“You shouldn’t eat beef. It is forbidden by the ancient holy books, the Vedas. If you eat beef you will suffer eternal punishment.”
If my Hindu friend told me that, I would think it strange. Why? Because I’m not a Hindu, and don’t follow the teachings and beliefs of Hinduism. Since I am not Hindu, I do not believe that the commands of the Vedas apply to me.
The same is true for you. If you are not Hindu, you probably sense no need or desire to follow the teachings of the Hindu Vedas, and would probably be somewhat offended if a Hindu tried to force their beliefs and practices upon you.
But let’s turn this around.
Why do we Christians expect non-Christians to follow the teachings of the Bible?
Why should we expect people who are not Christians to think that Christian beliefs apply to them?
Why would they think that our holy book, the Bible, is anything more than a collection of ancient writings that has little or nothing to do with them?
Hopefully, you have some friends who are not Christians. If you do, most of those friends probably do not agree with all of the Christian beliefs and practices. Since they’re not Christians, they don’t think the teachings, beliefs, and moral values of Christianity apply to them.
Of course, they probably also see that many of the people who self-identify as Christians do not act as if the teachings of Jesus or the Bible apply to Christians either. As one of our friends said, “It’s something they like to spout off about. They want to tell me how to live my life, but they don’t follow their own rules. They say ‘hate the sin, love the sinner.’ I get it that they’re calling me a sinner. I also get it that they don’t love me. The only ones they’re fooling into believing that they love me is themselves.”
A well-respected businessman in the city in which we live, upon hearing someone in a group of about a dozen people say something that indicated we are Christians, immediately blurted out “You can’t be Christians. They hate us, but you love us.” Everyone else in the group, including an atheist, immediately agreed.
Do Christians Really Care?
I think even most people who are not Christians think that Christians do not love them or care about them. Why is that? Let’s allow some of our friends to speak to that issue:
“Jesus told them to love other people. Instead they judge other people. They think God appointed them to judge me because I don’t live by their rules. Why should I? It’s their rules, not mine.”
“Most church people don’t want to have anything to do with us. The ones who do are doing it to make them feel good about themselves. They don’t really care about us.”
“They all have an agenda. Do they think they get points with God for converting someone?”
“Religion is all about politics. They’re pushing their political agenda.”
“It’s a weird religion. They do stuff their religion says they shouldn’t do. Then they tell me not to do the same stuff because they feel guilty about what they’re doing. That seems to make them feel better about what they’re doing.”
“Everyone needs a crutch. Their religion is their crutch. Religion is not my crutch. I don’t need their religion.”
“They give a few dollars to some group that claims they’re fighting the evils of (fill in the blank with words like homelessness, drinking, drug addiction, prostitution, homosexuality) because they feel guilty, but they’re afraid to come near us. Or they don’t care enough to come near. Do you think we ever see them or their money? That money never makes it to us. Those people (the groups who receive the money) spend it on their own paychecks.”
My wife and I have heard every one of those sentiments and variations of them expressed dozens, sometimes hundreds, of times. Clearly, many people have a low opinion of Christians.
If you’ve read some of the other posts I’ve written in the past, you probably know that we have hundreds of homeless friends. We have hundreds of gay friends. We know hundreds of our neighbors and are friends with many of them. Which of these people have said the things above about Christians? All of them. People from every group: from the drunk lying on the sidewalk, the meth addict, and the prostitute, to the people I rarely mention, the college professor, the doctor, the attorney, the scientist and many others.
Accidentally Doing What Jesus Says
I’m a slow learner. I tried everything religion told me to do. I invited people to church. I headed church committees. I worked part time at a church. I witnessed. I told people what the Bible says. I cooked church dinners for thousands of people. I heard lots of whining. I heard lots of complaining. Few really cared what the Bible said. They did what they pleased, not just the “sinners”, but also the church people. Something was missing.
Almost by accident we started doing what Jesus said. Love God and neighbor. Who would have thought we should do that? Apparently no church we ever attended. It’s right there in the Bible, but we never heard anyone teach it. We never heard a sermon preached about it. We rarely saw anyone doing it. We rarely heard about anyone who really did it. Well, maybe Mother Theresa, but that was like her own personal thing or something.
