Vomitously Sick Of Christians

[mymistake]

 

 

 

Even going by the gospels as written Jesus didn't make anything like a claim of divinity until the Gospel of John.  

 

That's not accurate.   I had similar concerns a few years back, so I read through the first three gospels and scrupulously took notes.  I came up with 113 incidents and statements by Christ which showed that he was divine. Here are a few:

 

Matthew 16:15-17:  "He said to the, 'But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Jesus answered and said to him, 'Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven."

 

Mark 61-62:  "Again the high priest asked Him, saying to Him, "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?"  Jesus said, 'I am."

 

Luke 22:70:  "Then they all said, 'Are You then the Son of God?  So He said to them, "You rightly say that I am."

 

Mathew 26:62-64:  "And the high priest arose and said to Him, 'Do You answer nothing?  What is it these men testify against You?' But Jesus kept silent.   And the high priest answered and said to Him, "I put You under oath by the living God:  Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God?'  Jesus said to him, "It is as you said."

 

 

 

It is so deeply engrained in you that you cannot see it.  "Son of" doesn't mean "is".  "Christ" doesn't mean God.  "Christ" means "anointed".  King David (in the story) was a Christ.  King Saul was a Christ.  All the kings of Israel were Christs.  These synoptic gospels do not say that Jesus was God.  For that you have to go to John.

 

Furthermore all of the authentic writings of Paul have the author list God and Jesus as serperate entities.  Paul never thought Jesus was God.  Jesus served God.  He wasn't God.

 

Look past the indoctrination and see the words in the actual Bible.  They don't mean what your pastor told you they mean.

 

 Isaiah 9:6 says, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."   This son is called the Everlasting God.  Certainly not trying to get all theological, but this verse in Isaiah clearly shows that a son will be the Everlasting God.  

 

 

Again "called" does not mean "is".  Jewish names run this way.  What does israEL mean?  It means prevails with god.  What does Josuha mean?  The name means god is salvation.  How about Joseph?  That means god will increase.  Of course the names do not always refer to the same god because back then the Jews were polytheistic.  That was why they had the Mary and Marthas names referring to their female deities.  And the name Jesus was as popular in the first century as it is today.  Of course they didn't have J so the Aramaic use Yeshua which is the same as Yoshua or our translation Joshua.

 

But let's look at Isaiah (who's name also refers to a god)

 

Chapter 9 KJV.  (Emphasis mine to indicate failed prophesy)

 

⁷ Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

⁸ The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel.

⁹ And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart,

¹⁰ The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.

¹¹ Therefore the Lord shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together;

¹² The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

¹³ For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts.

¹⁴ Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day.

¹⁵ The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail.

¹⁶ For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.

¹⁷ Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

¹⁸ For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.

¹⁹ Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother.

²⁰ And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm:

²¹ Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

 

The world is not at peace.  We didn't experience peace during the first century nor in the 20 centuries to follow.  And it couldn't have been a metaphorical peace because Christianity has been responsible for much of the conflict through history with the Crusades and the Hundred Year Wars and the Inquisitions.  Nobody sits on the Throne of David.  It is true that in 1948 some immigrants choose a very old name with a lot of baggage for their new country but they created a secular democracy; not a theistic monarchy.  The rest of the passage has to do with the politics of the time in which Isaiah was written when these names were for different countries.  

 

It's not a prophesy about Jesus.  Otherwise Isaiah 9:6 would read "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Yehovah is Salvation".

[Bhim]

We all dislike the concept of hell.  I certainly don't like it more than anyone else here.   I would like to completely dismiss it.  What Jesus said was disconcerting (to say the least).  However, most of us find it abhorrent because we consider it to be false.  That there must be something seriously screwy in the interpretation.  But, what if what Jesus said is actually true? What if hell really existed?  If that were the case, then his words make all the more sense.  Listen, I would be perfectly fine if everybody got a free passage to heaven.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my chapter "What the Hell?" I discuss various scripture that almost certainly shows that those who have died still have a chance.   People in church would claim this is blasphemy, but it's in the text.  Just freaking read chapter 4 of my book. It's the furthest thing from preachy.  You'll actually like it.   Also, it's free, so I'm not making dough of it.

