It is crystal clear (Tchump notwithstanding) who is or isn't an American. An American is someone born on American soil (to include embassy compounds and military bases), or naturalized through a well-defined system. The line between American and not-American is pretty darned thick and black. I think many if not most other nations have similar systems/definitions. Perhaps some people want Christianity to be as clear-cut and defined as modern national citizenship.
There are all sorts of potentially counterintuitive issues in all of this.
For instance, both the RCs and Orthodox have very 'realised' and concrete views about what constitutes Church (Big C) but both bodies are (now) far more 'flexible" as to who may ultimately be 'saved' than many independent evangelical groups which would pride themselves on not being as institutionalised.
I don't see anyone other than rabid fundamentalists of whatever stripe who are going round drawing great big thick black lines - in terms of pontificating on people's ultimaye eternal destiny that is.
All I'm saying is that it is possible to draw lines in 'citizenship' terms - as per @Mousethief's analogy - but not in a 'wheat and tares' kind of way. That's God's call not ours.
There's no value judgement in saying that Nick Tamen is a Reformed Christian and not a Pentecostal or that Lamb Chopped is a Lutheran Christian and not a Roman Catholic.
Because that's what they are. That is their affiliation.
That isn't drawing exclusive lines, it's simply an acknowledgement of what their particular affiliation happens to be.
Again, I don't see any incoherence there. If I'm an Orthodox Christian it doesn't mean that other Christians can't be orthodox (small o) or far 'better' Christians than I am. I might end up as one of the tares. I sincerely hope not but there's no guarantee.
Not that this should scare us into despair. Ideally, it should provoke us to love and good works.
Equally, rather than pointing the finger at any other group or individual we should 'test ourselves to see if we be in the faith' - should we wish to be, that is.
I've started replying to @Lamb Chopped from a few posts back, but keep tripping over myself. I'm glad to say that @Nick Tamen has me dead to rights, though. Thank you, sir.
@The_Riv appeared to be criticising some of us for having apparently fuzzy boundaries.
Permit me to disabuse you of that notion. I'm not criticizing any of you. What I said was, "It bothers me that there are no definitive answers." You're the second person who's interpreted that as directed criticism.
My point was that even if we have clinical and clear-cut boundaries it doesn't mean that we are saying that anyone outside those boundaries aren't decent, upright human beings nor that everyone within those boundaries is automatically morally unimpeachable.
To say that a Sikh isn't a Jain or that a Hindu isn't Shintoist or that a Christian isn't a Zeroastrian isn't to make a value judgement on their morality or human qualities.
Personally, I agree with both of these statements. The problem is, many self-described Christians most certainly do not, and I cannot understand how, both of them arguing from a position of doctrine, can be correct.
Given that Christ said let the tares grow with the wheat and they'd be sorted out later, I'm guessing there aren't meant to be thick black lines.
I'm only suggesting that the tares should know they're tares, and not wheat, and vice versa, and that the distinctions between them should be clear to both. The servants in the parable were never unclear as to which was which.
I can't tell you where the boundary between blue and green is; does that mean I don't know what those colours are?
No, it doesn't, but the reason you have green at all is because yellow has been added to blue. Keep adding yellow, and you'll eventually be back at yellow, and you can always tell the difference between blue and yellow.
I've started replying to @Lamb Chopped from a few posts back, but keep tripping over myself. I'm glad to say that @Nick Tamen has me dead to rights, though. Thank you, sir.
Given that Christ said let the tares grow with the wheat and they'd be sorted out later, I'm guessing there aren't meant to be thick black lines.
I'm only suggesting that the tares should know they're tares, and not wheat, and vice versa, and that the distinctions between them should be clear to both. The servants in the parable were never unclear as to which was which.
This interests me, because we're flat out told elsewhere in the Gospels, by Jesus himself, that there are going to be surprises in both directions--people who think they are wheat (or sheep, in a different parable) but are actually tares (goats); and vice versa. And he seems to be okay with that. Well, not okay really, because he spends a good amount of time explaining to people how you end up as a sheep/wheat vs a goat/tare, AND he urges people to do the former--making tares into good wheat is pretty much the definition of his whole mission.
And he gives diagnostics if you're unsure of your status (Matthew 7:15-20, or Luke's version here, Luke 6:43-45):
43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
Given that Christ said let the tares grow with the wheat and they'd be sorted out later, I'm guessing there aren't meant to be thick black lines.
I'm only suggesting that the tares should know they're tares, and not wheat, and vice versa, and that the distinctions between them should be clear to both. The servants in the parable were never unclear as to which was which.
I doubt very much the tares know they're tares. It's like Dunning-Kruger which says if you're stupid enough, you don't realize you're stupid and think you're smart. People who are oh-so-sure they're Christians are most likely to not be.
Given that Christ said let the tares grow with the wheat and they'd be sorted out later, I'm guessing there aren't meant to be thick black lines.
I'm only suggesting that the tares should know they're tares, and not wheat, and vice versa, and that the distinctions between them should be clear to both. The servants in the parable were never unclear as to which was which.
I doubt very much the tares know they're tares. It's like Dunning-Kruger which says if you're stupid enough, you don't realize you're stupid and think you're smart. People who are oh-so-sure they're Christians are most likely to not be.
