[QUOTE] " The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful,and has no one to thank". G.K. Chesterton


In His book Soul Survivor, Philip Yancey writes.."Why am I still a Christian? What keeps me pursuing a gospel that has come to me amid so much distortion and static...that often sounds more like bad news than good"?

I am at the point of asking myself this question: "What can I salvage from my fundamental religious background that is even worth keeping"?
I find myself avoiding some christians I meet now, because it reminds me of the old pain I felt so often in those early years of my faith.
Yancey asks,:Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million southern Baptist?"
I answer....Been there....done that!
Anybody else here having trouble with the salvage process?

A work in progress,

Jerry

YES!

What's left after fundamentalism???? Gosh - all the good stuff. For many people, fundamentalism is all about rules and figuring out how to make yourself acceptable to God when you fundamentally are not.... PUNT.

What are you left with? GRACE, God's unconditional love and desire for you, freedom to find Him every/anywhere. The freedom to learn about other paths/religions - not necessarily to change paths, but to learn about God from a different angle.

You get to move from a selfish idea of salvation - it's all about whether I'm in the book to a salvation that comes through you to change the world by touching everyone you touch. You lose the need to force others into your viewpoint so that they don't go to Hell. You can just show God's love, no strings attached.

For many people, leaving a fundamentalist background, it is hard to stay in christianity at first. Many explore other paths and then return to christianity. God is everywhere; so's Jesus. Learning more about Him will probably strengthen your faith. I'd try Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Phillip Yancey, Brian McLaren (His first 3 books are loosely fictional about a conservative pastor who becomes more progressive and how he deals with that with his church, friends, family, etc. A Generous Orthodoxy gives you a new framework).

It's early, hope I'm not babbling too much, but your question really struck me. The good stuff is left. Really. Godspeed Jerry - I really enjoy our conversations here.

[quote=jerryb,Feb 15 2006, 10:49 PM]
[QUOTE] " The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful,and has no one to thank". G.K. Chesterton


In His book Soul Survivor, Philip Yancey writes.."Why am I still a Christian? What keeps me pursuing a gospel that has come to me amid so much distortion and static...that often sounds more like bad news than good"?

I am at the point of asking myself this question: "What can I salvage from my fundamental religious background that is even worth keeping"?
I find myself avoiding some christians I meet now, because it reminds me of the old pain I felt so often in those early years of my faith.
Yancey asks,:Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million southern Baptist?"
I answer....Been there....done that!
Anybody else here having trouble with the salvage process?

A work in progress,

Jerry

[/quote]

It's a journey we are on. I have often found myself so enamored with Buddhist insights that I have thought about leaving Christianity behind. But the Bible really has a hold on me! And the progressive Christians I know and love in mainline congregations all over the planet are a network of love and compassion I can count on. I give Alan Watts the credit for letting me know that Christian myth and ritual is a good representation of the perennial philosophy or Mysticism which is the core, the heart, the foundation of all wisdom.

Moses met God at the Burning Bush. Jesus met God in the wilderness. Buddha met God at the Bo Tree. Mohammad met God at a little shack or something like that where he communicated directly with God. You can and do. I can and do.

Borg in THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY argues that the born again metaphor is too important to give away. Indeed "emerging Paradigm" or Progressive Christians have a great way to be born again or born from above, the way of the journey of humility and openeness. Christianity offers so much wisdom as do other wisdom traditions. Here in the USA there is every reason to stay connected to any congregation where the "emerging paradigm" is either accepted or embraced and there are many.

JB

Silence, persistence, consistency, openness, reading the ideas of others, and deep-emotionally-connected thought and reflection. Practice these and it will all come to you my friend.

peace to you...flow....

Thanks Cynthia.....guess I sounded a bit hopeless in this post. But I really am not hopeless....just hoping that I can be more realistic in my new faith.'
You are right though....all the 'good stuff' is left....and I intend,by God's help, to find it.

Blessings to you,

Jerry

[quote=mystictrek,Feb 16 2006, 10:07 AM]
[quote=jerryb,Feb 15 2006, 10:49 PM]
[QUOTE] " The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful,and has no one to thank". G.K. Chesterton


In His book Soul Survivor, Philip Yancey writes.."Why am I still a Christian? What keeps me pursuing a gospel that has come to me amid so much distortion and static...that often sounds more like bad news than good"?

I am at the point of asking myself this question: "What can I salvage from my fundamental religious background that is even worth keeping"?
I find myself avoiding some christians I meet now, because it reminds me of the old pain I felt so often in those early years of my faith.
Yancey asks,:Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million southern Baptist?"
I answer....Been there....done that!
Anybody else here having trouble with the salvage process?

A work in progress,

Jerry

[/quote]

It's a journey we are on. I have often found myself so enamored with Buddhist insights that I have thought about leaving Christianity behind. But the Bible really has a hold on me! And the progressive Christians I know and love in mainline congregations all over the planet are a network of love and compassion I can count on. I give Alan Watts the credit for letting me know that Christian myth and ritual is a good representation of the perennial philosophy or Mysticism which is the core, the heart, the foundation of all wisdom.

Moses met God at the Burning Bush. Jesus met God in the wilderness. Buddha met God at the Bo Tree. Mohammad met God at a little shack or something like that where he communicated directly with God. You can and do. I can and do.

Borg in THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY argues that the born again metaphor is too important to give away. Indeed "emerging Paradigm" or Progressive Christians have a great way to be born again or born from above, the way of the journey of humility and openeness. Christianity offers so much wisdom as do other wisdom traditions. Here in the USA there is every reason to stay connected to any congregation where the "emerging paradigm" is either accepted or embraced and there are many.

[/quote]


Mystic......Thanks for reminding me of the 'progressive network of love'....I too believe it is there...maybe not always as sharply defind as I wish...but still there.
Thanks for your encouragement

Blessings,
Jerry

Hi Flow...as always,you are an encourager. Thank you. I'm really working on the 'silence' part of your equation. I recently began reading 'Peace is every step' by Thich Nhat Hanh and He is helping me stop and breathe,and wait....amazing how that helps.

Blessings Friend,
Jerry

The people that make comments on this site just make my day. You all make me feel like I belong to a community of believers. thank you very much. I think you all fulfill point #7 along with others on the 8 points of tcpc. thanks again.

There are only 2 things left, both taught by Jesus

1) Love, Love Love

2) Standing up to those who abuse wealth and power.

I am still a Christian because I can change my life by becoming aware of my unity with an infinite God and the infinite possibilities that await all of us, but first, every new stage in life requires us to part from the previous one. Childhood gives rise to youth as it develops into adulthood. After a temporary stay our minds expand doing away with ignorance in order to approach God where the only medium between our minds and God's pure consciousness is our thoughts. As we bring ourselves to a greater consciousness, positive life affirming beliefs are accepted and negative thoughts and problems disappear as we express more love, peace, joy, wisdom and harmony with everything that flows unceasingly from God, but many hesitate to venture into the unknown. They tend to cling to the familiar in life, even if they are not happy. That is why Jesus preached with parables because pure consciousness is above reason but not against it, if pure consciousness can first be translated into terms that the mind can grasp people will learn to sense what is expressed. Pure consciousness and reason are friends, not enemies so we should be open to new ideas because we can always reject what we consider false and concede to the truth.

Christians throw rocks at me and people who hate Christians throw rocks at me so why am I a Christian because the rocks chip away the exterior showing the soul shinning underneath.
http://thinkunity.com

May I reply. I spent a year in hospital for a failed hip operation. My sister, who is a fundamentalist, started to blame me for being disabled. This was the last straw. I needed something to hold on to but the only words in the Bible that made any sense to me was "My God, my God, why thou forsaken me." Yet I did find confort in chanting "Abide with me."