 

Hi Sandiego.  I read the chapter from your book.  I don't know if others have.  I think most of us here are weary of people who ask us to read links with lengthy amounts of text, due to the large number of online trolls.  However I don't think that's the case with you.  I think I can better articulate the source of our disagreement.

 

In your book you seem to draw a dichotomy between Christians and atheists.  That is, anyone who doesn't believe in Jesus is rejecting God.  That may speak to a lot of people here, but not to me.  I already believe in God.  So if I choose to practice the religion I was raised with instead of converting to Christianity, you seem to believe that I am somehow rejecting God.  You even cited Lee Stroebel's claim that hell is separation from God, the idea being that when you go to hell you simply persist in your rejection of God into the afterlife.  But it isn't God I reject, it's Jesus.

 

Want to know why I reject Jesus?  There are numerous reasons, such as that he isn't a figure in my religion, he's a Western European deity, etc.  But like you said in your book, "The mere concept of Hell runs contrary to a loving God."  Your approach is to push the issue to the side and just trust in your God.  I think this may be because the only other alternative you see is atheism.  But there's another alternative; indeed there are as many alternatives as there are religions.  My solution to this problem is to simply conclude that Jesus is not in fact God, and that another religion better portrays him.  What invalidates this conclusion?

 

I also think that your interpretation of the parables of Jesus, which suggest to you that hell is temporary, leave much to be desired.  But that's a whole other can of worms that we could address later.

[kolaida]

Even when I was a Christian, I had a lot of issues with the Hell doctrine as well as the Rapture doctrine. 

 

There is so much information floating around on Hell and who goes there according to which denominations.  It is important to look up the words and what they originally translated as. Sometimes, I think people forget that language barriers do exist and if there is a God, it was not God himself publishing Bibles, but mere mortals who make mistakes and interpret words differently and who may be too far removed from an ancient culture to really even be the person translating old texts anyway. 

 

The idea of hell and what it is has evolved quite a lot over the years. 

[Positivist]

 

Verse

Verse

Verse

Verse

Verse

 

And there it is.

 

SD4M, I really wanted to believe that you wanted to have a "real" dialogue, until I saw this ^^^.

 

If you *really* want to have a *real* dialogue, you would be open to examine the Bible from without, not merely within. "The Bible is true because the Bible says it's true" is not going to cut it here.

 

How about this. Instead of arguing for the divinity of Christ, argue against it, merely as an academic exercise. Then you'll see where we are coming from.

[sandiego4me]

 

We all dislike the concept of hell.  I certainly don't like it more than anyone else here.   I would like to completely dismiss it.  What Jesus said was disconcerting (to say the least).  However, most of us find it abhorrent because we consider it to be false.  That there must be something seriously screwy in the interpretation.  But, what if what Jesus said is actually true? What if hell really existed?  If that were the case, then his words make all the more sense.  Listen, I would be perfectly fine if everybody got a free passage to heaven.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Sandiego.  I read the chapter from your book.  I don't know if others have.  I think most of us here are weary of people who ask us to read links with lengthy amounts of text, due to the large number of online trolls.  However I don't think that's the case with you.  I think I can better articulate the source of our disagreement.

 

 Thanks for taking the time to read the chapter.  As you can see, I don't pretend to know everything.  Christ's introduction of hell has scared everybody.  I, however, think that hell might be much less widespread than we think it will be.  As I noted, there is scripture which suggests that people will NOT live forever in torment, but, rather, will no longer exist.  That certainly is more humane than frying in boiling oil forever.   

 

I cannot avoid Christ because he brought up hell.  If he is right and it does exist, then it doesn't make sense to ignore it simply because it terrifies me.   He has given us a way to avoid it.  It's not very complicated to avoid it.   I think it's as simple as coming to him.  

 

I believe that the complexity within the universe is so surreally complicated that no way was it randomly put together by a boiling pot of stew form a few billion years ago.  No way.  

[Ravenstar]

This is how complicated it is:

 

Love me, or else.

