, to be horribly tortured and die for you (as long as you follow all his theological directions). He turned Jesus into sin on the cross, and punished Jesus for all the world’s sins, all so you could have eternal life!
This made God so happy that he now will forgive all your sins if you simply believe this God-man was born of a virgin, performed impossible miracles, rose from the dead, disappeared somewhere into the sky, still lives today, and will return on a white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth, killing everyone who doesn’t believe in him. Oh, and you have to believe this on faith, because there isn’t any evidence.
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You also have to believe that the God who sent Jesus (also himself) to be horribly tortured and die is somehow *different* from the God who laid down all the 613 commandments and is more loving than the old God. However, this God who sent Jesus to die is the same God who laid down all the 613 commandments and is described as never changing. Of course, this is all part of His Plan that makes no sense and we puny humans cannot fathom, but is allegedly laid down in a book that he supposedly wrote, but all the authors are human.
The problem with readings of this sort is based upon the mistaken assumption that the Bible is the infallible and inerrant word of God, as dictated to the scribes.
When we do this we must then try to reconcile the terrible inconsistencies in God’s behavior. Fundamentalists then come up with twisted and convoluted formulas and doctrines in order to explain these inconsistencies and in the process they obscure the overarching truths contained in scripture.
Skeptics, taking the fundamentalists take on scripture (and why not?), attempt to reconcile the same inconsistencies and decide that it is all absurd. The ponderous theological explanations only further discourage any understanding.
But if we look at the Bible, primarily the Old Testament, as an account, using poetry and other literary tools, of how a people respond to their God then it begins to make more sense. It is the story of how the Jews evolved from the primitive to the civilized, their accomplishments and their failures, their good as well as their evil, and how they could rationalize their actions by assuming God’s approval. (Not much different than many religious do today). Meanwhile they remained faithful to God and God remained faithful to them. It is not a book of rules or instructions, it is the recounting of a love affair, with all the glory and all the dirt.
@Christian: I don’t see what’s so beautiful and lovely about God destroying all of creation through a flood, or him cursing the earth because of eating fruit from a tree, killing all the firstborn Egyptian children, God killing a man for picking up sticks on the Sabbath (Num. 15), killing David’s child because of David’s sin, or telling his chosen people to kill millions of people throughout the old testament (1,000,000 Ethiopians alone, see 2 Chron 14!).
I just don’t see how you can think the OT teaches “Jews remained faithful to God and God remained faithful to them.” They turned away from God at almost every opportunity, and God was constantly punishing them for it.
If the Bible is a love affair, it’s one I’d want the hell out of.
Do you really think that we need to believe those stories to be factual? That they actually occurred in those ways?
These were primitive people telling primitive stories, in an oral fashion (initially for quite some time) and they did they best they could to explain things they did not understand. The story of the flood was more about the relationship one man had with God and how this relationship went counter to the conventional wisdom of the time, rather than a story of world wide punishment. Undoubtedly there was some type of flood in those ancient times – other cultures in the region share similar mythologies – and this was the people’s way of trying to understand how and why it could have happened.
The Jews remained faithful in that, 4,000 years later there still is a Jewish people who worship Yawheh. Sure they were few awat at times, but they always returned to God. And God was always there waiting for them.
Many of the things they attributes to God’s wrath are those tragedies that befall most of us when we forget the essence of God’s law – Love God and love others as you would be loved -the basis of all the great religions of the world. When they strayed from God and his guidelines for living then they ran afoul of the perils of pride and arrogance, in there minds incurring God’s wrath.
In the Gospels Jesus reveals the nature of God and it is not one of genocide, egotism, infantile anger. Those attributes of God that we supposedly see in the OT are thos human attributes that we (the Jews) have projected upon him.
Perhaps you’ve never been involved in a long term relationship of love with another but if you have, and it was without it’s desperate moments, those times in which anger frustration verge upon hate, then you are a very unique and fortunate individual. Love is messy.
Sorry about those damn typos.
