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.... Jesus' version is Matthew 24-25
..... Jesus' version is Revelation 21-22
so what you reject is not mine but Jesus'.
In other words, it is you who is going around telling God who is and who is not going to hell.
The part of conservative fundamentalism that claims God loves all and wants to forge a personal relationship is quite appealing. I still maintain that even though I have escaped fundamentalist religion.
But like Anne Rice, the vampire novelist who rediscovered her Christian faith, I can use her words:
"I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being a part of Christianity."
My journey, like hers, helped me to find a place to quench my spiritual yearnings, love God, and love others free from the poison of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is packed with myths, half truths, and a dogmatic approach to life. It is focused on worshiping the Bible, idolizing church, canonizing doctrine, controlling behavior, imposing religious disciplines, resisting reason, judging outsiders, and first and foremost spiritual manipulation.
If one cannot be free in Christ Jesus, what's a heaven for.
I belong now with those, like Dew, and Nate, and Zman, rejecting the psychological and theological obstacles of that religion. We live in a form of spiritual inspiration. Sometimes not as certain as you think you are, but then, we aren't trapped in all the entanglements of religious dogmatism.
Jesus and His words are not rejected--but your religion certainly is. Your religion is obsessed with individual piety and doctrine over and above concern for social justice. That was the beginning of my enlightenment--as God expects more of us. The attributes of your religion turn loving and caring for each other into spiritual manipulation and abuse.
Like Bono, when I was young, "I wanted to meet God, but you sold me religion."
The part of conservative fundamentalism that claims God loves all and wants to forge a personal relationship is quite appealing. I still maintain that even though I have escaped fundamentalist religion.
But like Anne Rice, the vampire novelist who rediscovered her Christian faith, I can use her words:
"I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being a part of Christianity."
My journey, like hers, helped me to find a place to quench my spiritual yearnings, love God, and love others free from the poison of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is packed with myths, half truths, and a dogmatic approach to life. It is focused on worshiping the Bible, idolizing church, canonizing doctrine, controlling behavior, imposing religious disciplines, resisting reason, judging outsiders, and first and foremost spiritual manipulation.
If one cannot be free in Christ Jesus, what's a heaven for.
I belong now with those, like Dew, and Nate, and Zman, rejecting the psychological and theological obstacles of that religion. We live in a form of spiritual inspiration. Sometimes not as certain as you think you are, but then, we aren't trapped in all the entanglements of religious dogmatism.
Jesus and His words are not rejected--but your religion certainly is. Your religion is obsessed with individual piety and doctrine over and above concern for social justice. That was the beginning of my enlightenment--as God expects more of us. The attributes of your religion turn loving and caring for each other into spiritual manipulation and abuse.
Like Bono, when I was young, "I wanted to meet God, but you sold me religion."
that's nice, while full of scapegoat excuses for rejecting all of what Jesus said ... so it's still irrelevant
that's nice, while full of scapegoat excuses for rejecting all of what Jesus said ... so it's still irrelevant
What's irrelevant about this?
Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross.
Let your light shine so shine before men that they may see your good WORKS, and glorify your father which is in heaven.
For even the son of man came not to be ministered to, but to minister---
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and with all thy mind--and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Whoever is the greatest should be the servant of the others.
And this particular one you need to drill down into your heart:
You Pharisees and teachers of the Law of Moses are in for trouble! You’re nothing but show-offs. You lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. ----You travel over land and sea to win one follower. And when you have done so, you make that person twice as fit for hell as you are.
That's your entire focus on these threads--to tell people they aren't a part of heaven and can't be unless they become a Twin like you. And you use the Bible, a testimony of many people about their faith in God and what they saw Him do in their lives--to lock them out. It's idolatry.
Idolatry is any religious practice that gives mankind a measure of religious and emotional satisfaction, and that alleviates their conscience and requires nothing from them. Religion is the propensity of men to take the holiest things of God in all of their well-meaning intention, and so to transfigure them as to rob them of their cogency and power.
The whole religious system is the mere contentment with the verbalization of things and the ability to repeat it, or to give it back, without the actualizing of that knowledge. In other words, there is little or no emphasis on becoming sufficiently existential. Fundamentalist Christian theology has not demanded an authentic appropriation. You recite doctrine, but that will leave people with a credal faith rather than an existential one. The tragedy is that too many have been satisfied with assuming that the credal faith is true, when that, in fact, makes it a lie.
In having a credal faith, you fail to see people with the same love and commitment to them that Jesus had. It's why you have no testimony at all. Until you get your own heart out of the gutter of the worst parts of Scripture, you will never be satisfied.
A dissatisfied heart is never content with itself, God, or other people.
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