[kolaida]

This is how complicated it is:

 

Love me, or else.

 

Exactly.   My post was more referencing the whole Gehenna thing but I got lazy with it.  But this is basically it, love me or else.  Come to think of it, some humans are actually kind of like that.  

 

 

Also, why does it matter so much that Christ brought up Hell? I'm pretty sure Hell was mentioned in the Old Testament as well. 

[pawn]

 

 

This is how complicated it is:

 

Love me, or else.

Exactly. My post was more referencing the whole Gehenna thing but I got lazy with it. But this is basically it, love me or else. Come to think of it, some humans are actually kind of like that.

 

 

Also, why does it matter so much that Christ brought up Hell? I'm pretty sure Hell was mentioned in the Old Testament as well.

Actually NO, there is no hell in the Old Testament. Many Jews didn't even believe in an afterlife. Whenever you see the word "hell" in the Old Testament, it's just an English translation of the Hebrew word "Sheol" , which is properly translated as "the grave". Bible translations are notoriously inaccurate and twisted by the translators' particular doctrines.

[kolaida]

 

 

This is how complicated it is:

 

Love me, or else.

Exactly. My post was more referencing the whole Gehenna thing but I got lazy with it. But this is basically it, love me or else. Come to think of it, some humans are actually kind of like that.

 

 

Also, why does it matter so much that Christ brought up Hell? I'm pretty sure Hell was mentioned in the Old Testament as well.

Actually NO, there is no hell in the Old Testament. Many Jews didn't even believe in an afterlife. Whenever you see the word "hell" in the Old Testament, it's just an English translation of the Hebrew word "Sheol" , which is properly translated as "the grave". Bible translations are notoriously inaccurate and twisted by the translators' particular doctrines.

 

 

Yeah, I understand it's Sheol, I just don't get the obsession with Jesus and Hell. I'm assuming SD4me doesn't know of Gehenna, Hades, or Sheol and their translations and would therefore think they were all similar or pretty much one in the same (since the Bible doesn't explain any of this).

 

Until I studied the translations as a Christian, I believed all the Hells were the same one.  But maybe he does know. Who knows?  I was just asking because most people that study the Bible don't know the translations, so why be so focused on just the one that Jesus brings up. I guess I know the answer to that question: because it's Jesus. 

[midniterider]

 

I cannot avoid Christ because he brought up hell.  If he is right and it does exist, then it doesn't make sense to ignore it simply because it terrifies me.   He has given us a way to avoid it.  It's not very complicated to avoid it.   I think it's as simple as coming to him.  

 

The first step to recovery is to destroy your fear. Next is to take charge of your own life. Stop pretending that the voice in your head is someone other than you. It's not very complicated. It's as simple as discarding toxic beliefs.

[mymistake]

 

 

This is how complicated it is:

 

Love me, or else.

Exactly. My post was more referencing the whole Gehenna thing but I got lazy with it. But this is basically it, love me or else. Come to think of it, some humans are actually kind of like that.

 

 

Also, why does it matter so much that Christ brought up Hell? I'm pretty sure Hell was mentioned in the Old Testament as well.

Actually NO, there is no hell in the Old Testament. Many Jews didn't even believe in an afterlife. Whenever you see the word "hell" in the Old Testament, it's just an English translation of the Hebrew word "Sheol" , which is properly translated as "the grave". Bible translations are notoriously inaccurate and twisted by the translators' particular doctrines.

 

 

 

There was a huge change in the theology after Alexander the Great conquered the whole area.  That is how the Greek ideas such as Hades (hell) wound up in Aramaic religion.  That is the real reason we have a New Testament.  God didn't change his mind.  Alexander brought Greek culture.

[Bhim]

Thanks for taking the time to read the chapter.  As you can see, I don't pretend to know everything.  Christ's introduction of hell has scared everybody.  I, however, think that hell might be much less widespread than we think it will be.  As I noted, there is scripture which suggests that people will NOT live forever in torment, but, rather, will no longer exist.  That certainly is more humane than frying in boiling oil forever.

