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Bush and his religion?
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Vox Humana wrote: How do you account for so many denominations each having so large a difference with fellow Christians that they can't abide belonging to the same organization? There are a number of reasons. The first is because people are different and their needs are different. There was a good book written some years ago by Bruce Larson, in which he illustrated it with a parable. It went something like this (I am paraphrasing from a years-old memory): There was once a man who had suffered many reversals in his life. He had tried and failed a multiple businesses. His car had just been reposessed. He had an addictive personality and in spite of his best efforts, could not shake many self-destructive habits. He had failed in love. He had failed so many times, he took his failure for granted. He saw himself as a failure and despised what he saw in the mirror. There was another man in the same town who had a golden touch. He was a millionaire. Important people came to him for advice. He had a wonderful marriage and his kids were exemplary. He worked out and looked good. He felt great about himself. There were also two churches in the area. The first, Our Lady of Eternal Redemption, focused on the love and acceptance of Jesus Christ. It told about how that every day was a new day in Christ, that all the sins and failures of yesterday were forgiven, and that, in Christ, all things are possible. The second, The Church of Eternal Repentance, focused on the fallen nature of man and the offer of redemption through repentance and humility. It preached about how that, no matter how good we think we are, as long as another person is in need we have not done what we can. It focused on the fact that we are all sinners and need the forgiveness of Christ. It told the story of the young rich man (Matt 19:16) who followed all the laws but walked away from Jesus when he was told to sell his posessions and give it to the poor. Larson points out that while both of them teach the truth, the concentration if very different. It would be a good thing for the first man to enter the first church and the second to enter the second, and possibly a very bad thing for the opposite to occur. In the best case, the needs of each would be met -- the man in trouble would be given encouragment and validation, and the man with it all would be taught humility. In the worst case, the man in trouble would focus on his failings and might have a hard time recognizing the value of his redemption,a nd the man with it all would see his wealth as validation. The second is that there is great ambiguity in most aspects of Christianity. Jesus noted that there were really only two rules to being a Christian: loving God above all else, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Everything else falls from those two. Most of the things that people think of when they think of Christian orthodoxy are not things that Jesus particularly cared about. Virtually every variant on the things that Christ didn't deal with has been proposed. That Christ was both human and God, that He was not human at all, that he was God but was an illusion, that He was human and not God. The orthodox trinitarial belief was established in the face of Christians who believed in the trinity, who believed in a pantheon of dieties, who believed that Jesus and God were enemies, etc. -- all of which, in fact, were relatively consistent with the fundamental teachings of Christ. Christ was concerned with how we lived our lives and with our relationship with a diety we could not comprehend. He was not all that concerned with which incorrect comprehension we chose. What this means is that most decisions that Christians have to make about life are thus pretty much judgement calls. Generations of theologians and demagogues have tried replaced the Pharisees in trying to write laws for every little contingency, and its not surprising that they differ in their extrapolations. This is compounded by the fact that Christianity is focused on belief (orthodoxy) rather than practice (orthopraxy). This is in contrast to Judiasm and Islam, where what you *do* is as or more important than what you *believe.* The belief system of Judiasm and Islam is pretty simple; it's the practice that gets the textual real estate. In Christianity, it's the opposite. Thus, not only is it *belief* that is key, but most of it is up in the air. Even in the early church, this was a problem. Paul, following a vision, brought a radical interpretation of Christianity into the forefront. Paul claimed authority based on his vision, his determination and suffering, and the results of his work. On the basis of this personal authority he tosses Jewish law out the window. What most Christians don't read was the response of the followers of Peter in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies who believed that Christianity should essentially remain a form of Judiasm: And if our Jesus appeared to you also and became known in a vision and met you as angry with an enemy, yet he has spoken only through visions and dreams or through external revelations. But can anyone be made competent to teach through a vision? And if your opinion on that is possible, why then did our teacher spend a whole year with us wh were awake? How can we believe you even if he appeared to you? ... But if you were visited by him for the space of an hour and were instructed by him and thereby have become an apostle, then proclaim his words, expound what he has taught, be a friend to his apostles and do not contend with me, who am his confidant; for you have in hostility withstood me, who am a firm rock, the foundation stone of the Church (Homilies 17.19). All may not have been quite as fluffy bunnies and candy cane among the Apostles as a superficial reading of Acts would imply. Paul even ran into this problem of personal interpretation when dealing with the Corinthians. He first wrote to them that to a person at one with Christ, *all* things are permitted. He meant, of course, that if a person were in touch with Christ then one would only *want* to do the right thing -- all things are lawful but not all things are "expedient" or "beneficial". Of course, many Pauline Christians took this to mean that anything goes, and Paul then had to write letters almost retracting this statement and giving lists of permitted and not permitted. Third, because Christianity allows broad variation in faith and practice in order to meet individual needs, it's not surprising that this leads to exploitation of that freedom. Jesus noted that the things that limited faith in different people are different ("If your eye offends you, pluck it out"), and that the practice demands of faith for one person would not be that of another. Some people have problems with sex. Other people have problems with food. Other people have problems with being ostentatious. And each support group essentially forms a denomination. Some, like the Shakers, are self-limiting. Others are not. Fourth, Christianity is a faith that has authority based in three basic things: the Bible, personal revelation, and tradition. Different denominations place different emphasis on each source of authority. Fundamentalists cling to the Bible and essentially ignore the other two. Mystics focus on personal revelation and use the other two as commentary and guide for the mystical experience. My pastor likes to quote a Sufi he once knew who told him about his training in the Holy Koran. This Sufi trained for months and was not *allowed* to read the Holy Koran. Finally he went to his master and asked why, as a Moslem, he was not allowed to read the Holy Koran. The master replied "First find God. Then He will give you the insight necessary to understand the Holy Koran." This is the basic attitude of mystics, whether they be Christian, Moslem, or whatever. It's why a Buddhist is willing to write the introduction to the mystical writings of the Catholic monk Thomas Merton. And it is an attitude opposite to that of fundamentalists who believe that reading the Book is the *way* to find God. Finally, traditionalists focus on continuity between their beliefs and those of the early fathers who were closest to Jesus Himself. Each of these different approaches result in a different flavor of faith, and all are Christian. billo |
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