Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

I appreciate the corrections and reading your impassioned defense of your religion. I'm sorry what I said was imprecise. I was writing from a Christian perspective and should have clarified that more. Sorry.

My point should have been the difference between the two really boils down to Christianity's divergence from the Jewish tradition that begins and ends with the belief in the divine Jesus. Everything that Christianity became started with that belief and all adjustments were made to accommodate that to become something different.

My point in the comparison is that Judaism is Judaism and doesn't need to acknowledge the things of Christianity but Christianity needs to acknowledge the Jewish traditions as it's foundations because everything Jesus did was rooted in them. It was supposed to be a refocusing on the Mosaic covenants, but got turned into a new religion as the early followers made accommodations to bring in nonJews into the fold, where the divergence of the law really takes place.

So I will leave that there knowing there is more nuances to it and deeper explanations of traditions. I was trying to answer the question about what the difference between the two religions were and while the short answer is Jesus, I should have stated there is way more to it. Apologies and a happy arbitrary new year started by a Christian dude.

 

I’m glad I’m not religious — at all. That’s what growing up Catholic will do to you.

 

Now we're getting somewhere.

Fake to what end? And remember - it'd be fake to an end as established 1,970 years ago, when it was opposed by both the ruling power (Rome) and religious power. It was fake unto its own powerlessness and execution?

(Now maybe it was, maybe it was. I don't believe so, still, maybe it was. But Trump's fakenews is to his own end.)

 

Your point was straightforward and elementary, for which there is nothing to apologize, even as I would acknowledge my lack of knowledge about how the matter between God and Israelites is reconciled.

 

I never could quite figure out why they call Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Bahai the "Abrahamic" faiths. There must be some reason ...

 

Well, ya know...

And I mainly wanted to honor where Amy was coming from and acknowledge that my point was really from a certain perspective and I could have been clearer about that.

 

There's a taxonomy of religious thought that attempts to make sense of it all. Frankly, I'm tired of the emotion over the babies Herod killed while there are children starving to death within shouting of many houses of worship. Yes, someone is feeling jaded.

 

I don't perceive a lot of emotion over this in mainstream Christianity.

 

Maybe I'm not as mainstream as I thought. And FWIW, the murder of the innocents is tragic. When children who are alive right now are going without care, I have to give the side-eye to ignoring actual need in favor of ritual observance. It's like we've forgotten those stories and rituals are mean to serve as a guide for what we should be vigilant about in our day to day lives. Jesus isn't just for Sundays anymore, if he ever was. (I know you knew that. Sometimes I have to remind myself.)

 

Yasher koach, Amy for a good response. I would sign on to much but not all of this. We absolutely reject the divinity of Jesus, as we would the divinity of anyone else. That's a pretty big deal. We definitely believe in a Messiah and an afterlife, as well as divine reward and punishment. It doesn't come up that often, partially because we don't "know" that much about it. Lots of cryptic prophecies, a few passages in the Talmud and plenty of medieval dispute.
I think there is plenty of dogma, but we don't lead with it. One God is the big one. I don't think all the laws fit as neatly as you claim into those two categories. All in all we have way more in common than we differ on, just putting it out there.
Happy non-Jewish New Year to you too.

 

I feel for Cleaver here. Not too much - he is, after all, a United Methodist pastor, and probably ought to have known his play on words wasn't going to be taken well - but a little bit.

I'm a prayer. I pray for others, have others pray for me. I pray for our government, since I'm generally subject to it.

But should our government pray? I mean, it can. But it doesn't have to. What's more, I'd hope, in a government where many different faiths exists, many different types of prayers are given.

Cleaver here is just trying to be, I dunno, a nice guy or something here. Clever, perhaps. But if he's a Christian - he is a pastor, after all - let someone else in the congressional body who believes in a broadly-defined feminine god get up there and pray to her.

 

Or simply not have a prayer. Doesn't this subvert the idea of separation of church and state?