ChristianForums banned Christ.

[godrulz]

I was wondering about CF because I was edited and one of my posts was deleted. All I did was call a false doctrine a "false doctrine" yet never made a personal attack on the individual that I replied to. I called the founder of a false doctrine a liar because he was a liar and it was proven in court before he died! Being it was proven in court I feel it then become fact and is coverd by free press to expose that fact to others. It seemed to me that CF was biased, very much toward the explaining away of the scriptures.

IN THE MASTER'S SERVICE,
Normann

Which false doctrine/teacher?

 

[Sarcastikus]

There are credible scholastic reasons why the canon of Scripture is what it is today. Just because some groups entertained other books does not mean it was truthful or credible.

I'm sure there were/are scholastic reasons why certain books were excluded, but I'm also sure that the "political" struggles in the early church also played a role. If your group wasn't backed by the Emperor then the books you viewed favorably wouldn't likely stand much of a chance for inclusion and would then probably be labled heretical and be burned.

There were a number of competing versions of Christianity which many modern people have little, if any, idea about. Books like Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels and Ehrman's Lost Christianities have done much to raise awareness that Christianity hasn't always been such a monolith (though it does have some significant cracks), and that early in its history it was also subject to human foibles.

 

[no avatar]

I was wondering about CF because I was edited and one of my posts was deleted. All I did was call a false doctrine a "false doctrine" yet never made a personal attack on the individual that I replied to. I called the founder of a false doctrine a liar because he was a liar and it was proven in court before he died! Being it was proven in court I feel it then become fact and is coverd by free press to expose that fact to others. It seemed to me that CF was biased, very much toward the explaining away of the scriptures.

IN THE MASTER'S SERVICE,
Normann

Was your post replete with the required evidence? It is one thing to make an unsupported argument, it is another thing (and a requirement at CF) that you document your accusations with evidence. And flaming is not allowed, whether the person is alive or dead. If you make a negative statement regarding someone's faith or religion, you must provide documentation to support your claim. Rules 1.2 and 1.3.

 

[Lighthouse]

Isn't it sad that they've closed both the threads about this issue? What are they scared of?

 

[no avatar]

Both what threads????

 

[Lighthouse]

The ones about this subject, over at the other site.

 

[no avatar]

Oh. That happened quite a while ago, did'nt it? I mean, that's old news, idn't it?

 

[quantumspirit]

who was Jesus calling brood of vipers and children of Satan? They weren't agnostics or Buddhists; they were the Republicans and the Saducees!

 

[Mustard Seed]

who was Jesus calling brood of vipers and children of Satan? They weren't agnostics or Buddhists; they were the Republicans and the Saducees!

Pharisees and Saducees were on opposite political and theological ends of supposedly the same religion. You claim to be Christian and a liberal.

"Nobody's right when everybody's wrong."

Your attempt to paint the opposition to Christ as being limited to one political end demonstrates that you don't understand the politics of theology. It's not the party, rather, the belief that puts one in accord or opposition to Christ.

 

[quantumspirit]

Jesus was a liberal

Jesus was a liberal

so why would those liberals ban another liberal?

Jesus provided health care to persons too poor to afford cough drops. He was a feminist who directly reached out to women. He even did things as small as turning water into wine for a wedding reception. If he were alive today, he would befriend pregnant teenagers, and be followed by people with AIDS. At the same time, he would angrily scold neo-Pharisees like James Dobson and Pat Robertson.

 

[oftenbuzzard]

so why would those liberals ban another liberal?

Jesus provided health care to persons too poor to afford cough drops. He was a feminist who directly reached out to women. He even did things as small as turning water into wine for a wedding reception. If he were alive today, he would befriend pregnant teenagers, and be followed by people with AIDS. At the same time, he would angrily scold neo-Pharisees like James Dobson and Pat Robertson.

• What would He say to folks rationalizing homosexual sin as an "alternate life style" or calling abortion "family planning" ???
• Would He take the disciples to see Brokeback Mountain and give it the thumbs up (unfortunate reference here) that Leftists have???

Leftist "Christians" are the neo-Saducees who are calling the Fundy Pharisees' KETTLE black, while they advocate legalizing POT.

 

[quantumspirit]

Jesus was a socialist

Jesus was a socialist

Get with it, and read your Bible already! Jesus sure was not a Bible-thumping fundie.

