I'd like a Hindu or Buddhist to prove to me that they achieve inner divinity. It'd be the same unproveaable discussion we've been having here about Christian precepts.
Agreed, their position would be just as unprovable and unjustified as your own.
Lots of people create stuff they then weave into the Bible, but it is not in the Bible at all.
Yes, sadly, every Christian denomination.
That's my point in these responses. Just because someone tells you "I'm Christian and Halloween is bad." does not mean it's a supportable Christian view. It means that person, who may be a twice a year "Christian" who attend on Easter and Christmas and has never even touched a Bible is spouting off stuff someone made up and they cannot teach you anything about.
The thing I find interesting is that the first people to say someone else is not a real Christian are usually other Christians (the same goes for Hindus, Muslims, etc etc).
From the outside looking in we have no choice but to take someone at their word.
If someone tells me they are a Christian, I believe them. Who am I to say what this person sincerely believes?
But you bring up an important point, which is why this entire thread I've tried to stay away from debating the beliefs of entire religions and instead focusing on what you or Jim or Overflow (or any other individual) might believe. Because the truth is, regardless of how much we may want there to be a unified system of belief for each major religion, there simply is not. People are individuals, and I'm not certain I've ever met two Christians, Muslims or Jews who shared every belief in their worldview.
The key questions to me have never changed: What do you believe as an individual, and why do you feel you are justified in believing it to be true?
As always sir, a very well thought out and put set of points.
So this post will cover a few things based on the last twenty four hours that go to these points and others that are a little older in the thread.
Meditation, Halloween, dancing, many others "dangerous" a "Christian" believesSo I thought quietly on this, dare I say "meditated"?! oh the horror. Let the Jevovah's Witnesses and those other article inspiring Christians cast the first stone in their perfect righteousness.
This is why I say a "real Christian", which I mean one who is heavily, heavily immersed in Scriptual study and is NOT basing their views on any trappings of a segment of Christianity views the fact that any of these things above and countless other is "dangerous" as ridculous and absurd. Here is the logic behind that.
- God tells us that he is the one true God
- Therefore, I understand that nothing else can be a God any worship of things or thoughts otherwise makes those things my idol, which would be wrong
- I also therefore know that despite the words of other men who claim meditation will take me to a higher realm of consciouness (maybe) leading to an inner divinity (utterly false because there is one God and I am not him)
- Therefore the fear of meditation is utterly absurd because I know there is no truth to the claims. It is all magic and mealy mouthed mumbo jumbo designed to cater to natural mans weak nature
- Therefore I come on an internet forum and boldly say these people are not properly instructed Christans
As I said earlier, any of these "faith arguments" as misled or patently wrong gleanings from the Word of God (the degree depends on what the arguers intent is, meaning are they just deluding themselves or are they setting out to wrongly lead large groups of people down this flawed path). None of the activities mentioned in this thread like mediation, Halloween, yoga or dancing are dangerous or sinful. Other things not mentioned specifically here but regularly by Christian groups like drinking or secular music fall into the same bucket of analysis. A well taught Christian understands that the danger in these OR ANY activity lies in how we partake or enjoy that activity, not in the activity itself. What has then happened, perhaps with good intent, but with sinful results because of creates false teachers, is that church groups add these guardrails and say, "no drinking" as Baptists and many other do, or "no meditation, yoga, balloon animals or non-pure bred puppies" as others do. Let us use drinking as an example. Many people in the Bible drank. Jesus actually turned water to wine, with the obvious intention and foreknowledge that what He just made people were going to (don't be too shocked) DRINK! Where this becomes sinful is in the drunkenness because this leads one to other sinful actions in many cases. The danger is in enjoying the drink too much, not in the drinking.
To try to drive the point home further of how these ridiculous stances on things like meditation fall apart and use something that I think must Christians would agree is usually a good thing and that is church attendance, and explain why attending church is dangerous, using some personal struggles I (and many men I know) have. In my natural man I am attracted to women. In our church are several women I find attractive. At times, I will look at one of these women and have thoughts that are adulterous and/or covertous, both one of the Ten Biggies. I my friends am a sinner, and just as Paul, I believe myself chief among sinners, so I struggle and pray for deliverance from these sins daily. I can see progress over my lifetime in this regard, but I also understand this will likely never be fully conquered until I am with the Lord in paradise. Therefore I am eternally grateful for the undeserved grace the Lord poured on me where he washes me clean of the sinful thoughts I have of the beautiful brunette in front of me in church that week. A pastor who taught a marriage session at our church in April explained his same struggles to the men's group about this same thing and how his wife helps him avoid this sin. Whenever they are walking in public and his wife sees a woman approaching that she knows her husband will find attractive they have agreed she will tell him "eyes right" so that he knows to avert his gaze and therefore avoid the temptation of the covetous or adulterous thought. Obviously his wife is less able to do this when he is preaching at the pulpit, and if his struggles with these thoughts are like mine, it's pretty likely he does not suddenly not have them pop into his head when he spies someone in the congregation as he is speaking. So along these arguments in this thread, I think I have clearly shown that by the same standard as mediation is dangerous, church attendance is clearly a pit of danger for a man (maybe women do this too, but I have no personal experience with that). Should I now go about preaching to other Christians that church attendance is dangerous so that unchurched people see that as the message and not be challenged by "real Christians" on how stupid this is? Going to church is not dangerous. The sinful way I participate in that experience when my mind has these thoughts is the issue, but it is an issue with me, not with the act of church attendance. For this reason, our church encourages (but does not enforce or scream about as "dangerous") appropriate dress for worship. It is stated as "you should not distract from the purpose for which we are here, to worship our Lord, by drawing attention to yourself because of your dress". We men understand that an attractive woman in a mini-skirt and tank top would distract us from paying attention to God in that space and instead draw us to other idols and get what that message means, but it is not codified into a stupid code claiming it is part of our faith. This is why I say there is zero basis for belief systems that take it that far.