Oh, you’re just reading the Bible out of context. You need to take the context of the entire Bible, gained with the help of His Patented Holy Spirit and otherwise completely inscrutable, and interpret individuals passages within this entire context. If one does so, one could not help but realize how loving, kind, and merciful God is. :P
But really, it’s interesting to see how old-fashioned and hardcore God is in older books, while getting a bit nicer in the New Testament (Revelations is an aberration). Almost as if it follows how views of a god changed throughout history, from mean old powerful beings to nicer but jealous and slightly incorporeal beings. A modern view of a god would be even more egalitarian and abstract, and I think we see this trend in relatively new religions starting from a couple of centuries ago.
Daniel, I just read your bio and I am not surprised that you have escaped from a long term fundamentalist existence. It seems to me that few religious moderates become atheists. Most that I meet hail from either fundamentalist or Roman Catholic traditions. Perhaps the rigid dogmas and doctrines that you had been expected to adhere to, all questions to be put asid, have something to do with this.
That being said, after 20 years of Catholicism, another 25 of agnostic/atheism and then a few years of fundamental protestantism, it has been refreshing for the last few years to feel free enough to question dogma and doctrine, discard that which is untenable and still maintain a spiritual reference. You need not check your brain at the door in order to a follower of Christ. And you most definitely need not call yourself a Christian to be in right relationship with whatever you call your God.
Christian: Yes, you *can* follow that sort of reading of the Bible, as a human document of developing understanding of the Divine (and C.S.Lewis seems to have, and I did for a while), which lets God off the hook for all the more spectacular nastiness. But there’s still no positive evidence for it. So why bother?
Anyways, there are substantial numbers of people who believe more or less what Daniel describes, so it’s well worth pointing out the absurdity of it, in the strongest terms.
@Christian: Like Eamon said, I’m pointing it out because many people think these things really did happen. I don’t.
I guess if you make them all allegorical or fiction, they are not so abhorrent — it’s like Greek myths. The gods are morons and cruel, but we don’t believe it is historical truth, so can see them as cultural stories.
I don’t have a problem with people reading the Bible like that, as you seem to, but I also don’t understand why you would think it had any type of spiritual truth in it at all.
@Christian (subtle)
“Skeptics, taking the fundamentalists take on scripture (and why not?), attempt to reconcile the same inconsistencies and decide that it is all absurd.”
I don’t think that skeptics take the literalistic view of scripture seriously. We sometime enter into it to argue with the evangelicals, but we do not accept it ourselves. Having abandoned doctrine, we take the bible as a collection of stories, each written by a different author, at different times, intended for different audiences, and each with different ideas about what they were writing and why. The bible is not “an account,” unless you attempt to shove it into the straitjacket of doctrine. It’s a diverse, heterogeneous collections of histories, literary stories, liturgical and theological works. It comes down to us through several different filters of redaction and canonization.
What we find absurd is the notion that the scriptures have any more relevance than the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” the “Illiad,”or the “Enuma Elish.” Obviously, this means the work is valuable – each of the works has its own wisdom to impart and its own history. But we do not accept these stories uncritically. To ask for special pleading for the scriptures over these other works is unethical and foolish. What reason is there to assume “inspiration” for this work but not that work? To quote Robert M. Price, “…the claim that the Bible is divinely inspired is spurious; second, that it is pernicious; and, third, that it is moot.”
It is a common mistake and miscoconception to consider the New Testament as the Old Testament Part 2. Christians have this same problem, and Jews are offended by it.
The Gospels are the story of how a man named Jesus, a devout Jew, attemped to correct the distorted religious cultural perspective of the time, a perspective which helped to establish a system in which the few could take advantage of the many. As a Jew he took scriptures seriously (which does not mean literally) but rather than attempt to creat new orthodoxy his goal was to deconstruct what the Jewish culture had built up around old orthodoxy. He called for a repentance to the social message of the Prophets; to seek mercy, love justice and walk humbly with God.
Jesus emphasized orthopraxy over othodoxy, his Way was about living with God – outside of religion, if necessary. We should remember that Jesus was a Jew speaking to Jews and therefore knowledge of the Old Testament is important to understanding his context at the time. It is also important to see how Jews, then and now, see the Old Testament – not as a series of historical vignettes but as a meta narrative (thanks Yoo ;) ) that in some small and quite indadequate way helps to flesh out the idea that we are not alone and we have value beyond what we percieve.
VorJack – I agree. That being said, Judeo Christian scripture works for me – but it’s only part of the story. Personal experience and revelation are just as important. If the dog don’t hunt…what’s the point.
