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As Fate (or the Holy Spirit) would have it, I’ve been reading a very recently published book, Jesus and the Near-Death Experience:Testimonies of the Ascended Christ by Roy L. Hill (https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Near-De...7400449&sr=1-1), at the same time I’ve been debating here with those who would completely reinvent Christianity to suit modern tastes. (I will call this Christianity Lite for purposes of this post.) I just finished the book tonight.
Mr. Hill is a psychologist and also the author of Psychology and the Near-Death Experience: Searching for God (https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Ne...7400763&sr=1-2), which I've also read. I’ve exchanged a few emails with him and have no doubt he is sincere, intelligent and well-meaning.
However, Jesus and the Near-Death Experience could serve as a veritable textbook for those who wish to understand what the Christianity Lite folks are up to. The principal sources for Mr. Hill’s version of Christianity Lite are (1) the non-canonical gospels of Phillip and Thomas; (2) the 14th century near-death (or visionary) account of Julian of Norwich as described in her Revelations of Divine Love; (3) his own dreams and visions; and (4) thousands of encounters with Jesus as self-reported on the website of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, NDERF Home Page.
Conspicuously missing, you will note, are the Bible and other mainstream Christian writings and creeds. Mr. Hill candidly admits that his Christianity Lite is likely to disturb many traditional Christians because it is so very, very different.
I’ve debated with the NDE community for decades now. One of my key bones of contention is with precisely what Mr. Hill does. The NDE community goes directly to the substance of the NDE accounts, as though they were no different from reports by tourists returning from Brazil, when we do not yet even know what NDEs are. The “ascended Jesus,” as Mr. Hill refers to him, is taken at face value and is allowed to contravene and all but obliterate the historical Jesus.
The theology is predictable. God is not holy, just and loving. No, He is only loving, and to an almost saccharine degree. He pretty much loves everything His rambunctious children on earth do, being almost infinitely tolerant and easily amused. The Fall, sin, the Atonement, salvation, judgment? Those doctrines either fall by the wayside or are reformulated in such a way as to be unrecognizable (curiously, Mr. Hill does retain the doctrine of Hell, although it is little more than a self-imposed exile and every inmate has a key to the door). Jesus is "sort of" special, but not really. All religions are paths to God, and ... well, you get the picture.
Christianity Lite is flatly unrecognizable as anything Christianity has ever been understood to be, across the entire spectrum of Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism. It is Christianity in name only, as though Scientology were to suddenly declare itself a Christian denomination without changing any of its teachings. To adopt it requires jettisoning all of the Old Testament, most of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and 2,000 years of Christian scholarship, teaching, belief and worship.
Christianity Lite is very appealing, of course. It's exactly what we humans would love to hear, whereas traditional Christianity is a tough-love message that most humans would prefer not to hear. Mr. Hill would assert that his Christianity Lite hasn’t been invented out of whole cloth because it has as its evidential basis thousands of self-reported encounters with the ascended Jesus. But when we don’t even know what NDEs are, is this really an evidential basis at all? Are we warranted in jettisoning core Christian doctrines and 2,000 years of Christian understanding on this basis?
I will give Mr. Hill credit for at least trying to build an evidential framework on which to hang his Christianity Lite. The promoters of Christianity Lite on these forums do pretty much invent their theology out of whole cloth. They have figured out what Jesus was really all about, whereas 2,000 years of Christian philosophers, theologians, pastors, teachers and believers were simply wrong.
If Christianity Lite is true, then Christianity as we have always known it is false. There is no middle ground. Christianity Lite requires a different understanding of the very nature of God, the very nature of humanity, God’s plan for humanity, and the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not clear to me in what sense it can rightly be called Christianity at all.
Christianity Lite permeates the Religion and Spirituality forum and the Christianity sub-forum. I spend a large portion of every week studying Christian theology and have done so for years, but I confess that I really had no idea this New Age pabulum was being promoted as Christianity. I was aware that some Christians promote grace and social justice almost to the exclusion of everything else, but I really had no idea that something as fundamentally at odds with traditional Christianity as Christianity Lite was being promoted as Christian.
What could possibly be the agenda, except to undermine traditional Christianity from within? I believe this is precisely the agenda. Christianity Lite really isn’t about “following Jesus” or “spreading the love of God,” it’s about rendering Christianity so hollow and toothless that it becomes virtually indistinguishable from Buddhism, a plethora of New Age cults and even secular philosophies.
Unlike traditional Christianity, Christianity Lite is exactly what humanity wants to hear. It’s an easy sell. It isn’t threatening to anyone. Even atheists can welcome it. It’s almost too good to be true. Indeed, it is too good to be true.
