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Goodbye Jesus

Trouble With Liberal Christians


Leo

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I need help from former liberal Christians.

It seems the more I come out on Facebook, the more I hear from left-leaning Christians who say, like so many left-leaning groups, "Not all ... are like that!"

I could, and do, ask the question, where were these when I was questioning, before completely having lost the faith? It certainly seems I've no right to complain of their absence then, as I'm glad to be out.

However, I know there are former Liberal Christians on this site, even though the place is overrun with former evangelicals.

In short, I have no way of knowing how to begin with them. I've never seen them debate evangelicals, just yell at atheists for comparing them to evangelicals.

Take the situation with homosexuals and bisexuals, for instance. I know some LGBT+ people who aren't Christian at all or haven't been. As a straight white looking aat the situation, as a Christian with a lot of doubts at the time, I could come to no other conclusion than "Clearly, the Bible is completely wrong on this issue." But how does a left-leaning Christian do it? I mean, stay Christian, believe the Bible, and still accept gay people the way the rest of us do? I saw how Francis Collins could make Christianity and evolutionary biology mesh, a relief to me at the time. I read his book in 2008, I think it was.

For different reasons now, I wish I could find a liberal Christian debating an evangelical and defending their position, just so I'd know. Because now semiregularly, I find myself in the odd and obtuse position of taking a badgering from a liberal Christian who is upset at us atheists putting them in the same camp as evangelicals. I mean an actual defense, the way the apologists typically do. If William Lane Craig and Ken Ham (I know it's kind of laughable but ...) debated each other, one Old Earth Christian and one Young Earther, they can both put forth an argument. Even if Ham's arguments are pretty silly at times. At least it's a defensible position -- defensible by young earthers anyway.

If we who are formerly evangelical could understand how the Left maintains its Christianity while not holding the evangelical line that would help in encountering them in a discussion like this. It seems the Liberal Christians have a completely different set of apologetics or questions they'd have of us.

It just seems a little disingenuous when liberal Christians refuse to go up against the evangelicals, then get upset at us who bypassed them on our way out, because we never heard them explain just how they were right and the evangelicals were wrong.

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Perhaps religious "moderates" are mislabeled if they, as the majority, stand aside and allow their more "radical" brethren fuck up the the lives of innocents.

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I used to justify my beliefs by saying words to the effect of magic/goddidit/he works in mysterious ways.  I believed I could cherry pick the less unpalatable parts of the bible because some things were obviously lost in translation and god is love, dontcha know?  I could make anything fit.  All the while, hating on fundies for being so extreme and giving xianity such a bad name.  I didn't hate on atheists, I just believed god would go and tap them on the shoulder as and when he wanted to. In short, my belief system was pretty inconsistent and indefensible, so I didn't try to defend it.  I just shrugged and said god is love, and switched on some praise and worship music.

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As a former liberal xian, I believed that we didn't (couldn't) know the mind of god, but that god was ultimately good and loving and somehow everything would be fine.  I got the point that xians needed to believe in jesus to get to heaven, but I personally couldn't believe that god would send young children, severely mentally disabled or mentally ill people, or people that had grown up with no knowledge of xianity (or had lived before jesus) to hell.  I figured it would all work out for the good somehow, in the end.  I also figured a lot in the bible was outdated, since we now know how things like rainbows work and slavery is illegal and unethical and gay people are just . . . people who are gay because they are, no big deal.

 

As you can see from that, I had no argument for or against xianity or atheism, nor did I ever attempt to argue anything about it.

 

I would sometimes let people know I taught sunday school, because it was something I enjoyed and I loved the funny things the 4-year-olds would say and do.  I did have some people express amazement that I taught sunday school, and was therefor a xian, because they said I was so nice and not judgmental.  I just figured that xians were supposed to be nice and not judgmental, and my parents were extremely nice agnostics that had absolutely no definitive answers to religion.  I was raised in a "live and let live" environment.

 

I never actually knew any evangelical people when I was growing up or as a young adult (I began my career my working in the arts, which tends to not attract religious people, and most of my family died when I was pretty young and the rest didn't seem very religious).  Whenever I've heard people make racist or sexist or homophobic remarks, I have a tendency to walk away.  That's kind of my argument.  I can't even talk to you if you believe that.  Truthfully, I don't even know what to say when people make such ignorant comments.

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I need help from former liberal Christians.

