This topic contains 49 replies, has 14 voices, and was last updated by 
Wade 1 year, 7 months ago.
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ok… i’ll write a whole post about it tomorrow… for one thing… the reason for Job’s suffering is NEVER revealed to him. Stay tuned for more tomorrow
So I’m thinking this topic has morphed into something different than I started … which relates to a post I’ve put up at http://www.thelastingsupper.com/topic/site-feedback/ I’m not sure how feasible it is to do this but being able to start a new topic and be able to see where it came from would be nice. Just looking back over this there are many little bunny-trails that were followed. We could probably start a whole new one on Job.
And I will say – thanks for all the discussion! I really got a lot relating to the original post and have lots to think about and ponder.
@cowboyjunkie: i think if you started a new thread and in your post link to this one and explain would be a good way to do it. don’t you?
@admin yes I have did that but I just found a a cool way to do that. I linked a post at the beginning of this. And also I’m cowboyjunkey not cowboyjunkie. You’re probably thinking of the band :). I love them and their story and so I took an alternative spelling and have made that my user for all the sites I’m on.
oooo. cool @cowboyjunkey. my favorite of theirs is “Common Disaster”.
Anonymous@admin That is an interesting point about what you say with Job not being aware of why things were happening. It seems to me his wife, his freinds want to see relief for his suffering. Doesn’t his wife say at one ponit “curse God and die”? And then of course he geets pisssed off with his freinds later calling them “miserable comforters” for trying to point out things to him – don’t they try to make out it is because of his sin that he is suffering?
What is great about the book of Job is that he doen’st hold back even gettgin angry with God. Of course God gets anry back at him with things like were you here at the biggining of the world, as if Job is making out he knows better than God. Then Job repents.
I guess the message I take fomr this is that thought life might be going crazy for me the suffereings I have expereinc and would be part of my expereince now and in the future are all part of that life – it is life. So what I take is that thouhg I might not understand what is happening at any poitn in time, if I trust in God ultimately for the outcome, things will come good. And yes I get angry with God and my freinds sometimes too!! Isn’t that normal?
I think a faith centered on Jesus would put the church as it is today out of business. The two are not compatible. I have studied the rise of Christianity in great detail and I too have a lot of problems with its history. I have often found myself asking the same questions over and over. Did God really use the Roman Empire to forward Christianity knowing that the horrible, corrupt Catholic church would purge it for 1500 years? The fact is, if God is in complete control of everything, that is exactly what he did, Christianity would not have flourished had Constantine I not not seen that “heavenly” image in the sky on the eve of the battle of Melvian Bridge against the Emperor Maxantius in 312. And then we move to the 16th Century and the Reformation and initially I thought great! This was God’s plan all along, allow the Catholic church to spread its influence and then bring in the reformers to put it right! But that’s not what happened, it was definitely made “better”, but today’s church is largely based on the fallacies of Calvinism. And then we have the evangelical movements, and how missionaries were spread to places such as India and Africa, enforcing the Western societal perspective on “outsiders”. I’ve read the memoirs of these missionaries and their high and mighty attitude towards such people was disgusting to read at times. It takes a special kind of arrogance to move in amongst African tribes people and attempt to call their customs heathenish and further, to try and change such ancient customs.
Christianity has a lot of baggage, and even to this day it is ever-growing which is why I stopped labeling myself as one. Do I think there is a pure message buried within the corruption? I do. I think you properly read what Jesus was saying a lot of the time, its almost as if he was anticipating everything that would happen to Christianity, and he left very subtle warnings. I think if we tore down the entire institution and started again from scratch, basing everything on the gospel accounts, then we would achieve what Jo listed. The problem is, its impossible simply because we are human and its for that reason that Jesus came and did what he did. He didn’t come to save us from God’s wrath or any of that rubbish, he came to save us from ourselves by granting EVERYONE free passage to heaven. There is some debate about the evils that happen in the world. I think evil happening in this world has got nothing to do with God letting or not letting it happen, and everything to do with the fact that its just life. Even when Jesus walked among us, the Romans were stringing people up on crosses to die a very slow and painful death and now, people in the name of Jesus are condemning homosexuals to hell, wars are being fought over oil and bankers are bankrupting economies out of sheer greed. No, I think our suffering is the price of freedom, because we can independently think for ourselves, make our own judgement, devise our own morality. Sometimes its good, and sometimes it isn’t. But the reason evil happens is because God doesn’t want us to be a bunch of robots, he wants to be free, and wants us to face the consequences of that freedom, and learn from it.
