steviedeluxe

Better to be safe than sorry, I feel. The problem is nowadays, if you admit to be a member of xxx society, or having given £x to yyyy, the scammers and hackers can track you down and add your name/email to their "suckers" list.

scampicat

Very true. I quite often get e-mails from various African countries calling me 'dear Sister in Christ' and saying that 'the Lord has told them' that I would 'generously' give £xx for the 'poor dear Christian child's life-saving operation', just send the money through some organisation where it will sink without trace and I will be in God's good books for evermore.

bil

Quite so, I always value those who 'pray not on street corners.' wrto what they do.

You don't have to answer a thing that you don't want to, but all I am doing is trying to learn. To me there is a vast gulf between what Jesus says, and what christians do. I also note that without exception, they don't like it when I ask these questions, and usually start to get irritable. That doesn't surprise me, but it saddens me.

You came on here and made a statement about your faith. I'm entitled to ask questions, provided I'm polite about it.

bil

I'm sorry if what I asked riled you.

You will note please that I said most clearly that I have known christians who have walked the walk. Having said that I feel it's only fair to mention that they are in a tiny minority. I see wealthy christians who patently live very rich lives, and I feel that to do so while so many go to bed cold and hungry shrieks against the basic tenets of the faith they profess to follow.

You will, I hope note that we are talking about christianity. I have no doubt that all other religions contain their fair share of bastards, hypocrites, liars and decent people and so on, but at the moment we are restricting our discussion to one particular religion.

Bait? I wasn't fishing. You come across as a more rational christian, and so I was curious how you would answer my questions. It was interesting reading your opinions. You will note that I haven't mocked them, or been impolite.

scampicat

You certainly are. I just didn't think your last post WAS very polite, that's all. But I accept your apology and understand that maybe I was a little over-sensitive.

The bits I deleted in my previous post detailed what I do and have done in the past to help others. However, some of it was very personal information, so I deleted it as Stevie sensibly suggested. Suffice it to say, that I do try to live out my faith as best I can. I became a Christian because I saw Christ in some Christians, people who walked the walk as well as talked the talk. Therefore I will try and be as good a Christian witness as they are, and hopefully I too will show Jesus to someone else.

There is quite often a vast gulf between what Jesus said and how Christians behave. That's because we are fallible and imperfect human beings. All we can do is our best. WE are learning all the time too. I try, I fail, I learn, I pick myself up and start again. And then almost certainly I will fail again. Just keep trying.

You will notice that following the way of Christianity is often called a 'walk'. That's because it is a journey. We have not yet arrived at our destination and so we will often stumble along the path.

Hope this helps, and I don't mind at all answering any questions if someone genuinely wants to know the answer.

bil

Quite disgusting behaviour, but there you go. Not, when you think about it that much different from the pastors in the US that rip off their flock like crazy to fund a dissolute and hypocitical life style.

Another question if I may.

In most of the discussions I have, I keep coming up against this. If the bible is the word of god, then all of it is the WoG and as such should be obeyed, including the dietary restrictions in Leviticus(?) re the prohibition against eating prawns, or wearing polyester cotton.

I see a lot of the more serious christian women wearing their hair long, because the bible tells them so, but they will still eat pork and prawns (tho maybe not together,) and believe in the creation story, Noah and so on.

I tend to think of this as a Pick 'n Mix approach to the religion, where people select what they want to believe from the bible, and ignore those bits that conflict with their lifestyle.

What's your take on this? Is it appropriate to edit the WoG to achieve a P&M faith, or are you supposed to take it all as (ahaha) gospel?

bil

Well, I wasn't actually apologising, because I didn't feel that I was being rude or even impolite. I AM sorry tho if you took it that way. It's extremely difficult to ask questions about a belief without stepping on someone's sensibilities sooner or later. So, if I have, then I apologise for that. I do think tho that the question was valid.

Would you honestly say that there are many christians who do take the responsibility of their faith seriously? ie those who carefully live a modest, comfortable, but modest life and dedicate everthing above that to working out the 'Love thy Neighbour' commandment?

When you look at it, I always think that Jesus (if he did exist) was one heck of a guy. He placed that COMMANDMENT above everything else (apart from LOVING god.) Plus he used the same word, LOVING. So, he was saying (IMO) that it is pretty much as important as No 1. and well ahead of all the other stuff, like theft, murder and adultery.