 

[oftenbuzzard]

Get with it, and read your Bible already! Jesus sure was not a Bible-thumping fundie.

and He wasn't a tree-hugging wussie....


.... ask the Fig Tree

 

[Mustard Seed]

so why would those liberals ban another liberal?

Jesus provided health care to persons too poor to afford cough drops. He was a feminist who directly reached out to women. He even did things as small as turning water into wine for a wedding reception. If he were alive today, he would befriend pregnant teenagers, and be followed by people with AIDS. At the same time, he would angrily scold neo-Pharisees like James Dobson and Pat Robertson.

Because he wasn't their kind of liberal. Jesus provided 'health care' when there were no cough drops (a little tough to afford something that doesn't exist). Yes he provided things without money and without price but that doesn't mean he was a socialist. Christ didn't advocate stealing from Peter to pay Paul. When Christ helped he didn't force anyone else to do it like the 'liberals' of today would. He didn't say that when you've lost something in court to give up something that rightfully belonged to someone else. Everything Jesus taught about being charitable was strictly tied to the free will of the person that did the giving. Pure religion was to feed the widows and fatherless NOT to force everyone else to also do it. Christ advocated CAPITALISM in that he told HIS followers to

9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

--Luke 16:9

You are not to serve Capitalism (mammon is tied to trade and money) BUT you are not to fight it. Capitalism is a terribly unequal system, but it is better than any other system which man can currently sustain. It's the only one that ensures a surplus and a surplus is the only means of ensuring sufficiency. Christ was not the stereotypical Conservative but even less so was He ANYTHING NEAR a modern day 'liberal' or 'progresive'.

He was not into forcing his morality through governmentaly subsidized programs. Rather he espoused the accessing of divine providence so that such institutions would be largely irrelevant to the lives of those who believed and those they sought to give succor to.

 

[Sarcastikus]

The last several posts brought to mind these words from Alan Watts' Beyond Theology...........

Christian Piety makes a strange image of the object of its devotion, "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." HIM. The bearded moralist with the stern, kind, vaguely hurt look in the eyes. The man with the lantern, knocking at the heart's door. "Come along now, boys! Enough of this horsing around! It's time you and I had a very serious talk." Christ Jesus our Lord. Jeez-us. Jeez-you. The Zen Buddhists say, "Wash out your mouth every time you say 'Buddha'!" The new life for Christianity begins just as soon as someone can get up in church and say, "Wash out your mouth every time you say 'Jesus'!"

For we are spiritually paralyzed by the fetish of Jesus. Even to atheists he is the supremely good man, the exemplar and moral authority with whom no one may disagree. Whatever our opinions, we must perforce wangle the words of Jesus to agree with them. Poor Jesus! If he had known how great an authority was to be projected upon him, he would never have said a word. His literary image in the Gospels has, through centuries of homage, become far more of an idol than anything graven in wood or stone, so that today the most genuinely reverent act of worship is to destroy that image. In his own words, "It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Paraclete [the Holy Spirit] cannot come unto you." Or, as the angel said to the disciples who came looking for the body of Jesus in the tomb, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen and has gone before you...." But Christian piety does not let him go away, and continues to seek the living Christ in the dead letter of the historical record. As he said to the Jews, "You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life."

The Crucifixion gives eternal life because it is the giving up of God as an object to be possessed, known, and held to for one's own safety, "for he that would save his soul shall lose it." To cling to Jesus is therefore to worship a Christ uncrucified, and idol instead of the living God.

And also from the introduction he wrote to his translation of The Theologia Mystica of Saint Dionysius:

... Jesus himself, if we are to credit The Gospel of John, was most undoubtedly a mystic, in the strict sense of one who has realized union with God. But in becoming the religion about Jesus instead of the religion of Jesus, Christianity separated itself from the basic insight of its master, and regarded him as a bizarre deus ex machina in the plot of history. In asking its followers to go by his life and example, it denied them access to the state of consciousness from which that life proceeded by insisting that Jesus alone was God incarnate, and that God cannot be in us in the same way it was in him. But a man so uniquely privileged cannot serve as an example for others. Christianity thus became an impossible religion which institutionalized guilt in failing to be Christlike as a virtue.

