Sabine Grant

Salut Opera Nut... I think the quote you attributed to me " getting right with Jesus" may be from someone else. My experience with folks of various faiths extends from Africa to Europe to the USA. I have rarely met christians in other countries who behaved the way you described. I was mostly impressed by the gentleness and sincerity of various christians from African countries for example. They are so busy dealing with poverty and oppressive conditions at times that they do not waste time mistreating other human beings. I hope you will have opportunities to travel overseas and hopefuly revise your general perception of christians.

Opera Nut

Thank you Sabine.

Incidentally, did you know that Mother Teresa raised millions and millions of dollars and never spent a single cent of it on MEDICAL CARE for the dying and suffering people she was allegedly trying to help? She thought suffering was good. The people who were suffering generally did not think so, since it was their nervous systems being wracked by intolerable pain, not hers. Do a google search for "Susan Smith" (not the one who drowned her kids).

Moses Mendelssohn, famous rabbi and grandfather of Felix, said "The scriptures say to do, not to pray". I can agree with that wholeheartedly, but that is a more Jewish attitude than Christian, since Jews have fairly vague ideas about heaven and don't make it a central part of their faith. They are more interested in helping people in the here and now. That is why there is a charity donation box (Tzedekah) in every home.

The best-hearted famous Christian I can think of is Jimmy Carter, since he works for Habitat for Humanity building houses for low income people. He is working in the here and now in a very concrete way to help people with his hands.

He also resigned from the Southern Baptists as they got too right wing for him.

Also, three of the guys in U2 profess to be Christians and they have done a ton of charity work such as Rock Against Apartheid, Bono's trip to Africa to start community improvements, Amnesty International. Being from Dublin, they know quite well what religious wars do to destroy a society.

I think doing good works is far more important than the motivation.

One could say, "I am helping the poor because Jesus taught so."

Or one could say, "I am relieving suffering amongst the less fortunate because Buddha said we should help all sentient beings to attain enlightenment."

Or one could say "I am helping others because the Talmud commentary says, "He who saves one life, saves the world entire; he who destroys one life, destroys the world entire."

Or as an atheist one could say, "I am helping the less fortunate simply because it's the moral thing to do, to leave the world a better place than I found it."

Some people do not understand the concept of the ends being the same, helping people, and the motivations being different.

I have not said that all Christians I have met have been rude and insulting. The liberal Christians I have met have been nice people. I graduated from a liberal Protestant university (Presbyterian) and got an excellent education. The conservative fundies I have met are not nice people; they are self righteous and hateful. There is a definite correlation between niceness and which denomination they belong to.

I would rather be in hell with Oscar Wilde, Gandhi, Einstein, Sagan, Buddha, Mark Twain and some of the other interesting storytellers.

Opera Nut

Badfish, here's some more about my experiences that I posted in another thread recently. This might clarify. Radorth (the ever entertaining) was making assumptions about me that weren't true when I compared Jesus to Mithra).:

Opera Nut
Veteran User

Registered: March 2002
Location: Houston TX
Posts: 821

Rad, your assumptions about me are wrong.

Pre-30 crowd who thinks Mithra is just like Jesus?? I saw 30 quite a while back. To quote from the Jews for Judaism website:

"Actually, there are ancient sources that have explicit reference to a supernatural, virgin-born savior, who dies by murder to achieve salvation for believers who can experience him by eating of his blood and body...You can read all about it in the mythologies about Mithra, Osiris, Krishna, Tammuz, Adonis, Dionysus, Bacchus, Isis, etc. "



Don't have any kids?? excuse me I have one. Almost grown, in fact, and a good kid, despite or possibly because of my godless moral values.

"My priest"?? That was not my priest. I am talking about an ex-priest psychologist who writes best selling books named John Bradshaw, Ph.D. You use the argument that he was not a "true Christian" when he wrote about unearned guilt and shame. You're not familiar with the books he wrote, and you're using the same argument that every Christian does when they see a Christian with an opinion they don't like, or an ex-Christian they don't like, as well.

Hate the sin and love the sinner?? I got told I was a worthless person, over and over, and I stand by those insults. I was told I had no right to charge money for my work I did for them, even though I was unemployed and desperately needed a job. That's what sent me over the edge and slashing my wrists. They didn't love me, they loved to scare people and have power over them. Scare them and extract money from them. Tell them their lives are totally worthless, even if they "accept Christ", because "Our righteousness is as filthy rags" ??? This crap we got from the choir director about not being "anointed" when we sang really got to me. I asume the preacher told the choir director to "crack down" on us or something.

I sat in church and cried all the way thru these sermons that you assume were "loving". You don't know much about human nature. Healthy people do not put up with verbal abuse. Insecure people let others tell them what to think, how to believe, what their self worth is, etc. I will never make that mistake again.

I don't think Jesus needed to die for me, and the whole business of Jesus atoning for my sins (which were not committed by me, but by fruit munching simpletons in the Garden of Eden) is a bunch of bullcrap. You don't get it about the presumption of innocence, do you??