So, to me, the sharing the money stuff is pretty damn high on the agenda. That's why I look at the fat bishops, clad in silk, and I wonder, I wonder.

I look at the fat, comfortable christians, and again, I don't see any of them giving up anything worth a damn.

I see the empty churches that could give shelter to the homeless.

I remember the widow's mite, which in all honesty she couldn't spare, and I think to myself, there's a lot of people who are going to be terminally screwed if the LtN commandment is an entry requirement.

scampicat

The Levitical and other Old Testament laws were to do with the Old Covenant (promise) that God gave to the Jews. They were paving the way to the New Covenant that began with Jesus. So although the OT is still the Word of God, as it paves the way and lays down the foundations for the NT, Jesus came to be the fulfilment of those Laws. He was the one sacrifice, once and for all, instead of many sacrifices every time they went into the temple, like the Levitical priests did. He came and was crucified to be this one sacrifice, for all time and all people, for sin.

So therefore we who follow the New Covenant do not have to keep the Levitical laws because Jesus himself is the fulfuilment of those laws. He said that the Ten Commandments and all the OT laws could be consolidated into two, which are
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength' and 'Love your neighbour as yourself'.

IMO there is no reason why Christians should not keep the Levitical laws if they wish, or any of the Jewish festivals if they wish, in fact many Messianic Jews (Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah) do precisely this. But there is no need for them to do so.

So to summarise, the whole Bible IS the Word of God, but that does not mean we have to keep all the OT laws as they have been fulfilled in the person of Jesus. The OT laid down the groundwork, if you like.

Hope this helps, I am not a Bible student and therefore find it quite difficult to explain.

scampicat

See my comments in blue above!

Dick Dasterdly

So what is the source of your statment that genuine Christians are in the minority ?

No doubt you lap up all the stuff in the media about the host of paedo priests, bent bible bashers, and the like all up to their dirty tricks, just as we all do.

However I doubt if you have even the faintest clue how many ppl quietly go about their everyday lives based on Christian principles, without regularly attending church or ever trying to ram their religious views down other ppls throats.

Am I just exceptionally fortunate, in that many more of the latter than the former seem to have crossed my path over the years ?

bil

Gangster, ok, one step at a time, but that wasn't really the point. People like that are a case apart, and deserving of much credit.

Jesus, obviously amazing. Raises the dead, turns water into wine when he isnpt walking on it, cures the sick, re attaches cut off ears and so on..... and yet, none of his comtempories ever thought all that merited the effort of writing it down somewhere. We know what another JC did, because people thought it was worth the trouble of writing down what a Caeser did.

That always keeps itching at me.

Commandments, no, adultery etc features after numbers 1 & 2. Not the same thing at all, except in the sense that if you love your neighbours as your self, you won't then steal from them or screw their wives, agreed?

Personally I think that if there was a Jesus, he was sitting there relaxing while the disciples were bitching at each other. You know the sort of thing, ?I'm holier than you because I obey this commandment more than that one. This goes on until JC is well pissed off, and when they try and drag him into it, he turns round and shuts them up by effectivelay saying that there really are only two commandments, now shut up and let me get 40 winks.

I don't care which way you cut it, I reckon that had you walked up to him at that point and said 'Yeah, but sharing out the money isn't what it's about, is it?' then I think you would have got pretty short shrift.

Fat Bishops and rich churches. Now, I don't mind you bringing your gangster friend to the table and pointing out that he is working his way up the ladder. That's cool, and I have no problem with it. However you simply mustn't and cannot hide the bishop behind your friend.

That comes under the category of trying it on. You see, that bishop had (unless I am much mistaken) to start out as a christian, receive a calling to the priesthood (something I suspect that went like this. "It's an indoor job with no heavy lifting. Do you want to be a farmer like your father?" )

He then rose on purely christian merit to become a bishop. Now if that doesn't include studying the widow's mite, the LtN as thyself, et all, then I for one would be amazed.

I'd be equally amazed if he didn't see the sheer, glaring chasm between a fat bishop in silk, and a starving child in Africa, but somehow he manages to gloss over it. I can't help but think that the first words the bish will hear in the afterlife will involve needles and camels.

