Chastity cages and Christianity

Well I think we can definitely agree that all Christians are humans and that all humans are awful sinners and hypocrites, therefore all Christians are awful sinners and hypocrites. But I don’t agree that the sins you lay at our door are due to us being Christians.
Maybe it would help you think better of Christianity if I point out that at a basic level Christ’s message is “Oi you lot, you’re all so crap that if you’re honest with yourselves, you’ll see you deserve the death sentence! And that’s entirely YOUR FAULT, cos I gave you everything, including free will and loads of chances to change, yet you completely and repeatedly fucked up. But I love you despite that, so I’m willing to commute your sentence provided you apply before the deadline. Don’t dawdle.”

I’m glad to hear that your underwear is in good order, maybe I misread your tone - easy to do in online conversation.

 

The crusades or inquisitions weren't because they fancied it.

The missions to convert the heathens, whether they liked it or not, weren't due to changes in the weather pattern.

The murder of native children in canada was done because they were abused and the crimes hidden, in the name of their god.

Jesus is a fictional character, at most there was likely a con man trying to promote his own death cult around that time that earned the ire of the romans, so nothing about him is real. Stating such nonsense as though jesus was real just further promotes the delusion.

Which leads to the core issue being that christians present as mostly harmless, well mannered and well meaning, but really they are part of a delusional cult that, if it could, would take power again and start torturing non-believers "bacause god".

 

Did Jesus claim to be God? Only according to John who came later. He doesn't have to be Lord, liar or Lunatic. It's after his death, and supposed resurrection that his followers raised him to that level. They were honestly mistaken if I was to posit my own hypothesis. Tbh it is an area I am looking into more. There is a lot to go through.

I want to know why, how, who, where when all at once too. But just because a question can be posed grammatically doesn't mean there has to be an answer.

 

If marriage is for eternity, what happens if one spouse is a God fearing Christian and the other a heathen?

 

1 Corinthians 7:14 - “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.”

 

No He definitely doesn’t claim to be God anywhere in the Gospels. And He doesn’t even claim to be be the Messiah. But latterly when certain people say He is the Messiah he tacitly confirms it. He’s modest like that.

 

So does that mean, my wife and I are protected by our Christian mothers, but as both of us no longer believe and neither do our kids, that means they're not allowed into heaven? Unless they convert of course.

 

One more nugget

Christians, as well as other relgious cults, want to involve others in their delusions and get upset when that fails.

You saying that jesus said this or that, or god does whatever is an attempt to involve others in your delusion.

Swap "god" and "jesus" in any of what you say, for "alien"and "imaginary friend" and you'll start to see how ridiculous it all sounds to those that don't share your delusion or have failed to be indoctrinated by it.

 

On the contrary, I never get upset when that fails. And I don’t proselytise except if someone is genuinely interested to engage.

 

Remains to be seen I suppose

 

Actually, Jesus isn't fictional. I actually went and looked for writings about him from non-Christians and I found several. Most of them called Jesus, who did not believe he was who he said he was, a magician. So Jesus was real.

 

I don't know who the expert is on this video but I'm not going to be too concerned with one man's opinion on this topic since he's in the minority. The vast majority of biblical scholars are in agreement that Jesus by his words and actions asserted that he was / is God. And these assertions by Jesus can be found in all 4 gospels.

Did Jesus use the words, "I am God"? No. But he came very close to that and the Jewish leaders & teachers of his time clearly understood his claim on multiple occasions, In fact, it was his claim to be the "Son of God" clearly understood by the Jews to be indicative of his claim to divinity that they turned him over to Pilate to be crucified.

John has the most well developed Christology of the 4 gospel writers. Why? He was one of the twelve apostles, as was Matthew. But he was one of an inner circle of 3 apostles who were the most closest to Jesus. He along with Peter and James went with Jesus on separate occasions for significant events that the other apostles didn't participate in.

Examples of his claims to be God in John include this exchange with two of Jesus' disciples, Thomas & Philip: "Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

One of the most clearcut examples of Jesus' making himself out to be God found in John's gospel was this interaction with the Jews: "“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds." The Jews, upon hearing Him, clearly understood that He was claiming preexistence and, more than that, to be Yahweh, the great “I AM” of Exodus 3:14. On this occasion, they tried to stone Him for blasphemy.

The disciples of Jesus distinctly heard Him declare His deity. After Jesus’ resurrection, Thomas the doubting disciple finally understood Jesus’ deity, declaring Him to be “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28). If Jesus were not Lord and God, He would have corrected Thomas, but He did not

Matthew has a couple of clear examples of Jesus' passive acknowledgement that he was God. According to the Jewish Mosaic law, only God was worthy of worship. Worship of any other than God alone was considered blasphemy. After seeing Jesus walking on the water, His disciples worshipped Him (Matthew 14:33). When He appeared to them after the resurrection, they fell at His feet and worshipped Him (Matthew 28:9). The disciples were well aware of the Mosaic Law’s penalty for blasphemy, yet they worshipped Him as God, and Jesus accepted their worship. Jesus never rebuked people for worshipping Him, accepting their worship as good and proper.