It seems the more I come out on Facebook, the more I hear from left-leaning Christians who say, like so many left-leaning groups, "Not all ... are like that!"

I could, and do, ask the question, where were these when I was questioning, before completely having lost the faith? It certainly seems I've no right to complain of their absence then, as I'm glad to be out.

However, I know there are former Liberal Christians on this site, even though the place is overrun with former evangelicals.

In short, I have no way of knowing how to begin with them. I've never seen them debate evangelicals, just yell at atheists for comparing them to evangelicals.

Take the situation with homosexuals and bisexuals, for instance. I know some LGBT+ people who aren't Christian at all or haven't been. As a straight white looking aat the situation, as a Christian with a lot of doubts at the time, I could come to no other conclusion than "Clearly, the Bible is completely wrong on this issue." But how does a left-leaning Christian do it? I mean, stay Christian, believe the Bible, and still accept gay people the way the rest of us do? I saw how Francis Collins could make Christianity and evolutionary biology mesh, a relief to me at the time. I read his book in 2008, I think it was.

For different reasons now, I wish I could find a liberal Christian debating an evangelical and defending their position, just so I'd know. Because now semiregularly, I find myself in the odd and obtuse position of taking a badgering from a liberal Christian who is upset at us atheists putting them in the same camp as evangelicals. I mean an actual defense, the way the apologists typically do. If William Lane Craig and Ken Ham (I know it's kind of laughable but ...) debated each other, one Old Earth Christian and one Young Earther, they can both put forth an argument. Even if Ham's arguments are pretty silly at times. At least it's a defensible position -- defensible by young earthers anyway.

If we who are formerly evangelical could understand how the Left maintains its Christianity while not holding the evangelical line that would help in encountering them in a discussion like this. It seems the Liberal Christians have a completely different set of apologetics or questions they'd have of us.

It just seems a little disingenuous when liberal Christians refuse to go up against the evangelicals, then get upset at us who bypassed them on our way out, because we never heard them explain just how they were right and the evangelicals were wrong.

 

The Liberal Christian is upset at "you atheists..." Putting 'all you atheists' in the same box, eh? Are all atheists the same? Nope. 

 

As far as Liberal Christianity goes people just take what works for them and shitcan the rest. Good luck coming up with a defense for someone who calls himself a Christian but doesnt subscribe to all the bible fundamentals. Is your Christian friend trying to convert you? Are they posting guilt, shame or fear inducing memes or text? Or are you trying to deconvert them? :)

 

I think we both know that some bible baloney has to be ignored by Christians because it would be illegal to follow some of it's rules in our modern society. Does this cause cognitive dissonance? Probably not. Life is full of contradictory ideas, some of which we reject while still identifying with the particular label that those rejected ideas belong to. 

 

Labels mean nothing. Reject labels. I call myself an agnostic but some days I'm pretty atheistic. Some days I'm pantheistic. 

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Thanks for your responses.

midniterider, the liberal Xian tries to interject if I post something from John Loftus or another atheist on Facebook, I don't know if they're trying to convert me or just defend their Christianity. On the one hand defending it as rational and reasonable -- I remember doing that although I never did so on Facebook or Twitter. And always an add about how "Not all are like that".

And yeah, thanks for the bit about not all atheists being the same either ;) good one!

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I can only speak for my own experience growing up in the Episcopal Church in the late 70s. Also, I will describe how I understood it, and that might be all wrong.

 

(1) The idea of doing an altar call as an adult to be saved from going to hell was totally foreign. We were baptized as babies and confirmed as teenagers. Confirmation allowed us to receive communion - it didn't affect salvation.

 

(2) The ceremony of communion was the purpose of going to church. The sermon was usually 5 or 10 minutes at most. There were no church activities like basketball, charity work, etc. Going to church was a way of remembering and giving thanks for the sacrifice of Jesus crucifixion. Everybody tried to be as serious as possible, because the bread and wine were supposedly transformed into body and blood. Church was more like a weekly chore to remind us how thankful we should be to Jesus.

 

(3) The bible wasn't very important. The church organization decided what people were supposed to believe instead of the bible. Of course the Episcopal Church wasn't too strict.

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I think the different role of the Bible explains why there aren't too many debates between Episcopalians and Fundamentalists/Evangelicals. Episcopalians view the Bible as a collection of writings that were approved by the Church. The Bible doesn't contain all the information needed to define Christianity, and the Bible isn't perfect.

