Ask a Christian Theologian

[Tranka Verrane]

I have a great interest in my faith and the theology of it to a point where I received a degree in it from a respected university.
I spend most of my time between Australia and England.
I am a reformed, evangelical, conservative Christian. (aka bible based)
I became a Christian at the age of 17, having been raised in a moralistic environment.
My passions are psychology, writing, literature, fashion modeling, aesthetic, industrial design, video games, art, fitness/health and my girlfriend.

Alright, I'll bite, but first some questions of interpretation:

1: Do you believe the bible as factual accounts or moralistic stories?
2: Do you believe the stories in the bible are the word of an infallible God or the writings of fallible human observers?
3: Do you believe the text of the current English translation of the Bible, and if not, which version do you follow as the closest to the true word of God?
4: If you do not believe in the literal words of the Bible, to what extent are you willing to interpret? For instance, would you be prepared to reinterpret the ten commandments?
5: Do you believe the words of the Bible to carry a universal meaning at all, or just a personal one, or both?
6: What atrocities committed in the Christian God's name are you prepared to condemn, and on what basis are your views more valid than those who espouse them?
7: Do you believe the old and new testaments contain differing amounts of truth?
8: How do you rationalise the many contradictions within the books of the Bible?
9: What is your attitude to the other Abrahamic religions?
10: Would it destroy your faith in God if you discovered for a fact that every event in the Bible is at best a distortion of the truth?

And for the record I ask as an Agnostic Philosopher, trained as a teacher of religious education in the UK.

 

[Amnestic]

@ Amnestic adn Gahars:

I've already told you that it's not the Christian way, how many people have you heard say this because chances are they are in a minority, in case you didn't know there are billions of Christians and you're basing your arguement on a handful.

Perhaps they are the minority. Unfortunately as you are, I'm going with my own experiences and my own experiences show that it's the majority of Christians act in the way I described: As those who believe I should convert. There are millions/billions of Atheists, and yet you were basing your argument on a handful. I'm not arguing that all Christians are trying to convert me, I was just pointing out the hypocrisy in your comment that implied Atheists try to convert whereas Christians do not.

Oh, and you can't define "The Christian Way." thanks to the number of denominations and metaphorical interpretations of the teachings of Jesus. Thanks to the subjectivity of the whole book most of them you can't define as 'wrong' either so saying that they're not following it is somewhat a moot point.

I didn't say that there weren't people who don't try to convert others but it's actually demonstrated by Jesus that people need to decide for themselves to come to the church there's no room for misinterpretation there.

It's fine if you want to believe all Christians are the same, I'll won't be following your example though and instead believe most Atheists respect others but choose to live differently despite a lot of harassment I see against Christians here.

Dammit man I don't believe all Christians want to convert me. I don't even believe the majority do, even though personal experience has shown me that they do. Turn off your persecution complex for five minutes, accept that you said something hypocritical to real life and move on.

Why is it so hard for people to accept when they make a mistake?

As for Jesus and going to church, and admittedly this is going by my memory, what do you have to say about Saul/Paul's conversion? Surely that was forcing him to 'church'? How can you accept that Jesus wants people to freely choose and then also condone Saul/Paul's forceful conversion?

 

[mokes310]

Okay, thought I'd retry this thread now that the other one has died.

Basically, feel free to ask me anything about the Christian faith - how it works, why we believe what we believe, technicalities of faith etc. Essentially, I'll explain to you from a Christian perspective. This is an attempt at an intelligent conversation between a Christian and a non-Christian to clear up different issues.

What I am not here for is to be abused or argued with, because I am presenting my faith - take it or leave it. If you don't have the respect and courtesy to be civil then I won't reply to your question. That said, the more challenging or surprising the question, the more of a pleasure this will be. Also, I won't take kindly to baiting questions eg. "why do you believe stupid stuff/why are you an idiot/why don't Christians stone homosexuals etc"

If you ask a question, then understand that what I have given you is what I believe and the Christian perspective. You may disagree, but the point of this thread isn't to argue over the validity of my faith, but to actually find out what Christians believe.

Similarly, please don't make this another prop 8/gay marriage related thread; we have numerous running at this time.

Essentially, you respect me and I respect you!

Lastly, my background:

I have a great interest in my faith and the theology of it to a point where I received a degree in it from a respected university.
I spend most of my time between Australia and England.
I am a reformed, evangelical, conservative Christian. (aka bible based)
I became a Christian at the age of 17, having been raised in a moralistic environment.
My passions are psychology, writing, literature, fashion modeling, aesthetic, industrial design, video games, art, fitness/health and my girlfriend.