“I’ve been living on the street for over ten years. I’ve watched all the people and groups who come and go down here. They all have an agenda. Usually it’s trying to get us to sign up for their religion, or they’re doing their annual do-a-good-deed to make them feel better about themselves. I’ve been watching the three of you for years, trying to figure out your agenda. You don’t have one do you? You’re the only people I’ve ever seen who don’t have an agenda.”
“You’re right,” I replied. “We have no agenda. We come because we love people.”
“I knew it!” she replied.
We’ve had many similar conversations. Once our friends know we care, that we love them, the relationship changes, in good ways. We talk about what is really going on in their lives and ours. We learn about each other and from each other. We’re frequently asked questions about why we do what we do, and questions about God and Jesus. Many people don’t care much for “Christians,” but are very curious about Jesus and people who act like Jesus.
I’m a slow learner. But I have finally learned that doing what Jesus said, loving others, is the way to live my life. I don’t need to tell people what they’re doing wrong, what my religion has to say about it, or quote Bible verses to them (most of them have already heard those verses many times), try to argue theology with them, avoid them or pretend to like them. (Everyone knows it’s pretending. Okay, my wife has a story about one person who fell for that. When she tells the story in any group, everyone thinks it’s funny.)
We love people and try to show it. If it’s genuine, most people figure it out almost immediately. We try to do what Jesus said. We try to love others with the love of Jesus, which points both us and them to Jesus.
The rest is up to God. Only God can convince them that if a person can love them in spite of anything and everything, then maybe God loves them too. Only God can help them realize “God does love me!”
So how then should we live? Well, it’s as Jesus said: “Love God with all your being” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s so simple, and yet so difficult for most of us to do.
yup!
In India eating beef is banned(In some states) as they believe COW is.their god. As a christian You can stand by the Word of God tat says every living animals & herbs are created by our Almighty God to eat (genesis 1: 24 to 30)… so eating beef you will Never Never go to Hell..
Does Genesis 1 v29 & 30 not say God has given us seed bearing plants and fruit for our diet? Before Adam sinned God did not intend that we ate animals. It all changed after the flood though.
Jesus was not a vegetarian. The Bible records Jesus eating fish (Luke 24:42-43) and lamb (Luke 22:8-15). Jesus miraculously fed the crowds fish and bread, a strange thing for Him to do if He was a vegetarian (Matthew 14:17-21). In a vision to the apostle Peter, Jesus declared all foods to be clean, including animals (Acts 10:10-15). After the flood in Noah’s time, God gave humanity permission to eat meat (Genesis 9:2-3). God has never rescinded this permission.
With that said, there is nothing wrong with a Christian being a vegetarian. The Bible does not command us to eat meat. There is nothing wrong with abstaining from eating meat. What the Bible does say is that we should not force our convictions about this issue on other people or judge them by what they eat or do not eat. Romans 14:2-3 tells us, “One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.”
Again, God gave humanity permission to eat meat after the flood (Genesis 9:3). In the Old Testament law, the nation of Israel was commanded not to eat certain foods (Leviticus 11:1-47), but there was never a command against eating meat. Jesus declared all foods, including all kinds of meat, to be clean (Mark 7:19). As with anything, each Christian should pray for guidance as to what God would have him/her eat. Whatever we decide to eat is acceptable to God as long as we thank Him for providing it (1 Thessalonians 5:18). “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
I would invite him for a hamburger.
Please pass me the bacon.
I’m interested in the difference between conditional and unconditional love. Conditional includes reciprocity, judgement, punishment. Unconditional includes correcting, helping, educating, non-retaliation, ignoring reciprocity. In real life we often use a mixture of the two, where conditional is (broadly) for strangers and unconditional for friends. You could say that fundamentally – at the bottom – respecting human rights and dignity is unconditional.
What I’m interested to ask you is, how do you reconcile these two aspects of Christianity? It seems that many Christians only see the conditional aspect, while a few, more radical and “fundamentalist” (in a good way – back to basics) follow the unconditional version. What’s your view on how to reconcile these two? How do you see unconditional love?
Brilliant question, Simon. I think you’ve already hit on the answer yourself, when you said that “respecting human rights and dignity is unconditional”. Personally, I see that this is how God loves people – unconditionally – and therefore the stranger/friend mixture, for God, simply doesn’t happen. He loves *everyone* unconditionally.