 

Fundamentalists/Evangelicals want to debate the meaning of the Bible, but Episcopalians don't care as much about the Bible. Imagine a political party that believes Tom Sawyer has the answers to every political issue. Who would want to debate with them?

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One thing I have to give evangelicals credit for: they generally take the words of the bible at face value. Obviously not all the time, but compared to liberal mainline types who barely even touch their bibles, that's at least a little more honest. I was raised liberal mainline (I'm actually a PK!), but became an evangelical in college. The amount of intellectual gymnastics the liberals have to do to discredit what the bible does clearly say about homosexuality, child sacrifice, warmongering, etc. while still believing in the god of that bible is staggering. It's just a metaphor, it's not meant to be taken literally, that was a long time ago, they didn't know what we know now, yada yada yada. I almost think they would be easier to debate, but I'm no where near knowledgable enough to do it myself, yet.

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Former Episcopalian here.???? I second what "directionless" said. I left liberal Christianity a year ago, and I have to say I would never have become a Christian had it not been for the Episcopal Church. They are definitely not the fundamentalist, evangelical types. They do not believe in a literal translation of the bible. They also have a universalist attitude toward acceptance by god. They believe everyone is accepted into heaven (eventually). They think the most important thing is to love god, and to love one another, and that those commandments override all other teachings of the bible. Therefore, they are able to be accepting of all people, including LGBT. Where were they when you were struggling with leaving Christianity? Well, they are not exactly accessible. At least, the Episcopal Church has its own issues with being too formal, too stuffy, and not very warm to newcomers. Still, some of the only people I have told about my apostasy are members of TEC. All of them are still on speaking terms with me, while I would be very wary of telling any of my evangelical friends.

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Thanks for your responses.

midniterider, the liberal Xian tries to interject if I post something from John Loftus or another atheist on Facebook, I don't know if they're trying to convert me or just defend their Christianity. On the one hand defending it as rational and reasonable -- I remember doing that although I never did so on Facebook or Twitter. And always an add about how "Not all are like that".

And yeah, thanks for the bit about not all atheists being the same either wink.png good one!

 

I just wouldn't have someone like that as a FB friend, period.  How disrespectful of them to interject on things you post on your timeline.  If someone does that on my timeline, they either get a carefully worded response that sends the hint "don't even think about doing that again" while appearing courteous, or I tell them privately, or delete the posts, or unfriend them, depending on what they said.  I do not have time to have people picking fights with me on a piece of the interwebs that I control, in front of my family and friends.  If they don't like what I post, they can ignore it, unfollow or unfriend me. Simple.

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Oh, and like FreeThinkerNZ said, just delete their comment if it bothers you. I've had to do that myself before.

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My wife is still a believer but has at least left fundamentalism. She has progressed to the point that she acknowledges the bible isn't literally or historically true. A couple of months ago she decided to attend a large Methodist church that is close to us.

 

They have a contemporary service with a rock & roll band and she likes that. I broke my drought and went with her a couple of weeks ago. When I was in my searching stage before de-converting I went to this same Methodist church for about a month. It was much more palatable than any other form of Christianity I'd experienced.

 

The sermon, as such, was basically interpreted as a goal or a way for people to live their lives and how to treat other people. I don't know much about the Methodist except their focus seems to be helping others. This particular church has a lot of community service projects they run and support. That's all good. As far as church goes that's about as good as it can probably get. At least they aren't bible literalists.

 

I'd didn't experience a come to Jesus moment and I also didn't experience anything that would motivate me to reconsider leaving religion. The last time I went to church with my wife was months ago and it was fundy church. I got up and left before the service ended. I'll say this for the Methodist, I didn't walk out. I endured the entire service, but I did doze off a couple of times.

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Former Episcopalian here. I second what "directionless" said. I left liberal Christianity a year ago, and I have to say I would never have become a Christian had it not been for the Episcopal Church. They are definitely not the fundamentalist, evangelical types. They do not believe in a literal translation of the bible. They also have a universalist attitude toward acceptance by god. They believe everyone is accepted into heaven (eventually). They think the most important thing is to love god, and to love one another, and that those commandments override all other teachings of the bible. Therefore, they are able to be accepting of all people, including LGBT. Where were they when you were struggling with leaving Christianity? Well, they are not exactly accessible. At least, the Episcopal Church has its own issues with being too formal, too stuffy, and not very warm to newcomers. Still, some of the only people I have told about my apostasy are members of TEC. All of them are still on speaking terms with me, while I would be very wary of telling any of my evangelical friends.