I don't think the latter follows from the Dunning-Kruger analogy, certainly I think it's possible to live be a Christian and to live the entirety of ones life without really doubting (I've known a few people who fell into that category, often with a very straightforward and/or matter-of-fact faith).
I think Mousethief was speaking not in terms of doubt but rather in terms of ... morality? ... though possibly in terms of simply "knowing," based on identity or some inner feeling of surety, which can be faulty. I've known a few people up-close and personal who were absolutely convinced of their status as Christians--faithful Christians, to all intents and purposes, I mean, they didn't seem to have any misgivings about their welcome in heaven! and yet, their behavior was quite opposite to Christ's. That's the kind of thing that gives me the cold shudders. It's why I keep an ongoing eye on Jesus' "fruit check" in my personal case, because it's so easy for people to delude themselves.
I've known a few people up-close and personal who were absolutely convinced of their status as Christians--faithful Christians, to all intents and purposes, I mean, they didn't seem to have any misgivings about their welcome in heaven! and yet, their behavior was quite opposite to Christ's.
Yes, we've all met people like that, but that doesn't mean that's everyone who has lives a doubt Christian life falls into that category.
Given that Christ said let the tares grow with the wheat and they'd be sorted out later, I'm guessing there aren't meant to be thick black lines.
I'm only suggesting that the tares should know they're tares, and not wheat, and vice versa, and that the distinctions between them should be clear to both. The servants in the parable were never unclear as to which was which.
I doubt very much the tares know they're tares. It's like Dunning-Kruger which says if you're stupid enough, you don't realize you're stupid and think you're smart. People who are oh-so-sure they're Christians are most likely to not be.
I don't think the latter follows from the Dunning-Kruger analogy, certainly I think it's possible to live be a Christian and to live the entirety of ones life without really doubting (I've known a few people who fell into that category, often with a very straightforward and/or matter-of-fact faith).
No it doesn't "follow from" it. I didn't present it as an argument, just as a metaphor to help make clear what I meant.
I think Mousethief was speaking not in terms of doubt but rather in terms of ... morality? ... though possibly in terms of simply "knowing," based on identity or some inner feeling of surety, which can be faulty. I've known a few people up-close and personal who were absolutely convinced of their status as Christians--faithful Christians, to all intents and purposes, I mean, they didn't seem to have any misgivings about their welcome in heaven! and yet, their behavior was quite opposite to Christ's. That's the kind of thing that gives me the cold shudders. It's why I keep an ongoing eye on Jesus' "fruit check" in my personal case, because it's so easy for people to delude themselves.
Given that Christ said let the tares grow with the wheat and they'd be sorted out later, I'm guessing there aren't meant to be thick black lines.
I'm only suggesting that the tares should know they're tares, and not wheat, and vice versa, and that the distinctions between them should be clear to both. The servants in the parable were never unclear as to which was which.
I doubt very much the tares know they're tares. It's like Dunning-Kruger which says if you're stupid enough, you don't realize you're stupid and think you're smart. People who are oh-so-sure they're Christians are most likely to not be.
I don't think the latter follows from the Dunning-Kruger analogy, certainly I think it's possible to live be a Christian and to live the entirety of ones life without really doubting (I've known a few people who fell into that category, often with a very straightforward and/or matter-of-fact faith).
This describes the environment of my upbringing, including a healthy dose of othering anyone who we could identify as outside that plainly held belief.
Given that Christ said let the tares grow with the wheat and they'd be sorted out later, I'm guessing there aren't meant to be thick black lines.
I'm only suggesting that the tares should know they're tares, and not wheat, and vice versa, and that the distinctions between them should be clear to both. The servants in the parable were never unclear as to which was which.
I doubt very much the tares know they're tares. It's like Dunning-Kruger which says if you're stupid enough, you don't realize you're stupid and think you're smart. People who are oh-so-sure they're Christians are most likely to not be.
I don't think the latter follows from the Dunning-Kruger analogy, certainly I think it's possible to live be a Christian and to live the entirety of ones life without really doubting (I've known a few people who fell into that category, often with a very straightforward and/or matter-of-fact faith).
This describes the environment of my upbringing, including a healthy dose of othering anyone who we could identify as outside that plainly held belief.
That's not really what I was thinking of; I've met Christians who most people would categorise as 'Good People', who don't experience doubts about their status and have the kind of faith best described as expansive.
I've also met a greater number of complete shits who were convinced that they were saved and engaged in a fair amount of othering.
I don't think conviction / lack of doubt is an infallible marker.
Pardon me absence, been running the household solo for a week...
As I've gotten older and joined an Episcopal Church, I've realized that I'm really very Protestant in my attitudes, and it feels ticklish sometimes being in a more Catholic-tilting culture. That said, I do think this one still agrees with me.
But it's very important to me to know that I don't know and I am not the arbiter of the church. There's no objective institution that has that kind of authority. Even if I respect the traditions of the ancient church and its history, it has forever struck me as a cracked pot and, because of its cracks, it's never really safe to treat it like it's a sealed vessel. It just isn't. It has always been a porous, political mess.
And this isn't to say that inside and outside don't matter, they do. I think it's important to keep the creeds, to follow the worship, read the scripture etc. Identity matters. Formation matters. What we are doing is ultimately important. But there needs to be that "mind the gap" attitude that knows that we're still fools, for we are not truly God. Merely, at best, trying to follow in imitation of the one that sent us (so far as we can tell.)
