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Religion 101 or How is the orange crop doing?
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quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Dark:
Common sense control of clergy???? WHOSE common sense?

Common, meaning common to the majority of the peoples. Not the government.


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Dark:
Don't ban them by government control, out-reason them.

Exactly. Reason and common-sense go together.


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I like this particular column because it breaks down the history of the early Christian faith within the Jewish community and religion, thus giving us a clearer view of its context.

Q: I have a question about the scripture passage from St. John's Gospel that you quoted recently in one of your columns: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me (meaning Jesus)." What about the Jews?

A: There are several levels on which an answer to your question must be contemplated:

Did Jesus actually say these words? I doubt it. They appear in the Fourth Gospel, which was written 65-70 years after the death of Jesus. They are also part of a series of "I Am" sayings, which appear nowhere except in John and are regarded by most biblical scholars today as the words of the Christian community that have been placed onto the lips of Jesus. They are clearly not the words of the Jesus of history. The scholars in the Jesus Seminar regard nothing in the Fourth Gospel, not a single one of the sayings attributed to Jesus in that gospel, to be the authentic words of the Jesus of history.
Most of the Christians at the time that John's gospel was written were still Jews. The Jews who were the followers of Jesus had just been expelled from the Synagogue. The tensions between Revisionist Jews, who were also disciples of Jesus, and the Orthodox Jews who controlled the Temple are in the background of this gospel.
These words were certainly not meant to fuel an imperialistic missionary campaign to convert Jews and others as they were interpreted by later generations of Christians. The actual split between the Jews who were disciples of Jesus and the Orthodox Party of traditional Jews did not occur until almost 60 years after the crucifixion. That is, for the first 60 years of Christian history, Christianity was itself a Jewish movement within in the synagogue.
At this moment, I am reading Rudolf Bultmann's The Gospel of John: A Commentary. He argues, persuasively I believe, that John portrays Jesus as the logos enfleshed in human life, calling us all to a deeper sense of what it means to be whole and human. To come to the God present in Jesus for John was to discover the logos in each of us. That, argues Bultmann, is what Jesus represented to the people of his day. It was that discovery, not some form of doctrinal Christian belief or faith, that was for John the only doorway into the ultimate reality we call God. That is quite different from saying that only those that believe in what Christianity says about Jesus will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Recall that in Matthew's parable of the judgment (Mt. chapter 25), Jesus says the criterion for eternal life is not what you believe but how you respond to the presence of God in another human being, especially those regarded as the least of our brothers and sisters. In that parable neither the sheep nor the goats are ever asked what creed they say. They are asked "did you see and respond to the presence of God in another human being." It was the Epistle of John that states that if you cannot love your neighbor whom you have seen, how can you expect to love God whom you have not seen?
Those who quote John's gospel to validate their own exclusive religious prejudices simply have no idea what John's Gospel is about. This Gospel does not lend itself to proof texting. It is far too profound a work for that.

– John Shelby Spong


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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MORE
JUNK
FROM
THE MOUTH OF SPONG
with DOUGLAS as Messenger

When you mess with truth and mix some truth with goofy nonsense, I call it JUNK!
 
Posts: 439 | Location: Oak Park, IL | Registered: 19 July 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I agree.
If even any of this "enlightening new insight into the real history" proffered by Spong, patrask, and their ilk were true, Christianity would've died out within a year after the Crucifixion.
 
Posts: 3167 | Location: Box in Braling I's cellar | Registered: 02 July 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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"This Gospel does not lend itself to proof texting. It is far too profound a work for that."

The problem is that once you move away from an exegesis of the text, you are simply making things up.

John is very profound, and he does point us toward God. The truly spiritual life is more than SIMPLY creeds--it is a real response to God. But that doesn't mean you simply make things up. And this is the problem with Spong.
 
Posts: 2769 | Location: McKinney, Texas | Registered: 11 May 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I was rather amused, this past week, to read a couple of news articles detailing the effect marriage equality has had on the institution of marriage in the state of Massachusetts (the state in which legal same-sex unions have been permitted for the longest amount of time). A sample:

Divorce Rate in Gay Marriage-Legal MA Drops To Pre-WWII Level

Amazingly enough, marriage has not imploded or disintegrated once marriage equality was part of the picture, and the extreme doom-and-gloom predictions have failed to materialise. Who would have thought it?

I continue to be puzzled by this obsession the right has with same-sex marriage, like it is in some way a threat to straight marriage. Seems to me the biggest threat to marriage is divorce/adultery. So, if people want to defend marriage by legal means (in other words, writing their own religious viewpoints regarding the institution into the laws of the US government), why not focus on passing laws that make divorce illegal (or very difficult to get), as well as laws that punish adultery? After all, there are pretty specific rules regarding divorce in the New Testament; one could even say that every time a divorced-and-remarried person pursues intimate relations with their new spouse, they are in fact committing adultery.

However, with the divorce rate approaching the fifty percent mark in this country*, American churches are full of divorced-and-remarried couples. There would be a mass uprising if the churches campaigned against divorce as fervently as they do again marriage equality.



