Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

Distrust thy neighbor

Covet thy neighbor’s wife

Let’s go Brandon

 

1) There is one God.
2) Jesus is God's son and emissary to a sinful world.
3) "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

 

I'll take a swing at this and put forth the lynch-pins of the faith :

1). John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

2). John 14:6: I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me...

3) Matthew 5-7: The Sermon on the Mount, which gets more amazing with each read of it as it includes the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, and the Golden Rule, as well as general messages about how not to be anxious, coming to God and the door will be opened; in short, it's a directive about about how to live and how to treat others, and therefore, how to live for God.

 

You beat me to the smartass answers, swingline!

I'll go with a Catholic version:

1. go to church on Christmas
2. go to church on Easter
3. root for Notre Dame football

 

That's a great question.

I'm not sure. But I think it's a very different set of answers depending where and whom you ask. USA vs Europe vs Africa, for example. Catholic vs Protestant. Sect to sect within each. Men. Women.

Heaven, maybe? Hell? Sin? Do they recall a commandment? The resurrection? Love thy neighbor? Adam and Eve? A Sunday School version of Noah? Fragments of the Sermon on the Mount? A muddle of virgin birth and Moses and "do unto others . . . somethingsomething"?

What's so interesting about the last couple of stories posted on this thread are the very American ways in which "Christianity" has become its own form and category of American politics. Christianism. What falsehoods and partial truths are held and acted on in that way?

And what do folks outside Christianity think Christians believe?

I don't know.

But again, a terrific question.

 

Here's some "Christianism" at work.

 

Wait ... so there's not near-universal outrage at something @Alma posted? I guess we truly are in an age of miracles.

 

^^^ "God" works in mysterious ways.

 

Board style is G*d

 

Jesse Ventura: CHEE-CO Santana.

Vince McMahon: His name is Tito.

Jesse Ventura: Just like I said, CHEE-CO.

 

The idea that salvation is exclusive to Christianity reminds me of Carlton Pearson, the Pentecostal minister who ran a megachurch in the Bible Belt. He preached to thousands, drove a nice car, etc. Then he made the mistake of looking outside his shell and recognizing that most of the world didn't follow his gospel. The idea that Buddhists, Muslims and others living just lives were doomed to eternal torment in the fires of hell became a sticking point in his faith ... and when he shared that salvation might extend beyond his church walls, his congregation shunned him.

I looked him up and found an ensuing ChiTrib article about him. He joined a more universalist church, but some in the hierarchy opposed his appointment as a minister, saying he wasn't qualified because he didn't come up through the church pipeline. "It's an insult to us," one member said. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2009-05-11-0905100192-story.html

 

The challenge impossibility of summarizing into a neat little list the core tenets of Christianity* -- such as "No one comes to the Father ..." -- is that even in distilled-down form they're subject to interpretation. On the one hand, one is welcome to read that passage as exclusive ... you ain't gettin' into heaven but by following Him, so all y'all over yonder are going to hell. On the other hand, it can be read as a tautology of the "I am that I am" type: Jesus is God, therefore no matter how many paths there might be to God, they all run through Jesus (and not necessarily through the Twelfth First Church of the Divine Evangeline).


*And, I would assume, other faiths.