When I got out of hospital I read the book "Stealing Jesus" (sorry I can't recall the author. The book talked about how fundamentalist, self-righteously claimed that the how destructive it is when fundamentalist claimed that the only way to be a Christian was to accept their belief and interpretation. Yet, the auther point out that being a Christian isn't about self-righteousness and judgement but about compassion. It is about living in the world with compassion and seaking jusice and invlusion rather then judgemjent. I claimed myself as a liberal Christian.

I joined Ruah, a church which at that time was based on Matthew Fox. His book "Original Blessing" talks about the via Negativa, the acceptence and working with suffering. I had long asked 'If there was a God, why was there suffering.' The priest a Ruah explained how we are purified by suffering just as a fire purifies metal. I began to see my ordeal in hospital as a fire of purificatation. It certainly fooorced to redirect my life, find way of reaching out, and has led me to study progressive Chrisrian theology on my own. I am grateful to find like minded people on this message bord with whom I can share my journey

Marilyn

It is curious how those who claim that the Bible is everything get only half of the Bible's messages. Some take the idea that disease is due to sin as TRUTH, and miss that even the Bible says that's not always the case. How much farther someone would have to go to accept the modern knowledge that no disease is directly due to sin, that, "Arise and walk!" and "Your sins are forgiven!" do not mean the same thing, even if the gospels quote Jesus as saying so.

God in life and God in words are two different things. I'm grateful to traditional Christianity for giving me a way to discover the difference. It is not words that gets someone from an understanding like that to living one's life to end poverty or to end conflict or to help people in other ways, including oneself.

I am now studying "Beyond Belief" by Elaine Pagels, a leading gnostic scholar. I am amazed and intregues at the debates which took place in early Christianity. In Beyond Belief The Gospel of John with it emphasis on 'believing in Jesus Christ was directly written to discount the Gospel of Thomas which emphasized how each of us can experience the "Divine within': Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas says "Those who drink from my well will become as I am."

The early Church Fathers were trying to figure out how to respond to the persecution of Christian. Some of the gnostics refused to be martyred. Their belief that the Divine within made Christianity andividual personal experience which could not be controlled by the Church. The Church Fathers resented the disrespect for their authority. They labelled the gnostics heretics and banned their books. This argruement continues on today.

Other books, particularily the "Bible Unearthed", by Finckelstein and el, talks about how Yahweh became a masculine tribal God to distinguish the tribe from the surroumding other tribes. These tribes worshipped the goddess or both god and goddess. The early Hebrews defined Yawheh as an angry, jealous god who would not tolerate other gods and goddess. Defining God this way gave them a sense of self-righteous superiority and distinction which is carrired on even today vis a vis other religions. No wonder the gnostics rejected Yawheh.

Looking back on these helps me to understand the confliocts in the Church are bo new. I do not want to get rid of the concepts of God and Christ but redefine them so that they make sense to me and my inner experience.

Good post!

It is sometimes difficult for some contemporary Christians to imagine a time when the "New Testament" did not exist. Some seem to think that the Bible dropped magically out of the sky, and that the early Christians were walking around with Bibles that were mass produced.

MOW

A great book on the making of the New Testament is: WHO WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT? by Burton L. Mack. Very comprehensive and provocative. He says that we know almost nothing about the historical Jesus. He says the early followers created a Jesus Movement which later became the Christ Cult. Fascinating.

The Jesus Movement was based on Sayings (Q) which were quite similar to the wisdom teachings of the Greek School of Cynicism. Not necessarily to be confused with a modern cynic.

I am going copy and paste this post in the book section and see if anyone wants to discuss it further.

I haven't read "Who wrote the New Testament", but I did read "The Lost Gospel of Q" by B Mack. I have gained more respect for Burton Mack as I have gotten older. I try to read something from the Q Gospel every week( I don't always suceed).

In regards to the Cynics, the best known of them is Diogenes of Sinope. One funny anecdote about him is this one. One day Diogenes was in the house of a rich man, and was told not to spit on the floor. So Diogenes spit in the man's face instead. I don't know if that is true or myth, but it gives some insight into some of the Cynic attitude .

Jesus never did anything that brusque . However some of his dealings with Pharisees, Saducees ,and lawyers come close. His " sons of vipers" tirade in the book of Matthew (Matthew chapter 23) is another example.

MOW

Most definately, Jerry!

One of the things that fundamentalism ingrained into my psyche was the notion that if ANY of it falls, then ALL of it falls. In other words, if I rejected fundamentalism, it was *exactly* the same as rejecting God, the Bible, faith, Jesus Christ, heaven, etc.

Fundamentalism says that we have no right to look at our belief system critically and to accept (or reject) only the parts that makes sense to us. It insists that the baby must be thrown out with the bathwater.

It is so successful at this lie, that most of the stuff you find on the internet (or in literature) that has to do with leaving fundamentalism entails that you leave Christianity altogether. And many have. Maybe that is a good thing.

In my own experience, I walked away from Christianity when I left fundamentalism. I threw out all of my Bibles and Christian music. I felt I could no longer be a Christian if I wasn't a fundamentalist.

It took a while but I am not searching through my soul and my life for what can be salvaged. I am not so sure that I am looking for the "truth" (as it seems to be very subjective) but I am looking for what is meaningful, what is transforming.

And I'm learning that it is beneficial (and probably necessary) to be critical of what I hear and read that claims to speak for God. This turn in my path requires discernment like nothing else I've ever known. It also requires letting go of the anger and bitterness, but that is itself a process. But it is also leading me into a freedom that I never thought possible. I don't have to be right. And I don't have to convince others that they are wrong. And I certainly am not going to give the welfare or salvaging of my soul to *anyone* else except myself and God.

wayfarer

Good post Wayfarer,

I really relate to what you said..("It's leading me into a freedom that I never thought possible") I too have found such a freedom. Just tonight as my wife and I were having dinner, I suddenly felt compelled to say," It's so wondeful to not be afraid of God anymore". Having been in a fundamental church for over twenty years....I now cherish this wonderful freedom of grace. Thanks for reminding me.

Blessings to you,

Jerry

Thanks, Wayfarer for a wonderful, provocative, clarifying, thoughtful post. My parents weren't fundamentalist so I was nurtured by loving, progressive congregations as a child and adolescent and young adult. But the fundamentalists were always within screeching distance! I have struggled all of my life with doubts and insecurities and the fundamentalists still can mess withy me emotionally and even intellectually and spiritually. Getting liberated from their spell is still a goal I have yet to achieve even though I was not brought up in that milieu and never participated in it in my 6 decade long life.

Hi, I'm new here. Was browsing, noticed an undercurrent of unity among posters here re a relief to be rid of a former fundamentalism.

As the world's only esoteric fundamentalist, I've seen these sentiments expressed on other theology boards, and wonder if any former fundies here would be willing to clarify their feelings about what it is about your former religious views you abandoned, what you found that is of greater value.

So you don't think I'm trying to 'bait' anyone into a mud-slinging contest, since a deep spiritual experience I underwent over a three year period, from '91-'94, I've found that my own fundamentalist beliefs were first shattered, then rearranged. Lots of old stuff was thrown out, and I find a lot of agreement with sentiments expressed here regarding some of the negative aspects of fundamentalism, but find now, some 12 years later, that my adherence to the fundamentals of the faith have been strengthened. I'm interested in honest, challenging debate, not rock-throwing.

Any willing correspondents?