This is similar to my experience in the Methodist church I attended until age 20-ish.  "Love god, love one another, and those commandments override all other teachings of the bible" and "formal, stuffy, not warm to newcomers."  Obviously, those two concepts contradict each other, but it describes the church I attended very well.  As a person who was born into that church and moved on by college, I enjoyed the love and acceptance of the members, but was too young to understand that it was not a welcoming place for newcomers.

 

Even tho I am still distantly friendly with a couple women from that church that I grew up with, and we all accept each other as we are (they still attend the church and at least one of them is still a xian, I'm not sure about the other one, and they are aware my parents were agnostic and I was agnostic for years and am now an atheist), I have no desire to ever attend that, or any, church again.  Just no interest at all; it'd be like singing songs and listening to a sermon about fairy tales for me.  I enjoy a good novel or movie, but have no desire to sit in a group of people and sing songs about any novel or movie, no matter how interesting the plot may be.  And I don't find the bible to be interesting reading.

 

And to add this:  as an adult my first husband and I joined a Presbyterian church, which was also similar in being liberal, mainly about love, and again formal, stuffy, and not warm to newcomers.  This time, as an adult that had joined that church, even after 10+ years of attending and being very active in that church, I never felt overly accepted by the long-time members that had been born into it, and still attended with parents, grandparents, etc.  We were always the "new people" was the feeling I had.

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It seems the more I come out on Facebook, the more I hear from left-leaning Christians who say, like so many left-leaning groups, "Not all ... are like that!"

Holy crap...I just had a Facebook encounter with someone else's "liberal" friend. I haven't had a debate on Facebook in a couple of years...

 

...and I don't feel like getting into it with this guy. He's seeming like a bit of a nut-bag.

 

Here's the weird part that I'm thinking you will relate to Leo:

 

I didn't "call" him anything, but he immediately went into this "don't label me as a christian" "I don't fit the mold of christian" etc, etc.

 

As I said, I actually didn't call him anything, I had said that if he wanted to study scripture and base his life around it fine and then I proceeded to tell him that my life was pretty much ruined by trying to follow scripture (my entire point was that faith and worldview are largely based upon personal experience and are subjective).

 

Anyway...I guess now I'm just as baffled as you are, Leo, at this guy's immediate defensiveness at being not being labelled like other Christians.

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Anyway...I guess now I'm just as baffled as you are, Leo, at this guy's immediate defensiveness at being not being labelled like other Christians.

 

 

That's just the way it works. Each Christian group or church or denomination thinks they are the one true church, that all others are imposters or something. I am no longer surprised to hear members of another church from which we deconverted saying, "Oh we're different. We're real Christians. We don't do that." Or something to that effect, meaning if only we atheists gave them a chance we wouldn't remain atheists. This, of course, is spoken from the presumption that people deconvert because of having been hurt in the church, not because of things like bad theology or an unethical deity or for personal integrity.

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I guess that's another thing to give evangelicals credit for: they love new people and are very welcoming from my experience. Liberal mainlines tend to operate more like social clubs, of the country club variety.

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Ultimately the bottom line is this: Be they liberal or fundy, if the bible ain't true then it just ain't true. It matters not how anyone interprets a myth, it's still a myth.

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Ultimately the bottom line is this: Be they liberal or fundy, if the bible ain't true then it just ain't true. It matters not how anyone interprets a myth, it's still a myth.

Not all denominations use the Bible to legitimize their beliefs and practices. I have read the Eastern Orthodox used to tell Christians not to read the Bible - especially the Old Testament. They felt that the Bible could only be understood by consulting the opinions of St. John Chrysostom or some other ancient Bible scholar. You were not supposed to read it and decide what you thought it meant for yourself. LOL.

 

Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, etc. all see themselves as a continuation of the earliest Church. What they believe and practice is legitimate, because it is what they have always believed and practiced. The Bible derives its legitimacy from the Church. The Church could declare the Bible to be bullshit or rewrite it if they wanted to. I believe the Catholic Church has made tiny changes in the Bible to align it better with their traditions (e.g. the "Our Father"/"Lord's Prayer").

