Reject religion, get closer to Christ

There are some in the Christian cults who believe they have no friends.

Don't believe *that.* Jeep your ways, just bring your souls. And if any God don't like it, which I doubt, we'll face him together.

We have a world here which I suspect we'd all rather keep, kids.

Let's focus on that.

I promise my Gods won't ill-use you as you've threatened yours will do to me. Which is too kinky and nasty to describe.

We still got a world, kids. Blame me if you gotta, but we really should keep it that way.

Rev. Smith writes:

Which is why, I guess, so many of us Christians ignore his teachings, and go to Paul (who was not the Christ!), or to selected passages in the Hebrew scriptures which make us polish our tendency to judge and ostracize people "in the name of Jesus."
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There is a great, great deal in the NT that promotes hatred and bigotry, including a hideous essentialism that ushered in the inaugural racism of the West. I have posted from the NT on many occasions to support this view and will not do so now.

As for Tanakh (the mistranslated OT), it is only Christians who somehow find justification in it to despise and abuse their fellow creatures. For these benighted souls, "OT" is a worthy supplement to their NT justifications.

Pity the poor Christian, who will not see.

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD. (Lev)

The place where some Christians get off track, is that they begin to believe that God is on their side. Maybe he is and maybe he isn't - the problem is with the question, not the answer.

A Christian seeks to be on God's side, not the other way around. "When two or three are gathered in my name." Does that sound like God wants us to go it alone? No. He wants us to live and pray in communities.

This being said, I wonder if God is on Anne's side concerning this decision or Anne is on God's. Wouldn't it be sad if the answer was 'neither'.

Kaltrop1 -

If the bible instructed you to jump off a bridge, would you?

Keep being led like a blind sheep by your bible.

Smith is missing some pretty important themes. Like sin, repentance, salvation, grace, mercy, justice, God's sovereignty, etc. You really need to watch out listening to people like her because you would think that with all that education she would really be spot-on, but often things are the opposite of what they seem in God's plan. The Bible points this out over and over in the choosing of shepherds and fisherman over well educated 'religious' men and women. As a matter of fact, although I don't know Susan Smith, she is far more a part of the whole 'organized religion' spectrum than any of us or Anne Rice. Another poster labels Smith a 'liberal'. For christians, a liberal is someone who takes out what they don't want to deal with and only deal with the 'easy' part. Yes, Jesus would certainly be against hating homosexuals (or anyone), but he would also have some things to say about depravity (which by the way we are ALL guilty of).

Jesus is controversial. People don't like to hear that they need to repent from their sins or that they have a duty to their creator. Some sort of fly fast and loose with the controversial stuff in order to be more accepted by the rest of the world. They water down or even deny things that are clearly stated in the bible and what they have left is a bunch of nothing. Jesus didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live (through his payment of all our sin, past, present and future on the cross). Jesus didn't come to start a religion. He came to save us from our slavery to sin and death.

When Smith says that Jesus taught us to "love others" she completely skips over the first part where He says "You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind..." THEN He says "...and love your neighbors as yourself". But Smith doesn't mention that for some reason. I suspect because she doesn't want to offend anyone. But, you CANNOT follow those two tenets and not be a positive influence on the world.

PASTOR Smith, don't tell me about the Jesus you STUDIED. Tell me about the Jesus you worship, who saved you, your King. Otherwise, what the heck are you doing?

Look- education is a good thing. But you don't need a divinity degree from Yale to figure out the bible. I will suggest that maybe if you study the bible to achieve some honors or degrees you might miss something. But if you pick up the bible because you really want to know what it says, you won't be disappointed. It's God's book, after all. Why get your information 2nd hand when you can get it from the source? If you seek out what it says with a true heart, something amazing will happen.

(and then you will be like us...accused by the world of having a lobotomy while trying to get them to look to Jesus)

""I doubt it. As Stanley Milgram proved in his experiments, people tend to put aside their moral principles when they think they're getting an order from a legitimate authority.""

Bingo.

'Religion' doesn't have to be part of that 'experiment,' but some few 'virulent strains' of some religions have in fact 'normalized' that.

Frankly, if there's anything 'testing faith' *about* all this noise, maybe you've got it here:

""And if Yahweh were to appear before me now and tell me that every word of the Bible was true, my first and last words to him would be, "I will not serve You. You are a tyrant, a murderer, and a rapist. You are unworthy of mankind, despite our defects.""

That's the kind of faith that scares *last week* out of Fundies.