No problem, I'm quite happy to read the material you asked me to.  Like I said, I think we tend to shy away from this because there are a lot of trolls who frequent this forum.  But you seem quite willing to engage in a discussion, so I think that bringing things like selected passages from your book can be quite productive.

 

Now as to the issue of hell, I'm glad it bothers you.  It should bother most people.  Based on what you said above, you seem to be advocating for annihilationism.  Annihilationism is the belief that people in hell will at some point be destroyed completely.  It is essentially the opposite of the doctrine of eternal conscious torment.  While I appreciate your attempts to reconcile your personal morality with the Bible, your belief still dictates that both Gandhi and myself will go to hell and be utterly destroyed.  Surely you can understand why this is of little comfort to me, can't you?

 

I'd like to make an observation.  Your personal conscience, which I believe is given to you by God, seems to be at odds with the teachings of the Bible.  Doesn't that beg the question of whether the Bible is really inspired by God?  Your God-given conscience tells you that eternal conscious torment is morally wrong, and it seems to tell you that annihilationism is also wrong.  After all, in what you wrote above you had to excuse your most optimistic interpretation of the Bible as "more humane than frying."  That's speaks very badly of the Christian God, namely Jesus.

 

So I would ask you to consider the possibility that maybe there is a God, and it's not Jesus.  What do you think?

 

I cannot avoid Christ because he brought up hell.  If he is right and it does exist, then it doesn't make sense to ignore it simply because it terrifies me.   He has given us a way to avoid it.  It's not very complicated to avoid it.   I think it's as simple as coming to him.

 

Well like I said, your interpretation of the Bible is pretty shaky, and please keep in mind that it also runs contrary to what evangelical Christian theologians think.  If hell isn't as bad as the rest of us think it is, then why did the apostles in the New Testament preach Jesus so fervently, with the goal of saving people from a "crooked and depraved generation?"

 

Again, I point out to you that you aren't faced with a binary choice between Jesus and atheism.  How do you know that Jesus isn't a false god?

 

I believe that the complexity within the universe is so surreally complicated that no way was it randomly put together by a boiling pot of stew form a few billion years ago.  No way.

 

I apologie for being thrice repetitious, but you're preaching to the choir if you just want to convince me that a creator God exists (you've terribly misportrayed both evolution and cosmology, but let's deal with that another time).  How do you know that the God who created the universe isn't Jesus?  Maybe Jesus falsely believed he was God and made claims to that effect.  Maybe he simply didn't exist and was invented by later individuals.  Are you willing to consider the possibility that God exists, and that he's not Jesus?  Because if you are, then you have the ability to accept the existence of God without having to worry about any eternal hell.

[sandiego4me]

 

 

 

.

 

So I would ask you to consider the possibility that maybe there is a God, and it's not Jesus.  What do you think?

 

Dude, I truly appreciate the dialogue.

 

My gut instinct is that Jesus is God,but that man has screwed up with he meant.   If Jesus said that he "came not to judge the world, but that the world might be saved," then why is hell so rampant?  I've looked at other religions, and Christ is the only one that makes sense.   

 

I loved watching that A&E show that was out a few years ago, "I Survived: Beyond and Back."  A&E is hardly a Christian station.  I'm sure you saw the shows, real-life stories of people who clinically died.  I was amazed that people repeatedly talked about dying and meeting with Jesus.  There were no stories of people meeting with any other religious figures other than Jesus. The thing that brought me peace was that so many of these people spoke about the amazing peace they felt in this setting.   It's easy to dismiss these stories as hokey, but these are people who were actually dead.  Again, this was not a Christian TV station doing these stories; it was A&E.  I can't think of a better piece of evidence about the afterlife than to speak with some guy who has actually died. I'm not suggesting that a person place their entire faith in stories like these, but, you have to admit:  once a guy has been dead, he does have a little more credibility than the rest of us about being dead!  This dude's story was phenomenal:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQ1XUWVLRc

[Thackerie]

 

 

 

 

.

 

So I would ask you to consider the possibility that maybe there is a God, and it's not Jesus.  What do you think?

