Caracarn, I would like to know your thoughts on this lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVoV3z9ZzXc
OK, so listened through this on my lunch hour and made some notes.
First, points in the lecture I found interesting enough to note.
1:30 - This was the first point that I hit what I expressed as my worry about his study being Catholic. Here he states that many believe the Bible descended from heaven in 1611 in the KJV. I don't. Any Christian worth 2 cents doesn't. Only people who are drowning in the Catholic or other kool-aid do. At any rate, this early in the lecture it appears to set the tone of his stances and he does not fail to disappoint, but I did listen to the rest of the lecture trying to avoid the Catholic distortion (which I found hilarious later when he explained how the speakers in the auditorium could distort what he was saying, while only partially acknowledging his own distortion. He admitted that the world view he has is being raised in Christian society, but fails to realize or not the Catholicism skewed him even further through the funny house mirror).
4:15 - I find the comment that appears at around this point in his walk down "If I was God, this is what I'd want" where he says God would become bored and want a surprise so he made miracles, almost make me laugh out of my chair. This is man trying to rationalize God's behavior through the lens that we get bored and must be entertained. I'm pretty sure God thinks everything is just perfect. He's not sitting around on the couch with his holey socks saying, "Again, 150,000 channels on cable and nothing on I want to watch. I'm bored, (queue Grateful Dead riff) 'I need a miracle.'" This was just a dumb minute of the conversation trying to align why Eastern religions have no issue with miracles and why he's OK with them to, because hey, he can see God would be bored. Stupid. Man is created in God's image, not God created in man's. I think Alan missed that in seminary.
7:50 - Sadly the next Catholic idiocy. Catholics are responsible for giving us the Bible? Don't they wish. They wrote the whole NT? I did not realize Paul and the gospel writers were Catholics hundreds of years before there were any. Then 10 seconds later he keeps going with the Catholic claim that they decided what books are in the Bible in 324. Yes, they decided what was in the Catholic Bible which has a few things not in any Christian Bible. Flat out the Bible he refers to is not my Bible. I again just wrote this off to his training and obvious lack of examining broader Scriptural study. The books of the Bible were being pulled together with documents we have from much earlier in 100 and 200AD. We did not have to wait for the Catholics to save the Christian world and gift us the biblical texts, they were there and had a 80%+ consistent canon for hundreds of years before that.
11 - This was an excellent point, that everyone is influenced by their upbringing as far as what ideas they grasp to most easily. I'd have a hard time getting on board with cannibalism because I did not grow up eating my neighbors, so I see this as valid. I'd be a hard nut for me to crack. So nothing to argue with, here. Was eagerly anticipating where this would all go at this point.
14:30 - Humans can distort rant. Sure this is possible, but it just seems like he's going to make the same excuses every skeptic makes that things were changed.
30 - Huge swath of the lecture where he said nothing noteworthy. I was unclear as he got to this point in the lecture exactly what he was trying to get me to understand he thought. Was he telling me that Jesus was delusional and that the disciples fell under his spell like a guru? After all he made this incredible statement about the power of good gurus. So to give it a fair shake, because I think at minimum he was saying Jesus never thought he was God just talked a good game in front of the apostles who would not turn him in for blasphemy because he was what, a con man? This argument is one I never buy because I get people can be suckered in in small groups and it might go on for a while, but he's implying that people suffered, were tortured and died, the world over because somehow Jesus was the greatest guru ever? I get his belief, it just if a much higher bar for me to cross than he is who he says he was and that's why people got and STAYED on board.
33 - The argument that we can't follow Christ because we are not immortal and therefore we cannot be as bold as he was was a new one to be sure. Not one I've heard before, but if your question is do I find it in anyway compelling to change my view? No, because this is where is Catholic teaching is not mentioned but skews his view and what he thinks a Christian belives is the goal. It is not my goal to live like Christ in the ways he talks about. He's talking about works based Christianity because that is what Catholicism is. It's all about being good (he makes that point later, again as a blanket for all Christians, which is wrong). I do not have any thought that I cannot strive to be like Christ and I'm not afraid because I know I'm not immortal and cannot be killed. It was a bizarre explanation he gave here.
