Trinity’s World

OK, dust the cob webs out all you closet theologins. Here is a quiz to see who you are most like in your theological ways. Here is what I scored:

You scored as Anselm, Anselm is the outstanding theologian of the medieval period.He sees man’s primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read ‘Cur Deus Homo?’ Anselm 80% John Calvin 73% Friedrich Schleiermacher 53% Jürgen Moltmann 53% Martin Luther 47% Paul Tillich 47% Karl Barth 40% Jonathan Edwards 40% Augustine 33% Charles Finney 33% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

And, I must give credit where it is due. I found this on dsimple’s blog. Click here to view her original post.

OK, so I find myself posting a reply to an other post here for all my faithful viewers (all 3 of you) to enjoy. I must say that there once I started writing this response I was kind of shocked to see a lot of stuff just come out that I have not had to think about in a while, and some things defiantly differ from the way they used to be a few years ago. I guess three years of struggling to make ends meet can change your view of things a bit. Anyway, enjoy.

Posted in responce to the statment:
“I want someone to prove that the Old Testament either is or isn’t neccessary in Christian believes. Then I’ll really have something to rant about.”

OK, well I was with you till your statement at the end. I spent four years at a Christian University (AKA Programming Center) and graduated with a degree in Biblical Studies. The problem is that you have been distracted from the get go by the very people you are trying to speak against. Don’t get sucked into an argument of “what parts of the bible apply to me and which one’s don’t.” This path will only lead you down a road of drawing line after line in order to define what you are supposed to act like…just like they do…just like the Pharisees of old did.

The Old Testament is important for one major reason…with out it you have no foretelling of the coming of Christ, or the reason that he needs to come. With out it, we do not see how God has tried over and over to save people in almost every kind of circumstance, and finally did the ultimate sacrifice in the end in order to make sure as many people were saved as possible. The message of the Bible is not a do an do not do list for life. The message of the Bible is not how to measure up in order to please God. The message of the Bible is that man is corrupt, and in order for there to be any way for Man to be acceptable in the eyes of God something had to be done to intervene.

I question any person who says, “The Bible clearly says,” insert random moral assertion here.” For instance, if you take the Bible as face value, the Old Testament has a few passages about Male Homosexual relationships, however there is a passage in Luke that supports Female Homosexual relationships. If you want the Bible to agree with it’s self, that is impossible. Moses did not write the Torha (sorry good little Sunday School boys and girls, he did not live to see have the things that happen in some of those books, including his funeral). We have four gospel writers, who tell the same story four ways. We have letters from Paul that show how his ideas about how to solve the “Jew/Christian’s who follow God” problem developed over time. Yes, the Bible shows the progression of people’s belief over time, so things at the end are going to conflict with things at the beginning. But with out that launching point to show us where things came from, we don’t understand where our faith tradition comes from.

Besides, the current thinking among Biblical scholars is that the entire Old Testament is slanted with a Post-Exlie outlook on the Jewish faith, setting up the idea that the Pharisees really banked on: following the law means adverting God’s judgment. As with any other book of the Bible, you have to think about the person/people/kind of person who wrote it. Are their issues the same as ours? Do things not apply to us if we don’t see a direct correlation? There are question that no person should be afraid to ask their pastor or youth leader. And if your church leadership is afraid, tell them that you know they are giving you crap and ask them who above them in your denomination you can ask. If you are in a congregational church that does not belong to a larger body or conference then ask your Pastor what Seminary they went to, look them up on the web, and e-mail any professor in the religion department who teaches biblical studies (trust me, they would love to talk to someone who is not already tainted by the bitterness that academics can bring to your search for knowledge). If you don’t have one, go here and ask Dr. Reeves.

Remember, do not let them pull you into the game of drawing lines. The Bible is not the answer book to all of life’s questions, contrary to popular Christian dogma. But dogma is no way to live your life by. The Bible is a collection of different people’s account of how God moved at a particular time in there life. Study it, and understand what God meant to them, and you might find out what God means to your own life. If you try to let it tell you what to believe, then you missed the point entirely.

Wemple posted this great find about how Christians are threatened by Atheists in the US. It got me to thinking, and you know how I can be when that hamster in my head goes into turbo mode. The following is a comment I posted in response to his post:

You really hit the hammer on the head. I think Nietzsche really had some great points to bring up about Christianity, and the sad thing is that the rise of Evangelical Christianity has done nothing but prove him right on so many counts. Does that mean that God is dead? No, but his followers sure act like it. Christianity has started to become so humanistic that it is hard to tell the difference between a Mega Church and a self help seminar. Christians these days are about, “Having a personal relationship with Jesus,” and, “Are you walking right with the Lord,” and jumping on bandwagons that point out the problems that everyone else has. They have developed that same kind of pretentious spirit that the Roman Empire had when if fell. After all, God is on their side so they have to be right…Right?

