Eliminate the divinity.....tell me about the man

[thacraic]

The question was posed by the moderator at an early Republican presidential debate in 1999: "Who is your favorite political philosopher?" George W. Bush declared, "Jesus Christ, because he changed my life."

Because W said it, it should mean what exactly?

 

[Dreadsox]

I think he swore like a son of a gun when he hit his hand with a hammer.

 

[thacraic]

LOL, how did you know I'd be looking in on it?

I'll leave it open...for now.

Thacraic, I think everyone is right...this is meant to be a "what-if" sort of thread, nothing more. No need to take offense. I know it wasn't meant that way, as Dread is a very thoughtful and devout person.

I am not taking offense. I am though very passionate about things like this. I know that Dread didn't mean anything in starting this. I said that quite a few post ago. I did however question how he honestly thought it wouldn't lead into the debate that it did. And not question it as in doubt his sincerity but question it as in how he couldnt see it coming.

 

[pax]

Okay, well, point taken.

All I'm asking is that we do try to consider Dread's thread with an open mind.

 

[thacraic]

Okay, well, point taken.

All I'm asking is that we do try to consider Dread's thread with an open mind.

OK. That is fair.

 

[financeguy]

thacraic,

If your intention is to convert atheists and agnostics I suggest you reconsider your approach. I am not open to your particular brand of diplomacy. Also you come across as quite an angry person.

I consider myself a Jeffersonian liberal, BTW.

regards,

financeguy

 

[thacraic]

thacraic,

If your intention is to convert atheists and agnostics I suggest you reconsider your approach. I am not open to your particular brand of diplomacy. Also you come across as quite an angry person.

I consider myself a Jeffersonian liberal, BTW.

regards,

financeguy

The way to convert people in my opinion is how one lives their life. You do not work with me, you do not live next door to me so you do not know anything about who I am. You have come to this conclusion based on what? I say things that you don't like?

I am not being diplomatic about this. I realize that. That is because I have chosen a side on which to stand and will not budge on this particular issue.

Well if I am coming across as angry over this...good. Some of what has been said does anger me. Is that not allowed? Just because someone gets angry about something like this it automatically makes them an all around angrey person?? Would you say the same about people that bashed Bush or Kerry during the election? My guess is no.

A Jeffersonian liberal. Ok. Then this thread should be right up your alley.

 

[pax]

Okay, PLEASE everyone take a deep breath.

financeguy, let's put aside our personal opinions and remember that even people with whom we disagree still have things to share.

thacraic, please try to check some of your anger at the door when you come to FYM.

Thank you both and everyone.

 

[thacraic]

Okay, PLEASE everyone take a deep breath.

financeguy, let's put aside our personal opinions and remember that even people with whom we disagree still have things to share.

thacraic, please try to check some of your anger at the door when you come to FYM.

Thank you both and everyone.

Ok pax but I don't come here angry. And the anger I speak of is not like a rage or even like I don't know... mad even. It is irriated and frustrated more or less. I have in the past gotten really angry and my husband just shook his head in disbelief "its people on a computer Carrie", he said.

Anyway, I replied to one of your post just a few minutes ago on another thread, in between my posts here, and it was not in any way angry. So well, don't know what else to say other than I am not sitting here fuming over all of this.

 

[BVS]

Probably goes without saying that I disagree with the majority of this post but
I think excercises of "what if" scenarios can be very educational and you miss out on opportunties by dismissing them. I won't get into certain points, I also think you misinterpreted Melon's post quite a bit.

The zeal comes from knowing Him personally which results in getting irritated when people want to change who He is to fit their neat little tidy view of what they think He is about.

I think this is the biggest load of crap, I have a friend who's a minister. One of the most Godly men I've ever know and THE LEAST zealous man I know. He knows when to talk and he knows when to listen. He can play "what if" scenarios and use them to educate himself and others around him and doesn't abuse every outlet possible and try to prove or express his beliefs.

 

[pax]

Well if I am coming across as angry over this...good. Some of what has been said does anger me. Is that not allowed? Just because someone gets angry about something like this it automatically makes them an all around angrey person?? Would you say the same about people that bashed Bush or Kerry during the election? My guess is no.

I'm going on your own words, that's all.

