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by charcoal23 3137 days ago
That's the view of the atonement as presented in fundamentalist / evangelical circles. Reduced to snarky absurdity, but the theology is itself absurd.

Perhaps this is different than your own experience or reading, but it doesn't make this experience less valid. Considering this is the dominant form of Christianity in the US, I think it's safe to say the snarky statement above accurately describes Christianity as how a majority of us experienced it.

My childhood spent in a very restrictive environment, and watching how "Christians" behave, definitely gives me the right to speak on behalf of Christianity, and the right to reject it completely as the fraud it is. I understand it completely well.

All I have to do is observe what they do. From the near-abuses of my own experience, to how the Orthodox have been perfectly willing to embrace Putin and other cruel leaders, to how women and gay people are frequently treated. There's the cruelty dispensed by the faithful over the millennia. In your own response there's no shred of Christ's love or humility. You offer nothing but cold, empty judgements rushing to defend and insult.

All of this shows there is little to nothing of worth in the system, and wasting hours of my irreplaceable life reading men (and it's always men) debate how many angels can fit atop a pin, is not going to convince me otherwise.

1 comments

Indeed as I said earlier part of the problem is the kind of theology that is taught especially in the US. I never said it was an invalid experience but only said that it cannot be a representation of Christianity - for one to get that they would need to look into works by Christian authors throughout the years.

I'm sorry to hear you were personally negatively affected by the Church. Btw Orthodox is a big umbrella, I'm not sure what you're referring to with Putin, I'm not Russian Orthodox.

I recognise that my comment may have been flippant. But you can't judge Christianity based on its misuse or the inadequacies of Christians. I am just sick and tired of hearing that my beliefs are irrational, or "out of date", and that I need to "get on with the times" and abandon myths and legends about God and Christ. This has been a consistent impression I get from others especially in the tech field. And upon talking to people who believe this I find that they really have done no research on their part and so end up with superficial understanding of everything. I only ask that people do their due diligence and read Christian texts to judge for themselves. I encourage you to completely abandon the current messy Christian debates (including my comment) and look into Christian texts of the first few centuries.

Indeed a lot of writers are men due to the cultural reasons of old times. But you can find sayings by women: https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Desert-Mothers-Sayings-Chri...

I would strongly disagree with you. Christianity can and should be measured by the behavior of its believers. The behavior is the one and only metric we have regarding the efficacy of the faith, since the supernatural claims are something we can neither prove nor disprove.

Christianity is supposed to remake people into something better. Paul had a concept of the "new man" in Christ. If Christians are no better than the secular population, and if the Christian leadership are just as prone (if not more so) to being corrupted by power and money as secular leadership, then it becomes obvious Christianity does not work. Or at least, does not work for the majority of its adherents. There are truly holy women and men out there, but, it's quite clear these are outliers and not representative.

In my personal experience, and in looking at history, it's quite clear Christians are the same, or worse, in most observable behavior as their secular counterparts. Though I'm shouldn't single out Christians. Any faith, which aspires to personal transformation, falls short. I was briefly involved in the American Zen Buddhist community, and then I discovered the faults and greed of the so-called zen masters. If "enlightenment" doesn't free someone from the desire for money, for temporal power, for sexually abusing members, then what good is it? Islam also falls short in many, many ways.

You can certainly believe in whatever you want. I'm sorry you feel harassed about it. But religion is as much a lived experience as it is a product of philosophers and theologians. For many of us, it was an unpleasant experience which no theologian can redeem. And for many others, they see religion used as a lever for power and an excuse for cruelty. When you feel criticized, keep those things in mind. The criticism is not directed at you personally, but is rather a reflection of the person, and their own experiences, making the criticisms.

Don't allow the inadequacies of others to get in your way towards Christ whom you yourself recognise love and humility in. We Christians always fall short of Christ.

New man in Christ indeed, but that's not a magical transformation that happened some time in the past, a time where I can say "I was saved". The transformation is a life-long journey. The new man vs old is a daily struggle, a life-long struggle...

This is not something that can be observed and tested, it is something that can be lived and tested.