The Dali Lama once told a Christian pilgrim, who asked if she should convert to Buddhism, that no – she should instead try to be a better Christian. I am convinced that all the great relgions are relative to God and that the nature of god, as personified by Jesus, is available to all who seek, although they may never have heard of Jesus or the Gopels. Of couse this is considered heretical by the majority of the Christian hiearchy but that is just another example of how doctrine and dogma tend to squash the spirit.
But don’t get me wrong – not all religions lead to God (just like much of Christianity does not lead to God). If the “Golden Rule” is not at the heart of what one believes, (even if one is an atheist) then one is wasting their life. (IMHO)
Oh, btw. My full name is Otto Christian Beyer, Jr. My dad goes by Otto and I go by Christian. Nothing subtle about it. Oom Pa Pa, Jah? ;)
“VorJack – I agree. That being said, Judeo Christian scripture works for me – but it’s only part of the story. Personal experience and revelation are just as important.”
Fair enough. If the gems of wisdom work for you, by all means take them. I would just point out that accepting the gems does not require accepting the dead stone around them. I see no reason to accept Christian doctrine because later writers tell us that Jesus delivered the sermon on the mount. If the sermon on the mount was a wholly fictitious creation of the author of Matthew which he crammed into the mouth of Jesus, it is no less useful.
Nor do I see no reason to codify these lessons into a religion, nor do I see any point in positing a God to give them veracity. Wisdom is wise, regardless of the mouth it comes from. If I accept the “Golden Rule” as it was presented by the philosophers centuries before Christ, and if I accept it because it is an entirely wise and pragmatic way to live, am I missing anything that the faithful supposedly have?
Why would you suppose the Sermon on the Mount (or on the Plain) is wholly ficticious? I think it is quite reasonable to assume that there were many ’sermons’ like this during Jesus’ ministry. Look at each of the synoptic Gospels; they are all ’synopsises” of his teachings, and to that respect a certain amount of poetic license must be accepted. The actual time and place in which he spoke is not (always) relevent to their understanding.
Accepting the “Golden Rule” is much easier than living it out. This is where the teachings of Jesus (and Gautam and Lao Tzu and Rabbi Hillel and Gandhi) come into play. There is so much legal baggage placed upon us, by government as well as religion, that we tend to spend more time lookng for loopholes than ways in which to return to purity (or repent).
I don’t know about the ‘faithful’ and what they have or what they are missing, nor do I know of what is in your heart. But I suggest that unless we try to follow the way of Jesus (and some other great mystical leaders) in which we actually come to naturally love those we would otherwise hate, we will again be burdened with another ‘law’ that is difficult to follow.
A changed nature is almost always the goal. Unlike some ‘born again’ folks would like to claim, it does not usually happen overnight.
“Look at each of the synoptic Gospels; they are all ’synopsises” of his teachings, and to that respect a certain amount of poetic license must be accepted.”
The term “synoptic” comes from the greek for “seeing together,” a term created for this purpose. It has nothing to do with the gospels being a synopsis of Jesus’ teaching. If you place Mark beside Luke and Matthew gospels (IOW ’see them together’), you see that Matthew and Luke include large portions of Mark. Matthew and Luke are essentially Mark rewritten with additions. They are later creations that include material more relevant to their predicaments than to that of Jesus.
As for why we would doubt; we ALWAYS doubt. We examine critically. To do less is unhistorical and unethical. We see many passages of the gospels which appear to be later redactions or creations; responses to dilemmas faced by the early Christians, or the results of disputes between early christian sects.
Matthew, in particular, seems to be enamored with the early Jewish practice of midrash; of interpretation through retelling. So baby Jesus must face Herod’s slaughter of innocents the way baby Moses had to escape the Pharaoh. To the author of Matthew, what actually happened is less important than what it meant : Jesus was the new Moses. Well, in the sermon on the mount we see Jesus being the new lawgiver, saying “you’ve heard this, but I say to you this.” Did an actual historical person say this, or did the author of Matthew project it into his mouth to fulfill his understanding of the savior?
Hi Christian:
I grew up in a Catholic Liberation Theology household. I’d consider myself as moderate as they come. I’m an atheist these days, thank god.
I agree that the Bible is not to be taken literally, which is one way in which the Catholic Church has always had it over others, though it brings with it major problems in the form of dogma, which are utterly ludicrous.