Hi Bernie. Welcome to TCPC.

Sure, I'll bite. Not literally, of course. Feel free to ask for clarifications if it would help.

Some of the fundamentalist views I've discarded:

1. The most important thing about life is where we will spend the afterlife.
2. Jesus sole mission was to die in order to save us from the default fate of going to hell.
3. God is three persons.
4. Jesus is God.
5. The Bible is the inerrant and infallible very words of God.
6. Jesus' death on the cross appeased God's anger towards humanity.
7. We are all born with a sin nature that cannot be removed until death.
8. We must continually confess our sins in order to stay forgiven.
9. God doesn't care how good you are. Goodness invalidates his grace.
10. We must keep the 10 commandments.
11. God's wrath endures forever.

That's enough for now. Now for things that I have kept.

1. God is love.
2. Jesus is a good role-model of God's character.
3. God's spirit is all encompassing.
4. The Bible is very meaningful.
5. Jesus' death on the cross demonstrates God's love.
6. God is good and forgiving.
7. God can be experienced through the person of Jesus Christ.
8. The greatest commandment is to love God and to love others.
9. The church should be "Jesus with skin on" to our world.
10. We live by faith.
11. God's love endures forever.

wayfarer

Howdy wayfarer2k,

Thanks for the welcome.


Yikes, I don't know....that avatar of yours sure looks like it'd bite. But I'll take the chance.....


Interesting, a pretty typical and consistent list compared to other former fundies I've dialoged wtih. I'd agree with you on 6 and 11 especially, and 1,2,5,8,9 & 10 conditionally.



Here, we have strong common ground in 1,5,6,7,8,10 and 11. Not sure what you mean by #9. Agree conditionally with the rest. See, fundies and ex-fundies can have some common ground.

I've found a great deal of freedom in adherence to several of the points you make, especially in those areas that confirm that God's love is toward all mankind.
But as mentioned in my opening post, I've found more reason than ever to remain committed to the fundamentals of the faith [as outlined by evengelicals in the early part of the 20th century in response to the rising tide of progressive thought within the church]. I'm curious to explore how differences in religious opinion are formed.

It's generally considered true that all those things that denote in a human being an improved or closer relationship with God have a corresponding effect for good in that individual. I.e., as one progresses in one's religious walk, it will, if authentic, produce conspicuous fruit (Mat 7). In light of this, aside from the freedom I think I can safely say you and I share--that God in His great mercy and love isn't going to roast in an eternal hell any human being--what other fruit or benefits do you see in having abandoned, for example, the notion that Jesus was God, that man is inherently sinful or that Scripture as an inspired set of texts has a form of power in being God's actual word and communication to mankind?

Thanks for your willingness to correspond.

Jerry,

My avatar isn't what I really look like. I look worse. But it does express the notion that we are often repelled by things that don't fit into our little boxes, doesn't it?

>See, fundies and ex-fundies can have some common ground.

I believe so, too. But without doing alot of finger-pointing, I am not usually the one that refuses to communicate when with my fundamentalist brothers and sisters. It is usually them writing me off, not the other way around.

>But as mentioned in my opening post, I've found more reason than ever to remain committed to the fundamentals of the faith [as outlined by evengelicals in the early part of the 20th century in response to the rising tide of progressive thought within the church].

For that, I can honestly say that I'm glad for you. Those fundamentals probably are something you need at this point in your walk. I'm saying this with no condescension at all. We are all at different places in our sacred journey. What I resent is that most fundamentalists insist that I be where they are. It is then that things become very uncomfortable.

>It's generally considered true that all those things that denote in a human being an improved or closer relationship with God have a corresponding effect for good in that individual. I.e., as one progresses in one's religious walk, it will, if authentic, produce conspicuous fruit (Mat 7).

I would agree. For me, the "fundamentals" made me worse -- more judgmental, less patient, more self-righteous, etc.

>what other fruit or benefits do you see in having abandoned, for example, the notion that Jesus was God, that man is inherently sinful or that Scripture as an inspired set of texts has a form of power in being God's actual word and communication to mankind?

Well, those areas are big subjects and probably deserve threads in and of themselves. But let me offer just a couple of insights into how rejecting the notion that "Jesus is God" helped me:

If Jesus isn't God:

1. I don't have to explain how God, who is immortal, died on a cross.
2. The notion that I should become like Jesus is more welcoming and accessible.
3. I don't have to rely on some man-made doctrine like the trinity to try to explain something that trinitarians say is unexplainable.
4. I don't have to explain how God, on the cross, was made sin.
5. I don't have to explain how God, who is not a man, is a man.
6. Then his temptations were as real as mine. God cannot be tempted.
7. I don't have to wrestle with how God as God is greater than God as Jesus.
8. Then Jesus becomes, to me, an example of what a life filled WITH God looks like. The Bible does seem to say that God was IN Christ, not that Yahweh was Jesus of Nazareth (or vice versa).

These are just a few examples. While they seem more like solving rational problems than anything else, I think they have very practical application.

wayfarer

>what other fruit or benefits do you see in having abandoned, for example, that man is inherently sinful or that Scripture as an inspired set of texts has a form of power in being God's actual word and communication to mankind?

I think the doctrine of "original sin" tries to address the issue of why we don't love God and others as we should. In that respect, I admit that we can be quite selfish creatures and treat each other very badly.

But when this doctrine is taken to an extreme, as it sometimes is, it becomes a way of saying that God is forever separate from us and cannot abide us. Of course, Romans is quoting stating that there is none good. But according to the Old Testament, many people were found to be righteous -- Abraham, Noah, etc. without ever having God's spirit indwell them.

Taking this doctrine to an extreme, I was told that two of our miscarried children were in hell because they both had "original sin" that prevented God from taking them to heaven.

This doctrine also suggests that it is perfectly fine for one group of people to be punished for the sins of another group of people. Personally, I see no justice in that concept at all.

As far as the scriptures go, I don't see the Bible as a magical incantation book that many Christians do. They view it as an encyclopedia galatica or as a religious cookbook full of words that can be quoted in order to have their wills accomplished. The Bible then becomes, not a record of other people's understandings of God, but a spell book of sorts in which God has put his magic.

The other side of not taking the Bible as the very words of God is that such a view allows us to be critical of the text and to discern which accounts in the Bible best portray the kind of God that Jesus taught about. If this is not done, then God tells one group of people to kill their enemies while telling another group to love theirs. Or God says an eye for an eye in one place while saying to turn the other cheek in another. I think the doctrine of dispensationalism grew out of a desire to try to reconcile or harmonize the schizophrenia that plauges God if ever word of the Bible is his exact quote. An interesting concept considering that most Christians believe that God is immutable.

I guess the bottom line for me is that fundies say that we must get our doctrines right before we can love others. I think that loving others will help us get our doctrines right. But that is me. What do you think?

wayfarer

Hello WF2k,

Your mention that one of my questions deserved its own thread made me realize that I've sort of hijacked this one, so I'll try to keep this short and sweet, and will back out anytime the thread wanders back to its original intent.

Just one question, though.....you said,


Which fundamentals of the faith do you see as contributing to being judgmental and self-righteous? Do you think progressives are more free from judgmentalism than fundies, and if so, do you think this is because of the reasons I stated in my earlier post...re a higher relationship and connectivity with God?

Also, do you think gut feeling in one's personal theology trumps reason in, for instance, the case of the fundie who sees man's inherent sinfulness as a reasonable, rational proposition over against the progressive view that man is not inherently sinful?

Let me know if you think this discussion warrants a new thread, BTW.

