Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingKnight
Well... The Old Testament is actually the holy book of Judaism. Christianity merely took advantage of it and purposefully related the religion they professed with that of the Jews. At least historically speaking.
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Well,
strictly historically speaking, Christians were a bunch of Jews that believed they had found the Messiah and afterward began inviting non-Jews to join them.
Then a bunch of non-Jews hijacked it and played mix-and-match with their religious beliefs.
There really isn't any conflict between the Old and New Testaments unless one interprets the New Testament according to assumptions made about Christianity. Jesus wasn't saying anything new.
But mainline Christianity has been busy for so long (almost the entirety of its existence) trying to justify its deviations that even many incredibly learned theologians have no idea what their own religion teaches, because they've been spending so much time learning it according to incorrect assumptions and their own cultural perspective.
I've spent a lot of time trying to shed myself of such, and I still have a long way to go. Still, it saddens and frustrates me that there's so much of it elsewhere. The only way I've been able to get through discussing religion with the religious and non-religious alike without blowing a blood vessel is to remind myself that religious
beliefs are secondary to
relationship.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bullzeeb
So many Christians...................*shudders*
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So many atheists...................*shudder*
So many Muslims...................*shudder*
So many Buddhists...................*shudder*
So many Sikh...................*shudder*
So many--OK, I think I've made my point.
The world is full of all sorts. In any given group, there are a few good, a few more fanatics, and a whole bunch of people who are ignorant, apathetic, ambivalent, or some combination.
If you're disturbed personally by proximity to people who belong to a particular group, well... I'd say you have a problem that needs much more of your attention than any problem you perceive in them.
"How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me pull the splinter out of your eye' when you don't see the beam in your own eye"--oh, nevermind.