Maybe if there's a spiritual point to people claiming the universe is ruled by some single jealous God with the 'ultimate eternal 'carrot' and the ultimate eternal 'stick' and all you have to so is 'submit...' Maybe if there's such a point.

Maybe that point is saying 'No.'

Too many Christians seem to think their own 'Dweller on the Threshhold' is to be *appeased.* Whoever else it hurts.

I don't believe or live in their world, but even *I* have a better opinion of even their God than that.

Lost a job over it once. "If you think your God both owns me (through you) and wants nothing but to scare and bribe me into hurting people (and trying to 'end the world,') I say no. Why is it suddenly OK to 'damn' others if I think my own soul both can't navigate and can be bribed and threatened to torment others?"

Milgram. He wasn't 'God' (Or a Devil) either, though.

Polytheists understand that not all lessons are direct. Not all tales of any God or hero are to be *emulated as 'Gospel.' *

Sometimes the point is to *learn.* Not just kneel and push a button and call it a 'job well done.'

THERESAFLEMING12, after studying history for years, it is my greatest fear that obedience will be the destruction of the human race. What harm could Hitler or Stalin have done if nobody had been willing to follow their orders? What harm could Mao Zedong or Pol Pot have done had they been bereft of obedient followers. Could Charles Manson have killed as many as he had without the Family to do his dirty work for him? Would we still be mired in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan if the Joint Chiefs of Staff had resigned en masse rather than implement George W. Bush's orders?

I doubt it. As Stanley Milgram proved in his experiments, people tend to put aside their moral principles when they think they're getting an order from a legitimate authority. As long as we believe that there's any such *thing* as a legitimate authority, we are all susceptible to what Milgram calls the "agentic state", in which we are capable of participating in atrocities because, after all, we're just following orders.

God can't redeem the human race. We have to redeem ourselves, and the first step is the willingness to say, "Go to Hell!" should God come to us and ask us, as he did Abraham, to murder our children in His name. Instead of killing our fellow man in the name of God, it is time to kill God in the name of our fellow humans.

While I can well understand how you feel, for surely unless we act with love, then any act if meaningless, there is something that Jesus did himself that I think applies to what you are saying.

Remember when Jesus saved the woman who was about to be stoned. He said, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". And no one did. However, Jesus also said to the woman, "Go now and sin no more".

What I would share with you is this... We should never be unkind and our Lord did not appoint us to be the judge and jury of mankind. However, as we love our Lord and love one another, we must also keep in mind that Jesus did make it clear that we are expected to do our very best to follow God's teachings as we live our life. Jesus didn't come so we can live as we please, but rather to pay the price so that we might come home one day to Heaven and to give us the help and grace we need to live a life of service both to our Lord and to one another.

One thing that is very clear is that love and obedience go hand in hand. You are so right in that it is not our place to judge one another, but we do need to keep in mind that one day we will stand before the throne of our Lord to be judged. And while church may, or may not, be required, following God's Word will be.

I can understand Ms. Rice's stance, but I don't agree with it. I myself turned my back on Christianity after losing patience with the hypocrisy inherent in organized Christianity. I read several translations of the Bible, including the Douay-Rheims, the King James, and the NIV. I had come to the conclusion that modern American Christians have allowed themselves to be more concerned with Leviticus and the writings of Paul than what Jesus of Nazareth is alleged to have said. I decided that the only difference between modern American Christians and the Pharisees that yelled "Give us Barabbas!" is that modern American Christians like bacon.

So I turned my back on Christianity. However, I went further. I asked why Yahweh had to appear on earth in a human avatar and allow himself to be murdered on a Roman cross in order to redeem humanity. If Yahweh made man, then it is Yahweh's fault if we are not good enough for him. He should have known that if you tell a person not to do something (such as eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), they're eventually going to do it. This is basic human psychology. How could Yahweh not understand this? Why could Yahweh not simply forgive mankind for being human, instead of acting out the same death-and-resurrection myth in which pagan gods like Osiris, Attis, and Dionysius all figure?

I never found any compelling answers to these questions. As a result, I turned my back on Christ as well. As far as I'm concerned, Jesus is just a Jewish Osiris. Since I don't believe in Isis and Osiris, why should I believe in Jesus and Mary? Since I don't believe in Zeus, why should I believe in Yahweh? I'm an atheist because I can see no difference between the Bible and Bullfinch's Mythology.