35:30 - This I starred as the most important point after hearing the whole lecture. The person he speaks about in this example is absolutely not a Christian who is showing saving faith, but I will give him that this is the typical Catholic. This was one of the reasons I left and then did not attend any church for years afterwards, the old "confession on Sunday, raise hell all week" that went with Catholics. It was the most hypocritical process I ever saw, and one that sickened me even as a child. A true Christian does not confess their sins (and certainly does not do that to a human intermediary because I go directly to God) as Alan says, "knowing they will just do them again". Look back at the Macarthur commentary points I posted on Romans 3 and what Paul tells us are the signs that are clear indicators of saving faith with regards to sinning. This entire example runs 180 degree opposite of what someone who is saved would do. The example he gives is not one of a Christian at all.
36:30 - He continues explaining how this is the message of Billy Graham. Well Billy's message is twisted so I'd agree it may be, but it did little to get to the point he seemed to be trying to get to of why we can't follow Jesus.
41:45 - The argument that we struggle in a republic because we are wrestling with the fact that God created a celestial monarchy? Come on. And he wants me to be hypnotized and take that as why clearly we are all god?
44 - God revealed himself through Buddha and others? I guess this was an attempt at the coexist bandwagon to indicate that less radicalism would help make religion more tolerable. It would do that, but it is still a man made wish list item. If only we could just ignore the passages in the Bible where God says he is a jealous God then it would all work.
46 - CATHOLIC CATHOLIC CATHOLIC - Man, I so wanted this guy to me more impartial. No my church's message is not 52 weeks of dear people be good. My Catholic church's message was that. And here is where he goes down the rat hole that makes this whole lecture worthless to me. I am not walking through life with guilt. That is not my worldview from Christianity. That is a specific group that he was trained in. My parents walk around feeling they suck. I get that. His whole litany of what a church service is was so not what I have ever attended in twenty years that it just derailed any hope he had to get me to think through what his whole point was that he has already made about John 10.
47:45 - Worshiping the Bible is idolatry. Yes it is. Any Christian knows that. We worship Jesus, not the Bible. I get the point he was trying to press here, but again, no.
49:30 - Finally a good point. Yes, you should go to church to be still. But taking me through a 50 minute lecture to get there and claim it should be clear because of a missing Greek word and him wanting to explain the Jesus never said he was God so I should understand that I am as much god as he and we are all god?
So overall, without study, this can be a compelling lecture to someone who is totally in the middle. It hits all the feel good points of we each matter and we can all be our own center of the universe. This just gets me back to the comment I made in my response up to MrDelane about that a lot of odds, chances and what a reasonable inference would be. Ancient Greek is a tough language, as is any ancient one. This entire lecture really hinges on the missing "the" in "the Son of God" in the Greek. Alan certainly jumps on the religious systems jump on the bandwagon to control the masses (and I'm guessing this is why you wanted me to comment on this video zoltani, for this point alone). And in this case he is not wrong, but that does not mean I can endorse what is a false message to get my point that religious systems may hide information from people to get them to do what they want. The problem with this lecture is what is naturally leads to that would cross thresholds that cannot be solved by showing us how a word is not present in the Greek. Namely, that if what Alan wants to peddle here were true, that Jesus is not God, and maybe even knew he was God, and clearly did not state he was God, that he was just a mystic that had an experience and it changed him to do good things and teach awesome messages but that we are all like him. But the things that are not explained here are then for this to be accurate he's need to give me a plausible alternative to the resurrection and ascension accounts. No mystic I know of, not matter how great a guru they were, rose from the dead and then appeared later and ascended into heaven on the clouds. Those understandings by Christians are not because "the" was missing from the Greek then Scripture said "He rose from the dead". Even if it was "He rose from dead" is still a pretty powerful statement. Maybe Alan would explain that it meant they lifted his dead body from the pile of other dead bodies but he was still dead, we just misread the Greek to think it meant he was alive again, when instead he was just a couple feet higher in the air being carried by a couple Roman centurions before they dumped his body into a common grave. He'd have to also explain away all other non-biblical accounts of Jesus's crucifixion and the aftermath. And then explain he conspiracy of where his body went if he did not in fact rise. All things which many others have tried and failed to discuss. So as always I appreciate hearing another lecture on faith and why Alan believes we have it a little wrong, but this is not the way to get more people to God. It just might remove some contention and discord. I am surprised because I really thought the point of the lecture would be a hardcore skeptic pushing against the entire belief system, but instead he seems to me just trying to get Christians to think like Eastern religions about how we can all just zen out and be great people.
ETA: I forgot another good point her makes, about a lot of churches just being talking centers. This is true. They need to be teaching centers.