The Bible warns of false Christs and false teachers who would deceive the very elect if that were possible. They aren’t going to come in comical Church of Satan garb. They are going to come with smiling faces, professing to be fellow Christians who embody the very love for one’s neighbors that Jesus was talking about. They are going to promote a counterfeit Christianity, one that is superficially appealing but guts Christianity of its real message and saving power. With Christianity Lite, the good news of the pseudo-gospel is that there is no bad news. With traditional Christianity, the good news of the gospel is that God has made it possible for fallen humans to escape the bad news.
These forums often remind me of a house infested with cockroaches. You switch on the kitchen light and the cockroaches scurry everywhere in mass hysteria. Here, you post anything resembling traditional Christian doctrine, even on the Christianity sub-forum, and the promoters of Christianity Lite attempt to shout you down, attacking you as a “fundie” regardless of whether the label fits and ridiculing a cartoon version of Christianity that no one really believes wthout posting anything of substance themselves. It's very clear that to the promoters of Christianity Lite, traditional Christians are the ENEMY in the truest sense of the word.
It’s too bad that this state of affairs exists, but I believe Christianity Lite poses a greater threat to Christianity than Islam ever could. I believe it is exactly what 2 Timothy 4:3-4 is talking about: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
As Fate (or the Holy Spirit) would have it, I’ve been reading a very recently published book, Jesus and the Near-Death Experience:Testimonies of the Ascended Christ by Roy L. Hill (https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Near-De...7400449&sr=1-1), at the same time I’ve been debating here with those who would completely reinvent Christianity to suit modern tastes. (I will call this Christianity Lite for purposes of this post.) I just finished the book tonight.
Mr. Hill is a psychologist and also the author of Psychology and the Near-Death Experience: Searching for God (https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Ne...7400763&sr=1-2), which I've also read. I’ve exchanged a few emails with him and have no doubt he is sincere, intelligent and well-meaning.
However, Jesus and the Near-Death Experience could serve as a veritable textbook for those who wish to understand what the Christianity Lite folks are up to. The principal sources for Mr. Hill’s version of Christianity Lite are (1) the non-canonical gospels of Phillip and Thomas; (2) the 14th century near-death (or visionary) account of Julian of Norwich as described in her Revelations of Divine Love; (3) his own dreams and visions; and (4) thousands of encounters with Jesus as self-reported on the website of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, NDERF Home Page.
Conspicuously missing, you will note, are the Bible and other mainstream Christian writings and creeds. Mr. Hill candidly admits that his Christianity Lite is likely to disturb many traditional Christians because it is so very, very different.
I’ve debated with the NDE community for decades now. One of my key bones of contention is with precisely what Mr. Hill does. The NDE community goes directly to the substance of the NDE accounts, as though they were no different from reports by tourists returning from Brazil, when we do not yet even know what NDEs are. The “ascended Jesus,” as Mr. Hill refers to him, is taken at face value and is allowed to contravene and all but obliterate the historical Jesus.
The theology is predictable. God is not holy, just and loving. No, He is only loving, and to an almost saccharine degree. He pretty much loves everything His rambunctious children on earth do, being almost infinitely tolerant and easily amused. The Fall, sin, the Atonement, salvation, judgment? Those doctrines either fall by the wayside or are reformulated in such a way as to be unrecognizable (curiously, Mr. Hill does retain the doctrine of Hell, although it is little more than a self-imposed exile and every inmate has a key to the door). Jesus is "sort of" special, but not really. All religions are paths to God, and ... well, you get the picture.
Christianity Lite is flatly unrecognizable as anything Christianity has ever been understood to be, across the entire spectrum of Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism. It is Christianity in name only, as though Scientology were to suddenly declare itself a Christian denomination without changing any of its teachings. To adopt it requires jettisoning all of the Old Testament, most of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and 2,000 years of Christian scholarship, teaching, belief and worship.
Christianity Lite is very appealing, of course. It's exactly what we humans would love to hear, whereas traditional Christianity is a tough-love message that most humans would prefer not to hear. Mr. Hill would assert that his Christianity Lite hasn’t been invented out of whole cloth because it has as its evidential basis thousands of self-reported encounters with the ascended Jesus. But when we don’t even know what NDEs are, is this really an evidential basis at all? Are we warranted in jettisoning core Christian doctrines and 2,000 years of Christian understanding on this basis?
I will give Mr. Hill credit for at least trying to build an evidential framework on which to hang his Christianity Lite. The promoters of Christianity Lite on these forums do pretty much invent their theology out of whole cloth. They have figured out what Jesus was really all about, whereas 2,000 years of Christian philosophers, theologians, pastors, teachers and believers were simply wrong.
If Christianity Lite is true, then Christianity as we have always known it is false. There is no middle ground. Christianity Lite requires a different understanding of the very nature of God, the very nature of humanity, God’s plan for humanity, and the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not clear to me in what sense it can rightly be called Christianity at all.