I think what struck me most about your post was this: in order for there to be growth there must be conflict. What makes us question who we are, that which forces us to think about why we believe what we believe, is a catalyst that makes us search deeper for the truth behind the reality that we see. These days the Christian Reich has helped non-believers paint the rest of the church as uncaring activists who only want to mold the world into their ideal version of perfection. Why should we fear people who have conflicting views? Why should we jump on and kill anything that might stand against what we believe? The only way that Christianity can actually be effective in a post-modern world is if the activists back it up, and actually listen to the opinions of others around them instead of treating these opinions like they were the plague. There is a reason the Nazis burned books during WWII: in order to keep your people under control you have to make sure they are not exposed to ideas that conflict with what you have told them to be true. I think that the Fundamentalists need to check their enthusiasm for do the, “will of God,” and start remembering that God has called us to be loving, compassionate, and caring.

Oh yeah, and to work with the people he has put in power over us. I’m sick of Christians complaining about how God has left the government, and how politicians do not do his will. I think I remember a passage in the gospels where the Pharisees asked Jesus about paying taxes, and his response really is a kick in the pants. He basically tells them that all power on heave and earth is given by the Father above and that they should, “render to Caser what is Caesar’s.” Stop trying to blame the problems of the country on all of these liberals who get elected into office, as if they were put there specifically to rob God of his power. If God did not want them there, they wouldn’t be there. Maybe what God is trying to show us is that we do not need him to “Heal our Land,” like so many Evangelical Rallies are proclaiming. Maybe, instead, he is trying to show us how to first accept people who have different views on how a life is to lived so that we can lovingly show them why we live life the way we do. The down side to this goes right back to how you opened up your post. If we are only doing the Christian thing because we are in it for the fire insurance for our soul, then we can’t really minister to those who thing differently by any other way than scaring them. The reason being: the only reason we jumped on the bad wagon ourselves was someone scared us into it.

Thanks again for such a great post, it got me to think about a lot of stuff that has been stirring underneath the surface of my mind for a while.

I saw this as I was looking through my tag surffer Are you A Christian or a Christ Follower I just had to stop and throw up.

I’m sorry, but who gives a shit? I’m sick and tired of Christians trying to one up each other by saying things like, “are you a Christ follower, or a Christian.” Come on people, wake up! Are we back on the play ground in grammar school? I know 3rd grade girls who are not that petty and self absorbed.

If you are a Christian, you follow the teachings of Christ (unless you go to an contemporary evangelical church, then you follow what your pastor says the teachings of Christ are), as they are set forth in the bible. Yes, I’m sorry for those protestant elitists like Baptists who think that no Catholic will ever get into haven, but they are following the teachings of Christ. But it seems that the only way that some people can feel ok with their own personal religious practices is to compare themselves to others around them. Well, I’m more Christian than you because I go to church, or bible study, or work with the homeless. Anyone who actually creates a distinction between a person who “Is a Christian” and who just thinks the teachings of Christ were groovy to follow, is setting themselves up only to judge others.

Here is what I think. If we all just actually listen to the teaching of Christ, and start looking out for people around us for no other reason then they are people that God loves, and stop making a show of everything we do, we may actually find that God is not as fire and brimstone as the church would have us believe. After all, Israel only got punished for saying they would do something then not. God never punished people for showing his love to everyone they came across. In fact, the only time God punished people in the bible is when the were a) oppressing other people or b) when a person/group/people would say one thing and did another. What the fuck does that have to do with “how Christian are you?”

OK, so it’s a rant, ok, so it’s a vent, and yeah I’m going to hell because I say things like Fuck and Shit. However, would you rather I went to hell for lying about my feelings and using other words that were not what I truly thought? You know what, forget the Christians. Reserve my spot in Hell next to Nietzsche, Bob Marley, Martian Luther, and any other free thinker who ever tried to tell “Christians” to fuck off and realize that organized religion is set up by man, run by man, and perpetuated by man, and is therefore not of God by definition. Stop making the Christian community look like a retarded collection of short sighted pop culture addicts, that have to find the latest greatest way of selling their religion so people will buy it. God’s been around since the beginning of time, I think he is going to be around for bit longer and that people will react better if they are not being bombarded with door to door Christianity Sales men/women (yes, God loves women too).