I can't answer for wayfarer. But I can tell you about my experience. Progressives are just as prone to being judgemental as any one else. But I find they tend to be judgemental in other areas, not so much in religion. But like wayfarer I find that I am a lot less judgemental than I was as a conservative/fundamentalist. I don't have a need to find who is in and who is out because there is no in and out. But that is more generally speaking, it doesn't keep me from having to watch myself be judgemental on a more personal level.

Bernie, I'm new here also so I don't know how strict the moderators are about threads and staying on subject. I trust they will let us know when/if something needs to be changed.

Personally, I think that the fundamentalist view that Christianity is all about getting out of the go-to-hell line and getting into the go-to-heaven line fosters the most judgmental and self-righteous attitudes. I suspect that if many people were not threatened with the punishment of hell, they would wonder why they would ever want to be Christians. Fundamentalism seems, at least to me, to be all about belief in God *now* for the sake of going to heaven *later*. I think it subverts Jesus' teaching that following him is about God's kingdom coming to earth now and shifts the focus to people getting to heaven later.

When this becomes the focal point, then, as October's Autumn has mentioned, Christianity takes on an "us versus them" mentality. Who is in? Who is out? Who is saved from hell? Who is not saved from hell? With such stakes at risk, how can one help but become obsessed with making determinations about how and whose soul is saved?

Can progressives be judgmental? Certainly. I don't really know this board yet so none of my comments are directed here. But one progressive board I was on was judgmental, not of eternal things, but of temporal things. Again going back to what October's Autumn said, no one's soul was judged but politics and social beliefs were certainly challenged.

Maybe some of that is good. We need our politics and social beliefs challenged. That is, after all, how we live out God's kingdom in the here and now, is it not? If God very much cares about how we treat each other "down here", then it makes sense that we constantly critique ourselves to see if we are becoming "Jesus with skin on" to those around us. I.e. living out loving God and loving others in self-sacrificing ways.

When we see how our politics and social policies affect others, I think some judgmentalism is good. But it takes alot of grace and discernment to judge beliefs without judging others. It takes understanding and meaningful dialogue.

Fundamentalism, at least to me, seems to be a list of beliefs that form a basis for making a determination of who is in and who is out without those beliefs ever truly impacting how we love God or love others. For instance, how does my acceptance of the virgin birth of Christ make a difference in my relationships today? Does it really matter, from a practical viewpoint, whether Jesus had a sin nature or not? They would say that Jesus' essence has everything to do with his ability to save. Yet they also insist that his nature alone doesn't save anyone. God still requires, according to the fundamentalist, something from us, something that Christ did not do at the cross. In that sense, the focus shifts from how and what Jesus taught and lived to what we believe about his person or nature. His life and teaching become secondary to a belief that Jesus was sinless or, in essence, *not* like us. I think, in this respect, fundies deny Jesus' humanity for the sake of his deity, which constantly reinforces the notion that God and man are forever separate.

As to gut feelings, how can we escape them? Even for the fundamentalist, he/she must interpret what they read in the Bible. While they often insist that the Bible is infallible and inerrant, they will seldom admit that their interpretation and understanding of the Bible is possibly fallible and errant. They sort of walk a double line in insisting that, due to humanity's inherent sinfulness, we cannot trust gut feelings and reason while also insisting that, despite their own indwelling fleshly nature, *they* have the truth and the mind of God in all things.

wayfarer

Important correction! I meant, "I am NOW searching through my soul and my life for what can be salvaged" from my prior fundamentalist beliefs. Spell-checkers fail miserably with misspoken words!

I hear you on this, Mystictrek. At this time, I simply don't have much interaction with my fundamentalist brothers and sisters. I truly hope the time will come when I can interact with them without going on the defensive. But the wounds are still fresh and they seem to poke at them whenever I try to, in love, reenter that milieu.

I often wonder if Spong is right about Christianity changing or dying. I would hate to see it die as a world religion due to the fact that the world sees it only as Catholicism or fundamentalism. But perhaps the death of this old forms could give birth to a newer, more compassionate, more mystical form that actually leads to transformation of ourselves and our world in the here and now.

I remain hopeful.

wayfarer

Hi OA,

Thanks for responding. You seem to be pretty honest. Actually, I've found that progressives and fundies are about equally judgmental of one another, in religious matters. I say this from a very informal 3 year study of my own, posting on various theology boards and having dialog with folks with different viewpoints.

Personally, as a fundie, I've found that once I understood that it has been God's intention all along to save all mankind, it became immediately easier to accept both my fellow fundies--who largely reject my views--and progressives, who also usually reject my theology. *sigh* Being the world's only esoteric fundamentalist gets lonely sometimes, but there are benefits, too...for instance, being the world's only rational esotericist, I recenly elected myself to my second consecutive term as CEO and chielf spokeperson for the Society of Rational Esotericists. Quite a prestigious position, you know.

Lonely though it is, still, human motive and behavior fascinates me, so I'll continue to collect data....

Bernie, I would assume then, correct me if I am wrong, that you are a universalist?

BTW, I have no problem with universalism, whether it be from a scriptural or philosophical viewpoint. I find the philosophical approach more convincing for me. But I know quite a few universalist fundamentalist who get very judgmental over preterism and eschatalogical viewpoints. It would seem that we are all very human.

Then again, I know alot of fundamentalists who would insist that universalism is a heresy and that universalists have departed from the faith and will most likely go to hell.

All I can say is, what a world!

Nice to have you here on TCPC forum.

wayfarer

ROFLing... I have felt very isolated in the past as my beliefs changed from fundamentalist/conservative to liberal. I actually started going to church again a little over a year ago because of getting frustrated with my interactions with so many conservative/fundamentalists (present company excluded) and needed to be around people who called themselves Christians who were not XYZ! I imagine you understand what I'm speaking of. It can be very lonely thinking for yourself instead of letting others do it for you... it is true, but in a different way, of some progressives...

Hi WF2k,


Correct.


Correct again...this is by far the most popular view among my fellow fundies. Remember, my own fundamentalism affirms the first four of the fundamentals--or five, as some use a 6 point fundamentalism, as per…..

Bible inerrancy
the virgin birth
the deity of Christ
the substitutionary atonement/man’s fallen state
the bodily resurrection
the second coming of Christ [premillenial belief]

I reject the last….premillenialism is not a fundamental of the Christian faith...and most are open to careful interpretation, which your typical Christian-in-the-pew is not particularly good at. While you and I appear to agree on what I believe to be some pretty important points, I’ll never tell you or anyone else you’re going to eternal hell. I do believe in hell, but not that it’s eternal. I typically lose lots of fundie support when I state that I believe Adolph Hitler, you, me, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Mother Theresa are all equally the apple of God’s eye. Most can’t handle the thinking behind this. But fndies are people too, you know, and not as bad overall as they're made out. Criticism tends to focus on the worst 5%, which is human nature.

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Hi OA,


Absolutely.

It's nice to have you here, Bernie.

To be honest, I was a scriptural universalist for a couple of years. I visited the concordant websites and like-minded forums. I read some, in my opinion, excellent books on this important subject: If Grace Is True, If God Is Love, The Last Word and the Word After That, The Unfailing Love of God, and a number of others. In fact, it was probably my universalist leanings that led me to a more progressive or liberal understanding.

BTW, there is a new book coming out in June that you may be interested in. It is called "The Coming of the Son of Man" by ... Perriman (or Perrimen). It supposedly does a very good job of showing how many of Jesus' eschatalogical warnings were fulfilled in the first century. Definately a must-read on my list.

And, yes, fundies are people too. Some of my best friends are fundies.

