What Is the Christian Message? (Second Version)
Lamb Chopped
Shipmate
My previous thread went off the rails in a huge way in about six directions. So I'd like to restart it here. Straightforwardly: What do you think the Christian message is, and why?
This is NOT the place to discuss slavery (do it on the previous thread if you like, whatever) or hell--I'm starting another thread specifically dedicated to that, just for safety) or emerging consciousness in complex systems (which makes my head go wubba wubba wubba, someone more philosophically inclined can start that). This is just about the Christian message--what you think it is and why.
Pretty please?
(Edited title, DT)
This is NOT the place to discuss slavery (do it on the previous thread if you like, whatever) or hell--I'm starting another thread specifically dedicated to that, just for safety) or emerging consciousness in complex systems (which makes my head go wubba wubba wubba, someone more philosophically inclined can start that). This is just about the Christian message--what you think it is and why.
Pretty please?
(Edited title, DT)
Comments
This.
Incarnation + resurrection = salvation
One result is that we want to obey his commands like loving and caring for others. This love for others is necessary and required by God but not sufficient for our salvation.
Love.
As I see it, if my faith in God is real and true (that is - this doesn't work if this is a cultural delusion or convention) then He makes possible the whole category of the meaning of Justice, Love, Transgression, Redemption. Without a 'Him', these ideas are shorthand for bunches of individual and therefore arbitrary human feeling which cannot be binding outside the person feeling them.
With Him, our transgressions mean something. Unlike an indulgent parent's 'Timmy is just boisterous', we are given the dignity that our offences are real and have an impact - and a dignity that those offences of others which we suffer, are likewise real and impactful, and that our sense of injustice is as real as it feels to us in that moment.
That this is a cause for hope rather than personal annihilation is a feature of the rest of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus with which I imagine most readers here are very familiar. But unless we notice the first bit which I have highlighted, all that follows can feel like a big lump of cultural goo which we might well be able to shake off. At least, that thought dogged me for a few years, and this is how I found my way back.
For anyone stumbling by here who wants an intro, I would very much recommend Spufford's 'Unapologetic' or perhaps some of his pieces in 'True Stories and Other Essays'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdd_qkXF128
"κύριος Ἰησοῦς" says Paul. But if I shout that out in the street, who would listen and understand?
I think that's too narrow a definition of "message". An Email saying "The Staff meeting is at 10am in the boardroom. Attendance is mandatory." is simply two factual statements.
"God is nice and He likes me"
Apparently not. I've been told on here lots of times God isn't nice. Apparently that allows him to be loving while toasting most of the rest of my family in Hell or something.
I stopped identifying as that type of Christian (if I ever really did) some time ago. But took a while to find a doctrinal position and biblical understanding that seems to work without any need for 'hell'.
Steve Chalke has been the most the helpful -but there are many others.
What I find fascinating is how reluctant some people are to let go of a veangeful, smiting God
I can understand being unable to move on from a theology that makes sense to someone however horrible I find it, but some people seem unwilling to imagine God actually forgiving.
What I mean is that the Con-evo God, exemplified by theologies like PSA, doesn't actually forgive anyone. He demands his pound of flesh, demands punishment, demands retribution. He's just willing to accept that pound of flesh, that punishment, that retribution, from an innocent party.
This is not forgiveness. If forgiveness is (as has been suggested) injustice because the guilty go free, this is double injustice because as well as that an innocent whipping boy suffers.
I'm left with a genuinely forgiving God, intent on reconciliation, as the only feasible option.
Sounds good to me.
I remember reading someone saying it's like God so wanted to communicate with the planet of the dogs, that he became one, knowing all the while that they would tear him apart. An experience he transcended, which most of the dogs (far from being amazed) decided was too weird to be possible.
On the subject of 'but - is it real?' I am captivated by today's reading in church. John the Baptist, in prison, sends his disciples to speak to Jesus. 'Are you the One, or should be wait for another?'.