 

Dude, I truly appreciate the dialogue.

 

My gut instinct is that Jesus is God,but that man has screwed up with he meant.   If Jesus said that he "came not to judge the world, but that the world might be saved," then why is hell so rampant?  I've looked at other religions, and Christ is the only one that makes sense.   

 

I loved watching that A&E show that was out a few years ago, "I Survived: Beyond and Back."  A&E is hardly a Christian station.  I'm sure you saw the shows, real-life stories of people who clinically died.  I was amazed that people repeatedly talked about dying and meeting with Jesus.  There were no stories of people meeting with any other religious figures other than Jesus. The thing that brought me peace was that so many of these people spoke about the amazing peace they felt in this setting.   It's easy to dismiss these stories as hokey, but these are people who were actually dead.  Again, this was not a Christian TV station doing these stories; it was A&E.  I can't think of a better piece of evidence about the afterlife than to speak with some guy who has actually died. I'm not suggesting that a person place their entire faith in stories like these, but, you have to admit:  once a guy has been dead, he does have a little more credibility than the rest of us about being dead!  This dude's story was phenomenal:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQ1XUWVLRc

 

 

But, the thing was, the guy was NOT dead. A NDE just shows what happens to some individuals as the brain is deprived of oxygen and begins to shut down. No one who actually died has ever come back to talk about it. No. One.

 

And, of course, in a nation where more than 80 percent of the population claims to be christian, the religious figure reported on in those so-called news programs would be Jesus. In the Mideast, people having an NDE might see Allah or Mohammed. In India, it might be one of the Indian gods, etc. You are absolutely 100% wrong in saying that "There were no stories of people meeting with any other religious figures other than Jesus." It's just a cultural phenomen, same as why people have the same religion as other people who grew up in their same culture.

[mymistake]

NDE's can be created in the laboratory with somebody who is in perfect health.  Out of body experiences are the same.  NDEs are caused by electrical activity within the brain.  OBEs are caused by the brain being confused.

 

People use to believe that dreams were real events in a spiritual world and that disease was caused by demons.

[Deva]

I only watched about half the video of the NDE of this guy. As Thackarie says, he wasn't dead. He had a massive heart attack, but that wouldn't immediately stop brain activity. The story he has of reviewing his past life and everything else in it, are obviously from his memory and it accords with what he was taught in Christian churches or by other Christians.  This type of story is not compelling to me.  I have had extremely vivid dreams, and certainly this was something of that type.

 

However, I have heard accounts of people clinically dead where they are on the operating table and their eyes are covered, yet when they come out of it they clearly describe instruments and things the surgeon said, and did where they could not have known, and the surgeon verifies it.  These kinds of accounts are more interesting to me.

 

Anyway, none of these accounts is definitive proof of an afterlife, since all these people were revived. Their brains were never completely flat lined, as far as I know.

[Deva]

sandiego: All of this stuff about Isaiah writing about Jesus was debunked years ago. The New Testament writers (whoever they were) HAD these scriptures at hand, and so could make them mean whatever they wanted to. Their goal was to legitimize the new sect of Christianity to make it compatible with Judaism, so to gain more converts and to manufacture a "historical" basis for their outlandish ideas.

 

None of this Bible quoting is the slightest bit of evidence to people like us ex-christians, who have seen these verses about a million times.  

[amateur]

One thing I read in a book about NDEs was that people with a xian background often went through a tunnel and towards a bright light.  Native Americans reported that they typically went down a river in a canoe.  There were other examples, too, of what different peoples (faiths, countries) saw during an NDE, and they were relevant to their religion or culture.

 

My sister used to work with adolescents in a psych hospital.  One day she went to get one of her students who hadn't left their room.  She saw the student laying on their bed, looking up at the ceiling with a terrified face.  She asked the student, "Why aren't you in class?" and they answered, "I'm dying!  I'm dying!  I see a bright light!"  She said to them gently, "That's a light bulb.  Please get up and come to class."  The student relaxed and did.