Given the way that I live my life in my cultural context, I'd feel rather disingenuous to try to say I wasn't Christian. I've been in churches most all of my life and even if I apostatized, the teachings are still in my bones. I'd be a Christianized atheist. There's no boasting in that, it's just acknowledging the sort of social animal I've grown into.
Whether I'm truly right with God or not? I hope so, but that's all I can say. I just try to act in good faith, which I think is all you can expect of anyone.
Whether I'm truly right with God or not? I hope so, but that's all I can say. I just try to act in good faith, which I think is all you can expect of anyone.
Perhaps apropos to this, I was in a scuffle (shall we say) with some flat-earthers, who were saying that the flat earth theory is just Plain Common Sense. They asked, don't you have any common sense? I answered, that's hard to answer, because if I weren't sensible, I would THINK I was sensible, and say I was sensible, but I'd be wrong. So if I say I'm sensible, that says nothing about whether or not I really am. You'd have to ask my friends for an honest answer.
For some reason they never responded. I wonder if it's because they caught the implied insult.
Sorry, come again? I didn't quite catch what you meant...
Sorry, not sure what happened there.
Yes, we've all met people like that, but that doesn't mean that everyone who has a doubt free Christian life falls into that category.
No, of course not. You can have people prone to doubt who are certainly Christ’s and who produce good fruit (Thomas comes to mind here, and for all the focus on his spoken doubts, it’s worth noticing where he is when Jesus finally catches up with him. It cannot have been easy to put up with the other apostles for a whole week when they were elated and he was convinced they were pulling some kind of sick joke. And yet, there he stays.
You can have doubters—or completely faithless people—who also live completely horrible lives full of hatred and every kind of corruption, contrary to Christ. That’s easy to understand too, because at least it’s consistent.
You can, I suppose, have a doubt-free believer who also produces very obvious good fruit. I’m not sure i know anyone like this, the closer you get to a person, the more you see their struggles.
The ones that freak me out are the last category—the ones who seem to have no doubts at all about their status with Christ, but when you look at their lives, they seem to go in for nonstop abuse of other people—and you never catch them apologizing for anything, or acknowledging even ordinary human frailty. They terrify me because they seem to know themselves so little—living testaments to how easy it is to lie to oneself, and believe those lies. I’m not sure what their certainty is built on, but i can’t help suspecting it’s shifting sand.
Faith being the context in which Christians tend to think about doubt, it strikes me that the way Christians think about faith is relevant. In Mere Christianity, C S Lewis addresses the question of Christian faith in two consecutive chapters, both called Faith. Here are some excerpts:
First chapter on Faith
Roughly speaking, the word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply Belief—accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people—at least it used to puzzle me—is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue—what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements?
Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.
Now I must turn to Faith in the second or higher sense: and this is the most difficult thing I have tackled yet. I want to approach it by going back to the subject of Humility. You may remember I said that the first step towards humility was to realise that one is proud. I want to add now that the next step is to make some serious attempt to practise the Christian virtues. ... The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practise the Christian virtues is that we fail.
I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. ... Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God.
Second chapter on Faith
I am trying to talk about Faith in the second sense, the higher sense. I said just now that the question of Faith in this sense arises after a man has tried his level best to practise the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that even if he could he would only be giving back to God what was already God’s own. In other words, he discovers his bankruptcy.
Now we cannot, in that sense, discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, “You must do this. I can’t.”
I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond...
You can, I suppose, have a doubt-free believer who also produces very obvious good fruit. I’m not sure i know anyone like this, the closer you get to a person, the more you see their struggles.
Sure and my list is correspondingly short and restricted to people I know or have know for many years (and in one case all of their fairly short life). They aren't perfect and have their struggles, but doubting their status as people who are loved isn't and wasn't among them.
Whether I'm truly right with God or not? I hope so, but that's all I can say. I just try to act in good faith, which I think is all you can expect of anyone.
Perhaps apropos to this, I was in a scuffle (shall we say) with some flat-earthers, who were saying that the flat earth theory is just Plain Common Sense. They asked, don't you have any common sense? I answered, that's hard to answer, because if I weren't sensible, I would THINK I was sensible, and say I was sensible, but I'd be wrong. So if I say I'm sensible, that says nothing about whether or not I really am. You'd have to ask my friends for an honest answer.
For some reason they never responded. I wonder if it's because they caught the implied insult.
My daughter has struggled a bit with being religious, mostly given up far as I can tell (teenager, so hard to say and I'm not the type to enforce it, to our mutual happiness.) But I once explained to her that sometimes being religious is self consciously keeping a few things in a box that are self consciously religious, and being completely comfortable admitting that maybe they don't entirely make sense. And that's fine. Everyone has their own personal shrine. You don't even have to be formally religious to do this.
I think where folks like the flat earthers screw it up is they try to take their personal shrine and make it "common property," which is a kind of abuse. I think I've always learned to be very private about my own religiosity, unconsciously turned off by people who make a big promotion out of it. Having grown older and watched where some of that talk has gone, I might've been right. I'm outwardly a Christian and in my heart I trust that I have faith, but it's not for me to enforce that.