I am probably going to die in here. Is it all bullshit? Was all that shit in the desert with locusts and honey a total crock of w***? Have I been kidding myself? Have I got time to get a reply, or am I getting the chop before they come back? ARE YOU THE ONE?
So he sent his disciples to inquire--and got no more answer than we do when we ask God "Why?"
Oh, he got confirmation that Jesus was the Messiah all right--and that Jesus thought very highly of him, as the disciples can hardly have failed to overhear all the great things Jesus was saying to the crowd about John as they were leaving.
But the unspoken question, "Why don't you get me out of here?" got no answer. Which is typical of God. And though I can certainly see an answer from 2000 years later (doing that would have certainly ruined Jesus' ability to train his disciples and establish the Christian church, whether by way of an early crucifixion or by forcing him into the popular model of a political Messiah), still, I can see why Jesus couldn't explain any of that to him. And John was left holding on to God's character for comfort in the face of his silence. Which is a very familiar place for me, too.
The message is full on lost. It originally was about being kind, decent and loving to others. Put others and their needs ahead of your own. Love one another means be kind. It doesn't mean most of what Christianity practices today. Nietzsche said "god is dead". He also said that it's not possible to sweeten a pile of manure with a bit of perfume. Christianity is that pile.
Let's keep the kindness JC taught, and burn the intellectual furniture. Throw it out. Along with all the sh!t it empowers, like anti-abortionists, gun people at drag story time, gender washroom sheriffs, rich people preachifying, fading colonial countries who refuse reparations, just wars. I want to go to hell if many of these Christians go to heaven, which I don't believe in, but you get the point.
God is drunk while away on business in other galaxies, Jesus is a homeless addicted refugee, and Christianity is worried about eternal life. Kill me now. We need a gas can and a match for the manure pile. We have to do Christianity ourselves if it means anything. Forget the saved messiah stuff. Wait til you're dead. It's not important now. In fact it's wrong, inaccurate and distraction. It just doesn't matter right now.
Sorry, not sorry for offending- even myself a bit.
Unless there's something real in it, there is no such thing as kindness - or at least, no such thing as exists outside the limits of your own head. My denomination seems to be going down this road - it might work for a few late-middle-age who remain (but find God an embarrassing abstraction) and who want to be humanists who, for reasons which escape me, meet in a church. If that's all there is left, it will be gone within 10 years - it is already dead.
LC, I enjoyed your points about J.the.B. He's a pretty real character.
But as important as I think it is, I’m not sure it’s the message. It seems to me that the centerpiece of Jesus’s message was to proclaim the kingdom of God. For Peter and Paul, the centerpiece was perhaps “Jesus is Lord/Jesus has conquered sin and death.”
“Love God and love others” is at the heart of what the kingdom of God is about, and it’s central to Jesus being Lord. But it’s not the message. Surely, odd though it may sound, Jesus is the message, the unique message that Christianity alone offers.
I guess I find myself thinking that, as counter-contemporary as it may be, attempting to reduce Christianity—or for that matter, any worthwhile religion or philosophy—to a mission statement or elevator speech can’t be done without losing more than is gained.
Really good to see you, @NOprophet_NØprofit!
Exactly. How else can it be measured?
Only if you play "no true Scotsman" games.
Frederick Douglass would disagree with you.
By the way, before the end of the 18th century, the American Quakers had concluded that slavery was indeed wrong, and they mostly freed their slaves when and where that was legal. (There is family history involved here, not all pride-inspiring.)
And I’d note that some of the predominantly white churches that had a history of expressly or tacitly supporting slavery later became churches that opposed the subsequent bigotry. I’m familiar with at least one of the signers of “The Call to Unity,” the letter to which King”s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was a response, who made a U-turn as a result of King’s response.
Would it not? The United States government seems to have been quite capable on its own in working to eradicate indigenous people here. Could the churches in Canada have engaged in that genocide without the explicit or implicit support of the government?
The point is like just about anything else in this world, churches—made up of imperfect people—are a mixed bag. You’ll find good and worthy and you’ll find horrible and evil. You can only extol churches as perfect if you ignore part of reality. Likewise, you can only condemn churches as uniformly terrible institutions if you ignore part of reality.