*(50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.)
 
Posts: 232 | Location: The Land of Trees and Heroes | Registered: 10 June 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Fred, always nice to read your common-sense posts. Good connecting with you on the Facebook, too.


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by theoctobercountry:

I continue to be puzzled by this obsession the right has with same-sex marriage, like it is in some way a threat to straight marriage.

After all, there are pretty specific rules regarding divorce in the New Testament; one could even say that every time a divorced-and-remarried person pursues intimate relations with their new spouse, they are in fact committing adultery.

There would be a mass uprising if the churches campaigned against divorce as fervently as they do again marriage equality.



Perhaps you continue to be puzzled because you got some wrong information here, at least skewed info?

Is it a threat to straight marriage, specifically the feedback it gives to kids? I know enough of what's happening to say yes! But this comment would indeed need much longer space.

This thing about a re-marriage always meaning adultery is wrong. There is a grey area in some instances with this in scripture, and those grey areas are left for the person who has Christ to be able to discern the best path to take. For instance, if you find a mate that has strayed into sexual situation with someone else, that is scriptural grounds for divorce. It then says, you are free. To marry? Not to marry? That's the grey area. Free usually means, free to marry. Or free not to marry. Roman Catholic churches have the escape clause of annulment, which has been sorely misused. What they say is that the two that got married did not really have a substantial understanding of what marriage was all about and thus there wasn't a true marriage. Well, that would include 90% of the people, wouldn't it?

There is also the abandonment issue. Mate just gets up and leaves.

If you leave your wife because you are shacking up with someone else, divorce your wife and marry the new one, that is scriptural grounds for adultery.

I am not taking into consideration the vast situations that accept grace and forgiveness, the struggle of guilt, etc etc.
 
Posts: 439 | Location: Oak Park, IL | Registered: 19 July 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Skewed info? Well, the statistics about divorce rates speak for themselves.

Now, as for the adultery problem... I realise that there is plenty of room for interpretation in the way one reads Biblical texts---not an uncommon situation. However---even if one believes that once adultery has taken place in a marriage, the innocent party is free and clear to remarry, wouldn't it follow that the other half of the partnership (the one who broke the vows) remains "guilty"? And thus if that party remarries, they continue to commit adultery once they remarry, every time they have relations with their new spouse? So, wouldn't fifty percent of remarriages (following the divorce of a cheating spouse) be considered invalid by the church?

And yet I think there are precious few churches that would deny membership to divorced-and-remarried members.
 
Posts: 232 | Location: The Land of Trees and Heroes | Registered: 10 June 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by theoctobercountry:
Skewed info? Well, the statistics about divorce rates speak for themselves.


Sorry, I wasn't referring to your statistics. That's the current statistics, and have been for awhile.

Well, I follow your reasoning on the re-marriage thing. And that would seem about right.

Now, in the ultimate context of everything, tho, we have to consider where grace and mercy come in, and how one relates to Christ in their life as the one that intervenes in what guilt there is in one's personal life. How does Christ fit into the equation of how one determines his standing before God in these matters? Well, he doesn't have anything to stand on except grace. And if one does not understand grace, and confession, then he is left to his own devices. If one wants to mis-use grace deliberately and recklessly, and people do, then there is no redeeming answer to that other then much guilt later in life, or after.
 
Posts: 439 | Location: Oak Park, IL | Registered: 19 July 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by embroiderer:
If you leave your wife because you are shacking up with someone else, divorce your wife and marry the new one, that is scriptural grounds for adultery.

Adultery is also scriptural grounds for stoning a woman to death. You want to pick up the first stone? I don't.


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:
quote:
Originally posted by embroiderer:
If you leave your wife because you are shacking up with someone else, divorce your wife and marry the new one, that is scriptural grounds for adultery.

Adultery is also scriptural grounds for stoning a woman to death. You want to pick up the first stone? I don't.


Oops! How did I ever Forgot!?? You are with the Spong clique, and where is the New Covenant in Christ?

So, yes, you think others are in still in the Old Covenant stoning mindset in scripture.

By the way, how pretentious can you be? I mean, that's Ray's old family address in your posting location. Whatta you think? You took his fictional name for posting. Now his address. Whatta you planning next?
 
Posts: 439 | Location: Oak Park, IL | Registered: 19 July 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by embroiderer:
Oops! How did I ever Forgot!?? You are with the Spong clique, and where is the New Covenant in Christ?

So, yes, you think others are in still in the Old Covenant stoning mindset in scripture.

By the way, how pretentious can you be? I mean, that's Ray's old family address in your posting location. Whatta you think? You took his fictional name for posting. Now his address. Whatta you planning next?

I'm sorry, I didn't understand a word of your post. Really.

Spong is a good word.


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:

I'm sorry, I didn't understand a word of your post. Really.

Spong is a good word.


Well, Douglas, that about explains almost everything. If you can't tell the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, what do you got? Well, what you just said: I didn't understand a word.
 
Posts: 439 | Location: Oak Park, IL | Registered: 19 July 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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