Beautiful Evangelical Christianity
Ali Eteraz
I am jacking this from a listserv I'm on as it relates to the discussion about religious supremacism in which I held that believing in the truth of your religion to the exclusion of others' religion is a form of supremacism:
"The Islam I know is about mercy, reason, knowledge ,compassion, tolerance, respect, moderation and social justice. Anything else is deviation by people who claim to be Muslim and not necessarily Islam."
As a believing evangelical Christian, this is how I understand my faith as well.
I try to convey the point to others that true Christ Spirit is one of mercy, compassion, tolerance, respect, joy, health and social justice. (I have some reservations about the role of reason and moderation — which I think have their places, but sometimes need to be de-emphasized in deference to heart wisdom and other spiritual leadings and insights.)
Therefore I don't understand the Christ Spirit as exclusive to the Christian faith, but see it as present in all Faiths which sincerely honor those values, and particularly including Islam as I understand it.
One paradox I see in all this is that I know many Christians who interpret our faith in a strictly exclusivist way However, while I see their exclusivism as contradicting my understanding of that aspect of Divine Truth which underlies the value of tolerance, their worship and meditation clearly increases their compassion and wisdom in many other respects — just as profoundly as does the worship and meditation of non-exclusivist believers. They understand the intensification of their exclusivist convictions to be part of the same spiritual endeavor as the deepening of compassion. In worship they may experience very similar subjective confirmations for both enhanced compassion and intensified doctrinal exclusivism. My heart understanding tells me that I am to honor and validate the integrity and sincerity of these believers, and the Truths they affirm in the domains of compassion and social justice, even though I am also led to reject some of their exclusivist and intolerant interpretations of our faith.
I see the same paradox among Muslims.
I would love to see Islam become more like this Evangelical Christianity.
It took me a long time just to realize that they are not, in fact, mainstream Christians but are a fairly small minority worldwide. Coming to understand that fact brought some of the emotional abuses I suffered from these people as a child into better perspective.
Theologically, as I've been saying on this blog for many years now (I'm constantly amazed that anyone thinks anything I've said on this subject is new) their view of the Bible is fundamentally in error and is frankly idolatrous. From the perspective of traditionalist Christians, it's also pretty clearly heresy. They try to make the Bible be like the Koran is for Muslims, and that's just wrong. The faith isn't based on the Bible and never has been. That's just something fairly modern that they made up. It's also fairly alien to Christians outside the English-speaking world.
I think their attitude about the Bible often leads them to very destructive behaviors and attitudes. On the other hand, I have people who I love and care about who are believers in their creed. I think many of them have good values and are good people and have made great Americans.
But I would never be one of them again. I fled and I will not return--not ever.
This guy strikes me as one of the better among their number. Because he knows the Christ of humility and mercy.
In other words if Christ is Universal and Ecumenical, as I believe him to be, then by his very nature he cannot be owned by Christianity anymore than God could be owned by Judaism or any religion for that matter.
Christ is not a commodity anymore than God is a commodity, or in other words religions were made for Man and not God for religions.
I fully believe Christianity to be the best expression of Truth of any religion (not perfect, just best), however to say that God is limited to Christianity or that Christ is limited to Christianity is to limit Christ and God, and I suspect that is both illogical and counter to God's very nature.
God is expansive and evangelical (in the original sense) so it only makes sense that Christ being the Son of God would infiltrate everywhere and anywhere as circumstances allow. Including into Christianity itself.
Religion to me then is less the Truth as it is and more an expression of an attempt to get man as close to the Divine as possible, meaning that anyone encompassed by the Heart of Christ or who is filled with a Christlike nature and is a friend and companion of Christ is a Christian, be he Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, or even pagan who has never heard of Christ.
The important thing be that Christ live within men and inform their relationship with God and their fellow man, not necessarily inform man's dogma or even his religion, though those things serve their place from time to time, both good and ill.
Religion should be a competition to see who can be the most perfectly imitative of the Divine that is possible for man to express. But religions should not assume they own God or that God is a commodity they may own, or spend. It's like saying equality and liberty and properties owned by Americans. If those properties are true then they are the properties of all, or none. To be free is to be free and to be true is to be true, but freedom cannot be kept from the slave or it is not freedom and truth cannot be hidden under a bushel or it illuminates nothing. But truth, once exposed, illuminates everything it reaches regardless of what it touches, for truth, like light, is no respecter of the thing it touches.
If you are seeking to become ever more like God then that is good religion, and if Christ lives within you then that is the important thing about Christianity.