[amateur]

One huge reason I gave up on religion at all is this confusing, contradictory bible.  Everybody that reads it can and does interpret it differently.  If god is real and so great, god could have given us a clear and concise book easily understood the same by all of us, to explain who god is and what god would expect of us while we are here, and what we should expect when we die.

 

Since god chose not to do that, OR since people made up god and wrote a poorly-written, poorly-edited confusing jumble of stories, myths, poetry, parables, geneologies, etc, then I have chosen to not take religion seriously and just live my life as best I can and enjoy this wonderful world.

 

I do like this website, tho!  I find it very informative and entertaining!  It's nice knowing I'm not the only one who has seriously tried to read the bible and ended up confused.  It's also nice not just getting those typical xian answers of "everything is in god's time" or "god's ways are mysterious," which have never answered any real question I have had.

[Bhim]

Dude, I truly appreciate the dialogue.

 

My gut instinct is that Jesus is God,but that man has screwed up with he meant.   If Jesus said that he "came not to judge the world, but that the world might be saved," then why is hell so rampant?  I've looked at other religions, and Christ is the only one that makes sense.   

 

I loved watching that A&E show that was out a few years ago, "I Survived: Beyond and Back."  A&E is hardly a Christian station.  I'm sure you saw the shows, real-life stories of people who clinically died.  I was amazed that people repeatedly talked about dying and meeting with Jesus.  There were no stories of people meeting with any other religious figures other than Jesus. The thing that brought me peace was that so many of these people spoke about the amazing peace they felt in this setting.   It's easy to dismiss these stories as hokey, but these are people who were actually dead.  Again, this was not a Christian TV station doing these stories; it was A&E.  I can't think of a better piece of evidence about the afterlife than to speak with some guy who has actually died. I'm not suggesting that a person place their entire faith in stories like these, but, you have to admit:  once a guy has been dead, he does have a little more credibility than the rest of us about being dead!  This dude's story was phenomenal:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQ1XUWVLRc

 

 

If this is the only information you have to go on, and you believe that the only religious figure ever seen in near death experiences is Jesus, then it might be reasonable to believe in him.  Therefore I'd like to introduce you to additional information.  Studies have been done on those who experience NDEs in which peoples' experiences are conveyed in an interview, and accounts are compared.  In Western cases, Jesus figures prominently.  However, studies on Indian NDEs have also been conducted, and the experiences are dissimilar in several ways.  When you have time you may want to see the results, detailed on this page:

 

http://www.near-death.com/hindu.html

 

In particular you may want to briefly read the case of Chhajju Bania.  Apparently he went to a place where several clerks were doing some kind of work, and he didn't have any desire to come back to life.  In particular see these words:

 

I asked the clerks to give me some work to do, but not to send me back. Yamraj was there sitting on a high chair with a white beard and wearing yellow clothes. He asked me, "What do you want?"

 

I told him that I wanted to stay there.

 

He asked me to extend my hand. I don't remember whether he gave me something or not.

 

Now Yamraj, also known as Lord Yama, is the Hindu God of Death.  And unlike the portrayal I'm sure you'll get from Christian missionaries, he is considered to be a benevolent figure.  So here's a case I was able to easily produce of someone meeting a religious figure who wasn't Jesus.  NDEs differ from culture to culture, and are very clearly informed by the dominant religion of each culture.  I don't think this invalidates them.  But it also means that Jesus isn't special.  I know of numerous cases of people having supernatural experiences in a Hindu context.

 

My dad himself has had several visions of various Hindu Gods including Shirdi Sai Baba.  Sai Baba is a person I bring up often when talking to Christians, but I never get a meaningful response.  You seem quite a bit more thoughtful, so let me raise the issue with you.  Shirdi Sai Baba is a person who lived in India and performed various miraculous works very similar to those described by Jesus.  He knew the thoughts of others, healed serious illnesses, etc.  But he lived only a hundred years ago, and unlike Jesus we know he exists because there's a photograph of him.  You may want to Google him and get some information yourself.  Evangelicals often like to disparage Hindus by asking, "my God rose from the dead; where's your God?"  I could respond that there's physical evidence of my God's existence, whereas we're still not sure that Jesus ever even lived.  You might want to skim the Wikipedia article on him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirdi_Sai_Baba), or at least briefly read the "Reported miracles" section and tell me what you think.