And because of that, if Christians are to emulate Jesus (1 John 1:6, “Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did”) then unconditional love is the only way to go about it. In fact, as far as I can see, there should be no ‘conditional’ love from Christians; it should all be unconditional. That’s my take, anyway; hope you find it helpful.
Thank you very much Tony. I can see that the “unconditional” version is Jesus’ stock in trade, and his great contribution and enduring, fresh-as-a-daisy legacy (among others) was to introduce, understand, promote, live by, and die by, that.
What I find is that the “conditional” aspect is seen as a mainstream, core, legitimate part of Christianity – God’s judgement and punishment of sinners. In addition (speaking as an atheist) I am told by proper, earnest, well-meaning evangelicals that it is an unforgiveable sin purely not to believe in God, and because of that, I’m beyond the pale and some kind of abomination in the eyes of God. I hope you can see that I know a lot about morality and in every other respect, Christians should be pleased with me. But it’s all seen in terms of judgement, punishment, exclusion, exclusivity, and this is normal within Christianity. Rightly so, in a way, because it’s one of the forming principles. But it has unfortunate effects in the real world. I believe that Christianity has not come to terms with this and needs to find a coherent way to reconcile the two. I agree with your approach, but it does not do this job of reconciliation.
I’m certainly going to have a go myself, since I’m developing an atheist version of religion (yes, really, I’m serious, and so far, blindingly successful) – just watch this space. But atheism doesn’t have that space where God is in religion – we have other things that will equivalently fit into the “true” (sorry) parts of Christianity (large parts in my opinion). Whatever I come up with, I’ll let you know, although you may not be pleased with it. Basically, atheists hate my philosophy because it proves that religion is correct, and likewise the other way round. Nobody likes it, like mixed-race people – they get crap from both sides.
For a start, mathematical models show that unconditional love all the time is a bad thing – we need some judgement and punishment or the bad people run wild. The same models show that forgiveness most of the time is optimum.
This is really good stuff you’ve written, Simon. I’ve recently finished fifteen years outside the Church, being detoxed from all the paraphenalia and the religiosity, and one of the main things I have learned is that people *outside* the Church seem to know more about the faults of said body of people, than the Church people themselves. And it’s about time we listened, too; as the original article was based on responses of those ‘outside’, this is the sort of thing we should be hearing.
This is relevant in this context because one of this things I was detoxed from was the exclusivism; the arrogant pride that we have it all right and everyone else is wrong. Whether intentional or not, that was what I had become like in the Church, and I would be ashamed to admit that except that it was part of my learning curve. And it’s one of the most un-Christian things to see, for those outside.
I love your gentle attitude. Many Christians could learn a lot from reading your stuff 🙂
Interesting about the ‘judgement’ stuff. To control society, yes, and keep it from falling into anarchy, yes, we need judgement and punishment. But the religious idea of eternal punishment? I don’t believe that at all; in a similar vein to those atheists hating your philosophy, I have been told that my ideas about (the non-existence of) Hell are ‘demonic’ doctrines. I see it as having been twited out of Scripture as a control measure. In a Church, ideally, we are supposed to be led by the Spirit of God and not by manmade Rules; this present blog (Redeeming God) has a lot of such liberating stuff as that in it.
But when it becomes an issue of control, essentially some Church leadership don’t trust God to do the controlling…and the adherence to such ‘control’ is a voluntary thing as well on the part of the Christian. Or at least it should be.
Agreed on forgiveness. It is optimum because it rebuilds relationships – hopefully, good relationships – and that is a key way of avoiding conflict. And more than that: the ‘forgiver’ reaps the benefits of not carrying all the bitterness around. Being unforgiving hurts only the person with the unforgiveness; no-one else! I’ve written on this at length here: http://www.flyinginthespirit.cuttys.net/2015/05/31/some-thoughts-on-forgiveness/
Thanks for your feedback Tony, it’s very useful to me.