I think it's just the -- for lack of a better expression -- violent insanity flowing through much of American Christendom that has made me feel more compelled to stick my neck up if only to prove to be the exception. I don't think I'm comfortable calling myself a model, but I do not want to see more people falling after that.
It is crystal clear (Tchump notwithstanding) who is or isn't an ASmerican. An American is someone born on American soil (to include embassy compounds and military bases), or naturalized through a well-defined system. The line between American and not-American is pretty darned thick and black. I think many if not most other nations have similar systems/definitions. Perhaps some people want Christianity to be as clear-cut and defined as modern national citizenship.
Umm, Americans? There are two hemispheres named America. I cannot remember how many countries that includes. Not all of them have the same conditions for citizenship either. Even in the United States of America you missed one way of being an American, being born to at least one USA citizen. Maybe the lawyers can correct me on this, another way is to have a private law, passed by Congress and signed by the President to recognize someone as an USA citizen. Point is, it can be even a little fuzzy.
It is crystal clear (Tchump notwithstanding) who is or isn't an ASmerican. An American is someone born on American soil (to include embassy compounds and military bases), or naturalized through a well-defined system. The line between American and not-American is pretty darned thick and black. I think many if not most other nations have similar systems/definitions. Perhaps some people want Christianity to be as clear-cut and defined as modern national citizenship.
Umm, Americans? There are two hemispheres named America. I cannot remember how many countries that includes.
Thirty-five, not counting overseas territories and departments of some European countries. But “American” is the long-standing and well-established demonym in English for only one of those 35 countries.
It is crystal clear (Tchump notwithstanding) who is or isn't an ASmerican. An American is someone born on American soil (to include embassy compounds and military bases), or naturalized through a well-defined system. The line between American and not-American is pretty darned thick and black. I think many if not most other nations have similar systems/definitions. Perhaps some people want Christianity to be as clear-cut and defined as modern national citizenship.
Umm, Americans? There are two hemispheres named America. I cannot remember how many countries that includes. Not all of them have the same conditions for citizenship either. Even in the United States of America you missed one way of being an American, being born to at least one USA citizen. Maybe the lawyers can correct me on this, another way is to have a private law, passed by Congress and signed by the President to recognize someone as an USA citizen. Point is, it can be even a little fuzzy.
Yes cute little playing with words. I am clearly and obviously talking about the United States of America. If there is a private law, then that person is an American, if not then not. The fuzziness is entirely imaginary and seems to be a product of arguing for argument's sake.
So, @Gramps49 the northern and southern hemispheres are both entirely American?
There's North America and South America and the other continents don't exist?
Thing is, in trying to pick a fight with your fellow Americans here for using the term to refer to the USA - something the rest of the world tends to do - you have inadvertently posted something that sounds more 'Americas-centric' than anything anyone else has posted.
Get over it already.
Everyone knows that the term 'America' is generally shorthand for the USA and doesn't imply that South and Central America aren't there or can be disregarded.
Some British people use the term 'Europe' to refer specifically to the landmass of the 'continent' rather than to our wee archipelago moored just off its coast.
But that's another issue and it's not how anyone here is using the term 'America' as if it's some kind of exclusive term.
The point I was responding to is defining good Christian behavior is fuzzy--it is. But when mousethief says The line between American and not-American is pretty darned thick and black. I ask, "It is?" Seems to me it can be just as fuzzy, which is why Trump is challenging birthright citizenship.
The point I was responding to is defining good Christian behavior is fuzzy--it is. But when mousethief says The line between American and not-American is pretty darned thick and black. I ask, "It is?" Seems to me it can be just as fuzzy, which is why Trump is challenging birthright citizenship.
That Trump is challenging birthright citizenship doesn’t mean it can be fuzzy. Trump is trying to make fuzzy, to call into question, what has been settled law for over a century.
It might be true that ethics always has areas of clarity and areas of haze.
I think most Christians would agree that ritual prostitution isn't acceptable Christian behavior. That's pretty clear. You don't turn your church into a brothel.
And while I'll grant that you can probably find an exception to this, somewhere, if you try hard enough, I think I'll call them an exception.
There are also areas where something may be crystal clear to some Christians and not to others. For instance, ordaining women. I'm fully in support of this, but I do understand that some Christians feel that it's very clear that thou shalt not ordain women for various reasons that do not need to be brought up here, because we're aware of them and it could derail the thread.
Whether this disagreement means "hazy area" or "conflicting clarities" is an interesting question. I'm inclined to "conflicting clarities."
I think the real ethical haze involves situational cases that involve questionable acts with mixed motivations, such as "homicide in self defense during a conflict on inadvertently escalated" or "subsistence theft" or "trespassing on what one thought was a vacant lot."
I'm not sure I can answer these, but perhaps the Christian response is less to set the rule and more to work out how to graciously respond to the situation. Mayhaps we should figure out an ethic of grace.
I recently outed myself as a believer in jesus at a particular work context in response to a direct question. I was treated with surprise and the comment "you're the first nice Christian I've ever met". I was left wondering what kind of folk this chap has met.
I recently outed myself as a believer in jesus at a particular work context in response to a direct question. I was treated with surprise and the comment "you're the first nice Christian I've ever met". I was left wondering what kind of folk this chap has met.
