With What He Said, we redesigned the Four Gospels to make them easier to read and explore. We saw the low readership numbers of the Bible then looked the Bible itself and saw a clear usability problem. All that tiny text burying Jesus’ message is really hard to read.
I realize I’m off on a tangent to my original purpose which is to talk about the separation of church and state that our founding fathers did such a nice job to establish. Believe what you want, but there’s a wall there. Government stays out of religion, and religion stays out of government. Perhaps you’d think that the designers of a religious book would want that message force-fed to the masses. Not so. Why? Well, Dan Brimrose does a nice job of explaining:
Unfortunately for [the religious right] the very first Amendment of the Constitution is nothing but clear that there should be a separation of Church and State. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
They shout that it does not say separation of Church and State. Who cares? The intent is obvious and the result is the same.
The Supreme Court has often used the words of our third President Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, to help them interpret and enable others to understand the intent of the very first Amendment. Contained in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association from Jefferson were the following words, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Less than ten years after the ratification of the Constitution in the treaty of Tripoli which was initiated by President George Washington, signed by President Adams and unanimously ratified by the Senate were the words,”As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion …”
Faith is a personal matter. We’d love you to buy our book, but the last thing we’d want is any government body making you.
Time for a Monday grab-bag, I suppose. First off, there was a report that the BBC had officially dropped the use of “AD” (Anno Domini) and “BC” (Before Christ) in favor of “CE” (Common Era) and “BCE” (Before Common Era). Turns out it isn’t true, but it is giving reporters and producers the leeway to use whatever terms they like.
Whilst the BBC uses BC and AD like most people as standard terminology it is also possible for individuals to use different terminology if they wish to, particularly as it is now commonly used in historical research.
A while back we wrote a post about Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. In it he challenged the thinking that all non-Christians will spend eternity in hell. Predictably, it caused all sorts of closed-minded firestorms. He led a megachurch in West Michigan for 12 years and now he’s leaving. We hope he takes his message of “God is love” to greener pastures.
Finally, I saw this piece regarding the dangers of confusing Christ and Christianity. The whole thing is worth reading, but this paragraph jumped out:
The fact remains that most people don’t desire true life-giving faith in God; they prefer the convenience of inherited religion. The reasons are obvious: Religions give you rules to obey. They are handed down, no thinking need be done, and most people prefer to hang on to their institutional club membership for the tradition and the perks.
The term “Christian Exclusivity” refers mainly to God. Is God a Christian? Is God *only* a Christian? Does he/she care only about Christians? If you’re an Exclusivist, the answers are a resounding “yes.” R. Kirby Godsey recently published a book called Is God a Christian?: Creating a Community of Conversation in which he argues against the Exclusive perspective:
… we Christians have to come to grips with the reality that there is not much that appears exclusive about the mind or the actions of Christ. Beggars, lepers, adulterers, and Samaritans were all welcome. Jesus broadened the circle of God’s embrace. Insofar as the Christian religion has come to offer itself as the exclusive bag of answers to life’s most difficult questions or a proprietary window through which the light of God shines on the human race, Christianity has simply become one more world religion competing for center stage.
Brian McLaren has written a review of the book where he helps to explain the dangers of closed mind/faith:
When Godsey speaks against Christian exclusivity—which he does passionately and often, he doesn’t mean that Christians should love Jesus less. He isn’t arguing that Christians should dump Jesus as their exclusive commitment and “date around.”
He’s saying that to truly and deeply love Jesus, to be rightly and fully committed to his message and mission, Christians must resist the temptation to let the boundaries of their own religion define the circle of God’s embrace. Christians must do this, not as an act of compromise with pluralism, but as an act of faithfulness to Jesus, who proclaimed in word and deed that God’s love does not push anyone outside its infinite circumference.
In my opinion, Paul Farmer is a person actually following the teachings of Christ. Doctor, instructor, and co-founder of Partners in Health, he has worked tirelessly around the world to provide medical care to the “poorest of the poor.” He has spent a great deal of time in Haiti, and while you may think that’s old news now, here’s what he has to say about Haiti after the earthquake:
Did you know there are Christians in China? Lots of them? It’s true: serious estimates put the number at roughly 60 million and growing rapidly. As this BBC article covers, more people go to church on Sunday in China than in all of Europe. While the Party promotes atheism, it says it will “protect and respect religion until such time as religion itself will disappear.”
So what’s the draw? I found these two quotes to be illustrative:
“We have 50 young professionals in this church. Everyone is so busy working, you don’t have time socialising, and even if you are socialising, you are putting on a fake face. But in church people feel warm, they feel welcome… they feel people really love them so they really want to join the community, a lot of people come for this.”
and
“The worship of Mammon… has become many people’s life purpose. I think it is very natural that many other people will not be satisfied… will seek some meaning for their lives so that when Christianity falls into their lives, they will seize it very tightly.”
Did you know there was a new New Testament? One that was personally commissioned by Jesus and the original authors of the New Testament? Sounds pretty special, right? Ken Maley is the “scribe” taking dictation for the message as Jesus wants it to be presented today. Is it a radical re-write? Apparently not, according to this press release.
The teaching of Jesus presented here is in no way something new. It was the core teaching in the early Church up until the fourth century when money and power overrode tradition, and to this day it is the teaching of many Eastern Churches, which never lost Jesus’ real Message.