A faithful follower must not check his or her brain at the door. The trouble is, once you start thinking, then the Bible, which people tend to see and the overt evidence of God’s existence, starts to crumble.
If it isn’t literal, then it’s allegory. But it’s framed in terms comprehensible to pre-medieval minds, for the most part, meaning that those allegories lose their potency with modern interpretation. Why should one believe that particular book to hold Truth instead of consigning it to the Fiction section with all the other legends?
Even hardcore evangelicals don’t really take the Bible literally. Some of them only know two verses: John 3:16 and Leviticus 20:13. But ask a literalist whether he follows Levitical law. Does he eat barbequed pork? Wrong! He’s dammned. Play football (albeit a few years back)? Wrong! Lev 11:26 (handling the skin of a pig) …
And whether or not you believe the Old Testament to be 100% fact or not, it is certain that that god is one angry dude.
The New Testament, as I was taught to understand it, is all about example. Okey doke. But why should I believe it’s divinely inspired instead of being the first-century equivalent of The Secret?
Vorjak – I was making a play on words with ’synopsis’, hence the quotation marks. Swoosh! :)
And I never asked why you ‘doubt’ but why you ’suppose’. I am all for doubt – but we have to be careful when we suppose because before you know it we’ve gone and created our own mythology. Jesus could just as easily have said all the things attributed to him. I, though, tend to think there is plenty of paraphasing going on there as tape recorders were still in the future. And I am not confident that a specific individuals named “Matthew” “Mark” or especially “John” composed the Gospels, but more likely it was a collaboration of their particular followers.
You are (mostly) right with your assesment of Matthews Gospel. He did have a specific agenda in how he wanted to present Jesus as messiah to his fellow Jews, hence the literary layout which is similar to the Pentateuch, the geneaology, the similarities between Jesus and Moses etc. etc.
Mark was a ‘wartime’ gosel written either immediately prior to or right after the fall of Jerusalem’s to the Romans hence his martial references and the eschatology. But Mark was most likely the first Gospel written, along with the mysterious Q and both Matthew and Luke draw heavily from it. Each Gospel has it’s own theme and each one will differ in certain parts. This tends to confirm the veracity of the essence of Jesus’ ministry as reported in that, while not being copies of one another, the essential elements are consistent. (We often forget that the earliest surviving written descriptions of Jesus and his words are found in Paul’s letters.)
However, Jesus was not a new ‘law giver’ and was never presented as such. The Sermon on the Mount is not the new and improved ten commandments. Jesus is not telling people what they should do but rather telling them how it already is. His words about lust and anger is not an order to stop thinking ’sinful’ thoughts but to point out that we must take an internal inventory before we so quickly judge and condemn others. “There but for the grace of God go I” more or less. Jesus did not come to abolish the law but he came to abolish the manmade laws put in place to serve (poorly) the one true law.
Metro – there is no reason for you to ‘believe’ in the Gospels over the “Secret” (except for the fact that the secret is just recycled 1970’s New Age mysticism according to…who?). You will never find rational material evidence to convince you to “believe” something that is by its very nature apart from the material. But there is a difference in believing something (like how I believe that Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years away) and “believing in” something (like how I believe in the love my wife has for me). It is relational and personal. Why would God choose to reveal himself relationally and personally rather than in some grandiose “Old Testament” display of pyrotechnics? Well, why not? (Although I might suggest that he already has but it didn’t take ;) )
And it’s not God who was angry – it was those who wrote of God. Just as (with all due respect) there is a thread of anger running through these threads (and likely for good reason) I should not assume that all atheists are angry. Don’t blame God for the foibles of his people. If he made us ‘perfect’ the we would more closely resemble Gort than
Adam or Eve (yes, I see all three of them as myths).
So god’s deliberately playing a sort of “hide-and-go-seek” with our eternal damnation as the stakes? He doesn’t have to prove he exists. I just have to accept that I’m correct in guessing he’s the right one (as opposed to Yaweh, Allah, Odin, or Baal) and I only find out whether I guessed right after I die?
And if I guessed wrongI’ll know because of the horrid pain I’ll be in for the entire rest of time.
Sound terrific! Just the thing to motivate the lesser beings to love him and believe in him all the harder.