Now, I really do think that you do a lot more than the average christian, but I don't agree with you when you say that many of those fat comfortable christians give anything worth a damn. The widow did when she tossed in the mite. Now I'm thinking all about all those nice middleclass christians with enough disposeable income to fund holidays and second cars and private schooling for their kids, and I say to you again, are you really going to tell me that many of those truly give even a second thought to those less fortunate?

Empty churches. Every church that stays empty when there are homeless people out on the streets is an affront to the second commandment and and insult to the memory of one JC SoG (alleged.)

bil

Wotcher Dick.

What is the source? Logic and observation my boy. I look at the millions and millions of christians, and wonder what you could do if all of them gave on a scale more close to the widow's mite, rather than the mite they put in the collection plate.

I lived in a village with a high % of alleged christians. The vicar was one of the most decent types I have ever met. A true christian in thought word and deed. No, I'll go one step further. The man was a saint. There was a couple in the village, again, truly christian types. The Jovos were pretty damn decent types too. That's still less than 10 there.

I knew what was done in the village by people and there wasn't any one else that showed much real christianity. Oh there were coffee mornings and so on. I was invited to one. Just the one. There was a group of them there, big noises in the village church circle, and I happened to mention Julian Clary, comedian and practising homosexualist. There was a pause and then they started off on a good old fashioned homophobic rant. At the end, I smiled sweetly and said 'Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself, unless of course he is black, jewish or homosexual. That'll be St Paul's letter to the bigots I assume?"

Think pins and drops. I never did get asked to another.

One thing I do love about you Dick is your consistancy. Always the same.

No I don't lap up paedo priests. I feel sorry for paedophiles, genuinely sorry, but the concept of a priest doing it is so completely horrifying that I just can't grasp it.

Since you have brought this up, perhaps we could ask scampicat to try and clarify that wrto the catholic sect of christianity? I don't doubt that this particularly nasty affliction is well represented in all religions if you look hard enough, but Catholicism does seem to be somewhat terminally afflicted.

Here we have a religion based on Jesus 'suffer little children' Christ. It isn't just that there are one or two priests like that. There are a huge number, the priests are moved around the parishes if there are complaints, instead of stopping the rot, and when we turn to the head of the church, we learn that the pope shelters such priests from the law in the vatican, and further more he was the one that wrote the bull threatening people who grass a paedo priest to the law. Not, you will note that he threatens said priests with anything worse than having to move to the next parish, oh no. He threatens anyone who attempts to stop a priest enjoying all that fresh youg meat with excommunication.

Now since the catholic church is the stem from which all the other sects grow, this is particularly vile, and implies, nay states that the whole church is founded on rotten wood.

This you seem to dismiss as just a minor kerfuffle in the red tops. Fair enough if that's your views.

I just remember an article on the works of art and riches stored in the Vatican basements. It was such a humungous amount that seeling it off would have made a serious dent in world poverty. Instead tho, it moulders away there while the poor starve and suffer from simply preventable illnesses.

Are you fortunate having come across decent christians who give their all?

Fortunate doesn't even come close.

Everyday lives based on christian principles? Only the ones that suit them, of course.

bil

Oh yeah, one truly funny story. There were two churches in our village, one a proper church and the other more of a chapel. Traditionally the more upperclass village members went to the church, the riff raff to the chapel.

A friend of ours, nice boy, despite being religious, was more a working class boy despite his father being an accountant, and used to attend the church, since that had been where his father had worshipped.

After the death of his father, he was met one Sunday by a deputation from the congregation who told him that as he was working class he would doubtless be happier going to the chapel in future.

I said to him, "Working class? You mean like carpenters and fishermen?"

scampicat

Just one or two remarks from me and then I am going to bed as I have a streaming cold.

Bishops: Yes of course they have had to work up through the church and know all the 'book learning' but some of them do not even know Jesus, it is just a job to them. They need 'saving' as much as my gangster friend. More if anything because they think they ARE Christians. Being a Christian is about having a personal relationship with God through Jesus. It is not something you are born, or even christened and confirmed, into, unless you have consciously and knowingly made that decision for yourself. In other words, it's not what you know, it's Who you know.

Peadophile Catholic Priests: Of course this is dreadful and I think the Pope should take more action. But I am not a Catholic, never have been, so I do not feel qualified to expound upon this.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be back tomorrow and if there is anything else to discuss, I'll discuss.

Goodnight!

bil

Sorry you have a cold like that. They can make you feel like shit.