Christianity Lite permeates the Religion and Spirituality forum and the Christianity sub-forum. I spend a large portion of every week studying Christian theology and have done so for years, but I confess that I really had no idea this New Age pabulum was being promoted as Christianity. I was aware that some Christians promote grace and social justice almost to the exclusion of everything else, but I really had no idea that something as fundamentally at odds with traditional Christianity as Christianity Lite was being promoted as Christian.
What could possibly be the agenda, except to undermine traditional Christianity from within? I believe this is precisely the agenda. Christianity Lite really isn’t about “following Jesus” or “spreading the love of God,” it’s about rendering Christianity so hollow and toothless that it becomes virtually indistinguishable from Buddhism, a plethora of New Age cults and even secular philosophies.
Unlike traditional Christianity, Christianity Lite is exactly what humanity wants to hear. It’s an easy sell. It isn’t threatening to anyone. Even atheists can welcome it. It’s almost too good to be true. Indeed, it is too good to be true.
The Bible warns of false Christs and false teachers who would deceive the very elect if that were possible. They aren’t going to come in comical Church of Satan garb. They are going to come with smiling faces, professing to be fellow Christians who embody the very love for one’s neighbors that Jesus was talking about. They are going to promote a counterfeit Christianity, one that is superficially appealing but guts Christianity of its real message and saving power. With Christianity Lite, the good news of the pseudo-gospel is that there is no bad news. With traditional Christianity, the good news of the gospel is that God has made it possible for fallen humans to escape the bad news.
These forums often remind me of a house infested with cockroaches. You switch on the kitchen light and the cockroaches scurry everywhere in mass hysteria. Here, you post anything resembling traditional Christian doctrine, even on the Christianity sub-forum, and the promoters of Christianity Lite attempt to shout you down, attacking you as a “fundie” regardless of whether the label fits and ridiculing a cartoon version of Christianity that no one really believes wthout posting anything of substance themselves. It's very clear that to the promoters of Christianity Lite, traditional Christians are the ENEMY in the truest sense of the word.
It’s too bad that this state of affairs exists, but I believe Christianity Lite poses a greater threat to Christianity than Islam ever could. I believe it is exactly what 2 Timothy 4:3-4 is talking about: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
Yes, the division between "liberal" Christianity and "conservative" Christianity is huge. It makes the Great Schism of 1054 A.D. look like a disagreement over what to have for breakfast, by comparison.
For all practical purposes, liberal Christianity and conservative Christianity are two completely different religions. They're as different from each other as Buddhism is different from Zoroastrianism.
While I'm not suggesting this should be moved (this is for anything religion-related), this is is for intra- CXhristian discussion, not for the ungodly. I'm Out.
Jesus said ``Not every one that says to me `Lord Lord `, will enter into the Kingdom of heaven , but he that does the will of my Father which is in Heaven .......``And I then will I says to them , I never knew you , depart from me , you that work iniquity`` ..................See Jesus said that people can have the spirit of God and appear to be saved , but Jesus will still judge them in the end ....Matthew 7:21-23
Jesus said ``Not every one that says to me `Lord Lord `, will enter into the Kingdom of heaven , but he that does the will of my Father which is in Heaven .......``And I then will I says to them , I never knew you , depart from me , you that work iniquity`` ..................See Jesus said that people can have the spirit of God and appear to be saved , but Jesus will still judge them in the end ....Matthew 7:21-23
What, exactly, does that mean? Is it an argument in support of 'conservative' Christianity? Are you trying to make a point about something?
As Fate (or the Holy Spirit) would have it, I’ve been reading a very recently published book, Jesus and the Near-Death Experience:Testimonies of the Ascended Christ by Roy L. Hill (https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Near-De...7400449&sr=1-1), at the same time I’ve been debating here with those who would completely reinvent Christianity to suit modern tastes. (I will call this Christianity Lite for purposes of this post.) I just finished the book tonight.
Mr. Hill is a psychologist and also the author of Psychology and the Near-Death Experience: Searching for God (https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Ne...7400763&sr=1-2), which I've also read. I’ve exchanged a few emails with him and have no doubt he is sincere, intelligent and well-meaning.
However, Jesus and the Near-Death Experience could serve as a veritable textbook for those who wish to understand what the Christianity Lite folks are up to. The principal sources for Mr. Hill’s version of Christianity Lite are (1) the non-canonical gospels of Phillip and Thomas; (2) the 14th century near-death (or visionary) account of Julian of Norwich as described in her Revelations of Divine Love; (3) his own dreams and visions; and (4) thousands of encounters with Jesus as self-reported on the website of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, NDERF Home Page.
Conspicuously missing, you will note, are the Bible and other mainstream Christian writings and creeds. Mr. Hill candidly admits that his Christianity Lite is likely to disturb many traditional Christians because it is so very, very different.
