skyseeker

Thanks for the welcome. WIsh you happy days.

Hello, I'd like to discuss something that has come to me lately. It is part of the reason why I'm not an evangelical anymore, and why I believe there is substantial support for belief in a Jesus that is an altogether more interesting and appealing figure than the evangelical Jesus. What I mean is this, I think that Jesus as we can find him in the Gospels has many times made remarks that evangelical christianity takes literally while in fact they were ironic and sarcastic really. As an example I would like to offer two passages of the bible. 1. Matthew 18:7-11 (Young's Literal Translation) `Wo to the world from the stumbling-blocks! for there is a necessity for the stumbling-blocks to come, but wo to that man through whom the stumbling-block doth come! `And if thy hand or thy foot doth cause thee to stumble, cut them off and cast from thee; it is good for thee to enter into the life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast to the fire the age-during. `And if thine eye doth cause thee to stumble, pluck it out and cast from thee; it is good for thee one-eyed to enter into the life, rather than having two eyes to be cast to the gehenna of the fire. `Beware! -- ye may not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you, that their messengers in the heavens do always behold the face of my Father who is in the heavens, for the Son of Man did come to save the lost. ---- Normally we read these verses as a strong warning about sin. But if we look for an ironic Jesus saying this, and if we keep in mind that Jesus' greatest enemies were the pharisees who spent all their time with the sin thing, the whole passage looks differently. What exactly makes little christians stumble? Is it really their hands and feet and eyes so they need to be removed? Isn't that exactly the kind of phariseical fence-around-the-law thinking that we see here? What makes us able to combat sin, especially if we see sin in being unloving? When we have two eyes, we can see the sinner and the saint, heaven and hell. We know where we are, what happens around, where we are going. When we have two feet, we can go seek the sinner and convince him of what is right, and we can go to the suffering to help them. When we have two hands, we can wrestle with sin successfully, and we can go to heaven to take some heaven, and with that we can go to hell (the life of people who suffer) and bring heaven there. And we can take the sinner in hell and bring him to heaven. Who are really the little ones? Unless we're delusional, it's all of us. And another passage: Matthew 5:28 (again YLT) but I -- I say to you, that every one who is looking on a woman to desire her, did already commit adultery with her in his heart. --- Is this really a proscription of looking at someone with desire? Or is this perhaps an appeal that if we want to lust for someone, we should do that with a marriage idea of love, I don't mean with clear marriage intent because that may not work out, but with a desire not just for sex but also for love, for the virtue that makes us stick together and not leave the other who may come to feel needy for you. The problem is a merely fleshly view of sex, where there is only lust but no love. This is not a proscription of masturbation either, this is the fatherly advice to be romantic and loving to the person you want to sleep with. At least this is how I see this verse now. ------------------------------------------- These passages are just two examples why I believe in a witty and ironic Jesus. There are many more. If you go by this interpretation, the Jesus walk is a human walk, you are not constantly besieged by temptations, you are going into a life of beauty if you trust in them. This is a walk of childlikeness, not the walk of grizzly adults that try to work everything through fighting and difficulty. This is the way of freedom.

Hi there, I'm Daniel from Germany. Raised as an atheist, I found Jesus when I was 22, although I always thought that God is to be found in Jesus' direction. I tried at first to remain unchurched, but then I got in touch with an evangelical christian online who taught me the conservative way of being a christian, and I was scared into this system and also read the bible and the book seemed to confirm evangelical christianity. I did not enjoy my faith life in this way, but I could not convince myself that the evangelical system was wrong. Sometimes I tried to escape it, but I did not have the courage to follow through with that. I must add that roughly in the same time when I found Jesus, I became sick with schizophrenia, so I had entered a life and a reality that was complicated, burdensome and difficult. The tidy and neat theology of evangelical christianity (somewhat congruent with Marc Driscoll's theology) appealed to me because it basically seemed to explain things to me and that it was faithful to the biblical account. However, there was another theology that I frequently returned to in my thoughts, although I didn't dare to believe it fully, the theology of Universal Reconciliation, also called Universal Salvation. But then happened some things that changed a lot. My beloved dad died. He remained an atheist until the end and while I tried to persuade him about Jesus, dad didn't want to hear it. Me and my mother took care of him, he became rather demented and needed help in many things. After some months he died and I experienced that in such an intense way that I couldn't help but look into universalism again. And then my agnostic sister got dreams about dad about which she told me that they felt like inspired from God, for example my dad would come to her in a youthful appearance, clothed like an artist, and he told her, dare to hope, Jane, this is better than doubting. My mother had dreams about my dad walking through grain fields with her. And I frequently felt an intense and otherworldly presence of beauty when I listened to my dad's music. At some point I concluded, my dad had been accepted by God despite being an atheist. I don't know how that exactly worked out, but for now I tend to think that everyone goes to God after death and enters His judgment, and this judgment is never hostile or damning but instead it is always fatherly, loving and omniscient. So I think Dad simply picked up faith in Jesus after death, and that this is the case for everyone who dies. God's just supergood to the newly "immigrants" to Heaven, and there are the angels, and especially the real Saints who all help in this Judgment making sure that everyone finds heartfelt faith in Jesus and doesn't want to go to hell. I'm sorry, I just realized again I had just meant to write a short intro, and I already blabbered about my theology stuff. Apologies! I just want to add that I enjoy theology, philosophy and poetry a lot, I do some photography, spend much time in the internet and I also enjoy doing civil discussions. I've been baptized into the evangelical-lutheran state church of Saxony in Germany. In case you don't know this church, it's rather anglican-esque. We have conservative christians, moderates, and liberals. We have church goers and those who prefer to walk the faith alone or with their family. Our preferred theologians are Bonhoeffer and related writers, although there are still lutheran ideas believed and celebrated. My main theology interest would be creating a theology of salvation that goes by "salvation by God's love", and not by grace and faith ... but it's not that easy to do. I'm not even sure if I can make such a theology, but my heart cries for it and I need to explore it for some time. Thank you for this cool forum and I hope we can have many good exchanges. Blessings!