Those very close to Jesus knew this teaching and later taught it. Christianity went underground in many places because Jesus’ core teaching — that we are God (John 10, 34) — continued to be illegal for a long time after Jesus was killed for preaching it, and so had to be kept secret except among members of the Communities.
[…]
“It cannot be stressed enough that Jesus does not want a new Church, or a new sect to come from his Message here! He simply wants his core Message to be taught and believed in all his Churches! His teaching here may well radically change Christianity today everywhere except in those places, mainly in the East, were his core Message was never lost, but it must be seen as a return to that Message and not a changing of it!”
If you’re curious, check out this page at Barnes & Noble and you’ll discover that there are actually several New New Testaments. Who knew? If you want to zero in on Maley’s version, it might be best to go right to his website. The testimonial quotes are real doozies.
There are shades of grey in almost every debate. Take Christianity vs. Capitalism. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus makes it pretty clear where He stands on the wealthy. Remember the camel and the eye of the needle? Well, St Margaret Lothbury, a very old church in London, has a different take. It doesn’t have services on Sundays and caters to financial services executives during the week. The vicar, Reverend Jeremy Crossley, has no problems with Christians making money:
“As long as you’re being honest about what you do, it’s not a sin to make money. God rewards industriousness, and that’s what most of the people who come here are. Good, hard-working honest people who want to make money. No sin there.”
I’ve long been perplexed by the view so many American Christians share on war. Killing foreigners just never seems to bother them, especially if these foreigners are not Christians, themselves. This view already puts them in Jesus’ doghouse, but then there’s their hypocrisy to deal with. Namely, their virulent pro-life stance. “Pro-life” means just what it says: preserving the sanctity of human life. Except to these folks, they narrow it down to unborn American babies. Innocent civilians on the other side of the world who happen to have the misfortune of getting in the way of a bullet or bomb be damned.
Today I ran across an article on the libertarian Lew Rockwell site, of all places. It was written by Laurence M. Vance and I think it makes a number of strong points. Here are some snippets, but please check out the whole thing:
I write extensively about the biblical, economic, and political fallacies of religious people, and especially on the topic of Christianity and war. This is a subject where ignorance abounds in both pulpit and pew, and most of it willful ignorance. This is a subject that exposes Bible scholars as Bible illiterates. This is a subject that turns Christians into disgraceful apologists of the state, its leaders, its military, and its wars. This is a subject that reveals pro-life Christians to be two-faced supporters of wholesale murder.
[…]
But modern-day Christianity is in a sad state. There is an unholy desire on the part of a great many Christians to legitimize killing in war. There persists the idea among too many Christians that mass killing in war is acceptable, but the killing of one’s neighbor violates the sixth commandment’s prohibition against killing.
[…]
Many Christians have a warped view of what it means to be pro-life. Why is it that foreigners don’t have the same right to life as unborn American babies? There should be no difference between being for abortion and for war. Both result in the death of innocents. Both are unnecessary. Both cause psychological harm to the one who signs a consent form or fires a weapon. Why is it that to many Christians an American doctor in a white coat is considered a murderer if he kills an unborn baby, but an American soldier in a uniform is considered a hero if he kills an adult?
Frank Huguenard is a documentary film producer whose latest film, “Beyond Belief” is the second in a three-part trilogy “focused on our minds, consciousness and finding true happiness in our lives.” “Beyond Belief” asks the following questions (and claims to answer them):
Is it possible that starting at the age of 13, Jesus learned to purify his mind using ancient Vedic techniques and then brought these teachings back to the west? Was there a completely different strain of Christianity, which was actually much closer to Hinduism than Catholicism, that was exterminated by the Roman Empire? Did Jesus teach reincarnation and emphasize meditation?
You can actually watch the 55-minute film (and judge for yourself) here. For a press release about the film, click here.
Tom Zirpoli is a columnist for the Carroll County Times. In today’s piece, he introduced me to a term I’d never heard of before: Christianism. He actually referenced Andrew Sullivan’s use of the word to describe the “political co-opters.” Here are four great paragraphs from Zirpoli’s column:
Many politicians who call themselves Christian insist on health care for the unborn, then vote to cut health care funding for millions of babies and their mothers. Come to think of it, they no longer even support health care for the unborn; just their birth.
I have always wondered why some people are so protective of the unborn, but don’t care much for helping children after they are born. Perhaps it is easier for people to advocate for the unborn because it doesn’t cost them anything. They don’t have to feed the unborn or provide them with shelter. And after they are born and in need, they can be someone else’s problem.
Self-proclaimed Christian politicians in Washington want to pay down the national debt on the backs of the poor, the elderly and the disabled while they continue to protect generous tax breaks for the rich who are enjoying the lowest tax rates in decades.
Andrew Sullivan uses the term “Christianism” to delineate Christianity and real Christians “from their political co-opters” who have “the desperate need to control all the levers of political power to control or guide the lives of others.” Sullivan views Christianism as he does Islamism. Both, he says, “are panicked by the complexity and choices of modernity into a fanatical embrace of a simplistic parody of religion in order to attack what they see as their cultural and social enemies. They are not about genuine faith; they are about the instrumentality of faith as a political bludgeon.”
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