In my experiences, like the rest of us, they can be very gracious and loving individually. But when they herd together, I think they tend to trample anything in their path.

In retrospect, I doubt that many of them seriously believe in hell. They believe in it because it is a tenet of their faith, it is an item on their list that must be given mental assent to in order to be part of the group. But if they *really* believed in eternal torment, I would suspect they would be much more active in trying to rescue others from the "burning building" that supposedly believe in. I.e. if I truly believed my neighbor's house was on fire, I would not use "friendship evangelism" techniques to try to get them out of their house. And I could care less if my warnings to them were offensive or not. The stakes would be too high for me to try to build a relationship first or to tell them how I escaped my own burning building. A burning house demands immediate action, not diplomacy. And I think that fundamentalist, despite their claim to believe in a literal hell, are more diplomats than fire-fighters.

I still have a list of fundamentals, Bernie. But it pretty much goes like this:

Love God
Love others

To me, everything else is negotiable.

wayfarer

Hi WF2k,

Didn't mean to ignore your post on page 2....I missed it completely until browsing after my last post.

[QUOTE]Bernie, I'm new here also so I don't know how strict the moderators are about threads and staying on subject. I trust they will let us know when/if something needs to be changed. [/QUOTE]
Moderators typically don't interfere too much unless excessive name-calling starts taking place. I was more concerned that jerryb, the thread starter, might think that I'm hyjacking his post and leading it off in directions not of his choosing. Don't want to play the bully with someone else's thread.

[QUOTE]Personally, I think that the fundamentalist view that Christianity is all about getting out of the go-to-hell line and getting into the go-to-heaven line fosters the most judgmental and self-righteous attitudes.[/QUOTE]
Fear definitely plays a role in Christianity and in the notion of an eternal hell. on the flip side of that coin, if, as I and other fundies believe, God did inspire the Bible as His message to man, then the exhortation to discipline in order to avoid consequence must have real meaning. Of course, this doesn't mean much to the progressive who rejects the fundamentals of the Bible as God's word, or the evil nature of man.

[QUOTE]I suspect that if many people were not threatened with the punishment of hell, they would wonder why they would ever want to be Christians.[/QUOTE]
Perhaps. At the very least, they would see Christianity, their relationship with God and their attitude toward others in a much different light.

[QUOTE]Fundamentalism seems, at least to me, to be all about belief in God *now* for the sake of going to heaven *later*. I think it subverts Jesus' teaching that following him is about God's kingdom coming to earth now and shifts the focus to people getting to heaven later.[/QUOTE]
This topic could easily grow into a whole other thread. I'll just say that I see value in my own fundamentalism in finding the path to righteousness now in order to avoid some measure of hell fire.

[QUOTE]When this becomes the focal point, then, as October's Autumn has mentioned, Christianity takes on an "us versus them" mentality.[/QUOTE]
True.

[QUOTE]Can progressives be judgmental? Certainly. I don't really know this board yet so none of my comments are directed here. But one progressive board I was on was judgmental, not of eternal things, but of temporal things. Again going back to what October's Autumn said, no one's soul was judged but politics and social beliefs were certainly challenged.[/QUOTE]
Interesting. Having not been party to these debates, I can't judge with certainty [pun intended], but to my own thinnking, there is often a very thin line between moral judgments and sociopoloitical ones. The prescriptive or spiritual attaches to all manner of the affairs of man. Prescript is induced by spirit, or attaches readily to the organic [things that have spirit or life force]. In other words, I'd bet that the judging you're talking about, though directed to non-religious matters, entailed prescriptive (and thus moral) arguments.

[QUOTE]Maybe some of that is good. We need our politics and social beliefs challenged. [/QUOTE]
Amen.

[QUOTE]Fundamentalism, at least to me, seems to be a list of beliefs that form a basis for making a determination of who is in and who is out without those beliefs ever truly impacting how we love God or love others. [/QUOTE]
Don't be too hard on evangelicals/fundies...these are for the most part trapped in a particular religious system and simply don't think too far outside the box for a variety of reasons. From the jist of this thread, many here can probably identify with this.

[QUOTE]For instance, how does my acceptance of the virgin birth of Christ make a difference in my relationships today? Does it really matter, from a practical viewpoint, whether Jesus had a sin nature or not? They would say that Jesus' essence has everything to do with his ability to save.[/QUOTE]
I'd agree with them. If it's true that man exists in a fallen state, that God saw fit to take on the form of matter to die in place of fallen man, then it becomes important whether Jesus had a sin nature. The above is the traditional Christian message. I'm a trinitarian because it makes sense that if the above is true, Jesus had to be God because He stated that He could forgive sin. This is consistent with the apostle's testimony, especially Paul's of course.

If God felt a perfect sacrifice was necessary to atone for fallen man, then if Christ was not perfect in essence, His sacrifice was insufficient to atone. To reject these premises is ceratinly within one's power to do. But if these things are true, then based on the Bible's agreement in both Testaments that evil is condemned and righteousness acceptable, it's reasonable to assume there will be consequences for the one who does not believe because the one who does not beleive does not act accordingly. I see this line of thought as reasonable, though there are myriad tendrils of discussion and distinctions to be made for each point. Ultimately, don't judge too harshly the one who tries to turn you from not believing in the fundamentals, even if they do it harshly and imperfectly. Many mean well, even if they are not tactful in their approach.


[QUOTE]Yet they also insist that his nature alone doesn't save anyone.[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure of the context here, but this appears to be a philosophical point. Theologically, I think Jesus' nature is important for all the reasons stated above.

[QUOTE]God still requires, according to the fundamentalist, something from us, something that Christ did not do at the cross.[/QUOTE]
Loaded question, I'm slobbering to tackle this, but it will quickly lead to definitions and distinctions, and don't really have the time to get into this kind of discussion right now. Short answer: Jesus did everything it was His Father's will He do at the cross, but first we'd need to identify what that was. He actually does require something from us: that we BELIEVE. This is the loaded part...the debatable part is what constitutes belief to the extent of saving faith. As James said, "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder" (James 2:19).

[QUOTE]In that sense, the focus shifts from how and what Jesus taught and lived to what we believe about his person or nature. His life and teaching become secondary to a belief that Jesus was sinless or, in essence, *not* like us. I think, in this respect, fundies deny Jesus' humanity for the sake of his deity, which constantly reinforces the notion that God and man are forever separate.[/QUOTE]
You dismiss belief in the fundamental nature of Christ....how do you know this is not an important part of what Christ exhorts one to believe? In fact, I would agree with those who note that it's more important to know how Jesus is not like us than it is to know how He is, for reasons noted above. How do you know that it's correct and proper to ignore traditional notions about Christ and the Bible? Isn't it possible that efforts to 'reinvent' certain aspects of the Christian faith to make it more appealing may be misguided, that such reinvention might be in directions that are not spiritually healthy?

I've head this idea before that fundamentalism tends to separate God and man. Now, I'm a fundamentalist, and the Lord has brought me considerably closer to Him by certain adjustments to my theology which ended up strengthening my fundamentalism and relationship with Him, not thrust it apart, despite the sheer difference in our natures.

This strikes very near the fascination I have with religious viewpoints. Many accuse fundamantalism of badness, but evil has no epistemic connection to a viewpoint. Viewpoints are sets and subsets of knowledge and ideas...prescript attaches to things spiritual, as mentioned above. This mirrors the classical view pretty much, I think. I don't think your charge of separation as a cause of fundamentalism is supportable, WF2k

[QUOTE]While [fundies] often insist that the Bible is infallible and inerrant, they will seldom admit that their interpretation and understanding of the Bible is possibly fallible and errant.[/QUOTE]
Agreed. But this is a people defect, not a fundamentalist defect. I know fundies who are quite honest about their fallibility, and progressives so dogmatic that they refuse to allow facts to alter their beliefs. So what's new under the sun?

