I recently re-read most of the New Testament. Doing it all at once is a great antidote to Christian "proof-texting" because you really get immersed in the spirit of the thing. My re-review led me to two conclusions:

(1) the early Christians were very emphatic about the coming return of Jesus to the earth to wreak vengeance. This is not just a "Jesus" thing, (as Albert Schweitzer concluded), it's a Paul thing, too. Their morality rested on this foundation.

Unfortunately, it just didn't happen. Now, anybody with integrity would say, okay, we were wrong...maybe our religion lacks merit, and we should reconsider it because of that. But of course they did not; people went on believing. But I think the apocalyptic disconfirmation has seriously undermined the basis for belief: how can we know what, if any, moral teachings of the New Testament can be untwined from its apocalypic viewpoint (see, esp. 1 Cor. 7:29-31).

(2) The early Christians believed they had supernatural power from God to perform miracles, etc. Their world-view is steeped with ideas that God is acting in the world. particularly in the discipline of his church. Now, where is that great force in the world today? Televangelists can engage in horribly scandalous behavior, and the principal punishment they receive seems to be from the secular government. I was a fundamentalist Christian for nearly fifteen years, attended charismatic and pentecostal churches, and I never saw anything miraculous that could not be explained by natural means. Not a thing!

Our world view is so different from that of the early Christians that it's questionable whether anything they said can be applicable to us today, without a huge amount of filtering. Those who are willing to "filter" (like Bishop Spong) have earned tremendous hatred and vituperation from the others who are holding on to the First Century worldview.

offa;
That sort of sums it up. They realy did believe that God would give them world power. Even today Christians are power seekers and love like hell to make us all suffer from their hypocritical views on morality.

Toto

Two years ago, lots of Christians (and others) were buying generators and stockpiling canned goods, water, beans, rice, and toilet paper to survive the Y2K disaster. Did any of them deconvert when nothing happened? What ever happened to Gary North?

Or any of the constant stream of preachers
who claim to have determined when the end
would come? There was one in '96 who made
a big deal of it. Did they run him off?

Then there was a book I saw once "88 reasons
for '88" (or something like that). 88 reasons
why the bible pointed to the "rapture" in
1988. Hey, we're all still here! (aside
from that left field website claiming that
the rapture did occur and was covered up
by the gubments of the world).

Kooks.

Pertinax: (1) the early Christians were very emphatic about the coming return of Jesus to the earth to wreak vengeance. This is not just a "Jesus" thing, (as Albert Schweitzer concluded), it's a Paul thing, too. Their morality rested on this foundation.

Any reader with average (or above average) intelligence can read the NT and see for himself or herself that you are correct in your observations.

rodahi

That was one of the points that drove me to question Christianity. The others being the discrepancy between the teachings of Jesus and Paul; and between the two Testaments.

I received a letter from my fundie ex-boy(kinda)friend, in which he wanted to warn me about the second coming, because "it WILL happen in our lifetime." Like every generation since the beginning hasn't said the exact same thing! I don't get it...