And this is why things like TULIP and other add-ons are exactly the same. They are false man-made misleading interpretations that add extra thoughts into Scripture that are not there. They take the word "all" and explain how to turn it into a subset of what the word "all" is. It's now not "all", it is "some", then translated to mean "all of the some". And it creates needless hostility which leads folks like Jim to state we are not spiritual brothers. By the way, I absolutely consider myself a spiritual brother with Jim, and therefore I express my view and encouragement to him to step outside the literature and writings of TULIP to study how TULIP adds on man-made confines.
Another example as I was driving was seeing the "STOP TXT" sticker on someone's car. A car is not dangerous in itself. It is in how I enjoy or use the car that causes possible danger. The car does not make me text, but if I text in the car I can hurt myself or others. This is the logic that a Christian may use, again either wrongly or rightly. A right interpretation of how we are taught to live is to not be a temptation to other. So as I mentioned earlier our senior pastor does not drink at all, does not listen to any music on the radio and refrains from any other things. But he does not wrongly take that to push to teach the congregation that these things are dangerous or wrong. He understands that 99% of Christians will never study the Bible enough to discern truth for themselves through the Holy Spirit, they will instead rely on their leaders to guide them and do the work and spoon feed them. He very clearly states that is wrong. It is every Christians responsibility to be in the Word on a daily basis and constantly growing in understanding. But because it is also his responsibility to provide godly leadership he refrains from those activities because he does not want someone to think because he does something and then they do it to excess and it leads them to sin, because they have not learned enough to go to God for strength to overcome those issues. He does not someone to get drunk because thy say the pastor having a drink and thought, "it's OK to drink" which it is, but it's not OK to drink to the point of drunkenness.
Additional thoughts on TULIP/CalvinismSo unexpectedly I found out that a consultant on a project we are working on attends a church that is Calvinist (follows TULIP) in its origins, yet is part of quite a large group in his church that disavows the TULIP adds. What I insert here is what he shared with me about why he feels that way, and some of his views. I share just to offer it up as additional viewpoints for people to consider.
Kevin has spent about fifteen years in this church. He was heatedly against the whole TULIP process as patently absurd when laid against Scripture and we spend about 30 minutes of him explaining each piece and how Calvanists contort themselves into pretzels to get there. I have not studied it nearly as much as he because I'm not in that environment (and I'd imagine have to discuss with others in my church body regularly) so it is not an area I've spent a lot of time on. He also has done a lot more study of exactly how Calvin's writing became TULIP and that is the part I wanted to provide brief notes on. Again, I can't back any of this up, you'd have to go dig for the facts to see if they line up, but this is what was shared.
It began with the fact that if you examine Calvin's life a more truly evil man is hard to find. The "pretzel" argument begins with the fact that to even take what Calvin created and turn it into a doctrine that is not abhorrent to a Christian you need to discount, ignore or just pretend vast pieces of his writing do not exist. You cherry pick, but according to Kevin is seemed like your getting about five cherries out of ten tons of excrement. It was as if you took Mein Kampf and used it find things to build a Christian worldview out of. Again, no idea, as I've not examined this detailed aspect of the origins of this belief system, but this is what I was told at lunch yesterday. So once Calvin decided to use his couple cherries to explain things in the Bible his ideas got a following but you'd need to ignore all the other garbage.
Kevin then proceeded down the same points I had made here. That all of TULIP is based on adding things to constrain interpretation to get things to fit in the flower. And the TULIPers in his congregation seem to have no other answer than what had been provided here by Jim "that's just the way it is folks", which was the same argument that led me away from other churches, because that's not a defendable position. I was curious why he attended this church instead of finding one he felt was more Scripturally sound and it was around the personal impacts. He was saved there, he met his wife there and they enjoy the people there. And while there are clearly two groups, with the TULIP and non-TULIP people, there it is not a point of division (I guess they consider each other spiritual brothers in that church).
So, now back to my thoughts.