And if Yahweh were to appear before me now and tell me that every word of the Bible was true, my first and last words to him would be, "I will not serve You. You are a tyrant, a murderer, and a rapist. You are unworthy of mankind, despite our defects."

(In the below post, I neglected to mention just *how many people* in the Greek world where that Christ term came from actually were 'Christs.' It was probably somewhere on the order of 'How many Americans have done an Ash Wednesday service.' :) )

""But then, after the mere mention of his office ("Christ" was not his name; it was his office. Jesus was his name), we go flitting off, reading pieces of scripture that will justify our ideologies and mask those ideologies as theology.

Poor Jesus is often not in the mix at all.""

Ironic, then, they cribbed what you call the name of his 'office,' (Funny you should even call it that: ) From the Eleusinian Mysteries: aka 'The Mysteries of Demeter.' Worst-kept secret of the ancient world, really, involving an underworld journey and grain and Shhh. :)

Technically-speaking, I have more right to be called a 'Christ' than Jesus does, but I won't begrudge the dude that. Seems his story's kind of close enough, in some ways: The odd thing is about him being claimed to be the 'only' one. When that's kind of *not the point.*

The point of where the word came from actually *was* a ritual connection among all kinds of people and their lives with where the *food* comes from, after urbanization set in, which should be a familiar enough issue, at least to modern Pagans.

In part, I think the term was appropriated by the Church to supplant this, and in part, on a more positive note, I think it was appropriated to *embrace* this idea.

So it's actually quite backwards of churches to say that 'Christ' means some high exclusive 'office,' ....it in fact is supposed to mean just the opposite. There was a notion once that Jesus was *representing* everyone and saying, 'Be like me,' not 'You're utterly unlike me, worship some distant text-endorsing 'Christ.''

Lady, you're a Liberal. You have (re)defined your Christianity, overloading it with so much Liberal cant, in a few minutes you're going to be telling us that Jesus was an abortionist.

Please.

So much depends on whether you believe, as does Ms. Smith, that "the crux of Jesus' teaching was that human beings were to love each other, forgive each other, and treat others as they would want to be treated," or whether these teachings - none of which are unique to Jesus - are only made viable by what God did for us through Jesus' death and resurrection. The "good news" brought by Jesus is not that we should all try harder to love one another - we already knew that and are amazingly inept at doing it. The two-part good news brought by Jesus is that (1) God's love for us is so extreme that he would become a man and die to reconcile us to himself and to one another, and (2) God is bringing about his rulership and justice in this world through the kingship of this resurrected Jesus. Only as we embrace this Good News in faith is it possible to accept the church - comprised of ourselves and other humans! - with all of its faults.

Hey Rev Sue! As usual you are spot-on in this sharing. I did not know that Anne Rice had said this, but I hear her being upset with the varied expressions of cut and paste eclectic Christianity. Howard Thurman when challenged by why he was Christian said that there are expressions "about" Jesus and also expressions "of" Jesus--he preferred the latter. I am not ready to give up on Christianity based on the legion of distortions that exist, but I am prayerfully challenged daily to live the Christ I read and believe in the scriptures--it's not easy--it gets crucified! Perhaps that is why there are so many caffeinated and decaffeinated versions. Thanks for a thought-provoking message. Ozzie Smith

Christianity is more than a religion is a way of life set forth by God through his son Jesus Christ (Yeshua). I find it interesting to see and read that some of these manmade religions call themselves Christian when they don’t follow Jesus Christ teachings. To say you abandon the Catholic religion due to improper interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, I can understand. But to say you abandon Christianity is just absurd, technically we are talking about 2 separate beliefs.

Well said and on point.

For many years I have argued to my "religious" brothers and sisters that I don't have much patience with religion. I consider myself a person of faith and the God I worship is an inclusive and compassionate spirit. But too often I find "organized" religion is exclusive and intolerant.

To my mind, not very Christian!

I understand Anne Rice completely. Nearly every instance where faith is institutionalized, it is bound to disappoint. Institutions like church bodies come together by human necessity, not divine command. Nonetheless, Christians need each other. If we didn't preserve the core faith as a community, then how would we Christians know that the practices mentioned in this article are not Christian? We know because we can line them up with the Apostolic witness in the Gospels that we preserve and read as a community. We also practice those teachings when we come together for Communion, fellowship, prayer and service.

I am some what confused,I know that religion needs a God, but, does God need a religion? My understanding is, that christianity is a belief not a religion.Therefore why do we have to label people, God does not. As my Mother used to say we are all Gods children.