Another quote about Jesus from the Jews for Judaism website:

"What did Jesus teach and preach? Looking at how those who proclaimed to be his followers have acted over the centuries one might suspect that the teacher was himself full of hate. And that is exactly right. Does it surprise anyone that the New Testament's Jesus advocates persecution of those who do not follow him? The Gospels speak for themselves. In particular, it is the Jewish people who are singled out for attack.

"It was to the Jewish people that the Gospel's Jesus presented himself and it was they who rejected his hypocrisy, arrogance and false claims. As a result, it was those "unbelieving" Jews who he condemned and ordered his followers to murder (Luke 19:27). For the Gospel's Jesus, the dictum, "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44), did not rule out the oppression and slaughter of those who did not accept him. Jesus' supposed prayer, "Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34a), an interpolation not found in the earliest manuscripts of Luke, is carefully crafted to exonerate the soldiers who physically affixed him to the cross. The Jews remain unforgiven. The claim of a gentle Jesus, meek and mild, is simply not true.

"The Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew says, "learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart" (Matthew 11:29). In compliance, many of his followers, throughout the centuries, have hypocritically perpetrated a façade of pseudo- piety declaring the "Christ-like" gentleness and humility of some of the most loathsome haters of Jews. They have learned well for Jesus, "gentle and humble in heart," was one who viciously called for the death of all who did not believe in him. Indeed, it has led to the slaughter of Christians deemed heretics by other Christians as well as millions of others who would not accept the "peace Christ has to offer."

"If Christianity is judged solely on the person of Jesus, as the Gospels depict him, the result is a negative one. One does not have to point to the horrible persecutions perpetrated over the centuries in the name of Jesus, but only to what is taught by the Gospel's Jesus.

"Jesus is recorded as forgiving the sins of those who sinned against others (Matthew 9:2, Mark 2:5, John 8:11); he is even supposed to have told God to forgive (Luke 23:34), but, he himself forgave no one who disagreed with him (Luke 19:27) or did anything against him (Matthew 26:24). Jesus did not live by his own precept that you must love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you (Matthew 11:20-24). He taught others to "turn the other cheek" (Matthew 5:39, Luke 6:29) but did not heed his own teaching (John 18:22-23).

"The New Testament Jesus did not love or pray for his Jewish adversaries in any interaction with them. Those who disagreed with him were vilified, called unrepentant sinners, and condemned.

"The Gospels' Jesus condemns the entire Jewish people, not for what may be classified as their own sins, but for the shedding of all righteous blood throughout history (Matthew 23:35, Luke11:50-51). The Gospels' Jesus irrationally denounced the entire Jewish people for murders neither they nor their fathers committed. He holds them liable for sins they could have had no part in because they were committed even before the birth of Abraham, the progenitor of the nation of Israel.


"John's Jesus is portrayed as though he is no longer a member of the Jewish people. He willfully disassociates himself from the Jews (John 8:17, 10:34).

"Moreover, Jesus identifies the Jews as being the children of the devil; they want to carry out the desires of their father and so are murderers and liars (John 8:44).

"The students have learned their lessons well. Unfortunately, the teacher's message includes a great deal that is evil. Often, Jesus' pronouncements are nothing more than seedbeds for future destructive accusations and mayhem (Matthew 10:34, Luke 12:51). The religious context in which they are taught only provides moral justification to the immoral. The students are who they are. How they interpret and carry out or ignore their teacher's dictums may be debated, but what their teacher taught plain and simple tells us about the teacher.

"Yes, it's about Jesus, the Jesus of the New Testament. It's about what he actually taught. What was good was not new and what was new was not good.

"Yes, it's about Jesus and it's not good."


April 13, 2003 11:35 PM

Rhea

Just bumping so Radorth can answer my questions. I know he's not running away.

Biff the unclean

The point of the wording/spelling of the Nicene Creed's "catholic" to mean universal was very much emphasized to me during my 17 years in Catholic schools. I remember an entire class discussion period on that one line of the creed by itself.
---KK Holiday

I must be too subtle in my sarcasm. Let me be plainer.

I took the same Catholic School classes. Mine were in Cork City, Ireland. But I must be quite a bit older than you because they emphasized that the Catholic Church was the Universal church. In those days it was "The One True Religion™". The wording/spelling was stressed to mean the opposite of what you claim, by the very same church.
There was a joke back in Cork--- "I was seven years old before I realized that Protestant and bastard were two separate words."

Now that's changed. But since it's changed it must either have been wrong before or it's wrong now. Always a problem, changing, when you claim to be peddling the "Truth."

The point being that the question "what defines a true Christian" has no definitive answer. Since none of it is provable and they all make it up as they go along. That Hitler is a good example since he was such an extreme case. Most Xians here would say that he wasn't a true Christian because he was a monstrous madman. But these same people claim that it is your inner faith that saves you and not your works. Then they will point to Hitler's works and observe that they don't reflect someone who has been saved even though they claim that works are beside the point. However Hitler saw the horrors he was committing as following the teachings of Martin Luther (and he was right). Hitler would have claimed that he was a true Christian, and the liberals who didn't want to murder millions were not.

So, to whom do you listen?
Myself I'm more ecumenical. I believe they are all True Christians, no matter what they might say about each other, by right of "self definition." If they say they are "True Christians," then it's good enough for me.