Here’s an idea: After a kid is born its parents go off into the woods and hide, leaving nothing but a notebook, written in a semi-legible scrawl in a mix of Hebrew and Swahili, to prove they ever existed.
For the rest of the kid’s life.
Sometimes they toss out a little food, other times they might throw a poisonous snake down out of the trees. The object of the game is to have the kid grow up to love them and honour them, and behave like a responsible member of society rather than ending up in foster care.
How’s that any different?
Maybe somebody ought to report that god dude to child welfare for abandonment.
Personally I’d like to opt for having Zeus foster me. He seems to have done okay by his kids.
@Christian: “I was making a play on words with ’synopsis’, hence the quotation marks. Swoosh! :) ”
I think, at this point in the discussion, neither of us has the right to chide the other for getting pedantic.
And like the good pair of pedants we are, we’ve wandered off topic. Let’s see: “However, Jesus was not a new ‘law giver’ and was never presented as such. ”
We’ll have to agree to disagree. To me, the very structure of Matthew’s gospel point to the author’s understanding of Jesus as the next Moses. I’m not saying that Jesus was supposed to replace Moses – Matthew was certainly not a Marcionite – but Matthew gives up a Moses v.2 and a Pentateuch 2.0.
But none of this is the point. We can argue probabilities until the end of the world really does come, and I don’t think we’ll get anywhere. My background and professional ethics make me skeptical; I ask, what evidence do we have that this actually happened? Perhaps you place the burden of proof on the other side. There, perhaps, we’ll have to agree to disagree again.
You seem to believe in a God, and believe that Jesus had some special insight into its nature. I believe in no such God, and so I really don’t care where the wisdom comes from. The story of the adulteress in the Gospel of John is surely a later addition; our early manuscripts do not have it and it is never mentioned in the commentaries until the middle ages. Does this rob the story of it’s usefulness? I would say not, it is still a wonderful story.
As an allegory, the Old Testament (or rather, the Tanakh) rather makes sense. The world is a hostile place and we need to all get along if we’re going to survive. Act out of place, and you don’t just risk your own life, but that of the community. God is a metaphor for everything bad that can happen and a warning to play nice.
The New Testament is just nonsense. Life sucks, but you’ll get rewarded for it after you’re dead so just focus on the end. You can never live up to an impossible standard, but if you don’t try, you’ll be punished for it. I can see where it might be appealing if you’re living as an oppressed people with no hope in sight, but it’s completely irrelevant for today — especially since Christians dominate much of Western society.
The watered down modern version (God/Jesus is love) isn’t the least bit compelling. Any New Ager can give you that and more.
Metro and Chayonav – that take you have on the New Testament is exactly the take that much of the “Church” has and I believe it to be terribly, terribly wrong (and I am far from the only Christian who feels this way) There is no scriptural basis for the doctrine of hell and damnation. The Jews at Jesus time had no theological doctrine for it, it is essentially a Greek intrusion into their culture.
This interpretive aberration of Jeus’ words, reading clear cut black white meanings into fairly into parables (similes) and colorful language used for emphasis has resulted in endless misery at the hands of the Christian church.
And I agree, meaningless platitudes based upon textproofing (John 3:16, 1 John 4) is hardly the foundation for any type of tenable belief.
Vorjack – not pedantic (at least not deliberately) merely letting on that I have a little knowledge of scriptural historicity. I don’t think there is a ‘burden’ of proof for either side. . I don’t believe that it is necessary for me, or anyone else, to convert you to Christianity. I really don’t consider myself to be a ‘Christian’ any longer, but just a follower of this Jesus fellow. I don’t think this means that you are somehow a sinner (any more so than I) or depraved (ditto) or immoral or amoral. And I can see where the actions of Satan’s useful idiots in the church have generated a certain amount of justifiable contempt and anger on the parts of may people (I think “Satan” is just a useful personification of our egos run amok).
But anger (even the ‘righteous’ kind ), contempt, revulsion – these are self-destructive qualities in a person and they are best let go, even for how Christians feel about non-Christians and atheists feel about theists. That wisdom is central to the Sermon on the Mount.
You are right about the story in John about the attempted stoning of the adulteress. It was likely lifted from Luke and placed in John by early church leaders to make to make this non-synoptic Gospel more attractive to those assembling the canon.