I think the idea of “hell” is useful if we choose to adapt it to *this* lifetime. As in, being “separated from God” (in Christian terminology) – living an unhealthy fruitless life, being on the wrong path, self-destruction, destruction of others. All very unhealthy, unsustainable, and a straight path to despair really. It’s very possible to have hell in this lifetime. Who really knows what happens when we die? There’s not enough knowledge for me to base anything on it. I guess that belongs in the traditional moral-philosophical category of “the good life”.
Unconditional love, and the Golden Rule, come from the days when early humans cooperated together in small groups. Unconditional love comes from the idea that you help and correct your cooperative partners, who have the same destiny as you, instead of punishing them – there’s no point in that.
Judgement and punishment really belong in larger groups where people are less interdependent – i.e. ever since 15,000 years ago, and there’s no going back.
We really need both. The question is, what is the ethically optimum way to use them.
The ethical pressure, if you can call it that, is “up”: towards more compassion, and this comes from nature. The basic formula I am using is “the maximum benefit and minimum harm” for each person in the situation including oneself.
What we have is always a case-by-case basis, but this formula applies to every case. Quite rightly, too, human rights and dignity are unconditional.
In actual fact, people like the police are already doing it. I believe the answer is that we behave as “unconditionally” as we can, but there comes a point, for the sake of a “compassionate outcome” (for the person and everyone else concerned) when stuff has to be enforced.
Also, we find ourselves in varying situations: if you buy something from a shop, they’re not going to “unconditionally” just give it to you for free. You need to pay them the correct price. That’s one example where reciprocity and conditionality is the appropriate thing to do.
I believe the power of my approach is in carefully analysing what morality consists of, and then using this knowledge to achieve an optimum result. This is what the religions have always tried to do, and it has been very successful. It’s the “people’s philosophy”: ordinary people can understand it, talk about it, think about it, and apply it for themselves.
I think that religion is great, in principle – it just could do with a bit of fixing. When (say) Christians take an exlusionary approach, they’re only hurting themselves – other people have no choice but to give up on them, and so they limit their effectiveness in the world. I believe I have the tools to make an intelligent informed critique that can enable people to think again. Perhaps it’s enough to present an analysis of the situation and leave people to think about it. Unfortunately, people like ISIS have taken this God-driven exclusion to its logical conclusion, and it doesn’t make the ordinary religious people look good in this day and age. Fortunately, there are plenty of people like you too.
Interesting isn’t it? I’m a Christian and yet I concur with just about everything you’ve said, especially the bits about ‘hell’ – I too think of it as something here on earth; the God I worship is not the sort of bloke who would condemn loved, precious people of all ages etc. to an eternity of suffering due essentially to an accident of where they were born. Rant over. The Church does need to change its hardline attitudes in order to make itself more reasonable to today’s thinking person – some see this as compromise; I see it as progress.
But then according to some, I’m going to hell too 😉
I know, like, wtf.
The Church needs to be hardline otherwise it loses respect. But when it is, it’s usually hardline about the wrong things.
The bottom line, as I see it, is that nobody really knows what they’re doing. However, while moral philosophy has still got almost nowhere (up until now), even after 2500 years, religion has been a runaway success by comparison.
There should be no reason why anybody has to compromise – if the premises are consistent and people can sensibly buy into them in this day and age. In other words, the rest of us tend to see the judgements of the Church as, at best, arbitrary, and at worst, needlessly unkind. It is also full of all kinds of traps and contradictions that catch and imprison well-meaning people, who are just given rotten material to work with.
Forgiveness: the article looks great, but it’s long. I’ve just been looking at this, here’s the quote I want to use: check out this lady’s terrible story and how she overcame the horror.
”
I think it’s important for other people to hear that victims can forgive, not that we ever forget, but that we can move on to live healthy productive lives. … victim families need to know that there’s hope, they don’t have to stay in that rage and desire for revenge forever.
… to take on the same mindset as the person who took my little girl’s life would be to violate her again. It took a real effort on my part to keep calling myself to the truths of my faith, which says that however he was behaving, in God’s eyes he was just as precious as my little girl, and that’s a hard thing to accept when you’re having to deal with the loss of somebody that’s so dear to you. But it’s possible, and I hold myself up as an example of what can happen if people are willing to set themselves free of the burdens of hatred because they’re not healthy. As justified as we may feel about them, in the end they are not healthy for us.
”
Marietta Jaeger Lane: appalling story, amazing lady.
Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 20 January 2016
journeyofhope.org
Wow, that’s incredible. In all her terrible grief, that attitude is the one that will bring her healing a) more quickly and b) more completely. I hope that doesn’t sound uncaring but as an Autistic person I often don’t quite ‘get it’, but that story is amazing. I have looked at the website too; didn’t realise that that existed and it is most encouraging….
nd yes, my Forgiveness article is loooong, for which I apologise. In mitigation, I would say that it was based on a letter I wrote to someone struggling with forgiveness, so basically I put in as much ‘wisdom’ (if you can call it that) as possible. Certainly its original recipient needed to hear the whole lot; sadly, he didn’t take a lot of notice at the time 😉
I would say you need to streamline it and slim it down, or the message will get lost. I forgive you though lol – I think what you’re saying is the equivalent of “hate hurts the hater”: the negative feelings we have towards others make us feel, well, negative. Which makes sense.
I think that your observation “respecting human rights and dignity is unconditional” is probably the key.
Oops sorry it’s 1 John 2:6….
Thanks Tony, that’s a good quote. Jesus is still fully able to inspire people 2000 years on, and one main reason for his success is his talent for soundbites. Soundbites stick in the head and you can easily pull them out at the appropriate time to illustrate what you need to know. They resonate with the situation you find yourself in. Here’s one from my friend who can’t read and write: “no good comes of no good”. That’s become a foundation of my moral philosophy.
Great discussion, Simon and Tony. You’ve noticed. How is it that a God of unconditional love is supposedly also a God of judgement and punishment? Something must be off.
My wife and I believe that following Jesus includes loving others unconditionally. No agenda. Of course, as frail humans, that doesn’t always work out. We do tend to expect reciprocity and other things that may make us question if we’re really loving unconditionally.
Love this! You involved in lots of outreach to people. How does that work in actual practice? Are you taking food to some, visiting others in hospital, etc? What do you actually do and how do you go about it? How do you meet all these neighbours? I’m really curious, and wanting to learn, about the practical nitty gritty of what you do.
Excellent post. I was just having a conversation with a friend on Sunday, after church, about this topic. Just going to church isn’t enough.
I would like to echo Jenn’s comment, how do you reach out in this way to so many people? Please share what you and your family do. I havent read all of your books yet, maybe the answer is in one of them. But if it isn’t, I think a lot of us are agreeing with you, but we’re not sure how to get started, or how to expand on what we are doing.
Thanks again for your ministry.
Jem and Faith, Go to the “Search” box in the lower right hand corner of the home page/front page of the blog and enter the terms “Getting To Know Our Neighbors”, “Homeless People” and “Being the Church in Your Community” and you will find series of numerous posts I wrote that speak to your questions. After you have looked over those posts, feel free to ask specific questions here.
Yes, we do know many of our neighbors and host and participate in many neighborhood events. We also spend much of our time working with homeless people and strive to “be” the church in our community rather than merely “go” to church.
Find where your passion for others lies. Build relationships with them, love them and learn to serve them.
Thank you.
if you consume to much of the beef and not enough green veggies, you will get there sooner. (hell being the grave)
Quoting your sacred text is only useful if “I” agree that it is authoritative.
Excellent, thought-provoking post. I must admit that I have seen people as a “mission” for years. It’s just be within the last couple of years that I’ve been seeing how wrong this viewpoint is. Jesus did come to “seek and to save the lost” but the way He did it versus the way our modern American churches do it seem so vastly different. My prayer is that I will see each individual person I come in contact with as just that….an individual, living breathing human being….with a story. I must learn to listen and try to understand that story. If I am not willing to learn and understand that story first then I will do the best by just keeping my mouth shut. When we make love our primary response to people then we are truly being God’s ambassadors to them.
Thank you Michael. This is a different way of seeing others than the way we learned in church. Once you have the knack of it, you will never go back to the old way. Who wants to be our mission? No one, just as we don’t want to be someone else’s mission. How demeaning! People want to see people who care about them, who love them. They want to see people who do what Jesus told us to do. It’s more than hearing someone, more than studying the Bible for the umpteenth time. It’s following Jesus.
This reminds me of Kant’s idea that “people should be treated as ends in themselves rather than a means to an end” – the basis of his ideas of personhood, dignity and human rights.