 

[Dreadsox]

I am betting that he put up with a lot of crap from his mother for not getting married. Socially, at the time, it would have been a pretty big issue for him to deal with.

 

[Irvine511]

I am betting that he put up with a lot of crap from his mother for not getting married. Socially, at the time, it would have been a pretty big issue for him to deal with.

hmmmm ... bachelor at 33, good with his hands (carpenter ... and from which we can probably infer a good sense of interior design), his mother thought he was the son of God ... gosh, sounds familiar ...

 

[Irvine511]

Because W said it, it should mean what exactly?

it meant that W hasn't ready any political philosophy, couldn't name a political philosopher off the top of his head, so he made something up on the spot.

 

[Irvine511]

I don't think the zeal is over what others believe or don't believe. The zeal comes from knowing Him personally which results in getting irritated when people want to change who He is to fit their neat little tidy view of what they think He is about.

Christianity is outside of religous orthodoxy. I don't see your point in 1. And I take it what you mean by 2 is Conservative Christians come in and say wait a minute, hold on, that isn't right slow down here. That doesn't make any sense in relation to what Scripture says. God forbid someone try to use Scripture. Once they do that they are "holier than thou" or "making other Christians look bad". Whatfrigginever.

i think the problem is that you seem to take as inerrant fact what most people, even believers, understand as articles of faith. with faith, because it is a choice to believe in the face of doubt, should come some semblance of humility. not necessarily humility before god, but humility before your fellow person because you can't *know* that you, or your interpretations, are correct. you can believe, but you cannot know. and as well you should know that Scriptural interpretations are highly contested, and that there is no correct reading, simply a valid one (i.e., it can be defended, and is logically sound). i see many devout christians in here to compose scripture-based arguments and without any of the histrionics.

and who's to say that in "getting to know him personally" you haven't unknowingly fit him to some image you already had? your first paragraph constitutes a claim that you have a correct understanding, and that others are simply wrong in their interpretations because they are different from yours.

and how is Christianity outside of religious orthodoxy?



anyway, to get back to Dread ... i would regard the message of christ more highly if people would stop claiming inerrancy around the message. if it's a human message, than it is presented in human terms, in human langauge, and as such is as imperfect and fallable and powerful and filled with the idea of man battling against the void and trying to create order and reason and love out of what appears to be chaos. for man to do this, for the message to come from man, and not as some sort of microphone for a paternalistic God, is both far more beautiful, far more poetic, and probably far closer to the truth than claims of perfection, and inerrancy.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

The zeal comes from knowing Him personally which results in getting irritated when people want to change who He is to fit their neat little tidy view of what they think He is about.

But nobody was trying to do that. Again, it was just a hypothetical situation. Nobody was trying to push their own view of what they think he should be like on anybody else. You said you don't know how Dread could think this wouldn't lead into what it's lead into, well, maybe he was just hoping we'd leave all that stuff that normally comes into these debates out of it for once. There's nothing wrong with hoping people will be able to try and imagine things from another point of view.

Originally posted by thacraic
God forbid someone try to use Scripture. Once they do that they are "holier than thou" or "making other Christians look bad". Whatfrigginever.

It depends on how they use Scripture in discussions. Bono's quoted Scripture before, but he does it through universal terms, in ways that allows anybody, whether they're Christian or not, to be able to relate to it. If people use it to basically state flat out that anyone who doesn't agree with this piece of scripture is a sinner and will not go to heaven or something like that, that is when they're acting holier than thou and making Christianity in general look bad. That doesn't mean that they can't say it in whatever way they want-if someone want to quote Scripture, I personally don't give a care, they should be allowed to do so-but they should also know that if they use it in a way that sounds like they're condeming anyone who isn't of their faith, people who aren't of that faith will get pissed at them and accuse them of being pushy. And that goes for anyone from any religion, not just Christianity.

Originally posted by thacraic
What I am getting here is this. On certain threads Conservative Christians should just keep out of it because this is Free Your Mind and if you don't have something to say that is radical or progressive you just need to shut yo mouth and sit down or go start your own damn thread. I mean how can your mind possibly be free if you are embracing a fundemental view of Christianity? Wake up! Its the 21st century you have to change things to accomodate YOU and the SOCIETY in which you live! Bollox.