 

What I'm trying to really get at here is that Jesus isn't unique, and Christianity has never proven superior to other religions.  Except maybe in its capacity for political domination and military conquest.  While I think that Christianity is a harmful religion, I know I won't actually convince people to leave it.  How could I?  It's what you grew up with.  All I ask is that you recognize that I and many others grew up with something else, and when you try to convert us, you are doing the equivalent of us telling you to "deny Christ."  So if reading the Bible, praying to Jesus, etc. is what you find spiritually fulfilling, that's fine.  I think Jesus is a horrible person, but I don't seek to dictate how you practice your religion.  All I ask is that you not give money to organizations that send missionaries to India (or any other place I suppose), that you not join evangelicals in their forays on college campuses to convert the Hindu students, and that you not use Christian apologetic materials to disparage other religions.  It could be that you already don't do these things, so forgive me if I'm wrongly blaming you for this.  But evangelism is the worst symptom I see of the teachings of Jesus.

 

If you require justification for this that doesn't involve denying that Jesus is God, then here's some food for thought.  You claim that Jesus' words have been twisted by men.  How do you know that perhaps people didn't twist Jesus' words to imply that Christians need to convert others?

[amateur]

Bhim, beautiful post!  You make an excellent, clear, concise point showing how people of other backgrounds and religions view xianity and its evangelizing.

 

Thank you.

[pawn]

"...I was amazed that people repeatedly talked about dying and meeting with Jesus. There were no stories of people meeting with any other religious figures other than Jesus....."

 

Get real dude. They interviewed people from a Christian culture, duh! As Bhim easily refuted your idea, if they had interviewed people from India or China or Pakistan, they would have had a whole entire set of NDEs based on the dominant culture.

THINK about it, it's really not amazing at all, it was simply a biased NDE pool of people tgey interviewed. If they had interviewed Tibetan Buddhists, I guarantee they would not be describing Jesus, because these guys tend to have VERY different NDEs than those of typical Westerners "meeting Jesus".

[Bhim]

Bhim, beautiful post!  You make an excellent, clear, concise point showing how people of other backgrounds and religions view xianity and its evangelizing.

 

Thank you.

 

Thank you very much Amateur.

 

I must also observe that Sandiego is the only Christian I've met on this board so far who is equally willing to hear another point of view, and it's good to know that my words aren't falling on deaf ears.  I don't know if he'll ultimately agree with me, but at least he's listening.

[amateur]

Bhim, you have no idea how much I wish I could show your post to a lot of people and have them understand it.  When you're living in Middle America, surrounded by a lot of people who have been xians since birth, and most of them aren't fundy xians, just people who go to church out of habit and believe what they were taught in grade-school sunday school, and never ever question, you hear them say such stupidly outrageous and nonsensical things like "don't question, just trust in god," and "god has a plan for your life," you just want to scream.  So many of them are offended that "god has been taken out of the schools."  If you try to point out that not all kids in public school believe in the same god or any god at all, they simply can't comprehend that.  The thought that in another country that the majority of people have a completely different religion than them that is completely valid is not even close to their radar.  

 

So they go to church, they give their tithes, they support their missionaries, and never ever think about it or why they do it.  They simply do it because they were raised in a church and their parents did the same thing.

 

If someone truly believes in their religion, has studied it, supports it, and wants to support it or evangelize out of a solid belief, then ok.  But following a religion out of habit, donating money out of habit, repeating meaningless mantras out of habit is stupid.  Wake up, people.  Think about what you believe in, think about what you are contributing to, think about what you are saying.  Churches have built a multi-billion dollar industry out of taking advantage of this non-thinking habit.

 

Your second to last paragraph is absolutely brilliant -- and chilling.  The millions of non-thinking, non-fundy (fundies are another species altogether), habit-living  xians in Middle America will NEVER see xianity and evangelism that way, and I wish they could understand it and see if from your point of view.