Yep, this.
Personally, if you love me in spite of everything you’re the one who can go to hell.
Love people BECAUSE of everything. Because of who they are, because of the great qualities they have, realized and potential, because of the limitations, pain, misconceptions, suffering and stresses that they face (or currently avoid) even when those things spill out into negative attitudes, harmful and self-harming behaviors. Everyone’s been there.
Love, which I define as the desire to help another person grow and flourish, requires building blocks of understanding, empathy, acceptance, kindness, and generosity. “I love you in spite everything.” Where’s the understanding in that? The empathy? The acceptance? The generosity?
What a noble Christian you are, loving me in spite of how terrible I am. Who are you kidding? It’s not me.
The “in spite of everything” is directly quoting what some of the addicts, prostitutes, thieves, murderers and other people say to us concerning themselves. I agree with your definition of love. That is what we do.
Telling any of us we can “go to hell” and sarcastically saying “what a noble Christian you are” – Where’s there any love in that? I find none.
Hi Sam,
Well, okay … I can’t find the quotation marks, but I guess I could have misread … no. Really?
“Go to hell,” well, in most of the English speaking world, I think that’s a very mild expression of disappointment or frustration, probably said to a friend or close business partner. It would be kind of comical if said in real anger, at least anytime since the 1950s. Anyway, it doesn’t carry a heavy rhetorical weight. It’s about 10% stronger than no thanks. I guess it could depend on your subculture. Well, my purpose wasn’t to offend you, so I’ll apologize for that, although it feels likes apologizing for a mole hill. Look, the rhetorical purpose, actually, is maybe interesting as you’re the writer. I wanted to express, a little dramatically, the attitude that your article provoked in me. Despite arguing that Christians shouldn’t expect others to follow their religious rules, phrases like loving people “in spite of everything” suggest that you are still judging people, doesn’t it? In our world, sadly most, if not everyone, has been treated badly, hurt, and I guess most people do the best they can under those conditions. Some people are more hurt than others, some are more sensitive. Anyway, for most people these issues get expressed in negative ways, internally and externally. I explained myself in the follow up comment. Love people because of everything.
Finally, the noble Christian comment, sarcastic? Yeah, but I prefer to think of it as challenging. To claim you’re not judging people, and then to judge them, suggests you need the feedback. As I said, who are you kidding.
Is this too challenging for you, Sam?
The “in spite of everything” was an exact quote from what an addict had said to us the same day I wrote the article. He told us that we are the only ones in his life who love him “in spite of everything”. If you’re reading judgement into our opinion of him or anyone else, you’re finding something that is not there or intended to be there.
Actually, I’m fine with judging people. I think it’s a perfectly normal healthy activity everyone does everyday. And I think it’s good to hold ourselves and others accountable, to try to inspire each other to live according to our highest values. The only things are we have to be careful not to rush onto judgement, be very aware that our judgements can, and often are wrong, and we need to go beyond judgement into understanding, if possible (and usually it is) into empathy, because only then can we be of any help to people. Judgement is a virtue, but only in the right context, not on it’s own.
I think Jesus plea for the people on the cross implied that the people were doing something pretty terrible, but he went beyond judgement, to understanding their ignorance. That’s how I read it, but I’m no Bible scholar.
Anyway, very interesting talking with you. Sam, you seem like a patient guy. Best wishes.
I think the point is that addicts tend to see themselves as scumbags: they enjoy themselves freely at everyone else’s expense, ruining the world just so they can get high. So of course they feel like scumbags, they’re not terrible people.
If you said the same thing to many people, you would lose them, because their dysfunction and distress is not their fault, it’s down to the circumstances they were born into. You would need to find another way to say the same thing, that doesn’t have an implicit condemnation built into it. You need to respect people’s suffering and give them credit for struggling against the odds just to have some kind of functioning life. For some people, daily life is like active service in Afghanistan, and they didn’t ask for or cause that.
Excellent article. I’ve often wondered why some Christians try to save people from a hell that the people don’t believe in. How can you can save them from something they do not accept? And it isn’t about avoiding hell it is about joining Christ in a wonderful loving relationship.
