This is a guest post written by Richard Hagenston. Hagenston is an ordained United Methodist minister, a former pastor, and the author of Fabricating Faith: How Christianity Became a Religion Jesus Would Have Rejected. When I was a United Methodist pastor, I learned an unsettling thing from my own experiences and those of some colleagues serving other churches: Many ministers keep secrets about the Bible, lest things they learned in seminary (or otherwise know) hurt church attendance and the Sunday offering. This put some friends of mine in a terrible quandary, forced to say things from the pulpit that were doctrinally demanded but which they had come to privately question. As for me, I resolved the matter by leaving the pastorate. When I did, I got calls of congratulations from two nearby ministers. One of those calls was especially poignant. He said I was fortunate to have other skills from my previous work experience that I could draw on. But he added that all he had been trained to do was to be a minister and that he felt trapped in the pulpit saying things he no longer believed in order to continue supporting his family. It’s time our secrets about the Bible came out. It’s time for Christians to know what their pastors won’t tell them. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friend...r-pastor-will-never-tell-you-about-the-bible/ Do some of our more bible-oriented members want to take this one point by point?
#5 is correct and I've acted on that all my life. #8 Paul was also presented to the apostles and disciples at Jerusalem and he was accepted as an apostle. #2 So what? Jesus was a Jew. He was King of the Jews and gave the Jews first opportunity to be saved. This isn't really up for debate. Jews in general rejected Jesus so everything went to the Gentiles. #4, #6, and #7 can be argued equally both ways.
Jesus was actually mental vegetable who was replaced by a time traveling Jew from the 20th century named Karl Glogauer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man_(novel)
No you haven't. You go to church. So where does that sit with your statement "I don't like Jews" and your derision of members of this board of Jewish heritage? So Christianity is a bit like eBay then, you got everything second hand via a dodgy deal? Then advance your argument as your see them.
I've explained it before. The fact that you reject that explanation AND continually act as though I never explained it speaks volumes to your staggering intellectual bankruptcy.
I think it's pretty well known that Jesus never intended to create another religion. IIRC,bye said that the laws of Moses still stand and that he was just expanding on them.
First off, the very title is wrong. Our church discusses these issues and controversies all the time. So, no, these are not things "Your Pastor Will Never Tell You". These are cute assertions, but they don't stand up to any scrutiny. Most of these are outright wrong, or at best, misleading half-truths. I'll give a more thorough refutation later. I am at work.
So are you now advancing the position that you consider Jews to be equal to you? If you say yes, then I will happily never raise the original statement again. Yes or no?
Yes, as told to us by Jesu...no, wait, Paul was the one that started tossing around the Anti-semitic stuff....but modern Christians aren't Paulists, because....reasons.
A great deal of the problem here is that people don't want to know that actual facts. It's why I get frustrated when people talk shit about, for instance, my area of law (mostly off WF) and things like Iran (some on WF). Now, I can't agree with your religion for reasons of critical analysis. But I would not ever seek to debate the intricacies of The Bible or what it advocates (and I say that as someone who has actually read the whole King James version). I think there is a tendency for some atheists to just jump on any agenda that suits them, and I don't think that's fair, it is disrespectful. It's the mirror of @Dayton3 and his refusal to entertain any opinion but his own, including that of other Christians.
Can you not see the inherent conflict in your post? So if a Jew remains a Jew they are unequal. That is your position?
They are completely equal in this world. But Jews like the majority of people who have lived or will ever live in the world from the way I read it are going to hell. (something like 99.9% of adults).
If Christianity is just an extension of Judiasim, then there is no hell and being an all around decent person should be enough to get you into heaven.
Have you not yet figured out that your particular god is.... how can I put this delicately.... a cunt?
Has it occurred to you that a God that gives humanity literally thousands of opportunities to repent and keeps getting rejected.......... No. There is nothing I can say that you would accept.
How do you know God gives these chances? So it is your faith that God exists, but how do you know what he says or thinks?
He gives us reasoning, then gives us piss-poor reasons to believe in him. Your only reason to believe in god or jesus is the bible, there are thousands of gods in hundreds of religious texts. Only an idiot would choose one of these religious texts over the others and say 'this one is correct, the other is wrong'. If god wished us to be 'saved', who would either, not have given us the faculty of intelligence,... OR given us more to go-on...
That would make him a fucking idiot. Here's a being with omnipotence, who could make reality any way he wants, and yet he's always pissed off at everybody. Either he has all the psychical powers, but he's a bumbling knucklehead, like if Will Farrell were God, or he's a fraud who puts on a grand show, but isn't really all powerful, like The Wizard Of Oz, or.....it's all bullshit.
Thankfully I don't believe in heaven as described in the bible. I believe we have souls and I believe they go somewhere when we die, but not as its described in the bible. I don't believe in hell, we have enough hell on Earth.
Ok, devil's advocate, how can you rubbish The Bible and Hell, but still believe that there is a soul and an afterlife? If one is a fantastical and unrealistic notion, surely the other is as well?
Just out of interest, what does a soul 'do'? As I see it, it can't contain your personality or memory, they are encoded into very specific areas of the brain, areas that die when the brain dies. So, what is left for the soul to take away after death?
#2 is probably true, and supported by some (the most reliable) biblical sources. But it is in fairness contradicted by others, most notably the stuff by Paul. #3 is not clear. Luke-Acts is pretty big on Jesus being divine, although it doesn't go as far as John. #6 is probably putting it a little strongly. The concept of authorship in a society dominated by the oral tradition is not the same as the one we have. But yeah, most of this stuff should be clear to anyone who does a little independent reading.
Let's say you have a woman. Would you want her to love you because she freely chooses to or Because you keep her chained in the basement with better food and drink rations if she is nice. Humans are free moral agents. God wants their love and worship because the freely choose to do so and not because he can force it.