I'm a Native American, and I'd like to know what you think of the colonization of the United States and the role that Catholics/Christians played in it? Let's not forget the colonization of the Carribean, Central, and Southern America.

From my point of view, people of the Christian/Catholic faiths are just as bad, if not worse than the Nazi's, and I'm really curious if you see it that way at all.

 

[EnglishMuffin]

Why are christians so unlike their christ?

 

[maximilian]

One of the major questions in the bible is weather god is vengeful or benevolent. Jesus sayed that he was benevolant, and most other profits believe he is vengefull.

God is Just and therefore God is Wrath. (to be just you need to punish)
God is also Love, which means that he must punish Sin to be Just and to punish, He must be Wrath.
Different parts of His character are highlighted at different parts of the Bible.

Now hang on, the Old Testament is just as large a part of the Bible as the New Testament. You can't just dismiss a point because "It's in the Old Testament." when your holy book *contains* the Old Testament.

I did. If I read a book about Winston Churchill's life, then it will include a list of Nazi atrocities, this does not mean he perpetrated them, but shows us what he saved us from. Same deal.

Also answer my question about the conflicting viewpoints of Genesis and scientific evidence please, considering the description of what kind of Christian you are.

Please read the original thread. I'm not here for apologetics. Anyhow, which evidence and verses are you talking about? I'm sorry if I didn't answer to the extent you wanted but I'm trying to answer everybody here.

EHHH
WRONG.

Mistranslation.

Original Hebrew says something along the lines of two men not being able to sleep in a woman's bed.

Nothing about how homosexuality is wrong.
Just where the fucking can happen.

Back then Women were considered property, you know, and during her period, she'd be 'quarantined' to her own bed. It was against cleanliness rites to sleep with another man on that bed.

This topic clears a lot of the stuff up.
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/extended-discussion/homosexuality-is-not-a-sin-what-christ-said-and-more/t.22055569/

Afraid that that website is the most liberal, dodgy piece of theology ever. Look at the "scholars" behind it to see what I mean. As an evangelical, I have to point this out. Look especially at the hermeneutics and the New Testament verses regarding homosexuality.

As for my question.

Do you believe in Hell, even though the concept doesn't even exist in Judaism and was effectively taken in its modern form from Dante's Inferno?

The concept of Hell is directly from the Bible. Reading Revelation is a fairly good indication of that. It's the whole point of our faith.

Now hang on Genesis 2 [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202&version=9;] specifies 7 days within the first two verses.

Apologies, I forgot to specify that the original boundaries of the text exist between 2.3 and 2.4.

 

[The Sorrow]

Oh? The Bible says EVERYONE was corrupt, so God's allowed to murder them all?
What about the babies? I don't think they were throwing virgins into volcanoes in their spare time.

And Cheeze has a damn fine point. Catholicism, corrupt as it is, has just as much evidence towards being correct as any other form of Christianity. Hell, Pastafarianism has as much chance of being true as does Christianity.

And if I hear a "God moves in mysterious ways", I'm going all Torquemada on your ass.

 

[Dele]

No, God hates sin

You really must have a fracking huge ego to be able to say what God thinks about matters.

Basically, feel free to ask me anything about the Christian faith - how it works, why we believe what we believe, technicalities of faith etc.

So you got a decree and now you think you can do that? Youre not explaining The Christianity as you are claiming, youre only explaining your views about it.

 

[The Sorrow]

Oh, and how do you justify Christianity's obliteration of African religion?
Ooh, and how about that Spanish Inquisition? Good times!
Hey, you guys sanctioned slavery, right? What a hoot!

 

[ThePlasmatizer]

@ Amnestic adn Gahars:

I've already told you that it's not the Christian way, how many people have you heard say this because chances are they are in a minority, in case you didn't know there are billions of Christians and you're basing your arguement on a handful.

Perhaps they are the minority. Unfortunately as you are, I'm going with my own experiences and my own experiences show that it's the majority of Christians act in the way I described: As those who believe I should convert. There are millions/billions of Atheists, and yet you were basing your argument on a handful. I'm not arguing that all Christians are trying to convert me, I was just pointing out the hypocrisy in your comment that implied Atheists try to convert whereas Christians do not.

Oh, and you can't define "The Christian Way." thanks to the number of denominations and metaphorical interpretations of the teachings of Jesus. Thanks to the subjectivity of the whole book most of them you can't define as 'wrong' either so saying that they're not following it is somewhat a moot point.

