meritocrat

Is this 'branch' of Christian belief wholly logical?

Recently a person in real life told me they were a liberal Christian yet didn't believe that Jesus was crucified. Isn't the notion of Jesus dying and rising for our sins a fundamental belief of the faith?

It seems evident to me that liberal Christians simply pick and choose which parts of the Bible to follow or accept.

cydonia

Maybe it's having the best of both worlds. On the one hand, you can be intellectually honest with yourself when you see things in the Bible that you just can't accept as having happened. On the other hand you won't go to hell.

It is kind of weird. My dad is a pretty liberal christian, but in the sense that he believes the Old Testament is mythology and the New Testament is reality. The problem, which is similar to the problem you mentioned, is that without that OT guilt and sin of Adam, there's no reason for Jesus to come to save us.

Badfish

Exactly, basically they choose which doctrine or scriptures work for their lifestyle.

They try to conform God to fit their lifestyle and theology.

There are some liberal Christians that are true to the faith, but overall I don't see this too often.

Yellum Notnef

Well Radorth has figured out a way for us to still need Jesus' salvation even though the A+E story is a myth. He claims that man "invented" sin.

Good luck getting him to explain it to you.

Badfish

How could man invent sin if God is the Sovereign creator?

Isaiah 45:7

" I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

Spaz

Because the christians seem to have had a hell of a lot of fun creating many many religions out of one.

Yellum Notnef

Why the hell are you asking me???

Take it up with your fellow Christian Radorth if you want an answer to that one.

Btw, Good luck.

southernhybrid

I don't have a problem with liberal Xians. They take what they see as positive out of the Xian religion and use it as some kind of structure for their lives. They aren't fanatics and tend to be quite humanistic in general.

Liberal Xians are in some respects freethinkers. They question the really absurd things about their traditional religion and they tend to think things through to a much greater extent than other Xians. For whatever reasons of their own, they never are able to give up god and/or religion completely. Perhaps they need the tradition or they think of god as a metaphor. I don't personally see a major problem with that.

I consider liberal Xians my allies and I have a lot of respect for the ones I have met in person.

Badfish

God will spit out the lukewarm. So if there is picking and choosing and Christians believe only what gives them that warm fuzzy feeling, then they are not following the word of God, and being lukewarm at best.

Of course there are many degree's of liberal Christianity, so it is hard to just put them in a box.

Spaz

Well they think they are, and you think you are, what if they're right and you're wrong badfish? That means you're fucked. The differences are in interpretation of the bible. Who are you to say that yours is right and theirs is wrong?