Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

Totally agree. I don’t see how you can read the Bible and find some soft, new-agey inclusive document. Either you believe it or you don’t.

 

1. People don’t read it.

2. Soft and new agey keeps the pews full. Coffers too. And the inclusivity goes both ways,
Too, politically

 

I think one sees that most clearly in the post-modern prosperity gospel superchurches like Joel Osteen's.

Sin is completely absent from the PowerPoint, and Jesus is a life coach.

It's a 2-hour breakout room at the Amway convention.

 

Oh please.

 

Perhaps some people should apologize for messing with your echo chamber.

Religion is an important part of our national culture. That is true even for those who don't believe. Everyone deserves a place in this discussion.

 

It's not. It is just like every thread on SJ.com. It is open to all. It was actually kind of shitty for one poster to suggest otherwise, especially about a topic that affects all of us whether we want it to or not.

 

Your Christianity (and perhaps mine ... I ain't saying here). But not every Christian's. And I'm not just talking about the cash flow types, either.

 

Revelations is a fascinating book to study strictly from a literature/rhetoric standpoint. So much of the language is metaphor or imagery that would be widely understood by middle-of-the-road schlubs of its day but that we modern-day folks get lost in. I mean, we say "born with two strikes against him" and we all know what is being said. " To the author and (original) audience of Revelations, being "washed white" meant triumphing or being made triumphant, and "the seven churches" were the complete or entire or universal church (seven was a common metaphor for "complete" or universal).

 

I just wish the dude on Patmos had written: “No longer applicable after Nero” and saved us a whole bunch of headaches.

 

It'd a been something else ...

 

Anyone’s. As it relates to the way, truth, life thing. Anyone’s. It’s it and that’s that. Otherwise it isn’t Christianity as we understand it. It’s the core principle.

Put it this way: There are people who argue the whole “love wins” thing in which Jesus makes himself known after death, and there’s a final choice, and there you have it. Or some argue for purgatory. But at the end of either is an acknowledgment Jesus is who he is and did what he did. As it relates to Christianity, that is.

Anyone in theory can claim anything, I suppose. And people do. I’d rather fence that aspect of the faith. It’s way more helpful to everyone.

 

I understand all that you posted. You're still doing that "No true Scotsman" thing, though. There are quirks and nuances in the translation of seemingly simple Greek words such as "the" that add ambiguity to even the most definitive statement. Intellectual honesty compels me to admit that you might be right. It should compel you concede that you might be wrong.