@shift I agree that if it were all torn down it wouldn’t take long to build it right up again. Thanks for your thoughts on this topic. I’ve got to spend some time just reading the sayings of Jesus and get away from interpretations.
@Shift, this is why the term “Churchianity” was coined by someone here. It means the sort of church-centred religious rituals and living that has just a passing nod to Christianity. Unfortunately, the vast majority of both pew-warmers and ‘the great unwashed’ have been taught to call the former the latter, with no idea that the two are separate. Meanwhile real Christianity has the problem that their name has been co-opted. :-/
Wade.
It wouldn’t, mainly because if we were to reform it simply on the basis of Jesus’ teachings then you wouldn’t need the mass of institution that surrounds it, it will simply be a bunch of gatherings of people who have spiritual beliefs centered on Jesus, just hanging out, talking about spirituality and anything really. Pretty much like we’re doing here!
And yes the term is perfect really haha. And yeah the church likes to try and categorize everyone and everything. I think their favorite term at the moment is ‘liberal’. Honestly, Christians throw that around so much that its just lost all meaning, it basically another way of saying ‘you don’t believe what I do and that is bad’. And I would say it has been both co-opted by a whole manner of different people, but it has also become tarnished by the mass of terrible stuff that has been done under such a label. So many people now are actually less inclined to call themselves a Christian simply because the lay person would automatically assume that person doesn’t like homosexuals, hates abortion and is anti-intellectual.
Anonymous@shift – with your there in being not likeyl to call mysefl a Christian. just in the last few weeks, I’ve begun calling mysaelf a post-Christian. Church as with other human instituations tries to put people in boxes at times. it’s a form of control. Boxes are for things, and labels are for jars, not people.
Wow I feel a bit late to the party, sorry >_< Anyway, replying to the original post; In all honesty I don’t deal with the church’s history and baggage, I’ve made every attempt to avoid it and distance myself from the church itself, because I don’t see it being fixed anytime soon and I don’t want to be branded as a part of it. I’m not sure there’s much else I can do…
In my view, the Jesus-centered faith would involve acting out the fruits of the spirit as much as possible (y’know goodness, kindness, faithfulness and so on) which are virtues most anyone of any (or no) belief would say are good things I think. I definitely don’t think it has anything to do with telling other people they’re sinful and doomed unless they agree with your point of view, because that’s just supremely egotistical and damaging.
I also find that most of Jesus’ teaching directly contradicts the attitude of the atrocities committed in “Christ”‘s name, though I can see how the bible can very easily be warped to justify almost anything.
Also “Churchianity” ahah, great. Yeah “real” christianity (whatever that means) has been swallowed up by the institution of “church”, and the problem is, christians feel they have to build or become part of a “church” because “de bibl sez so dunnit” (and they don’t what to look like one of those “liberal” believers) and so they’re effectively building their own cages. I can see the benefit of social gain and spiritual encouragement or whatever “nice” reasons people like to attend, but really I don’t see how you can get that out of it and not be in denial about a whole load of other crap, namely the crap that started this discussion I guess…
@Adam-Julians Post-Christian! Like it, very relevant. And yes with the boxes. Any kind of catagorisation is there for the same purpose, as you said, control.
Anonymous@MxMagpie cheers mate.
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