I don’t know of anything in life that’s not like that.
Orthodox monasteries used to keep Roma people in slavery in Romania - I believe they were traded within the country.
For instance, the Cașin monastery in Bacau was built in the 1650s by 800 Romani slaves.
@HarryCH you may have read about how the Jesuits in the US are coming to terms with the many enslaved persons they used to own - Georgetown University which is Jesuit is trying to perform reparations to the descendants of enslaved persons owned by the Jesuits that ran the university owned by giving them scholarships.
In the 19th century there was a vigorous attempt among slave-owning Protestants in the US to develop a theology that permitted slavery, with quite a few books published by clergy, many of whom owned slaves themselves, to counter the claims of abolitionists.
As for differentiating between the transatlantic slave trade and domestic slave trade, I'm not sure if clergy or religious orders were directly involved in or directly profiting from the transatlantic slave trade while it was in operation, but it is possible.
None of this in my opinion undermines the Christian message in the modern world (or the Islamic or Jewish or any other religious message).
The damage done is being discussed in some detail. The usual hue and cry is that for many generations now people have nothing to do with. It's not true. Missing the biblical point that the sins of parents are visited on multiple generations after and that current residents of former colonial countries and their empires continue to benefit from what they stole. The UK stole $45 trillion from India for example. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india/
We couldn't get any admission for what the Anglican/C of E and Roman catholic churches profitted from when the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope were both shamed into coming to Canada a year ago. These churches directly were enriched by their evangelism of indigenous people. They got paid. Very Christian men them.
*contains descriptions of the torture and death of children and others*
(Spoiler tags & warning added, Doublethink, Admin)
@Martin54 do not post graphically violent material like that without appropriate warnings.
Doublethink, Admin
[/Admin]
God sends us good news in Jesus Christ.
That's it. It's still a lot to unpack - to put it mildly.
About Christians not behaving as if they believed in the good news of Jesus Christ: yeah, humans gonna human. Buddhists do not live up to Buddhist ideals, Muslims do not live up to Muslim ideals, Christians do not live up to Christian ideals. Possibly God could have created humans to be some other way than the way they are, but here we are.
Thank you for informing God about the evils of slavery and residential schools, and the inadequacies of certain expressions of faith. I'm sure God was entirely unaware of them before you decided to articulate your rage and bitterness. Actually, no: I believe that your rage and bitterness are dwarfed by God's cosmic-level rage and bitterness at the same, and also by God's joy and hope.
Part of my faith in Jesus involves the announcement and reality of his governance based on justice and peace. I believe that the divine effort to create that governance includes the re-weaving of time, so to speak. We only experience time as moving in one direction, and everything ends in death. Not so! I believe in God's active creation of a reality in which enslaved people and indigenous children are returned to their families with joy. Or that the impulses of greed and violence that created those situations will never have happened in the first place. The light of that future reality shines into what I experience as the here and now, to work against similar evils here and now.
I guess, if you wish to retain your bitterness and rage, you can find a place in eternal life on God's restoration team. You can point out every bit of sin and suffering that requires mending and re-creation. Thank you, in advance, for your service!
Part your disconnect is your personalized god, Jesus-as-saviour who's going to take you to heaven. More reject than accept that, and the trend increases. I've taken an additional step beyond that, that Jesus as saviour is destructive because it lets people do whatever, believing they've got their ticket to heaven. And they do, do whatever. Much better would be to have to earn you way in (but heaven (and hell) don't exist as most who believe in such things believe).
But abusus non tollit usum* and Christ, or Christianity, can't be held responsible for the way some people pervert it. If I could buy a zillion corks and go around inserting them in the mouths of all the idiots out there, I'd be happy to, but that's not a realistic solution to people perverting the Christian message. Plus I'd run out of money real quick.
*Abuse of something doesn't cancel out its proper use.
My apologies. Is there something I've missed in the commandments?
If you wish to discuss H&A interventions, please use Styx.
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