[QUOTE]They sort of walk a double line in insisting that, due to humanity's inherent sinfulness, we cannot trust gut feelings.... [/QUOTE]
....and I think this is perfectly reasonable....

[QUOTE]....while also insisting that, despite their own indwelling fleshly nature, *they* have the truth and the mind of God in all things. :)[/QUOTE]
I think they would be right, but this applies to all humans. We're a pluralistic mess, each one of us, spiritually speaking, IMHO. True, the opinions of some tend to exceed actual knowledge and perception, but again, this is not specifically a fundamentalist flaw, it's found everywhere.

Thanks for your input, WF2k.

Bernie, these are pretty heavy-duty subjects and books could well be written.

But you've asked me a couple of questions and I'll share my viewpoint.

If, as I and other fundies believe, God did inspire the Bible as His message to man, then the exhortation to discipline in order to avoid consequence must have real meaning.

I definately believe in the concept of sowing and reaping, my friend. How else do we learn life's best lessons? But neither grace nor hell line up with the sowing/reaping notion.

I'll just say that I see value in my own fundamentalism in finding the path to righteousness now in order to avoid some measure of hell fire.

Exactly. This seems to be the essence of fundamentalism -- finding a way to save one's self from God's wrath. Jesus becomes a means of saving people from God. Which is sort of odd if Jesus is God, isn't it? I mean, if Jesus is the mediator between God and man but Jesus is God, how can he mediate?

If it's true that man exists in a fallen state, that God saw fit to take on the form of matter to die in place of fallen man, then it becomes important whether Jesus had a sin nature.

But that is just it, Bernie, despite the so-called substitutionary atonement of Christ, we still die, don't we? You. Me. If the wages of sin is death, then God still gets his pound of flesh from each and every one of us. And if the wages of sin is hell, as fundies say, then Jesus' death was not substitutionary in that aspect either because he is not in hell.

I find it odd that fundies claim that, because of the fall, to be human is to be sinful while, at the same time, claiming that Jesus was human but *not* sinful. If, as fundies claim, all humans born since Adam are sinful, if that is the "nature" of humanity, then Jesus, being sinless, was *not* human. He may have looked like a human. He may have lived like a human. He may have died a human death. But he could not have been human in his essence if, according to the fundamentalist, all humans are sinful. Catholics solve this dilemma by saying that Mary, too, was sinless. Mary then becomes deified and no longer human, the "Mother of God." To me, fundies can't logically have it both ways. They cannot claim that to be born human is to be born inherently sinful and that Jesus was born human without being sinful. Just doesn't make sense.

I'm a trinitarian because it makes sense that if the above is true, Jesus had to be God because He stated that He could forgive sin. This is consistent with the apostle's testimony, especially Paul's of course.

I forgive sins. I'm not God. My wife reminds me of that constantly.

If God felt a perfect sacrifice was necessary to atone for fallen man, then if Christ was not perfect in essence, His sacrifice was insufficient to atone.

To my way of thinking, the notion that God demands blood before he can forgive sins is not logical or entirely biblical. Even those who believe they are washed in the blood of the Lamb will admit that his blood was not sufficient, cleansing requires confession. The atonement has the same problem. Atonement theology, as currently portrayed, says that God's accepts Christ's sacrifice, not categorically dependant upon how "perfect" *he* was, but dependant upon how individually believing *we* are. God only accepts Christ's sacrifice on our behalf *if* we believe he will. Christ may have paved the way, but he didn't finish anything. Of course, Calvinists circumvent all of this with the doctrine of election or double-predestination -- God did completely accept Christ's sacrifice and belief is a response to that. But then, that is limited atonement. Arminians typically believe that Jesus paid for all sins but that God doesn't deposit that payment into our account until we first accept it.

Personally, I think God forgives because he is forgiving, not because Jesus "paid him off". I don't believe Jesus' blood intrinsically changed something in God's nature whereby God could forgive sins after the cross but not before. Atonement theology basically says that God had to kill his own son in order to forgive us. Even as a fallible father, I don't have to punish on of my children in order to forgive the other.

But if these things are true, then based on the Bible's agreement in both Testaments that evil is condemned and righteousness acceptable, it's reasonable to assume there will be consequences for the one who does not believe because the one who does not beleive does not act accordingly.

Perhaps. But then you are faced with salvation being based, not upon the atonement of Christ, but upon our acts, whether or not they line up with righteousness, which Paul says they never do.

Ultimately, don't judge too harshly the one who tries to turn you from not believing in the fundamentals, even if they do it harshly and imperfectly. Many mean well, even if they are not tactful in their approach.

Good advice, Bernie. The problem is, each and every group has a different set of what they consider to be the fundamentals. That is one of the reasons why Christianity is plagued with so many different denominations.


I'm not sure of the context here, but this appears to be a philosophical point.

My point was that no matter how loudly atonement theology proclaims that Jesus completely paid the price for sin, conservative evangelicals still insist that Christ's atonement alone was not enough to save anyone. They insist that God cannot or will not save *until* faith in the atonement on our part is exercised. Though they claim that "Jesus paid it all", they insist that God does not accept the payment until we sign the check by our individual faith. Of course, many of them claim that even our faith is a gift from God but then the question becomes why doesn't God give saving faith to everyone if Jesus died for everyone? We then enter into the "God's sovereignty versus man's free will" debate. No fun there. Where is the fun in fundamentalism?

He (God) actually does require something from us: that we BELIEVE. This is the loaded part...the debatable part is what constitutes belief to the extent of saving faith.

Yep, as soon as one concedes that God requires something from us for our salvation, one admits that Jesus' atonement was not enough. Jesus' death didn't save anyone, it only *offers* salvation. Quite a difference. In the end, according to fundies, we do save ourselves, despite their claim that it was all grace. Grace that requires something is no longer grace.

You dismiss belief in the fundamental nature of Christ....how do you know this is not an important part of what Christ exhorts one to believe?

Good question. When Jesus exhorted his followers to believe in him, what about him was he asking them to believe?

Was he asking them to believe that he was born of a virgin? Where is that in his greatest sermons?

Was he asking them to believe that he was the eternal, all-encompassing spirit that the Jews called God or Yahweh? Where does Jesus say, "I am God."

Thanks to folks like the apostle Paul, following Christ shifted from believing what Jesus taught and how he lived to giving mental assent to historical events in the death and resurrection of Christ. According to Pauline theology, what Jesus did and taught is insignificant. What matters to Paul is his death and resurrection, little else. Christians hail Paul as *their* apostle. He supposedly gave the church its truth, not Christ. Even so, where does Paul mention Jesus' virgin birth? Where does Paul use words like "inerrant, infallible, trinity, virgin birth, holy Bible"? If these are the core fundamental truths of Christianity, why does Christianity's core apostle not mention them?

How do you know that it's correct and proper to ignore traditional notions about Christ and the Bible? Isn't it possible that efforts to 'reinvent' certain aspects of the Christian faith to make it more appealing may be misguided, that such reinvention might be in directions that are not spiritually healthy?

Sure it is possible. But life is too short to based my beliefs on what is possible. Just because it is possible that I could get into a car wreck tomorrow doesn't mean it will happen. I have to go with what is *probable*, with what is reasonable, with what works.

