Good people who don't share one's beliefs aren't sufficiently whole, and perfection comes once they are assimilated.
Sounds a bit like the Borgians for Christ sect.
If I may offer a different paradigm, it is that Jesus as exemplar and moral teacher may be what one finds if one strips Christ from Christianity. It does damage to his divinity but it humanizes him and allows for more universal access to at least the moral ideals one may associate with being a "good Christian".
But the concept of Christ as conqueror is in conflict with this view even within the New Testament. Different authors and redactors inserted so many views that the mythical Jesus is Legion in his personality and what he personifies.
Stem, picture a Christianity that does indeed embrace the love of Jesus but also functions in a rational manner eschewing any nuttiness and unnecessary superstition.
Thanks. I have plenty of examples around me for that brand, including my own mommy. But again the extreme degree of variation seems to be more of a problem for Christianity rather than a virtue. Are you simply saying some people live Christianity right and others do not? Whose right? The one who hates family for Jesus' sake, or the one who loves one another?
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
I think it was Bart Ehrman who said that he thought jesus was probably a revolutionary who got caught by the romans and crucified for attempting to start a revolution. The other stuff is probably paul and other later christian writers inserting their views.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
I guess I have been away from Mormonism a long time. The notion that someone would define me as anti-Christ makes no more sense to me than defining me as anti-Shiva or anti-Thor or anti-Sasquatch. From my point of view as a nonbeliever, it's just kinda crazy.
he/him When I go to sea, don’t fear for me. Fear for the storm.
Jessica Best, Fear for the Storm. From The Strange Case of the Starship Iris.
I guess I have been away from Mormonism a long time. The notion that someone would define me as anti-Christ makes no more sense to me than defining me as anti-Shiva or anti-Thor or anti-Sasquatch. From my point of view as a nonbeliever, it's just kinda crazy.
My suspicion is that they artificially make a dividing line of us vs them in order to justify or else satisfy themselves that there CAN be a wrong and right, and all of us want to be on the right side, so by creating division we end up feeling justified in taking the right side, i.e., those who believe what we do. It's all superficial, but has a deadliness to it. Religion idealizes unity, but don't want it. It literalizes myth into history which causes polarization, a simplified version of reality, which they cling to tenaciously because they are terrified of the truth. They hide that terror in demonizing all others who refuse to think, believe, and behave as they do. Spirituality however, that can lead to a unity across all borders of people regardless of what kind of borders are there naturally or raised artificially.
I guess I have been away from Mormonism a long time. The notion that someone would define me as anti-Christ makes no more sense to me than defining me as anti-Shiva or anti-Thor or anti-Sasquatch. From my point of view as a nonbeliever, it's just kinda crazy.
My suspicion is that they artificially make a dividing line of us vs them in order to justify or else satisfy themselves that there CAN be a wrong and right, and all of us want to be on the right side, so by creating division we end up feeling justified in taking the right side, i.e., those who believe what we do. It's all superficial, but has a deadliness to it. Religion idealizes unity, but don't want it. It literalizes myth into history which causes polarization, a simplified version of reality, which they cling to tenaciously because they are terrified of the truth. They hide that terror in demonizing all others who refuse to think, believe, and behave as they do. Spirituality however, that can lead to a unity across all borders of people regardless of what kind of borders are there naturally or raised artificially.
Philo, you have very adroitly articulated a situation in my extended family that has tortured me for a while now. Apparently, they see my family as "anti-Christ" and have taken it upon themselves to:
"artificially make a dividing line of us vs them in order to justify or else satisfy themselves that there CAN be a wrong and right, ....so by creating division we end up feeling justified in taking the right side, i.e., those who believe what we do. It's all superficial, but has a deadliness to it.
Ironically, my partner's family runs the full gamut from Catholic priests to Easter Catholics to believers in a higher power to full atheist, but religion NEVER comes before family, and religious association NEVER determines which family members are considered worth associating with. This type of Mormon variation on this can be so damaging. I hear from more and more people that Mormon families are starting to let go of this, so I can only hope my future family members will benefit from that.
philo sofee wrote:
They hide that terror in demonizing all others who refuse to think, believe, and behave as they do.
Just coincidentally, someone posted this on reddit:
Taken from a devotional address delivered to the students at Brigham Young University on December 16, 1969.
Printed in the New Era 1984:
"Of all the people in Christendom, we Latter-day Saints are the only ones in a position to reap the full blessings of the spirit of Christ in our lives..."
I think it was Bart Ehrman who said that he thought jesus was probably a revolutionary who got caught by the romans and crucified for attempting to start a revolution. The other stuff is probably paul and other later christian writers inserting their views.
Dr Exiled,
I am sure there are some scholars who have read Jesus this way. My understanding is that Ehrman is of the school that reads Jesus as a messianic prophet teaching righteousness for the kingdom of heaven. The sayings we read may have been adjusted or added to in combination but would be in the ball park of what Jesus went about preaching.
...if one strips Christ from Christianity...It does damage to his divinity but it humanizes him and allows for more universal access to at least the moral ideals one may associate with being a "good Christian".
In my earlier comments on this thread I said that a person who is antichrist is simply one that doesn’t acknowledge His divinity. I think I’ll stick to that. But again, it’s in degrees. Different strokes for different folks. The range goes from antichrist having similar parallel to antibuddah...to vehemently speaking in hatred and/or direct opposition to the Christ. The commonality being a non belief in Christ’s status as only begotten of God in the flesh.