Some of us remember the sermons from when we were kids that got great responses from people who didn’t want to go to hell. I wonder how many of those people joined Christ in a wonderful loving relationship.
Many years ago we visited a very poor family. The father explained that he “got saved” so he wouldn’t go to hell. He had no concept of a relationship with Jesus. His idea was that he went to an alter, the church people prayed over him, and therefore he wouldn’t be going to hell.
Our culture is responding less and less to a religion that it does not accept or believe. Church done the old way isn’t working so well. It’s kinda like opening a store selling rotary phones. Most people aren’t interested. Those of us who follow Jesus must interact with our culture with Jesus’ love. Many people do find that interesting. Some find it unique.
@Sam – I agree with you, and it’s going to work, if only it’s possible to find a way to sensibly reconcile the two aspects of God’s love: the judgemental and non-judgemental. In the “atheist version”, there is no contradiction: God’s love is given freely to every living being, just by virtue of being alive, and each being (in our case, humans) is free to use that power for good or ill. The way they choose to use it is called morality or ethics, and this accommodates how one treats oneself as well as others.
In the “atheist version”, we are judged by ourselves, our peers, and the legal system.
The good news is that both kinds (conditional/unconditional) are very well understood and this information is very useful in deciding what to do.
The two (atheist/religious) line up so exactly that it must be possible to transfer wisdom from one to the other. I despair of finding anything within the existing Christian framework that can do this job of reconciling the two (conditional/unconditional). Put it this way, already, I’ve used tons of good stuff from the Christian, Buddhist and Muslim frameworks: they’re all the same in many ways.
I’m not sure what the way forward looks like, it’s really impossible to predict. I think my best strategy is to produce what I’m going to produce, and hope that this can straighten out the whole debate in a theoretical sense.
There are those who see the issue of God’s violence/judgement differently: The Old Testament (and the thread of the Old Testament thought that carries over into the New Testament) version of God that sees an angry, violent God who destroys people and tells his people to destroy people. Then in the New Testament we see the God who shows up to set the record straight, Jesus who destroyed no one, but he who loves everyone, even those we might consider unlovely.
We’ve been told what the Bible means, and have been told not to consider other options. That image of an angry, violent, judgmental God has kept people in line and has given religion an enormous amount of control over people, hasn’t it? Do what we tell you or you’ll go to hell. Food for thought, and ultimately I suppose all of us decide which God we believe in, or we decide that we can’t believe in either, often because we can’t believe in the violent God, or because we want a God who fixes all our problems, right now. Yes, I know that many believe God is both loving and angry and that is the correct way of thinking about God.
I’m not entirely sure God is angry at all; I’m certainly sure He’s not angry with me. He’d tell me if He had a problem with me! Personally I think that the angry God came from ancient thinking where the harshness of nature (red in tooth and claw!) was blamed on the supernatural; only later did the understanding of God being loving come in. I could be wrong, of course. But also the idea of Hell as a place of punishment, abhorrent to most sane, free-thinking people, was I think extrapolated from Jesus’s original speaking on Gehenna and Hades – which was originally intended as teaching on the Kingdom of God, not on eternal damnation ideas – to develop a means, as Sam says, of control. Do as we tell you, or….. If that’s not manipulative behaviour, I don’t know what is….
Tony, I tend to agree with you. Of course, for many people it depends on how you understand the Bible, especially the Old Testament. If we understand it as the record of the thinking of the people of that age, we need not conclude that God is the angry, violent God they thought he was. If we understand it as accurately telling what was in the mind and heart of God, then we have to deal with the issue of why did God create us in his image, knowing that he planned to destroy so many of us, and tell the rest of us that, at least in certain circumstances, it is fine with him if we destroy each other.
Sam,
I like that analogy of a store selling rotary phones! Of course, some will say you can’t update the church, as you can’t keep changing truth. To me that is limiting the Bible. The Bible can speak to every age. So long as you are tied to the core principles in the Bible updating theology is fine with me. In fact, we are not updating the Bible as much as we are updating doctrines and theology men created over the last 2,000 years. We are updating traditions, not truth.