I've definitely had that experience, and I have also met the kind of Christians being referred to. Mileage really varies.
I recently outed myself as a believer in jesus at a particular work context in response to a direct question. I was treated with surprise and the comment "you're the first nice Christian I've ever met". I was left wondering what kind of folk this chap has met.
I recently outed myself as a believer in jesus at a particular work context in response to a direct question. I was treated with surprise and the comment "you're the first nice Christian I've ever met". I was left wondering what kind of folk this chap has met.
Normal, ordinary, everyday Christians.
Really? Most normal, ordinary, everyday Christians I know would also qualify as nice.
The trouble is that the ordinary “nice” Christians often remain unknown as Christians to those around them, as they tend not to make pushy nuisances of themselves. The ones who stick in the mind are the bad examples.
The trouble is that the ordinary “nice” Christians often remain unknown as Christians to those around them, as they tend not to make pushy nuisances of themselves. The ones who stick in the mind are the bad examples.
Exactly (and I’m not setting myself up as a good Christian here), it seems to come as a surprise down the pub or wherever, in the odd moments I reveal myself as even a churchgoer.
Tbh I am a bit troubled by that sometimes, because while I’ve got no wish to stand in the high street and attempt to evangelise passers by, I am aware that I probably ‘ought’ to do more to fish for people. And when I say more, I actually mean anything. But I don’t.
It’s possible to ask the Lord to, ah, set up situations where you find yourself sharing your faith—and if you’re as nervous as I was, ask him to make sure you’re well into it before it ever occurs to you what you’re actually doing! I did that and wound up sitting in the dark during a tornado warning with a power outage (no harm done!) and literally nothing to do with my time but answer the questions of the Christian-curious guy in the seat ahead of me. I realized what was happening about twenty minutes in… it was that non -threatening.
Ghandi was once alleged to have said, "I like your Christ, but not your Christianity." (Yes, I know Snopes cannot find that quote. It might have been a paraphrase from a Swarthmore College philosophy professor named J.H. Holmes who had interviewed Ghandi. though,)
The point is, though, Christ is often given a black eye by those who claim to be Christian given the bigoted and racist remarks by many supposedly great preachers, given the resistance to the acceptance of people with different gender and sexual identities, given to the insistence that information other than Christian--whatever that may be--in a public library.
The Federal government is recently going after the city council of a small town just a few miles east of where I live because a Christian Reconstructionist group was denied a building permit to use a old bank for a meeting hall. The council says the group was denied a permit only because the city does not want a congestion problem in the center of town. The reconstructionist group is saying they were denied a permit because of their views. The founder of the movement has written a pro slavery book roundly condemned by American scholars. During the Covid epidemic this group openly defied rules requiring face masks and social distancing. It also has some very strict opinions on family and the role of women in society. Yes, there is some fear this group wants to convert the whole town to its point of view. For a summary on what is happening there, read this review. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2025/may/25/this-small-north-idaho-town-kept-to-itself-then-a-/
It is this type of people that distorts the understanding what a Christian really is. The distorted view suggests Christians are judgmental and the like. Consequently, when a Christian acts with grace, it tends to blow people away.
Ghandi was once alleged to have said, "I like your Christ, but not your Christianity." (Yes, I know Snopes cannot find that quote. It might have been a paraphrase from a Swarthmore College philosophy professor named J.H. Holmes who had interviewed Ghandi. though,)
I probably won't have time to clean this post up as well as I'd like, but I got some thoughts...
Funny anecdote, my evangelism prof from seminary not only said this quote was legit, but said that Gandhi's interlocutor was a Christian missionary who did the unusual thing for a Christian missionary and didn't built his mission by appealing to the bottom castes of Hindu society. Most of the time, missionaries liked to appeal to the people who were ostracized by the status quo. It's easier to pry them away from the religion when the religion already tells them that they're garbage. Christianity is an improvement in status for the bottom, and I think that might even go back to the earliest early church. There could be a cynical side to all of that preaching about the importance of caring for the poor. The poor always outnumber the rich and the rich are always a little afraid of this fact. Now, going to a Hindu culture and getting the brahmins to convert? That's a flex.
For someone whose experience of Christianity is framed through Christian persecutors, this might be a harder thing to swallow. I also think of a friend I have in seminary who is Navajo, literally spent his childhood in a Christian-run re-education camp. He is very proud exponent of his Native culture and deeply resents the way he was treated...and yet the guy is still an ordained Methodist preacher and keeps the faith. Never quite got the story on how he has managed to do that, but it's real. He's a trip. And I wouldn't dare hold him up as a model because I don't tell people how to process their trauma. But, he's out there. And he's a great guy, in my experience.
I think there's another thing going on where pain draws attention. Dysfunction draws attention. Churches that simply try to do good, in a healthy society, don't get that much attention. We just show up and do our thing and a lot of people think "oh, that's nice," and go about their day and figure that it's normal because so much of the better side of Christian ethics is "normalized" in our culture. So the ones that stick out are the harmful ones, because they're weird.
I suspect that may change in the coming years. As I've quipped a few times among D&D geeks, nobody really wants to live in a world where being a lawful good goody goody two shoes is an exciting lifestyle.