I didn't say that there weren't people who don't try to convert others but it's actually demonstrated by Jesus that people need to decide for themselves to come to the church there's no room for misinterpretation there.

It's fine if you want to believe all Christians are the same, I'll won't be following your example though and instead believe most Atheists respect others but choose to live differently despite a lot of harassment I see against Christians here.

Dammit man I don't believe all Christians want to convert me. I don't even believe the majority do, even though personal experience has shown me that they do. Turn off your persecution complex for five minutes, accept that you said something hypocritical to real life and move on.

Why is it so hard for people to accept when they make a mistake?

As for Jesus and going to church, and admittedly this is going by my memory, what do you have to say about Saul/Paul's conversion? Surely that was forcing him to 'church'? How can you accept that Jesus wants people to freely choose and then also condone Saul/Paul's forceful conversion?

I wasn't denying there was people like that I thought you meant the majority of Christians were like that.

As far as I remember he became blind and was healed, he wasn't brainwashed into conversion.

"The gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ", doesn't sound particularly like a forced conversion to me.

 

[maximilian]

Random question: Do you think listening to any sort of music is truly Anti-Christian? Or is it just how the individual percieves the sound within his own light?

I think there is music that is unhelpful to your faith and may be a bad witness as it inherently contradicts your view. Ie. Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl is probably not a good witness if you are yes on prop 8. Similarly, listening to Slayer isn't going to be helpful - there is much better stuff you could be listening too.

Premillenial Dispensationalism, which is a branch of America's conservative evangelical movements. Its eschatology plays an important role in popular culture and is often described as a "literal interpretation of the Bible" by believers and the media.
-- Alex

Yeah, I'm not really a subscriber to dispensationalism. There are some parts of the hermeneutics that I really don't agree with. This is a good article however: http://pitchfordsramblings.com/2005/06/01/is-dispensationalism-biblical/

 

[EnglishMuffin]

Why does the bible say the world is flat and that the sun revolves around the earth when it is clearly not so? Did god make a mistake?

 

[Amund]

what the hell's up with that kill the infidels stuff. wouldn't god tell them to live and let live and let him judge when the time comes?

Thought that was Islam, never heard that about Christianity

through out history, just about every religion killed off other religions. The Christians did it to the Euro Pagans, the Native Americans, the Southern Native Americans.

And yes I realise some Christians were against those movements, but the majority did it and used their faith as the basis of their actions.

lol your logic is broken,

May I ask what nationality you are? hopefully they have done something like start a war and I can label your entire nation as war mongerer's because according to you it's right to label entire groups.

I did say that I realize that there are some Christians who were against the mass killings. However the majority was for it. Also, would you like me to go through history, and try to point out every individual who was for the mass killings? Cause seriously, that is impossible. Even the History channel groups people. They say that it was the Christians who marched across Europe snuffing out all other religions.


Lets use an example shall we? Lets say there's a war between two groups. We shall call the first group, the Bunnies, the second group the Rabbits. Now with these two at war, some of the individuals in the Bunnies group do not wish to fight, they would rather be peaceful. Same for some of the individual in the Rabbits. In a history book, would we point out every single individual who was for and against the war. No we wouldn't, we would use to labels. The Bunnies and the Rabbits. We may make note that some were against what the majority was for, but that's really just a given.

Now we put my example into real world Logic. Lets take the Christians and the killing of Pagans in Northern Europe. Was every Christian for the killing of the pagan people? No? Do we go and name every individual responsible for the killing of the Pagans? No. Do we point out every single Christian that was for the killing? No. We use labels.

Lets use politics for another real world Example. Abortion. Is every Republican for it? No. Do we go and say that Republicans are against it? Yes. Why because the Majority of Republicans are against it.

Do you want more examples? If so I can give you some.

 

[maximilian]

What do you think of the people -men, women and kids- burnt in the era of the Spanish Inquisition because of religion? I could go on, but I'm not going to convince anyone who "have faith", so I'll just shut up...

I think that the Spanish inquistion flew the flag of religion when in actual fact it was the state appealing to peoples religious fears and used it to control the whole of Spain. Nothing about it is Biblical/Christian.

 

[Amnestic]

As far as I remember he became blind and was healed, he wasn't brainwashed into conversion.

"The gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ", doesn't sound particularly like a forced conversion to me.

Isn't God showing himself to SaulPaul a forceful conversion enough? Is Saul a special exception to the Faith requirement that Jesus preaches about? You can't honestly claim that Saul just decided to become a Christian, divine intervention in his life lead him to it, that's as bad, if not worse, than Christians trying to convert people of other religions. It's directly undermining something that Jesus himself preached as core to the religion: Faith. You can't have Faith if God comes and shows himself to you.