 

The real killer problem for Christianity IMO is the early history of the church that suggests they were improvising their beliefs. That doesn't match with the legend that Jesus taught everybody what to do.

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"Liberal" Christians (the Jesus character would say lukewarm) don't have the balls to actually do anything their book or supposed Savior tells them to do. It's half-assed lip service to some vague idea of a religion and it's more revolting than the snake handlers who have faith and take the message seriously and put their life on the line because they actually believe that shit. "Liberal" Christians actually believe in nothing, and they act accordingly. If they paid any attention and had any morality of their own they would be leading the charge against their more fundamental, hateful, shit flinging brethren.

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"Liberal" Christians (the Jesus character would say lukewarm) don't have the balls to actually do anything their book or supposed Savior tells them to do. It's half-assed lip service to some vague idea of a religion and it's more revolting than the snake handlers who have faith and take the message seriously and put their life on the line because they actually believe that shit. "Liberal" Christians actually believe in nothing, and they act accordingly. If they paid any attention and had any morality of their own they would be leading the charge against their more fundamental, hateful, shit flinging brethren.

 

Florduh, I think you misunderstood the post of directionless. The church legitimates the Bible, not the other way around, which means that they don't have a book to follow or they don't see the Bible as the Holy Rule Book the newer post-Reformation denominations like evangelicals do. This includes the Mennonites and a host of other post-Reformation denominations.

 

My Lutheran prof said the Bible is only one part of it, experience is another. It's almost as though they see the NT as a family history, rather than the infallible Word dictated by God and unchanged through the millennia. The idea that the Bible is the foundation of belief is apparently a relatively new tradition--the two-thousand-year-old church does not see it that way. That the Bible is the foundation of faith is an idea that came along about the time of the Reformation, I think. The Bible was made available in the common vernacular and the printing press made for relatively cheap books that common people could afford. This happened around 1500 and following decades and centuries. 

 

Before the printing press, books were copied by hand and chained to desks in churches, seminaries, libraries, etc. so as not to be stolen. They were so valuable. Now the average person suddenly had access to the Bible and new religions sprung up all over Europe based on the Bible. We are the descendents of this movement. But the old churches still exist with their ancient beliefs that do not depend on the Bible. I know it's really difficult for us who were taught to revere a book so highly to comprehend this.

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Late to the thread and haven't read though every single posting but I'll assume that I can add something just because there aren't many other active Germans on the site... :)

 

When I was a terribly lukewarm German mainstrem protestant, the tenets of the faith could be summed up as "The bible says jesus was a good and kind and very ethical man, let's try to be at least a little like him in our lives". Sermons and teachings focused on Love Your Neighbor™ and pretty much nothing else, no conditions, no qualifiers. While at least the pastor where I grew up didn't deny there's... very unethical stuff said in the bible, he didn't try to explain it away either. I can't remember his exact wording but it boiled down to everyone having to answer that question for herself (the question of how the horrible stuff is possibly compatible with Love Your Neighbor™ ).

 

I didn't leave the church because I was unhappy with it, but because I found something that I found really  connected to in a spiritual way, while I had always considered "our" brand of christianity as 99 % a social thingie. Only after I left I did I stumble over the batshit insane jebus taliban in (mostly) the US.

 

So, if you had asked me back when I still was a church member what I think about the horrible parts of da wholly babble, or of morons like the US evangelicals, I probably would have thought that you're joking. I wouldn't have believed that you could possibly be serious about that, or that anyone could for that matter.

 

Since I learned how much crap is still thought and said and done in da name of da lawd™ I've wondered about how the moderates should behave. It's a difficult question. On the one hand, if they just stand at the side saying nothing, or perhaps shaking their heads in sadness about how fucking dumb some people can be, they could be said to tacitly accept that shit. On the other hand, if they speak out in public against it, wouldn't they just give the morons more publicity and make them appear more legitimate, or at least more "important"? I don't think I have a good answer for that, it can be argued both ways. :shrug:

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For different reasons now, I wish I could find a liberal Christian debating an evangelical and defending their position, just so I'd know. Because now semiregularly, I find myself in the odd and obtuse position of taking a badgering from a liberal Christian who is upset at us atheists putting them in the same camp as evangelicals. I mean an actual defense, the way the apologists typically do. If William Lane Craig and Ken Ham (I know it's kind of laughable but ...) debated each other, one Old Earth Christian and one Young Earther, they can both put forth an argument. Even if Ham's arguments are pretty silly at times. At least it's a defensible position -- defensible by young earthers anyway.