Also, grace is kinda normal for most people. We like to think wrongs are easily rectified, especially when we're not the ones who got wronged. There's something appealing about forgiveness, unless you're the one who is owed something. Grace is as shocking as the scale of the injury that's smoothed over. You cut me off in traffic? No big. You ran over my child with your car? As a cyclist, I've had that one running through my head sometimes and I've struggled with it. And I can hear a driver saying in my head "But I didn't mean too, it was an accident! And know that is very much the truth, and I hope I never have to figure out why that makes a difference in the face of a serious injury.
And all of these thoughts might be going to some cogent conclusion, but I'm not sure where that is and I really should get myself to bed.
Ghandi was once alleged to have said, "I like your Christ, but not your Christianity."
The quote I have heard is
I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ
This is not so surprising from one who experienced the Doctrine of Discovery or its European version.
From that perspective I wonder if there has ever been a Good Christian Nation, or even a Christian Nation.
Comments
For instance, both the RCs and Orthodox have very 'realised' and concrete views about what constitutes Church (Big C) but both bodies are (now) far more 'flexible" as to who may ultimately be 'saved' than many independent evangelical groups which would pride themselves on not being as institutionalised.
I don't see anyone other than rabid fundamentalists of whatever stripe who are going round drawing great big thick black lines - in terms of pontificating on people's ultimaye eternal destiny that is.
All I'm saying is that it is possible to draw lines in 'citizenship' terms - as per @Mousethief's analogy - but not in a 'wheat and tares' kind of way. That's God's call not ours.
There's no value judgement in saying that Nick Tamen is a Reformed Christian and not a Pentecostal or that Lamb Chopped is a Lutheran Christian and not a Roman Catholic.
Because that's what they are. That is their affiliation.
That isn't drawing exclusive lines, it's simply an acknowledgement of what their particular affiliation happens to be.
Again, I don't see any incoherence there. If I'm an Orthodox Christian it doesn't mean that other Christians can't be orthodox (small o) or far 'better' Christians than I am. I might end up as one of the tares. I sincerely hope not but there's no guarantee.
Not that this should scare us into despair. Ideally, it should provoke us to love and good works.
Equally, rather than pointing the finger at any other group or individual we should 'test ourselves to see if we be in the faith' - should we wish to be, that is.
Permit me to disabuse you of that notion. I'm not criticizing any of you. What I said was, "It bothers me that there are no definitive answers." You're the second person who's interpreted that as directed criticism.
Personally, I agree with both of these statements. The problem is, many self-described Christians most certainly do not, and I cannot understand how, both of them arguing from a position of doctrine, can be correct.
I'm only suggesting that the tares should know they're tares, and not wheat, and vice versa, and that the distinctions between them should be clear to both. The servants in the parable were never unclear as to which was which.
No, it doesn't, but the reason you have green at all is because yellow has been added to blue. Keep adding yellow, and you'll eventually be back at yellow, and you can always tell the difference between blue and yellow.
As to whether both positions we've discussed and agreed can both be doctrinally correct...
Well, I'm not going to argue for a both/and position on this one.
I'm right and they are wrong. 😉
I am of course the lodestone for doctrinal correctness at all points.
(Cough cough cough)
This interests me, because we're flat out told elsewhere in the Gospels, by Jesus himself, that there are going to be surprises in both directions--people who think they are wheat (or sheep, in a different parable) but are actually tares (goats); and vice versa. And he seems to be okay with that. Well, not okay really, because he spends a good amount of time explaining to people how you end up as a sheep/wheat vs a goat/tare, AND he urges people to do the former--making tares into good wheat is pretty much the definition of his whole mission.
And he gives diagnostics if you're unsure of your status (Matthew 7:15-20, or Luke's version here, Luke 6:43-45):
So I'm not sure what more you want from him?
I doubt very much the tares know they're tares. It's like Dunning-Kruger which says if you're stupid enough, you don't realize you're stupid and think you're smart. People who are oh-so-sure they're Christians are most likely to not be.
I don't think the latter follows from the Dunning-Kruger analogy, certainly I think it's possible to live be a Christian and to live the entirety of ones life without really doubting (I've known a few people who fell into that category, often with a very straightforward and/or matter-of-fact faith).
Yes, we've all met people like that, but that doesn't mean that's everyone who has lives a doubt Christian life falls into that category.
Sorry, not sure what happened there.
Yes, we've all met people like that, but that doesn't mean that everyone who has a doubt free Christian life falls into that category.
No it doesn't "follow from" it. I didn't present it as an argument, just as a metaphor to help make clear what I meant.
This is what I was talking about.
This describes the environment of my upbringing, including a healthy dose of othering anyone who we could identify as outside that plainly held belief.
That's not really what I was thinking of; I've met Christians who most people would categorise as 'Good People', who don't experience doubts about their status and have the kind of faith best described as expansive.
I've also met a greater number of complete shits who were convinced that they were saved and engaged in a fair amount of othering.
I don't think conviction / lack of doubt is an infallible marker.
Pardon me absence, been running the household solo for a week...
As I've gotten older and joined an Episcopal Church, I've realized that I'm really very Protestant in my attitudes, and it feels ticklish sometimes being in a more Catholic-tilting culture. That said, I do think this one still agrees with me.