I can't help but agree with Watts' critique and I think many others do also who are turned off by the narrow-minded theology of fundamentalists, which is frequently found in this forum.

 

[oftenbuzzard]

I can't help but agree with Watts' critique and I think many others do also who are turned off by the narrow-minded theology of fundamentalists, which is frequently found in this forum.

Narrow minded as opposed to your open minded, navel-contemplating Buddhist position?

HELLO...HELLO...HELLO...HELLO...HELLO...

Yep your mind is so open it echos.

 

[Mustard Seed]

The last several posts brought to mind these words from Alan Watts' Beyond Theology...........



And also from the introduction he wrote to his translation of The Theologia Mystica of Saint Dionysius:



I can't help but agree with Watts' critique and I think many others do also who are turned off by the narrow-minded theology of fundamentalists, which is frequently found in this forum.

I find your presented pieces interesting in light of your apparent disdane for a closed mind. Let us reflect on portions of the pieces you quoted--

Beyond Theology[/i]]Poor Jesus! If he had known how great an authority was to be projected upon him, he would never have said a word. His literary image in the Gospels has, through centuries of homage, become far more of an idol than anything graven in wood or stone, so that today the most genuinely reverent act of worship is to destroy that image. In his own words, "It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Paraclete [the Holy Spirit] cannot come unto you." Or, as the angel said to the disciples who came looking for the body of Jesus in the tomb, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen and has gone before you...." But Christian piety does not let him go away, and continues to seek the living Christ in the dead letter of the historical record. As he said to the Jews, "You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life."

The above view of what Christ was or wasn't is as much a dogmatic, narrow-minded, and idol-like image as anything traditional Christianity has made of Christ. The mere statement--

"Poor Jesus! If he had known how great an authority was to be projected upon him, he would never have said a word."​

assumes to know the very mind of God. The mere implications of the above place Christ as a conscientious liar, or, at best, a deluded fool who happened to be a nice guy. It clearly operates on the assumption that Jesus was/is not the Christ, that He is/was not God.

Below is a demonstration of the problem you are running into with your hypocritical decrying of the closed mind.


"the whole question is not whether or not one is to have an open mind or not...

...The question is the point at which to draw the line. And even in the case of these two extreem liberals, one can't help noting that, where each man is strong and positive is precisely the area in which he has made up his mind, that is, where he is not open minded.

Is an open mind then a negative thing? An empty mind? It is, unless it is a searching mind. An oyster has few prejudices in the field of astronomy, we may safely say it has none. Are we then to congragulate the oyster for his openmindedness?"

--Hugh Nibley

 

[Sarcastikus]

Narrow minded as opposed to your open minded, navel-contemplating Buddhist position?

HELLO...HELLO...HELLO...HELLO...HELLO...

Yep your mind is so open it echos.

I've never really understood why fundamentalists, particularly Christain fundamentalists, take such derogatory/suspicious stances toward mysticism, when it's mystical experience(s) that form the core of religious tradition(s). Apparently they feel threatened by the pluralism.

I admit that I'm very open-minded, but I do have some fairly firm beliefs about the nature of reality and deity, based on much reading, studying, and contemplation. As my understanding has expanded my amazement at comments like yours has also increased.

 

[oftenbuzzard]

I've never really understood why fundamentalists, particularly Christain fundamentalists, take such derogatory/suspicious stances toward mysticism, when it's mystical experiences that form the core of religious tradition(s). Apparently they feel threatened by the pluralism that is revealed by and inherent in mystical spirituality.

Yep, there is only ONE way... Jesus.

Hell will be chock full of pluralists and religious tradition(s)!

Dude, you need to repent and fall on yer face before Jesus and seek forgiveness that only He can give.

Pluralism is lethal eternally.

 

[Sarcastikus]

Yep, there is only ONE way... Jesus.

Hell will be chock full of pluralists and religious tradition(s)!

Dude, you need to repent and fall on yer face before Jesus and seek forgiveness that only He can give.

Pluralism is lethal eternally.

Perhaps you are correct, but why do you feel that you know what is correct for anyone other than yourself? Fundamentalists (or at least the ones I've encountered) seem to fall into a group-think mentality that excludes anything outside their one-size-fits-all tunnel-vision religion.

I'm sincerely happy that you've found a spirituality that satisfies you, but your definition of God is waaaay too narrow for me.