Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

Love thy neighbor.

 

Your understanding of Christianity is incorrect.

 

There's a commandment that comes before that one.

 

Do you mean Arminianism?

Calvinism provides the easier path for the person who isn't a known Christian, because it leaves it up to God entirely. Is Ghandi in heaven? He might be. I'd hope so. Up to God (and, in the great mystery, Gandhi's own will.)

Or maybe you mean eccumenicalism or some sort of Rob Bell-ish, "Love Wins" bromide, where all the cools make it up top.

 

... yeah - a commandment to appease (apparently) God's fragile ego. I choose to disregard it.


You asked "What is Good." The answer is decidedly not, "Anyone who says, 'Jesus is the man!' "

 

self proclaimed Christians don’t decide who is qualified or not. That’s their heresy. It’s that they act and treat nonchristians as if they were less than human. Their 1800 year crusade to rape, murder, enslave, pillage and steal from the non Christians is gearing up again led by their leaders in America, trump, Bakker, Graham and Pence.

 

Mmm-hmm. So love thy neighbor is good, but the author of it, meh.

Hey, I get it. You're entitled to it. I just fail to see how the definition of "good" and "love" doesn't just come down to each individual person, which means we're back in relativism, which means "good" and "love" is defined by a constant shifting standard of whoever might be in power at the moment.

That's part of what's sunk American Christianity, by the way. Instead of simply being for what we know we oughta be for - and not adding to that - we got ourselves entangled in all kinds of political BS. Christians uphold the unfettered free market! And multi-national corporations! And intervention in the Middle East! I mean, FFS.

 

Jesus didn't write the bible. Neither did God.

Man did.

And in fact: I would offer that the Jesus in each of the fourth Gospels is a different Jesus depending on which Gospel you're reading.

Mark is the Fire-and-brimstone Gospel, with Jesus preaching the, "God is coming soon and he is PISSED!"

Matthew and Luke is the, "Crap - we need this Jesus guy to compete in the marketplace of ideas with the Roman Gods. Let's give him a miraculous birth story, and start from there ..."

John is the, "Jesus, as played by the Avengers' Vision" Gospel.

Four gospels. Different Jesuses. Differences in anecdotes. Differences in timelines. Differences in what was said where and by who.

 

That's all fine.

Now - back to defining "good" and "love." You like ol Jesus' take on the neighbor, the rest is fiction. So's that how we go about picking a choosing the good and love list? Yay and nay? You the one picking?

 

You win. There's no defining "good" and "love."

I'm going to go stab my neighbor and rape his wife. And since none of us are capable of defining "good" and "love," you can't criticize me for it.

 

You seem to be trying to drag us back to this idea that goodness and love have to come from religion and it has to be your religion. That simply isn't true.