Is it possible that Jesus was born of a virgin? I suppose so if we negate everything we know about how human reproduction and believe, as the ancients did, that deities were capable of impregnating humans. But as soon as we do so, the Christian religion becomes sort of God's litmus test for just how far he can push what we will blindly accept as truth despite what every other area of life and knowledge tell us. I think God wants us to believe in him because he is *believable*.

The same "tradition" that holds to fundamental beliefs also believed that the world was flat, that the earth was the center of the universe, that sickness was caused by demons, that weather was the hand of God, that slavery and governmental leaders are God-ordained, and that everyone, by default, is destined for hell, despite Jesus' atonement.

Now, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater (ha ha), but I think it is necessary, especially in Christianity, to discern what is spiritual and what is superstition. That, for me, is an ongoing process. How do I know I'm right? I don't. But then, I have this odd notion that God is more concerned about how I love him and love others rather than in convincing me about unbelievable, iffy things. Those are my "fundamentals." Unlike the traditions of the church which often require unquestioning mental assent, the denial of God-given reason, and the perpetuation of out-dated superstitious voodoo, my fundamentals involve my whole heart, mind, and soul. It is costly. But I'm taking the road less traveled. And it is making all the difference.

Thanks for your input, WF2k.

Yours, too, Bernie.

wayfarer

Wayfarer,

You have a way of putting into words many of my feelings and ideas that I can't.

Thanks!

Hi OA,

One of my axioms is, why efficiently say with 10 words what you can laboriously say with 1000?

Thanks for the feedback.

wayfarer

Great post. Thanks.

My understanding of the divinity of Christ has been explained well by Alan Watts in MYTH & RITUAL IN CHRISTIANITY. He believes that Christian myth is an excellent representation of the perennial philosophy with some important errors which are corrected by other excellent representations of the PP such as Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Native American Spirituality.

Jesus-olatry is the heresy which says Jesus is God to the exclusion of all other creatures. We all reveal divinity to some extent. God is within us (immanent) as well as beyond us (transcendent). The trinity at its best describes this reality. At its worst it distorts this reality. It's a teaching tool which need not become an idol.
Jesus is the new Adam or the first born fruits of the new humanity. He opens the door to divinity becoming human or humanity becoming divine in a spectacular way and is rightly revered for that. It is hard to explain! It is hard to keep Jesus human. But we must try to explain and we must try to keep him human as well as divine. Hard work but holy work and it's holy week so time to try again to explain and invite and transform through dramatic ritual!

I have found Marcus Borg's categories of "earlier paradigm" and "emerging paradigm" in THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY to be a helpful way of getting beyond the fundamentalist-progressive dichotomy or conservative-liberal dichotomy. Most of us have our feet in both paradigms! God is "doing a new thing" and no one knows what the new church for the new age will look like in the future. We all know that it is changing and changing rapidly unless we are totally committed to the earlier paradigm. Borg is as non-judgmental as I've seen in these days of lots of judgment and bitter divisions. I think his appreciation for the strenghts of "earlier paradigm" Christians is commendable. There is a long string on Borg's THOC here which I recommend skimming or digesting fully or, better yet, read the book. Borg is most helpful in pointing out that the earlier paradigm is not the same as the earliest paradigm and that perhaps the emeging paradigm is actually closer to original Christianity. Borg says we must be born again! It's basic!

Mystictrek, I enjoy your thoughts on Christ's divinity. I'm going to have to look into this PP stuff when I get time. It sounds intriguing.

I like what you said that we all reveal divinity to some extent. I think the Bible alludes to this when it says that we are made in God's image. And I don't think the fall invalidated that image. But I think that the extent to which we reveal divinity varies from person to person, don't you?

I also think you are right that the doctrine of the trinity is an attempt to show that man and God need not be thought of as totally separate. But as soon as Jesus is made out to be deity only, that the separation is left intact. Perhaps the apostle Paul was trying to counter this with his statements about "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Maybe the truth to which the trinity points is that when we live our lives from a spiritual basis, the line between humanity and divinity becomes almost invisible or irrelevant. Perhaps akin to Borg's description of "thin places", places where it seems that, like Jesus did, we become one with God. That is an appealing notion to me as my background constantly told me I should become like God while also constantly reminding me of how not like God I am.

Many conservatives are repelled by such a notion, that we could become divine (or that we still have the divine in us). Yet they constantly admonish us to be like Jesus.

If, as Christians, we truly became like the Jesus that Christianity often paints as God-in-the-flesh, we would share in his divinity. I don't find such a notion repugnant. I find it hopeful. Perhaps even God's desire from the start.

wayfarer

PS - I LOVE your sigs. Awesome!

"My understanding of the divinity of Christ has been explained well by Alan Watts in MYTH & RITUAL IN CHRISTIANITY. ... We all reveal divinity to some extent. God is within us (immanent) as well as beyond us (transcendent). The trinity at its best describes this reality."

This is one of the issues that draws me to the gnostics. The Gospel of Thomas says: "If you drink from my well, you will become as I am.'

The Gospel of Philip makes this clearer
"...You saw the Spirit, you become the spirit. You saw Christ, you bedcome Christ. You saw [the Father, you] shall become Father...you see yourself, and what you see, you shall [become].

This is one reason why the gnostics are considered heretics but this identification with the immenence of the Divine resoates with me. If wed all saw ourselves as part of the Divine we would be less cmpetitive and more conpassionate, we would take our individuality so seriously. To me this is what the Christ archetype points to.

WF2k,

I absolutely love to debate, but as I'm so often wont to do, I tend to get into discussions I really don't have time for. We can debate the points of fundamentalism vs. progressivism ad infinitum without convincing one another of the wisdom of his own position. Maybe in the future we can have a more robust dialog about the fine points, but I have to reign myself in for now.

Bottom line IMO is that the content of goodness or badness is not in a theological, philosophical or political position, but seen in act (word and deed). Even then, these are just manifestations of good and evil's real existence, which I believe to be ontological properties intrinsic to human spirit. Like most other debaters, I tend to get lost in the same "liberal is bad" mindset, largely, I think, because language tends to be loose and inacurrate. I have to keep reminding myself that badness, to the extent it exists, is a product of the inner man. To the extent my fundamentalism is false, it's in some real sense 'bad', and same for the other guy. No easy answers....but then debate wouldn't be any fun, would it?

Hi mfg50,


I have to admit, panentheism has some exciting possibilities. I've come to believe that all theologies, be they fundamentalism, liberalism, Gnosticism, etc. are essentially all admixtures of truth and falsity which, for various reasons, different folks are attracted to. Ultimately, there must be some real truth in all positions in order to make a case for each. For instance, the progressive criticism that fundamentalists are generally less loving in their theology as well as their everyday life has some real basis in truth, though there are of course many loving fundies. The fundie may counter that the love the liberal contends for is to a degree superficial and tends to vanish when disagreement and controversy arises.

The Gnostic errs, I think [from my fundamentalist view], in a number of ways, but there is a glue of truth underlying the Gnostic position generally which demands attention. David, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says, "ye are gods" and Jesus confirms this. What sense we might be "gods" isn't clear, but I take comfort and rest in in the belief that we'll all become exactly what God has created us to be, eventually.


When you identified your source as "here", I suspect you intended to supply a link, but there isn't one there. Sounds like an interesting read, and I'll see if I can Google the article.

I said something similar on a different thread earlier. I included all religions though!

One of the root problems IMHO in any progressive/fundamentalist dialog is where to correctly draw the line between true and false in faith.

The fundamentalist assumes on some real level:
a) the force of an inspired Bible
b) the Deity of Christ
c) the virgin birth
d) the moral force which reasonably flows from a, b & c.