If we who are formerly evangelical could understand how the Left maintains its Christianity while not holding the evangelical line that would help in encountering them in a discussion like this. It seems the Liberal Christians have a completely different set of apologetics or questions they'd have of us.

It just seems a little disingenuous when liberal Christians refuse to go up against the evangelicals, then get upset at us who bypassed them on our way out, because we never heard them explain just how they were right and the evangelicals were wrong.

On another thread I posted some things said by a biblical scholar who evangelicals would consider liberal, Paul Achtemeier. The book was from 1980, but I don't think positions have really changed theologically since then:

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/67874-bible-discrepancies-from-paul-achtemeier/#.VXwW1EbQPrQ

 

Achtemeier and some of the scholars he quotes approvingly are quite hard-hitting against fundamentalism.  James Barr, Fundamentalism, Phila.: Westminster, 1978, is often quoted by Achtemeier.

 

Achtemeier tries to distinguish himself from liberals by holding a higher standard of scriptural authority, but I think fundies would brand him as a somewhat more conservative liberal (!).

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I've been both… and it's frightens me that I could have swallowed so completely the fundie nut bag stuff. (I was an SDA for a while, even Maranatha once)

 

The liberal stuff made complete sense to me for quite a while because of my studies in other religions. I guess deep down I was essentially an Universalist at heart. Being a loner though was my 'saviour'… I don't need to belong to any group.

 

However - because of that essential universalism I never condemned anyone… nope, not even atheists, because I also believed in reincarnation and was of the mind that eventually all become purified through experience. Everyone was at a different place in their soul development and therefore who was I to judge?

 

Interpretation always fascinated me because the Bible and the Apocrypha and many other texts can be seen in so many ways.

 

Ya, I was pretty woo-woo most of my life  :D  

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"Liberal" Christians (the Jesus character would say lukewarm) don't have the balls to actually do anything their book or supposed Savior tells them to do. It's half-assed lip service to some vague idea of a religion and it's more revolting than the snake handlers who have faith and take the message seriously and put their life on the line because they actually believe that shit. "Liberal" Christians actually believe in nothing, and they act accordingly. If they paid any attention and had any morality of their own they would be leading the charge against their more fundamental, hateful, shit flinging brethren.

 

Florduh, I think you misunderstood the post of directionless. The church legitimates the Bible, not the other way around, which means that they don't have a book to follow or they don't see the Bible as the Holy Rule Book the newer post-Reformation denominations like evangelicals do. This includes the Mennonites and a host of other post-Reformation denominations.

 

My Lutheran prof said the Bible is only one part of it, experience is another. It's almost as though they see the NT as a family history, rather than the infallible Word dictated by God and unchanged through the millennia. The idea that the Bible is the foundation of belief is apparently a relatively new tradition--the two-thousand-year-old church does not see it that way. That the Bible is the foundation of faith is an idea that came along about the time of the Reformation, I think. The Bible was made available in the common vernacular and the printing press made for relatively cheap books that common people could afford. This happened around 1500 and following decades and centuries. 

 

Before the printing press, books were copied by hand and chained to desks in churches, seminaries, libraries, etc. so as not to be stolen. They were so valuable. Now the average person suddenly had access to the Bible and new religions sprung up all over Europe based on the Bible. We are the descendents of this movement. But the old churches still exist with their ancient beliefs that do not depend on the Bible. I know it's really difficult for us who were taught to revere a book so highly to comprehend this.

 

I know about early church history, but even in the beginning there was no reason for Christianity to exist apart from the Bible. Yes, people make up their own rules and religious dogma and create their traditions, but at the heart of it all is the biblical story of a miraculous risen god-man named Jesus. Today more than ever, Christianity exists in all its current forms solely because of the information taken from the writings in what's known as the Bible. There is no Christianity at all without the Bible because the Bible is the only place the Jesus character ever existed. Believers in that story may choose to accept only the virgin birth, only the resurrection or any other essential tenet and then summarily dismiss the rest. Such is the nature of humans. Still, if one accepts part of Scripture, it seems cowardly and disingenuous to not give weight to the whole of Scripture.

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