But it's very important to me to know that I don't know and I am not the arbiter of the church. There's no objective institution that has that kind of authority. Even if I respect the traditions of the ancient church and its history, it has forever struck me as a cracked pot and, because of its cracks, it's never really safe to treat it like it's a sealed vessel. It just isn't. It has always been a porous, political mess.
And this isn't to say that inside and outside don't matter, they do. I think it's important to keep the creeds, to follow the worship, read the scripture etc. Identity matters. Formation matters. What we are doing is ultimately important. But there needs to be that "mind the gap" attitude that knows that we're still fools, for we are not truly God. Merely, at best, trying to follow in imitation of the one that sent us (so far as we can tell.)
Given the way that I live my life in my cultural context, I'd feel rather disingenuous to try to say I wasn't Christian. I've been in churches most all of my life and even if I apostatized, the teachings are still in my bones. I'd be a Christianized atheist. There's no boasting in that, it's just acknowledging the sort of social animal I've grown into.
Whether I'm truly right with God or not? I hope so, but that's all I can say. I just try to act in good faith, which I think is all you can expect of anyone.
Perhaps apropos to this, I was in a scuffle (shall we say) with some flat-earthers, who were saying that the flat earth theory is just Plain Common Sense. They asked, don't you have any common sense? I answered, that's hard to answer, because if I weren't sensible, I would THINK I was sensible, and say I was sensible, but I'd be wrong. So if I say I'm sensible, that says nothing about whether or not I really am. You'd have to ask my friends for an honest answer.
For some reason they never responded. I wonder if it's because they caught the implied insult.
No, of course not. You can have people prone to doubt who are certainly Christ’s and who produce good fruit (Thomas comes to mind here, and for all the focus on his spoken doubts, it’s worth noticing where he is when Jesus finally catches up with him. It cannot have been easy to put up with the other apostles for a whole week when they were elated and he was convinced they were pulling some kind of sick joke. And yet, there he stays.
You can have doubters—or completely faithless people—who also live completely horrible lives full of hatred and every kind of corruption, contrary to Christ. That’s easy to understand too, because at least it’s consistent.
You can, I suppose, have a doubt-free believer who also produces very obvious good fruit. I’m not sure i know anyone like this, the closer you get to a person, the more you see their struggles.
The ones that freak me out are the last category—the ones who seem to have no doubts at all about their status with Christ, but when you look at their lives, they seem to go in for nonstop abuse of other people—and you never catch them apologizing for anything, or acknowledging even ordinary human frailty. They terrify me because they seem to know themselves so little—living testaments to how easy it is to lie to oneself, and believe those lies. I’m not sure what their certainty is built on, but i can’t help suspecting it’s shifting sand.
First chapter on Faith
Second chapter on Faith
Sure and my list is correspondingly short and restricted to people I know or have know for many years (and in one case all of their fairly short life). They aren't perfect and have their struggles, but doubting their status as people who are loved isn't and wasn't among them.
My daughter has struggled a bit with being religious, mostly given up far as I can tell (teenager, so hard to say and I'm not the type to enforce it, to our mutual happiness.) But I once explained to her that sometimes being religious is self consciously keeping a few things in a box that are self consciously religious, and being completely comfortable admitting that maybe they don't entirely make sense. And that's fine. Everyone has their own personal shrine. You don't even have to be formally religious to do this.
I think where folks like the flat earthers screw it up is they try to take their personal shrine and make it "common property," which is a kind of abuse. I think I've always learned to be very private about my own religiosity, unconsciously turned off by people who make a big promotion out of it. Having grown older and watched where some of that talk has gone, I might've been right. I'm outwardly a Christian and in my heart I trust that I have faith, but it's not for me to enforce that.
I think it's just the -- for lack of a better expression -- violent insanity flowing through much of American Christendom that has made me feel more compelled to stick my neck up if only to prove to be the exception. I don't think I'm comfortable calling myself a model, but I do not want to see more people falling after that.
Umm, Americans? There are two hemispheres named America. I cannot remember how many countries that includes. Not all of them have the same conditions for citizenship either. Even in the United States of America you missed one way of being an American, being born to at least one USA citizen. Maybe the lawyers can correct me on this, another way is to have a private law, passed by Congress and signed by the President to recognize someone as an USA citizen. Point is, it can be even a little fuzzy.
Yes cute little playing with words. I am clearly and obviously talking about the United States of America. If there is a private law, then that person is an American, if not then not. The fuzziness is entirely imaginary and seems to be a product of arguing for argument's sake.
There's North America and South America and the other continents don't exist?
Thing is, in trying to pick a fight with your fellow Americans here for using the term to refer to the USA - something the rest of the world tends to do - you have inadvertently posted something that sounds more 'Americas-centric' than anything anyone else has posted.
Get over it already.
Everyone knows that the term 'America' is generally shorthand for the USA and doesn't imply that South and Central America aren't there or can be disregarded.
Some British people use the term 'Europe' to refer specifically to the landmass of the 'continent' rather than to our wee archipelago moored just off its coast.
But that's another issue and it's not how anyone here is using the term 'America' as if it's some kind of exclusive term.
BroJames, Purgatory Host
BroJames, Purgatory Host.
I think most Christians would agree that ritual prostitution isn't acceptable Christian behavior. That's pretty clear. You don't turn your church into a brothel.