Oops.
Those who are a part of what is being called the Emerging Church finds this idea to be just as reprehensible as you do. Wallis, McLaren Jones, Sweet, Padgitt even more conservative folks like Willard, Stott, and Foster have articulated a much more accurate, less selfish and less fear- based commentary on what Jesus taught.
This ‘new’ theology has been in evidence for a long time, most obviously in the works of people like Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day and Mother Theresa. Christians have no exclusive hold on charity (and are more often not charitable) but the ‘new’ vision is more pro-active in that it is working toward the OT Prophets (who Jesus quoted often) vision of a society that is focused on justice and mercy, not self aggrandizing visions of eternal salvation at the expense of the oppressed.
Energizing a non-hierarchal, bottom-up church structure, the Emerging Church is addressing the systems that cause poverty and misery rather than anonymously throwing ‘tithes’ at the victims of these systems ad infinitum. This calls for real ‘change’ in the lives of those who claim to be Christians and a deliberate working towards the end of religious hypocrisy.
Problem is, I have little use for theology because it’s meaningless. Religion is nothing more nor less than how it’s practiced by its followers and what they believe. Go to a Southern Baptist church some Sunday morning and tell them they’re reading their Bibles wrong and that belief in damnation has no sound scriptural foundation.
But you might want to keep the car running so you can make a quick getaway.
So there’s another schism ongoing in Christianity. I’m sure many of the differences of opinion are forgotten when dealing with non-Christians and especially atheists.
Good advice, perhaps, if you don’t like to be verbally assaulted in response to your own verbal assault (quick getaway indeed) but I would imagine the same would hold true for the militant baptist who provoked a meeting of the American Atheists.
Of course you have no use for a meaningless theology. But remember that this is your own particular perspective. It certainly is not meaningless to me. Now if you consider my beliefs, because you do not see them, as being meaningless, that’s OK. But, if you think that someone who adheres to theistic philosophy as being irrational or merely ‘ignorant’ then you would be guilty of the same closed mindset as the religious fundamentalist.
The Emerging Church is no schism, it is an effort to mend the divisions that exist in the church by paring away the modernist religious baggage that has piled onto all the various denominations. Of course, schisms do exist within people of faith, much like the schisms that exist between Republican atheists and Democrat atheist.
Go out into the world and take a survey. By and large Christians believe in heaven and hell, that Jesus was the only person born without sin and of a virgin, 3 days after he died he was resurrected, and the only way to get into heaven is to believe all that unconditionally. They believe it literally, but when you press some of them on it further, they’ll do an about-take and suddenly claim it’s just a metaphor for love.
If it is all a big love metaphor, then nothing in the New Testament needs to be taken seriously. If it’s literal truth, there are some problems involved with that, too.
I said theology was meaningless, but said nothing about theism as being irrational and ignorant, so don’t put words in my mouth. And don’t bother trying to paint me as a religious fundamentalist, because that dog won’t hunt either.
Your “Emerging Church” is just yet another interpretation of Christianity (you can claim it’s not all you want, I don’t care, but it still is), and one of many that has claimed to fix everything wrong with Christianity — I think Martin Luther was the very first to make that claim, in fact. On the other hand, atheism takes absolutely no faith at all, so again, your attempts to paint it all with the same broad brush is a futile exercise.
So none of those arrows hit, sorry to say. You may want to try taking closer aim next time.
Why? Because of the shrewdness of your arguments?
Look, I’m not taking aim at anything – not trying to attack your beliefs nor defend mine or anyone else’s beliefs. Don’t be so defensive. I thought this was just a conversation and I think the more conversations people have the more understanding and perhaps more harmony we will have.
Let’s say that it is all one big love metaphor. Why should that not be taken seriously? Would it be worthy of more consideration if it were packaged as the “10 Steps to BLANK” or “30 Days Until a New BLANK”? Or perhaps you think there already is enough love in this world?
Love means never having to say “ABOMINATION!”
Chaya: I think St Paul was trying to fix problems in the church. John of Patmos, too. Less than a hundred years and there were already problems…
Homosexuality has a genetic and biological basis, meaning that if God exists, he created it. But it’s an abomination. God commands us to stone those who are homosexual. How does that match with a doctrine of love? The only love like that is a seven-year-old’s for their sand castle… they love to make it, and then they love to smash it. Love all the way, but you wouldn’t want to be the sandcastle.