I personally feel you should be able to say whatever you want in regards to what you believe. I personally wouldn't care if you had discussed Jesus minus the divine aspect in this thread, and then also started a thread to discuss him with the divine aspect included. Everyone who wanted to could certainly have discussed both hypotheses, each in different threads-I certainly wouldn't have had a problem with that.

Angela

 

[thacraic]

Oh well... back to not debating on online forums....

 

[BVS]

Oh well...we tried.

 

[U2Bama]

anyway, to get back to Dread ... i would regard the message of christ more highly if people would stop claiming inerrancy around the message. if it's a human message, than it is presented in human terms, in human langauge, and as such is as imperfect and fallable and powerful and filled with the idea of man battling against the void and trying to create order and reason and love out of what appears to be chaos. for man to do this, for the message to come from man, and not as some sort of microphone for a paternalistic God, is both far more beautiful, far more poetic, and probably far closer to the truth than claims of perfection, and inerrancy.

That is an intriguing concept on Christ's message being more positive to you if He were merely human.

Conversely, I find it beautiful that God would humble Himself in such a way as to fashion His Son to us in our image (since previously WE had been created in HIS image). I thought of this as I read Paul's letter to the Philippians earlier today. Even Christ's messianic parade on Palm Sunday was a somber event of somewhat rustic humility; after all, this Christ, this King, rode through town on a jackass! Not exactly a royal mode of transportation (being carried by escorts or riding on a camel with an army of guards and servants would have been the high-end presentation). But more importantly the pain and suffering that Christ went through six days later was a physical experience of humility, an ultimate humility that no king, person or messiah should ever go through.

Herein, I'm not trying to debate you or steer this thread out of the role-playing Jeffersonian experiment; I'm only offering my view on the Jesus-as-God concept as an explanation of where I am coming from as an alternate viewpont in the discussion you and Dreadsox were having.

~U2Alabama

 

[Irvine511]

i'm kind of taken with the idea that God becoming Jesus, God becoming man, might have changed God.

and for the better.

 

[Dreadsox]

bama.....

believe it or not.....

I too find that equally as powerful!

 

[Irvine511]

it's interesting ... as someone who's agnostic about God and the divinity of Jesus, there are so many elements to the "story" that make my English Major heart get all aflutter.

so much beauty from the diversity of interpretation, such power from the subjectivity.

 

[BonosSaint]

Interesting thread. I appreciate the question eliminating the divinity issue. Since we cannot comprehend the divine and
can comprehend the human, the question becomes what does
Jesus teach us about the human condition?

My theory is, if there is a God, he did not have a clue about the human condition and had to send an emissary to understand it.
It isn't the Biblical concept of Jesus's perfection that interests me
(unachievable for any of us), but the concept of his fear, his doubt, his anger, his love, his questions, his faith. More than divinity, he presented us with the possible, the achievable in the midst of all of our frailties. If there is a God, he needed Jesus as much as we did. ( Interesting book, "Christ, A Crisis in the Life of God" by Jack Miles) Jesus's humanity was infinitely more provocative.

 

[deep]

The Resurrection. Did it really happen?

By Sandi Dolbee

UNION-TRIBUNE RELIGION & ETHICS EDITOR

March 27, 2005


Today, on Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate the defining moment of their faith: a crucified Jesus rising from the dead, living proof of his divinity.

But did it really happen?

And how much does it matter for a religion that has grown from a band of disciples to the world's largest body, claiming a third of the population? Roughly 7 of 10 Americans identify themselves as Christians in surveys.

In U.S. opinion polls, the literal account of Jesus' Resurrection wins in a landslide. But religion is not a contest and Easter isn't an Election Day where one group of Christians wins out over another.

There are no photographs of an empty tomb. No home videos of Doubting Thomas checking Jesus' wounds. And there's no "CSI: Jerusalem." Instead, there is lingering disagreement over what was written centuries ago in Scriptures and what was meant.

"The classic Christian understanding of the Resurrection is that it did happen, it literally happened in a way that remains fundamentally mysterious," said the Rev. Lawrence Bausch, rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Ocean Beach.

Bausch turns to a famous passage in the New Testament from the apostle Paul, who writes that without the raising of Christ, all their beliefs are in vain. "In the end, if there is no Resurrection, then when you're dead you're dead," is how Bausch puts it. "There is nothing to be hoped for."

But there are Christians who simply don't buy into the physical Resurrection account.

