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Your OP sure seemed to be asking for people's opinions.....
Are you going to demand scriptural proof from everyone who answers your question?
It's a question about the opinion of what the church is commanded to do, or is put in place to do -- not what people see it doing now, or simply a wish list of what they'd like it to do.
IMO,
The actual and true message of Jesus has been miscegenated over the centuries and it has been taken over by the Nicene creed.
Jesus was a human, and a God's chosen prophet who was born through the virgin birth and who used to breathe life into the dead. These were his miracles.
Jesus carried over the same continuous message of monotheism just like many, many prophets before him brought the same message of monotheism.
This message of monotheism was later changed into the idea of Trinity for polotical reasons and that made billions of people gone astray in today's world where Christians are somehow made to think that "believe in Jesus and you are blessed" is the only way of salvation.
This is the belief system of modern day Christianity and I have no problem with it. I respect it but I don't agree with it.
It WAS a thing in medieval times. The conversion of Jews was supposed to be a sign of the last days. But very few Christians these days are focused on converting get Jews; in fact, some Christian churches, like mine, outright frown upon proselytizing to Jews.
But I'm pretty sure you know that and are just trolling for your own entertainment!
Sadly, Vizio and other Christians seem to THINK the purpose of Christianity is "To believe specific things about God and Jesus along with an assortment of beliefs both barbaric and implausible while focusing on what they THINK are the sins of others as a self-congratulatory means of excluding them from their ranks."
I believe the purpose of Christianity is: "To emulate Christ in all ways and follow His instructions to His disciples to love God and each other every day and repent when we don't."
Thank you for your response.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
Well, that's definitely a big part of it. Jesus did say that we are to love even our enemies.
Absolutely not.
I believe we are to preached God's Plan of Salvation for His children as we understand it, and then step back and allow the Holy Spirit to touch the hearts of those who are looking for the truth.
Thank you for your response. I cannot argue with that, nor do I want to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mircea
Christianity teaches you how to be a good slave and just another cog in the wheel.
Romans 13:1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except by the appointment of Jesus, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by Jesus. 13:2 So the person who resists such authority resists the ordinance of Jesus, and those who resist will incur judgment.
Thank you for your response. So you believe the ONLY purpose of Jesus was to teach people to submit to government?
Quote:
Originally Posted by John F S
The REAL purpose of Christianity is to be Christ-like. We are supposed to follow His liberal words. Unfortunately MOST of the people who claim to be one of His followers actually HATE His words, make up their own, and then claim that this is Christianity.
These are the people who believe in the idiotic, ignorant notion that there is such a thing as a "Conservative Christian".
Your editorials aside, that's not far off of what I'm looking for. Thank you for your input.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
The purpose is to let us know that God is accessible to all.
Thank you for your response.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Gringo
What do you believe is the purpose of Christianity?
Crowd control.
Again--like one above, you believe the ONLY reason that Jesus died on the cross, and why the apostles were willing to give their lives for what they saw was for crowd control?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ukrkoz
Vizio, I can tell from your posts that you are an intelligent person.
Ask yourself a simple question.
Exactly how much of Lord Jesus direct words is there in the new testament? Like none, right? Everything else is hearsay. John saw this, Mathew heard that, John believes that's what happened, and so on.
So what teaching of Jesus are you actually referring to? There is Essenian Gospel of Jesus that allegedly is His words directly, but it was tossed out and is considered a forgery.
[The Essenes were a third religious sect during the time of Christ that lived away from the towns. Instead they lived in simple communities. The Essenes practiced the seventh day sabbath, believed in reincarnation, non-violence to all living creatures and the sharing of all material possesions. They were uninvolved in the politics of the Sadducees and Pharisees and shunned publicity. Josephus writing around 80 A.D. said that the Essenes were Jews by birth but seemed to have a greater affection for one another than they did for the Pharisees and Sadducees. Their piety toward God was extraordinary. They wore chitw garments. They used no profanity. They were ministers of peace and they spent a great deal of time studying the writings of the ancients The Essenes - The Essene New Testament - The Gospel of The Holy Twelve (12) - The Gospel Of Perfect Life That said, give me DIRECT teaching of Jesus and I'll discuss it with you. Though in its essence, it is not much different from principles of Buddhism of precepts of Krishna.
Also, even based on New Testament, Jesus never asked anyone to go to a church. When asked how to pray, what did He say? What prayer did He give? That was it.
So you don't believe that there was supposed to be a church at all? That Jesus never said anything about building a church? That he never commanded his disciples to go forth and make disciples?
Quote:
Originally Posted by hd4me
Purpose of true Christianity is to bring together people of all sorts who are willing to worship God in spirit and truth and disown themselves by putting into practice the teachings of Gods son Jesus. Simply put you can hold to Christian values without being a hater
Good answer. Thank you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Albert_The_Crocodile
So I don't know how to answer your question. If I am to answer the question that is asked in the thread title - that is, give an answer that reflects the purpose of what christianity in this day and age actually is - then I would have to say that it exists to control society by rewarding people for following church dogma and punishing them for following the actual teachings of Christ. I'm sorry; I know you specifically said that you did not want the answer to be about what the church is actually doing, but in reality, what else is the purpose other than what it is doing?
If I am to answer the question that is asked in the OP (which is very different from the question asked in the title) then I don't know if it's even possible to answer the question at all. He never attempted to found a church, so it would not have been possible for him to command the members of his church to do anything. If I were to answer the question in the context of what Jesus would want us to do (and in fact sacrificed his life to teach us), I would have to say that the purpose of Christ's teachings was to reject the religion that stole his name, because christianity is exactly what he spent and sacrificed his entire life teaching against.
The ironic truth is that if Christ were alive today, he would most certainly not be a christian. Christianity represents everything he fought against and taught against. In the eyes of Jesus, the most important commandment (and in the end, perhaps the only one that really mattered) was to love god, and in the act of so loving, love one another - because we are all brothers and sisters in the heart of god, and if you truly love god, then you must necessarily truly love all of humankind. If Christ came back today and tried to preach that same message once again, this time it would be the christians who crucified him.
Good grief. Is it THAT hard to stay on topic? I just asked a question and you wander off into some weeds about Saul of Tarsus. I just asked what the purpose of Christianity is -- not whether you think Saul usurped it, or if Jesus would submit to the church today. If you can't stick with the question, why did you bother to respond at all?
Of course he was. There is no indication that he wasn't. To the contrary, Luke, a physician, wrote that she was a virgin. I'm pretty sure he knew what qualified a woman to be a virgin.
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