 

[Tranka Verrane]

From my point of view, people of the Christian/Catholic faiths are just as bad, if not worse than the Nazi's, and I'm really curious if you see it that way at all.

Wow, that's a big leap. I'm not sure that says quite what you meant it to say. It reads as if you are saying that all present-day christians are the same as the pepetrators of the genocide that saw the mass extinction of thousands of native Americans, are the same as the Nazis. Personally I'd agree with the second two, but I wouldn't equate them with present-day Christians. That would be like saying all modern day Germans are Nazis. It isn't the faith that wiped out those people, it was people acting in a very unchristian way. They may have thought they were being Christians, but they were wrong. The Nazis thought they were Christians too, incidentally.

Genocide has very little to do with religion and a lot to do with the darkest side of human nature, the ability to stop seeing some people as human and therefore deserving of our empathy. Islamic suicide bombers, Nazis, Rwanda, Cambodia... They all convinced themselves of the ethicacy of their actions by denying the humanity of their enemy. But no religion that has lasted any time at all has begun on principles that included the subjugation of another. People pervert religions, not the other way around. The devil can quote scripture to his own ends.

 

[ThePlasmatizer]

what the hell's up with that kill the infidels stuff. wouldn't god tell them to live and let live and let him judge when the time comes?

Thought that was Islam, never heard that about Christianity

through out history, just about every religion killed off other religions. The Christians did it to the Euro Pagans, the Native Americans, the Southern Native Americans.

And yes I realise some Christians were against those movements, but the majority did it and used their faith as the basis of their actions.

lol your logic is broken,

May I ask what nationality you are? hopefully they have done something like start a war and I can label your entire nation as war mongerer's because according to you it's right to label entire groups.

I did say that I realize that there are some Christians who were against the mass killings. However the majority was for it. Also, would you like me to go through history, and try to point out every individual who was for the mass killings? Cause seriously, that is impossible. Even the History channel groups people. They say that it was the Christians who marched across Europe snuffing out all other religions.


Lets use an example shall we? Lets say there's a war between two groups. We shall call the first group, the Bunnies, the second group the Rabbits. Now with these two at war, some of the individuals in the Bunnies group do not wish to fight, they would rather be peaceful. Same for some of the individual in the Rabbits. In a history book, would we point out every single individual who was for and against the war. No we wouldn't, we would use to labels. The Bunnies and the Rabbits. We may make note that some were against what the majority was for, but that's really just a given.

Now we put my example into real world Logic. Lets take the Christians and the killing of Pagans in Northern Europe. Was every Christian for the killing of the pagan people? No? Do we go and name every individual responsible for the killing of the Pagans? No. Do we point out every single Christian that was for the killing? No. We use labels.

Lets use politics for another real world Example. Abortion. Is every Republican for it? No. Do we go and say that Republicans are against it? Yes. Why because the Majority of Republicans are against it.

Do you want more examples? If so I can give you some.

So you're really okay with being called a war mongerer because others would be for it and you're not by default being part of the same "group" as them you are the same.

You can't label all people as the same as others by association.

 

[Amund]

Because without Jesus death and resurrection, our sins would not be forgiven and the promise of salvation etc. would mean nothing. Our whole faith hinges on the symbol of the cross. Similarly, it is a fairly good symbol.

Ok, but why the cross? It was a horrible torture device. Why not use the Jesus Fish as your main symbol? Or why not use the Bible its self?


Also another question, I have heard that Jesus said not to worship him or symbols. Is this true? If true, would not using a symbol and praying upon it, be an act of worshiping a symbol?

I also heard that he said that he said that you need not go to church to worship god. Is that true? If so, why are so many Christians required to go to church?

 

[maximilian]

Do you see yourself as a Christian?

Yes.

Despite Sorrow's rather vulgar way of addressing the question it is a good one. How can you justify the sorrow (heh) that people go through daily when a supposedly omnibenevolent God created us? Basically I'm asking how you deal with the problem of evil [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_problem_of_evil]

This is an audio file that explains it really well. http://download.redeemer.com/sermons/Suffering_If_God_is_good_why.mp3 It's a sermon/talk, so you can glean a pretty solid understanding from it.

yah I know, doesn't answer my question as to why it's in the scriptures.

Either it's in the scriptures as history of when the Jewish nation was commanded by God to fulfill his plan for them or it's a recount of Christian persecution within the New Testament. The former has no Christian life instructional purpose as outlined in my posts replying to Labyrinthe.