And while I'll grant that you can probably find an exception to this, somewhere, if you try hard enough, I think I'll call them an exception.
There are also areas where something may be crystal clear to some Christians and not to others. For instance, ordaining women. I'm fully in support of this, but I do understand that some Christians feel that it's very clear that thou shalt not ordain women for various reasons that do not need to be brought up here, because we're aware of them and it could derail the thread.
Whether this disagreement means "hazy area" or "conflicting clarities" is an interesting question. I'm inclined to "conflicting clarities."
I think the real ethical haze involves situational cases that involve questionable acts with mixed motivations, such as "homicide in self defense during a conflict on inadvertently escalated" or "subsistence theft" or "trespassing on what one thought was a vacant lot."
I'm not sure I can answer these, but perhaps the Christian response is less to set the rule and more to work out how to graciously respond to the situation. Mayhaps we should figure out an ethic of grace.
I've definitely had that experience, and I have also met the kind of Christians being referred to. Mileage really varies.
Thank you
No offense taken.
Normal, ordinary, everyday Christians.
Exactly (and I’m not setting myself up as a good Christian here), it seems to come as a surprise down the pub or wherever, in the odd moments I reveal myself as even a churchgoer.
Tbh I am a bit troubled by that sometimes, because while I’ve got no wish to stand in the high street and attempt to evangelise passers by, I am aware that I probably ‘ought’ to do more to fish for people. And when I say more, I actually mean anything. But I don’t.
Hostly beret on
@The_Riv if you wish to dispute or comment on a host call, the Styx is the place. Please don't do it here.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
The point is, though, Christ is often given a black eye by those who claim to be Christian given the bigoted and racist remarks by many supposedly great preachers, given the resistance to the acceptance of people with different gender and sexual identities, given to the insistence that information other than Christian--whatever that may be--in a public library.
The Federal government is recently going after the city council of a small town just a few miles east of where I live because a Christian Reconstructionist group was denied a building permit to use a old bank for a meeting hall. The council says the group was denied a permit only because the city does not want a congestion problem in the center of town. The reconstructionist group is saying they were denied a permit because of their views. The founder of the movement has written a pro slavery book roundly condemned by American scholars. During the Covid epidemic this group openly defied rules requiring face masks and social distancing. It also has some very strict opinions on family and the role of women in society. Yes, there is some fear this group wants to convert the whole town to its point of view. For a summary on what is happening there, read this review. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2025/may/25/this-small-north-idaho-town-kept-to-itself-then-a-/
It is this type of people that distorts the understanding what a Christian really is. The distorted view suggests Christians are judgmental and the like. Consequently, when a Christian acts with grace, it tends to blow people away.
I probably won't have time to clean this post up as well as I'd like, but I got some thoughts...
Funny anecdote, my evangelism prof from seminary not only said this quote was legit, but said that Gandhi's interlocutor was a Christian missionary who did the unusual thing for a Christian missionary and didn't built his mission by appealing to the bottom castes of Hindu society. Most of the time, missionaries liked to appeal to the people who were ostracized by the status quo. It's easier to pry them away from the religion when the religion already tells them that they're garbage. Christianity is an improvement in status for the bottom, and I think that might even go back to the earliest early church. There could be a cynical side to all of that preaching about the importance of caring for the poor. The poor always outnumber the rich and the rich are always a little afraid of this fact. Now, going to a Hindu culture and getting the brahmins to convert? That's a flex.
For someone whose experience of Christianity is framed through Christian persecutors, this might be a harder thing to swallow. I also think of a friend I have in seminary who is Navajo, literally spent his childhood in a Christian-run re-education camp. He is very proud exponent of his Native culture and deeply resents the way he was treated...and yet the guy is still an ordained Methodist preacher and keeps the faith. Never quite got the story on how he has managed to do that, but it's real. He's a trip. And I wouldn't dare hold him up as a model because I don't tell people how to process their trauma. But, he's out there. And he's a great guy, in my experience.
I think there's another thing going on where pain draws attention. Dysfunction draws attention. Churches that simply try to do good, in a healthy society, don't get that much attention. We just show up and do our thing and a lot of people think "oh, that's nice," and go about their day and figure that it's normal because so much of the better side of Christian ethics is "normalized" in our culture. So the ones that stick out are the harmful ones, because they're weird.
I suspect that may change in the coming years. As I've quipped a few times among D&D geeks, nobody really wants to live in a world where being a lawful good goody goody two shoes is an exciting lifestyle.
Also, grace is kinda normal for most people. We like to think wrongs are easily rectified, especially when we're not the ones who got wronged. There's something appealing about forgiveness, unless you're the one who is owed something. Grace is as shocking as the scale of the injury that's smoothed over. You cut me off in traffic? No big. You ran over my child with your car? As a cyclist, I've had that one running through my head sometimes and I've struggled with it. And I can hear a driver saying in my head "But I didn't mean too, it was an accident! And know that is very much the truth, and I hope I never have to figure out why that makes a difference in the face of a serious injury.
And all of these thoughts might be going to some cogent conclusion, but I'm not sure where that is and I really should get myself to bed.
The quote I have heard is
This is not so surprising from one who experienced the Doctrine of Discovery or its European version.
From that perspective I wonder if there has ever been a Good Christian Nation, or even a Christian Nation.