An example of Jesus demonstrating his divinity is found in his claiming to forgive sins of certain individuals he encountered. Examples can be found in Matthew, Mark & Luke. One example is in Jesus' encounter with a paralytic man in Mark 2: "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”" Here a Jewish expert in the law recognized that Jesus was blasphemy, i.e. claiming to be God.

At the end of Mark's gospel in Mark 14, he claims equality with God in 3 distinct ways.
When Jesus is being tried by the Sanhedrin, he is asked, “Are you the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One?". Jesus replies: I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven". Here in a clear but thoroughly Jewish way, Jesus claims equality with God both in name (the divine name I AM), title (the Son of Man) and in authority (see Ex. 3:14; Dan. 7:13-14). We mentioned the divine name "I AM" previously. The Son of Man title comes from the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament, chapter 7. The Son of Man is seen "coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." There are many elements of divinity in this description including the act of being worshipped. You can clearly see the parallels to Jesus statement in Mark 14. And Jesus alone referred to himself as the Son of Man.

These are some of the highlights but there are more if you'd like.

 

Here's a good explanation of the meaning of that verse from GotQuestions.org.

"A verse in the New Testament that some use to teach household salvation is 1 Corinthians 7:14: “For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.” This verse seems to teach that an unbelieving spouse can be saved on the basis of his or her spouse’s faith in Christ. It also seems to say that their children will be holy before the Lord because one of their parents is saved. But that conclusion would be inconsistent with the overall teaching of Scripture. In this context the word sanctified is not referring to salvation or being made holy before God. Instead, it refers to the sanctity of the marriage relationship itself. Paul taught that Christians should not be “unequally yoked” with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14). The fear of some in the church was that, since they were married to unbelievers, they were living in sin—their marriage was “unholy” and their children from that union were illegitimate. Paul allays their fears: believers who are already married to an unbeliever should remain married as long as the unbeliever consents to stay married. They should not seek a divorce; their marriage relationship is sanctified (holy or set apart in God’s eyes) based upon the faith of the believing spouse. Likewise, the children of their marriage are legitimate in the sight of God.

The fact that 1 Corinthians 7:14 is not speaking of household salvation is clearly seen in the question Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 7:16: “How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?” If household salvation were true, then the wife would already be saved (on the basis of the husband’s salvation); Paul would not need to refer to a future time of salvation for her."

Earlier in the article, it makes clear that salvation is a personal, individual decision. You can find the full article here if you wish to read more.

 

As I said "at most there was likely a con man trying to promote his own death cult around that time that earned the ire of the romans".

When you were reading the writings, what language were they written in? You know where that question leads, so let's not pretend you were reading first hand experiences.

 

Said the skydaddy people about Copernicus.

I didn't watch the video, but I'm sure the point isn't lost on you.

 

The skeptical retort to all this, of course, is that the “Jesus is God” interpretation is a later gloss on the Gospel text and possibly even the result of textual additions that someone motivated to do so could argue are deliberate distortions. This is certainly what Muslims claim.
It’s clear that Jesus did present Himself as the Messiah, but according to Jewish tradition, the Messiah is not God Himself but sent from God.
I think of all the examples you offer, the most compelling is the “I AM” - hard to see what else this could possibly mean.
Of course, I DO believe Jesus is God, and it’s not a problem to me that the Gospels themselves don’t explicitly and unambiguously say that. Personally I go further, and believe that Jesus is Theanthropon (i.e. Incarnate) before creation, and that it is He, the physically embodied Word, Who formed Adam from dust with His hands, and Who walked with him in the garden of Eden, talking to him as with a friend. I base this belief on the dogma that God is unchanging and that Christ was bodily resurrected and sits bodily at the right hand of the Father. If He is was and is incarnate then He must always have been so. There is even an icon that illustrates this (shown above). That MUST be the Incarnate Jesus Christ breathing the Spirit into Adam because only the Incarnate Christ can be physically depicted in art. I am told that believing this is not a mandatory requirement for Orthodoxy but it is Orthodox.

 

Of course, no-one’s salvation is certain! We know the Act of salvation is complete and available to all, but none of us knows yet whether we will be in a state to accept that gift at the time of our death. Freedom entails the possibility of our turning away.