@Christian:
The Catholic Church, via Pope John Paul II (a good man, if rather senile by the end), declared a few years back that the traditional Hell of belief (flames and physical torment) had given way to the philosophical and mental torture of “eternal separation from God”.
There’s certainly room to interpret scripture in that way: “… cast into the darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth …” and all that.
But to be Christian requires at minimum two literalist beliefs: That Jesus of Nazareth was God AND man simultaneously, and further that he was crucified to death, and rose again, whole and in the body. I submit that any other definition of Christianity is twisting it into an unrecognizable shape, and in fact strips it of meaning. Witness those Christians who call themselves “Messianic Jews”.
Which brings us back to the problem of interpretation: Which bits are the literal ones? We are apparently expected to guess.
The Emerging Church (which I observe without malice may need renaming if it ever attains the status of the Catholic or Baptist Churches) is simply another best guess.
How does the Emerging Church come to its interpretations, and who are the recognized authorities? And if there are none such then how do you know you’ve got it right?
Metro -
First let me address your question about the Emerging Church. It is not a new denomination nor a new Christian religion and prefers to use the word ‘conversation’ instead of ‘church’ but its numerous religious critics won’t allow it.
If anything, Emergence is the antithesis of religion and its denominations. The goal is not to construct a new system of laws, doctrines and dogmas but to deconstruct all that the Christian religion has heaped upon the teachings of Jesus and the Prophets (foundationalism). If they (we) ever look up and see that we have become big and ‘powerful’ like the RC or the Southern Baptists, well we have yet again f—ed things up.
The recognized authorities (and they would deign to refer to themselves as such) are folks like Brian McLaren (we belong to the same faith community) Leonard Sweet, Tony Jones, Doug Padgitt and others. Besides, how does anyone know they’ve got it ‘right’? God is a bit too big for that, I think.
I also think that your minimalist definition of what constitutes a “Christian” is a little bit off base. Although some fundamentalists do not consider Jehovah Witnesses or Unitarian-Universalists to be “Christian” they certainly do so themselves, and those beliefs are not part of their doctrines. Many Evangelical Protestants consider these folks to be cults but then again many think the Roman church is a cult as well. And Messianic Jews do hold to the two belief statements you mentioned.
Marcus Borg, one of the scholars related to the Historical Jesus seminars, has some other take on those ‘foundational’ beliefs, one of which I hold to myself. There is no reason to believe, based up Scriptures, that Jesus was both God and man simuteanously. In fact, that was a great subject of debate in the early church, up until the Council of Nicea ‘authoritatively’ put the question to bed.
And here again lies the problem; religion. Faith and belief are by their very nature personal. The goal would be to work and play together with people of different beliefs, wether they be variations of Christianity or seemingly as disparate as Buddhism, Hinduism or atheism.
Jesus provided us with a way to be free from religion. but unfortunately many men and women don’t have the courage to cut that particular umbilical chord.
Well the anti-church becomes a church by definition, surely sociologically if no other way, as soon as you draw that line around your group. Because you are identifying the group as somehow different.
At the very least it’s a faith community with, presumably, membership requirements and voices recognized as authorities by the community, whether they define themselves as such or not.
As to power, once a group reaches a certain size it has power simply through participation–witness Christianity. Surely you’re not saying that if ever the Emerging has 2 billion members it’ll disband?
As to my definition–it’s not just mine. It’s the generally accepted definition for what constitutes Christianity.
JW’s certainly believe that Jesus was the son of god. And they’re 100% certain they’ve got it right.
SDA’s seem to believe (though I’m not familiar with them, much) that Jesus was divine. I’m not sure what they think of the resurrection.
Messianic Jews are still Christians, no matter what they call themselves.
And as to who’s got it right, isn’t God himself in His Bible is quite clear on that point? “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me”?
If one is going to deconstruct the Bible, what parts shall one pick and choose to base one’s life upon? Is the Sermon on the Mount a go? How about Leviticus? The Commandments? Why not simply treat the whole book as a collection of quaint, but outmoded, morality tales for a series of superstious generations of peasants?