The progressive assumes on some real level:
a) the lack of authenticity to some degree of all the above
b) the lack of moral force based on "a"
c) the upholding of love as a primary operating moral force

The point of view of most fundamentalists is that to dismiss the fundamentals results in a laxity in areas where discipline is called for, the further results of which are consequences for wrong thinking/behavior. The fundamentalist generally believes the progressive hides from the pressure of moral responsibility rather than embracing it.

The point of view of most progressives seems to be that the embracing of religious fundamentals beyond love is unecessarily restrictive, causing social and moral disorders in varying degrees according to the degreee of harshness of fundamentalism practiced. The progressive believes that the fundamentalist's pressure of moral responsibility is largely or entirely self-produced and illusory.

I see a lot of truth in both positions, though as the world's only esoteric fundamentalist, I admit my bias runs more strongly in favor of the fundamentalist position. Bottom line, though, is that each group has its own fundamental DOs and DON'Ts. This is important, I think, because it highlight's a fundamental (pun intended) difference in favor of the fundie, that the alleged non-adherence to a fundamentalist form of religious faithby the progressive is at bottom itself an illusion. The fundie typically recognizes that his/her faith is rule-based, and affirms this as a good, if imperfectly practiced, thing. The progressive stance by comparison seems based on a falsehood, that of claiming to reject DOs and DON'Ts while actually practicing them by raising sharp contradistinctions between fundamentalism (bad) and progressive faith (good). This is the reason of my occasional posting at prrogressive sites, to plumb the depths of what kinds of faith we really hold to and why. I've found that there's really what William James would call the same "cash value" in either position at the end of the day.

We're really all a complex but fragmented (in terms of truth or falsity) mess, in the final analysis. Here, I'd have to side with my progressive brethren than God's love is the one thing that will eventually save the day. If the progressive can have a real faith in this, I suspect he'll find himself alongside the fundie who also places his faith in something beyond his own ability when the lights get turned out. I'll be glad when it's over, personally.

Hi Bernie,

You've obviously put alot of thought into the fundie vs. proggie thing and I do appreciate your insights.


I know you don't have time to debate, but I did want to offer a response to your prior post.



Sure they do. Both fundamentalists and progressives think it is important how we act. Good faith, I believe, requires a transposition from the head (what we think) to the heart (how we act because of what we think).



I don't think that progressives out-of-hand reject DOs and DON'Ts. But I do think that progressive try to understand the reasoning behind, and the applicability, of the DOs and DON'Ts. To a fundie, this may appear as antinomialism and/or chaos. Fundamentalist like, and perhaps need, lines that should not be crossed. And they think those lines apply to all people for all time. As a progressive, I think that the lines should be moved as we progress, or as we grow in faith.



Maybe. But I would disagree that the ends justify the means.

Take the DOs and DON'Ts. Fundamentalist say that the list of DOs and DON'Ts is extremely important because God will get you if you don't do the DOs and if you do do the DON'Ts.

Progressives might say that the DOs and DON'TS are important because we are all made in the image of God and we affect one another by how we live our lifes, for better or for worse.

Does it matter if a fundamentalist doesn't commit adultery because God will get him if he does or if a progressive doesn't because it will hurt someone else?

To me, it does.

In rather simplistic terms, the fundie tries to obey the rules because sin offends God and there will be hell to pay later. The progressive tries to practice love because sin hurts us and others and creates hell here on earth. Which mindset is more true? Does it matter as long as the outcome is the same?

I would say it does. As a progressive, I think that motives are very important. And the Bible has alot to say about people who seem to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.



I hope so, Bernie. I recall Jesus' message to one of the churches in the book of Revelation, that they were doing all the right things -- they had the DOs and the DON'Ts down pat. But they had left love in the dust. I don't think progressives are calling out for an erradication of the DOs and DON'Ts. But I do think they care about motives (which are always on the fuzzy side) and want things done out of love for each other, not out of fear of future punishment.



Me, too. But it is a difficult thing to walk alongside someone who is convinced that you are going to hell because you don't see things the same way they do.

wayfarer

W>Fundamentalism says that we have no right to look at our belief system critically and to accept (or reject) only the parts that makes sense to us. It insists that the baby must be thrown out with the bathwater.

It is so successful at this lie, that most of the stuff you find on the internet (or in literature) that has to do with leaving fundamentalism entails that you leave Christianity altogether. And many have. Maybe that is a good thing.

M>I found it useful to read Karen Anderson's "Battle for God" She exaplaiins how fundamentalism in Christianity, Judism and Islem is a fairly recent phenomen arising in the 1800. For Christians fundamentalism is a response to the uncertainty of liberalism and the fear of meanjinglessness and loss of identity, for Jews it is a reavtion steming from the nihiliation of the Holocaust, for Moslems it the threat of colonialism. Fundamentalist cannot tolerate doubt and uncertainty in their believes because it threaten their identity. Anderson talks about how our response to fundamentalism might be empathy for their fear.

W>It took a while but I am not searching through my soul and my life for what can be salvaged. I am not so sure that I am looking for the "truth" (as it seems to be very subjective) but I am looking for what is meaningful, what is transforming.

And I'm learning that it is beneficial (and probably necessary) to be critical of what I hear and read that claims to speak for God. This turn in my path requires discernment like nothing else I've ever known. It also requires letting go of the anger and bitterness, but that is itself a process. But it is also leading me into a freedom that I never thought possible. I don't have to be right. And I don't have to convince others that they are wrong. And I certainly am not going to give the welfare or salvaging of my soul to *anyone* else except myself and God.

M> I share your confusion of whether you could still be a Christian and not be a fundamentalist, My sister, who is a fundalmentalist, convince me that I was not a Christian and robbed me of what faith I did have. You seem to be seeking what is meaningful and transforming. Since I left the hospittal. I have also been searching for this and still searching. For me one of the answers is to be part of a community that affirms my need to both seek answers for myself and to share in their strength of living out the values of social justice. To some extent I am finding this at Holy Trinity.

Marilyn

mqf50,

What you wrote was very inspiroring. The razor's edge that encompasses everything is the path, a path of
human experience where life is deeply concerned with everything. It is not bargaining, compromising or holding back from what we have read or heard, but an involvement with our lives and with what is right. It sounds like you are renewed, deepened and transported to new level having become aware of your relationship to God and your unity with everything. You are not expressing another theological system or a new interpretation of the Bible, but your individual opening or path to God. You are a true Christian. Thank you

Soma

Thank you for your encouraging response. I have had a long hard struggle with faith ever since I was a teen-ager in the United Church of Canada. The Literal interpretation of the Bible nedver made any sense to me, but when I needed faith I had nothing to fall back on. I like you concept of God as Unity. I have also used the term Wholeness but I really mean the same thing. I am exploring what that really means emotionally, not just intellectualy.

Today I finished reading Harvey Cox's "Fire From Heaven". How initially Pentacostalism was more about moving from authority of the Church to auuthority of Spirit. Yes, I have trouble with the emotional manipuloation of speaking in tongues and all of that. Cox however talks about this being an Africa sensibility, of going beyond the literal interpretation of words.

Having been brought up with rages and temper tantrums eand my own feeling discounted, I came to associate exuberant emotion with evil. When I go to my sisters Pentalcostal Church, i want to scream be still and know that I am God." I always associated esctaacy with interior emotion and silence. I have occassionally fround grace inn quiet tears. Now I beginning to wonder if my reaction to Pentacostals is cultujra prejudice.

I am also intrigues by my study of the Gnostics wher Christ is an experience of inner knowing. For me the Dark night of the soul is more rea