Reply #183: I don't know [View All]

[Joe Chi Minh]

where you people get the idea that mainstream Christians must be bigots because they believe that it is a fundamental axiom of their faith (as passed down by Scripture and developed, but not contradicted by tradition) that there is wrong, sinful behaviour, as well as right, moral behaviour. ("Morality", of course, is by no means limited to sexual matters, as the pharisees would have it, but it does include it).

However, Christian love is not about superficial stuff - kind of rubbing noses and being lovey-dovey, it's about love on a deeper truer level, as expressed by an acceptance, at least in priniciple, to be bound by a moral code. To be harder on one's own failings than those of others. The word "religion" derives from the latin verb, "ligere", to bind. Some of you, though, give the impression that you would view Lucifer as a feedom-fighter.

It also implies an acceptance of one's own suffering for a higher, divine cause. Acceptance of the sufferings of others is another and alarmed by matter altogether, however, where it is palpable that cynical human beings are responsible and with impunity.

To be unconcerned for the poor and the afflicted is not simply to be un-Christian, but to be anti-Christian, to have the spirit of anti-Christ, because not only did Christ say that what you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me, but he also said, we are either for him or against him. He also expressed that truth, when he followed his statement that the First Commandment was the most important one, by adding, "And the Second is its like: you must love your neighbour as thyself". Indeed, the whole purpose of Christ's incarnation was to enable its corollary, that we should share in his own divine life - only perfectly, of course, in the next life. So failure on our part to reflect a belief in Christ's identification with other human beings, is in a very real sense a failure to believe that Christ himself was born in the flesh.

Maybe if I had grown up in the US, I would be more acutely aware of the way Christianity has been subverted for political ends, and alarmed by it. Particularly when I was young and a rabid agnostic.