Besides, if Jesus existed but wasn’t the son of god, and didn’t rise from the dead, then what’s the point? Sure he had some good ideas, definitely ahead of his time. But if he wasn’t a direct pipeline to god then what gives him any authority at all? One might as well stick to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, no?
It seems that you’re advancing an argument for atheism, rather than faith.
Not trying to be snarky, just very interested in how one can be a Christian while questioning two of the central pillars of the whole cathedral industry.
“There is no reason to believe, based up Scriptures, that Jesus was both God and man simuteanously.”
So what then? Would this mean that Jesus was deified after his death?
Metro, there is no ‘membership’ in the Emerging Church just as there is no membership among those who call themselves Fundamentalist or Evangelical or liberal or conservative socialist or capitalist. There are some people (leaders? thinkers? authors?) who seem to exclusively address emergence, personally I have little interest in them. The ‘emerging conversation’ has been called that because it is made up of people across the church – Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Quaker, Lutheran, Methodist etc – who are beginning to realize that their denominations, their ‘religions’ have been limiting them in their spiritual grown precisely by claiming to hold the only truth about God.
Your definition is widely accepted. I (and many others) just don’t hold to it.
There can only be ‘one’ God, right? Only one supreme being. But at the time of early OT their were many gods worshiped, by Jews as well as others.
Not deconstruct the bible – deconstruct the religious interpretations, commentaries, doctrine and dogmas that derive from other prior readings of the bible. Few read the bible today without coming to it with religious preconceptions, preconceptions that often are faulty.
CS Lewis could have written that. Personally, I believe in the Resurrection – it is very important to me. That being said, if someone could present cold evidence that there was no empty tomb, it would not effect my relationships with the resurrected Christ. Hard to understand, I am sure. The reason is that it is because it is ‘relational’ on an (almost) daily basis, in a way that cannot be summed up in words. But I know some wonderful Christians who do not take the resurrection literally (Borg and Crossen are two authors that come to mind). The spiritual relationship to Christ is at times obsucred by an obsession with verifiable facts. Spirituality, by its nature, transcends the material and often the logical.
Some (Marcus Borg, again) have suggested that Jesus did become “God” after the crucifixion and resurrection. If Jesus was to be fully man then how could he also be fully god at the same time? I think this idea has tended to create a sort of Marvel comics version of Jesus as a type of Clark Kent who was always keeping his super powers in check, who could tell the future, who could call legions of angels to his defense, who decimate the Roman legions if he chose. But if that were the case, then he would not really be man at all and much of the significance of the incarnation is lost.
But….who knows?
“The ‘emerging conversation’ has been called that because it is made up of people across the church – Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Quaker, Lutheran, Methodist etc – who are beginning to realize that their denominations, their ‘religions’ have been limiting them in their spiritual grown precisely by claiming to hold the only truth about God.”
As a veteran of the Anglican community, I have a hard time seeing it as a church that claims to have sole access to the truth. After all, this is a church that placed ‘reason’ as one of its three pillars. And any church that not only allows Borg’s colleague John Shelby Spong to come through the door, but actually makes him a bishop, has to have a pretty open mind. Or a sense of humor.
(”Another book, John? What’s in this one? Oh, I see, Mary Magdalene never existed, it was just Jesus’s cross dressing problem. You know, John, maybe you should consider letting someone else finish off the communion wine.”)
For the record, another member of of the Jesus Seminar is a member of the Episcopal church. That’s Robert M. Price, the radical skeptic, the demythologizer, and proponent of the Jesus Myth hypothesis. This is not a church with a real tight lock on doctrine.
Good point. This is no doubt why, if I were in the market for a religious denomination or at least a local faith community, I would first check out the Anglican parishes. There was a time, not too long ago, when I wouldn’t have been caught dead in one, for pretty much the same reasons.
I can’t quite get a handle on Spong. It’ almost like a very prolonged stream of consciousness thing with him, although to be fair I have not been able to get too far into any of his books.
Anyway, there are quite a few Anglicans taking part in this emerging conversation. And it’s true, in many cases it seems that others are being drawn to them for their insights. I once heard that the reason why the Anglicans seem to be taking the lead here is that they were never truly a Protestant denomination, they don’t have all that baggage from Luther, Calvin, Zwingli etc. They also consider themselves to be reconcilers, standing as mediators between Rome and the Protestant world.