I’ve debated with the NDE community for decades now. One of my key bones of contention is with precisely what Mr. Hill does. The NDE community goes directly to the substance of the NDE accounts, as though they were no different from reports by tourists returning from Brazil, when we do not yet even know what NDEs are. The “ascended Jesus,” as Mr. Hill refers to him, is taken at face value and is allowed to contravene and all but obliterate the historical Jesus.
The theology is predictable. God is not holy, just and loving. No, He is only loving, and to an almost saccharine degree. He pretty much loves everything His rambunctious children on earth do, being almost infinitely tolerant and easily amused. The Fall, sin, the Atonement, salvation, judgment? Those doctrines either fall by the wayside or are reformulated in such a way as to be unrecognizable (curiously, Mr. Hill does retain the doctrine of Hell, although it is little more than a self-imposed exile and every inmate has a key to the door). Jesus is "sort of" special, but not really. All religions are paths to God, and ... well, you get the picture.
Christianity Lite is flatly unrecognizable as anything Christianity has ever been understood to be, across the entire spectrum of Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism. It is Christianity in name only, as though Scientology were to suddenly declare itself a Christian denomination without changing any of its teachings. To adopt it requires jettisoning all of the Old Testament, most of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and 2,000 years of Christian scholarship, teaching, belief and worship.
Christianity Lite is very appealing, of course. It's exactly what we humans would love to hear, whereas traditional Christianity is a tough-love message that most humans would prefer not to hear. Mr. Hill would assert that his Christianity Lite hasn’t been invented out of whole cloth because it has as its evidential basis thousands of self-reported encounters with the ascended Jesus. But when we don’t even know what NDEs are, is this really an evidential basis at all? Are we warranted in jettisoning core Christian doctrines and 2,000 years of Christian understanding on this basis?
I will give Mr. Hill credit for at least trying to build an evidential framework on which to hang his Christianity Lite. The promoters of Christianity Lite on these forums do pretty much invent their theology out of whole cloth. They have figured out what Jesus was really all about, whereas 2,000 years of Christian philosophers, theologians, pastors, teachers and believers were simply wrong.
If Christianity Lite is true, then Christianity as we have always known it is false. There is no middle ground. Christianity Lite requires a different understanding of the very nature of God, the very nature of humanity, God’s plan for humanity, and the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not clear to me in what sense it can rightly be called Christianity at all.
Christianity Lite permeates the Religion and Spirituality forum and the Christianity sub-forum. I spend a large portion of every week studying Christian theology and have done so for years, but I confess that I really had no idea this New Age pabulum was being promoted as Christianity. I was aware that some Christians promote grace and social justice almost to the exclusion of everything else, but I really had no idea that something as fundamentally at odds with traditional Christianity as Christianity Lite was being promoted as Christian.
What could possibly be the agenda, except to undermine traditional Christianity from within? I believe this is precisely the agenda. Christianity Lite really isn’t about “following Jesus” or “spreading the love of God,” it’s about rendering Christianity so hollow and toothless that it becomes virtually indistinguishable from Buddhism, a plethora of New Age cults and even secular philosophies.
Unlike traditional Christianity, Christianity Lite is exactly what humanity wants to hear. It’s an easy sell. It isn’t threatening to anyone. Even atheists can welcome it. It’s almost too good to be true. Indeed, it is too good to be true.
The Bible warns of false Christs and false teachers who would deceive the very elect if that were possible. They aren’t going to come in comical Church of Satan garb. They are going to come with smiling faces, professing to be fellow Christians who embody the very love for one’s neighbors that Jesus was talking about. They are going to promote a counterfeit Christianity, one that is superficially appealing but guts Christianity of its real message and saving power. With Christianity Lite, the good news of the pseudo-gospel is that there is no bad news. With traditional Christianity, the good news of the gospel is that God has made it possible for fallen humans to escape the bad news.
These forums often remind me of a house infested with cockroaches. You switch on the kitchen light and the cockroaches scurry everywhere in mass hysteria. Here, you post anything resembling traditional Christian doctrine, even on the Christianity sub-forum, and the promoters of Christianity Lite attempt to shout you down, attacking you as a “fundie” regardless of whether the label fits and ridiculing a cartoon version of Christianity that no one really believes wthout posting anything of substance themselves. It's very clear that to the promoters of Christianity Lite, traditional Christians are the ENEMY in the truest sense of the word.
It’s too bad that this state of affairs exists, but I believe Christianity Lite poses a greater threat to Christianity than Islam ever could. I believe it is exactly what 2 Timothy 4:3-4 is talking about: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
At long last! After years, nay, decades of searching high and low, and low and high...and sometimes in the middle! I have found it! The Great Wall Of Text!
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It's like Tweety -pie drooling as he nods -off through sheer boredom.
