What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

[icymist]

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

<snip>
The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin by saying that I'm sorry.


http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/shane-claiborne-1209

Amen, and amen.

[pansypoo53219]

1. i keep pointing out to a moderate republican epal who is a church goer

how unchristian his party leaders are. he is now beginning to question his stance more. he is also in the state revenue dept. and sees how gov napoleon stupid walker has affected things.

[icymist]

2. The worst thing I see happening here, ( yes, the worst )

The worst thing I see happening here is how young people see their religion. How it's gotten political, socially disrespective of other religions, and hypcritical in how they preach something as being bad while doing it at the same time. These kids are not stupid. In as much as the state tries to make them stupid by denying them classes in school, they are not stupid.

[madrchsod]

4. one person at a time and that one person knows another.

i think the people up there in wisconsin are waking up to the fact that they elected people who do not share their values.

[lunatica]

3. I knew someone who once said, "I don't believe in God. He's mean."

Arguing with that kind of reasoning is like running in ever diminishing circles until you disappear up your own asshole.

[CBGLuthier]

5. I have a made a similar but more logical statment

I have said that I am an atheist and if I were not I would still find the classic "jehovah" god to be not worthy of my worship. He is kind of a dick. The original mass murderer, one hell of a misogynist, and the only thing the NT really adds is that he likes girls just a little too young.
I am glad such a creature does not exist.

[Igel]

9. Oh, then you'd love my church's beliefs.

"Jehovah" was born as Jesus, and the two really have basically the same outlook.

Which means when Jesus said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" he was quoting himself. Did that a lot, actually.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Why do you need to "argue" with someone who doesn't believe in "God"?

Maybe you should ask yourself that.

[drpepper67]

6. What if...

What if Muhammad ment all that stuff?

What if Budda ment all that stuff?

What if (Jewish Laws) ment all that stuff?

This is the problem. How does anyone know who's really right? The answer is they don't.

[duhneece]

15. I believe that compassion is the root of all the major religions

Violent fundamentalists have twisted every religion and philosophy to justify killing or hurting 'the other.'

But I believe God is Love, and all the religions have a fully-developed local myth.

[laconicsax]

22. Your belief is unsupported by the source material.

There are multiple places in both the Bible and Quran in which God/Allah explicitly advocates "killing or hurting 'the other.'"

[trotsky]

24. Absolutely correct.

Modern liberal theology seems to most preoccupied with finding alternate ways to interpret or spin the vast amount of the bible that offends modern secular sensibilities.

[humblebum]

26. Yes, and organized atheism has such a history of love and non-violence.

You talk about spin. Very seldom has there been a group so focused on attacking another and ignoring its own horrid background of hate and violence. Pathetic.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. I'm an Atheist, and I don't NEED to be converted, convinced, saved, or proseltyzed to, thanks.

If you want to apologize for something, apologize for the inability of religious people to keep their beliefs and superstititions in their own heads, where they belong, instead of constantly trying to "helpfully" insert them into ours.

[11 Bravo]

12. And yet here you are, offering up your own belief and opinion regarding how others ...

should keep theirs to themselves.
That ain't teen spirit you're smelling, Sparky. It's abject hypocrisy.

[Warren DeMontague]

16. No, it isn't. I'm not telling or even "suggesting" to anyone else what THEY should think/believe

Am I going door-to-door to explain evolution or quantum chromodynamics? Am I demanding equal time in sunday school to show off dinosaur fossils? No, jack, I aint.

What I *AM* doing is saying I respect your right to believe what you want and make up your mind for yourself, so PLEASE EXTEND THAT COURTESY TO ME, TOO, THANKS.

You're telling me that part of the personal religious belief that I'm supposed to respect is the part where said religious person needs to foist that belief on ME? That argument is like that of the people who say "you claim to be tolerant, but you're not really tolerant because you don't tolerate our bigotry".

That's not teen spirit, that's not hypocrisy, it's just a piss-poor, lame argument.


Edit: here, I'm going to post that sentence from the last post again, because I like it so much. Maybe this time you'll understand it:

If you want to apologize for something, apologize for the inability of religious people to keep their beliefs and superstititions in their own heads, where they belong, instead of constantly trying to "helpfully" insert them into ours.

[WCGreen]

10. I always tell my Christian friends that I am a follower of Jesus and they

say I can't because I don't believe...

I always tell them I live by the Jesus of the New Testament while most people, usually including the person I am talking to, believe in Jesus as if he were a figure from the first five books of the old Testament.

[Curmudgeoness]

17. A christian atheist? Well

that is what I call myself. It messes with the fundie mind, but it is true. Christian, as in follower of Christ. Or at least what I preceive of what he was teaching. I just can't get around that son of god/father's house thing though. I just assume that was misinterpretted (like most of the Bible).

[Manifestor_of_Light]

21. The Jesus of the NT that said I come not in peace but with a sword?

That violent, ass kicking Jesus, or the nice guy Jesus that Christians allegedly try to follow?

Do you follow the Mean hateful Jesus in the NT or the nice guy who said to love one another?

[blkmusclmachine]

11. Organized Religion Is A Racket.

[Taverner]

13. Which Jesus? And which stuff?

Synoptic Gospels paint a completely different Jesus than the Gnostic Gospels do

And the Koran and Book of Mormon paint an even different Christ

This isn't just semantics, but what ultimately led me away from Christianity.

[duhneece]

14. God is Love, Divine Love...

I liked this alot.

[Humanist_Activist]

20. Did he show his love to the Canaanites when he ordered them exterminated?

Or the various other tribes that bordered Israel? Why do people cling to a belief in a genocidal God? I frankly don't care what you believe about "god", and I certainly don't care if Christians were the nicest people on Earth, doesn't change the fact that their god is fictional, and one of the worst characters in all of mythology.

[_ed_]

23. God is love?

Luke 19:27

"But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them--bring them here and kill them in front of me.'""

[Lorien]

18. Actual Gandhi quote:

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” "I sure love Jesus.." wasn't quite his style.

[Humanist_Activist]

19. The actions of Christians have no influence on my belief in a deity...

I read the Bible, and found it to be logically absurd, the God(Gods actually, but let's not get into that) that are mentioned and worshiped are contradictory, cruel and malicious. Logically such a god as Christians claim to worship can't exist, and on a moral level I find it to be repugnant. But even then, I thought some sort of god still existed, just not the Christian god, became sort of a deist until I eventually even abandoned that.

But this has nothing to do with the actions of Christians, I have a problem with Christian's claim to moral superiority, when, at best, their faith has a neutral affect on their behavior, if not a negative affect. But I'm more interested in the real world than in what other people believe, as long as those beliefs don't interfere with my freedom, or have an undue influence on world cultural development, I don't care what you believe.

[trotsky]

25. "an image crisis"?

No, that's no crisis. That's really how a majority of US Christians feel. They are anti-gay, they are creationists, they are judgmental, and hypocritical. Surveys show this repeatedly. You don't have an image crisis - the public perception of Christianity matches what the majority practices.

[CJCRANE]

27. I like the Humanitarian Jesus, the one who said...

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and
"Whatever you do not do for the least of these, you do not do for me".