 

Yes, the point is lost on me - unless the point is just a repetition of your belief that all Christian dogma is bollocks. But doesn’t that get you into a paradoxical pickle? Because if there is no God, and Jesus is a fictional character, then everything that we Christians say and do is said and done because of our ordinary human psychology, and we’d be saying and doing something essentially similar whatever dogmas we spouted. In which case all this genocide and kiddie fiddling and embezzlement that you’re on about is just the behaviour of bad people, and the Christianity is neither here nor there. Certainly there’s nothing in Scripture or Christian Tradition that exorts us to engage in slaughter, rape and theft. When we do that we’re NOT being Christian.

 

The whole “argument” about whether or not God exists and Christian teachings are valid is pointless. Christianity is internally coherent but unverifiable.

 

Lot of detail there and good analysis. Right off, though there's a phrase that always challenged me. "Son of God". Like, what/who is son of God. He's also, "the son of man". I figure there's something about these phrases that just don't work for me. We're also told we're created in the likeness of God. Does that make us, too, the son of God. Which is really where my leanings are. We are all the "son of God", and we are the "Son of man" too. So when I think of Jesus, I see him much like us. He is more "divine", but I've never been a believer in the Catholic view of a virgin birth. And I certainly do not put myself in the same league as Jesus. But I can't say I know for sure whether he is God or not. Blasphemy for many of you I'm sure. I believe he is a teacher for sure, a prophet, definitely inspired by God. Actual God? Given that I don't know what/who God is, I don't know I can answer that. Is there God in every one of us? I believe so. Even those who seem controlled by evil.

 

If Christ is not fully God and fully Man, and if He did not really die and really rise again, then we are not saved. The Nicene Creed gives the necessary and sufficient exposition of Christian faith, and it includes that Christ was “incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary”.

 

Those are all words I have trouble with. Incarnate. A God in human form. I just don't know. Because again, we have to define God before we can answer that. I don't think we have a good definition of God. I'm of the belief that God exists, but I don't know what He/She/It is. Can God exist in human form? Maybe. Again, God made us in his image. Does that not make us all a piece of God? I don't know. I'm not trying to preach that as true. Just that this is where my confusion comes in. I most definitely believe that the Holy Spirit resides in each and every one of us. Does that not make us all part of God? I will admit that my faith, although strong in some ways, is challenged with the nuances. Did Christ's body rise again? I don't think so. I believe Christ's spirit rose again. Do we know for sure? Well, I certainly don't. Did Christ have to physically rise from the dead to "save" us. I don't believe so. I believe somewhat metaphorically that Jesus most definitely rose from the dead. Here's someone who was crucified, yet his message, his teachings live on today. He is more alive today than he ever was 2000 years ago. Did he have to be a God, in a way other than what a human possesses? That I don't know. Was he special? Absolutely. Did he "save" us? I believe so. I believe his teachings are profound, divine, persuasive, impactful. Many people are saved daily through his words. Did he have to be a God in order to save folks? I don't know. Are there people today that save people? Can people save generations, can people save cultures. Yes. So to say that if Jesus wasn't God then we are not saved doesn't ring true with me either.

I'm mean nothing but respect when I say these things. I've voiced them to pastors, congregation, and others. Most will refer to the written word for answers. I guess the difference between me and those that do quote the bible literally is that I don't take it literal. I parse out the meaning. Jesus feeding a throng with a single fish and loaf. I'd say, Yeah, don't take it literally. The point is that Jesus' message is enough to keep people from hunger. And not physical, malnutrition hunger, but spiritual hunger. Jesus' message is that strong. One doesn't need to interpret the passage literally.

I accept that I may be wrong. If I am, I ask to be judged by my acts, and my spirit.

 

But on what basis don’t you believe these things?

 

Most of what I said was more on the lines of doubt or questions and not on belief. But much of my opinion does come from the bible. Jesus spoke in parables all the time. In fact, most of his words are parables. It's his disciples that put spins on those words.

I also believe that God does speak with me. I don't say that as some kind of differentiator. I believe he speaks to all of us. I've had a fairly religious/spiritual background. Not that any of that makes me any more of an expert. In fact, I don't feel like an expert at all. I'd also say the message of the New Testament is 100% correct. I don't debate any of that. The only thing I question is how literal to take it. I know in my heart that the Old Testament cannot be taken literally. The New Testament has a different message, but can it be taken any more literal?

I certainly understand your incredulousness with what I say. I'm not preaching it and I don't want to convince you of any of it. I share it more as a testament to my doubts.

 

forgive me if I’m not understanding you correctly, or else expressing myself unclearly; I’m trying to grasp why it is that you hold this degree of doubt about the central tenets of Christianity. There appears to be something preventing you from accepting these beliefs and I’m unsure what that is… for example, you differentiate between what Jesus supposedly said and a spin put on His words by disciples - but you and I only have the words of His disciples. The Gospels are of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So on what basis can you compare the “teachings of Jesus” with the “spin”?