Led by revisionist Jesus scholars such as Marcus Borg of Oregon State University, a movement of people view the biblical stories as metaphors on how to live life today. What is emerging, writes Borg in his 2003 book, "The Heart of Christianity," is "a new way of seeing Christianity and what it means to be Christian."

The Rev. Laurel Gray, a retired Lutheran minister who lives in El Cajon, is one of these adherents. "There are a lot of people, I would say, who are coming out of the closet, so to speak, and saying, 'Let's talk about this,' " said Gray, who leads an informal, ecumenical group of questioning seekers called the Church Alumni Association of San Diego.

For Gray, the Resurrection was spiritual, not physical. He says believing this doesn't diminish his faith. "I consider myself a Christian because I believe in the things Jesus taught," he added. Things like loving your enemy. "He introduced me to some principles that I think no one else has."

But for other Christians, if there is no bodily, physical rising, then Jesus runs the risk of becoming any other person who dies and lives on in our memories. "The enormity of the Resurrection is that he really does conquer death," said Bernadeane Carr, a Roman Catholic theologian and director of the Diocesan Institute, a San Diego diocese training program for religion teachers in Catholic schools.

It's a question of eternity. "The essence of Easter, of the celebration of Christ's Resurrection, is the grounding of our hope of eternal life," Carr said.

In traditional Christian theology, Jesus' death was a holy ransom, his life sacrificed for the sins of others, so that they might have eternal life. The Resurrection sealed the deal and a new religion was born, with Jesus as Messiah, Savior, the Christ.

Even nearly 2,000 years later, the miracle of the Resurrection is so powerful for followers that they leave their homes in darkness to celebrate with the sunrise from the beach at Coronado to the cross at Mount Helix.

"Without the Resurrection, there would be no reason to follow Jesus because that would mean there would be no eternal life," said Greg Allsup, who attends Calvary Chapel in El Cajon and leads a young adult group there. In other words: It's Easter, for Heaven's sake.

The Rev. M.A. "Mac" Collins, rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in City Heights, would rather talk about taking Jesus' teachings more seriously – from his biblical examples of inclusiveness to his exhortations to care for your neighbors.

"If we did more of that and less worrying about our symbols and how they are perceived in society, perhaps we would be a greater witness of the Resurrection and our faith," Collins said.

Suzie Knapp echoes that thought when she talks about helping her students at the Academy of Our Lady of Peace in North Park "get it from the inside out."

Knapp, campus minister and religious studies teacher at the Catholic girls high school, agrees that "sometimes people really get hung up on the details of resurrected body." In other words: Don't debate it, live it.

Still, Knapp leans toward the bodily Resurrection. After all, the Bible tells of Jesus appearing to his followers after his death, talking with them and eating with them.

The literal biblical account is good enough for Pastor Jeremy McGinty, lead minister of theMovement, a 3-year-old contemporary evangelical congregation in San Marcos. "The truth of God's word is black and white," McGinty said.

Besides, he asks, where's the body? "If they could have found the body of Christ, the movement of Christianity would have been gone."

Is it any wonder Easter is the holiest day on the Christian calendar? That day is today for western Christianity; Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter on May 1 this year.

"To me, it's absolutely huge," McGinty said. "To me, it's life or death. That's what's at stake."

Next spring, probably just in time for Easter 2006, the Rev. John Fanestil plans to come out with a book about Christianity and death. If Christians really believe in the meaning of the Easter message, Fanestil, senior pastor of La Mesa First United Methodist Church, argues they should be less fearful of death – and more trusting that it will be a spiritual communion with God.

As for Jesus' Resurrection, Fanestil says he can live with the mystery. "I believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, but I don't know what that looked like or felt like to Jesus' disciples," Fanestil said. "I can't answer the question of how it happened."

He suggests Christians push past the dissecting. "I think that trying to answer the 'how' questions will drive us crazy." Ultimately, he adds, "the question is, will we live our lives as those who trust that life will win out over death?"

 

[BonosSaint]

Glad to see this thread updated. It'll disintegrate again because the mysteries and the rituals and the rules have always overshadowed the teachings and the man, both of which were incredible and revolutionary. God forbid, irony intended, that we want to look at the harder questions of his teachings instead of being comforted in the warm blanket of the mysteries.