It’s worth knowing that outside of the religious world, Jesus carries an enormous amount of clout, although it can be very hard to get atheists to admit this (they may have very good reason to be angry with religion, and you know how people can be too fond of a worldview to admit other possibilities). Even gangsters respect and revere Jesus, he’s some kind of mythical figure of good, like the Devil, but the opposite. So you’re always going to have great success if you’re aiming to emulate Jesus. You just can’t go wrong: if you’re genuine, everybody will listen to you.
People often ask us “Which church are you from?” Most of these people are not “from” any church. We reply, “We’re followers of Jesus”. Our church is the street. The only people who have ever had any problem with that are some church people. I agree that most people respect Jesus, and most of those outside the church think that church people ought to look like him (but often don’t).
Truly loving God and loving others is what we are called to do. Loving others with ulterior motives is not truly loving them. We have been taught in the church to love others with the purpose of converting them to our way of thinking. Truly loving others means loving them and accepting them just as they are, even when we don’t agree, with no hidden purpose.
” If you eat beef you will suffer eternal punishment” .It’s a strong statement,yet it seems odd why should you suffer eternal punishment for such a seemingly ordinary thing. In fact it sounds a bit like a dogma isn’t? Reading all the good church’s people comments below, does not clear up much the statement for me. To start with,no hell is eternal according to the Holy Vedas as stated here, even though it might feel like a eternity.But yes,we mostly believe that in fact hell exists as all major religions of the world accept existence of hell and heaven,but is it eternal?If Koran or Bible says so,than i ask how can the God, All Merciful Father condemn any poor soul to eternal suffering? In such a case He is not All Merciful Father. Why wouldn’t He,out of His unlimited mercy not give a second chance to his dear children who happened to commit transgression to his sacred law and damn us to eternal suffering in hell? We tend to simplify in our fatalistic view of afterlife and accept such statements. We fabricated the confessions to make it easy for some and fatal for others.Is it so that you confess your sins and God supposedly forgives you and you are safe forever no matter what? Unfortunately it’s not that simple. But it could even happen that way if, provided by God´s grace, we would avoid to sin again,and thus God’s grace would certainly be bestowed upon us.That alone would suffice. But no,no matter how many confessions and holy communions we take,that taste for sinful action,that desire is still there.The heart is dirty,and we will commit the same sins again and again.Do we even know what is sinful ? Do we even know there is a difference between sins of omission and commission? Maybe it’s not for this time. At the end we can simply say,i can atone for all sins before death comes,but will we have enough time? Will God accept our atonement?Will it be enough for atonement?We cannot know for sure. He might not forgive us if we don’t strive to change ourselves.External rites, blind faith in God or dogma will not suffice,rest assured.In any case if Hell exists,it’s there to correct us,or punish us, but certainly not to condemn us eternally.
Why is cow considered sacred and not to be killed or eaten? It’s not something isolated in Vedic tradition,but primarily it is because we all have different mothers in this world,our mother,stepmother,mother earth, mother cow etc. Consider this; we take a milk from a cow,we enjoy our ice cream, yogurt and other palatable things from milk and then we kill her for her beef? Is that acceptable,to kill and eat your mother?Certainly not. It must be the most grievous sin indeed, regardless what we religion we believe, individually and collectively, as a society,whether hindu,christian,jew or muslim we are all responsible for such a act of cruelty.Real religion and slaughterhouses go ill together And it’s only one of many insides to consider why we should not eat beef or kill cows and protect animals in general as conscious human beings.
God Bless
Respectfully, I appreciate the sentiments behind your post as a Christian who is not a conventional one and turned away from mainstream religious behavior. I completely agree that I think many Christians are not truly regenerate in their hearts with love, but I reserve judgment for the Lord. However, Jesus was a judge and he came to judge, but also to save the lost. Living by the Spirit is very different from just doing charitable deeds. If we pass judgment on others we must be sure not to be hypocrites as well and to do so in a way that is for the benefit of others. Sinners hung out with Jesus but they were changed and saved by the experience and repented. Jesus said “sin no more, lest something worse come upon you” John 5:14. (It’s not just about seducing people with being nice, which is what it can sometimes come to.. (not saying you are, I don’t know) It’s about setting them free with the truth, repenting from sin and forsaking it completely). This should be our attitude as the light of this world and salt of this earth. Not an easy path, but to be as holy as God as holy.
Thanks again for sharing, hope my word was edifying as well