I think Christianity does that best, but it does not mean Christianity owns Christ or God. Christianity has an obligation to be the best expression of the nature of Christ, but it does not own Christ by right. Religion is a practical matter and a good tool for seeking, emulating and being possessed by he divine, but we should never confuse the Tool with the Tool-User, much less the Tool-Maker.
God is too big for man to contain and Christ is too big for mere religion to own.
Christ never wrote one word down. So where do these "fundamentalists" get off claiming that a book proclaims the entire message of Christ? What's fundamental about that?
The New Testament speaks constantly of what Jesus SAID, what the Apostles SAID, what God SAID, and rarely speaks of what any of them WROTE. At one point, one of the New Testament writers wrote to assure the early Christians that scripture--written words--were God-breathed and inspired. But he never claimed that scripture alone was the basis of the faith. He was writing to assure that Christians who were uncertain they believed the written words should have respect for scripture, because they were not sure they trusted written words. The statement was not that they should accept that scripture alone was authoritative, which is a modernist silliness.
The Bible never claims--not ever, not once--that scripture alone is authoritative. And indeed, Peter warns quite clearly in the New Testament that people who take the writings too seriously are easily confused and led into foolishness.
The great modern heresy and idolatry is the idea that the Bible alone is the authoritative voice of the Lord. This is why the Bible-worshippers fall apart so readily into so many different schisms. They're all inventing their own new versions of Christianity based on whatever their personal interpretations of the Bible are.
Indeed, while they're fond of accusing others of reading whatever they want into the Bible, it's ironic: it's they themselves who exemplify that trait.
One thing is certain. Though the life and death of Jesus gave rise to Christianity, Jesus himself was not "Christian."
Ali is correct to appreciate the paradox, and its sweeping implication for all formalized religion.
Jesus was a champion of informality and liberated faith in that which no mortal words could ever hope to fully describe.
Of course it doesn't exist. But the fundies keep throwing "all scripture is god-breathed and inspired" around as if that's a sufficient answer.
They worship the Bible. They should stop it.
Except that the Orthodox (who number hundreds of millions) and the Anglicans and the Lutherans and the Presbyterians and some others besides (who also number in the hundreds of millions) all reject the notion that the Bible *alone* is authoritative and that you can derive all you need to know about Christianity from it.
And since the Bible itself makes no such claim for itself--it simply doesn't, unless you think "all scriprture is god-breathed and inspired" equals "there is no truth outside of written scriptures"---you might admit that that they have a point.
Those who say otherwise are a distinct minority. Worse, most are mostly English-speaking and have only been around for a few hundred years of the 2,000 years of Christianity.
Evangelicals just take the Sola Scriptura of Luther et al doctrine too literally.
The end result can wind up looking like the Westboro clan at times.
I call shenanigans on the Presbyterians being included in the group of people who reject the Bible as authorative. I was, until recently, a long-time member of a PCA church and they, along with the Orthodox Presbyterians, teach that the Bible is the unerring word of God. I cannot say about the PCA-USA members as I have never attended one of their churches.
I call shenanigans on your not reading what I said. [grin] That happens a lot in these discussions.
You keep missing the word "alone." It's a modifier that matters.
The Bible *is* authoritative for all the groups I listed. I never said it wasn't.
It is not the *sole* authority.
Here's a clue: if you know the Nicene Creed--which probably 85-90% of Christians worldwide do--you're not in a group that believes that the Bible *alone* is authoritative. You're part of a group which recognizes the validity of the church fathers, and of the oral traditions, and of history and context.
The "Sola Scriptura" believed by the Presbyterians was and is one of the "five solas" that they believe, none of which came out of the Bible. Their "sola scriptura" only meant that if there was a conflict over tradition that the Bible was the only arbiter you could turn to. They never meant, and still do not mean, that the Bible is the only vessel for everything and the only source to which you turn.
What about the Christ that turned over the tables of money changers in the Temple? What about the Christ that commanded people turn from sin? What about the Christ that was nearly stoned a number of times because what He had to say so enraged the people?
What about that Christ? I don't see Him in your Christ.
What in G-d's name did your Christ do that made the people hate Him so much as to condemn Him to death and release a murderer in His stead? Can you tell me that?
This, once again, is why it's so dangerous for people without any backing in tradition or history to just pick up the Bible and "decide for themselves" what it means. The Bible is not coherent enough for that to work, which is why there's so much schisming among the "we have no creed but the Bible" evangelicals.
He was crucified mostly for political reasons, by people who felt their political position was threatened. Including the hypocritical pharisees, who held that they and they alone were the arbiters of God's word and who fulminated about it loudly on the streets in front of others. He also offended people who thought he was a blasphemer falsly claiming to be the Messiah.
He was also subject to mob pressures. In that time it was normal for people to encourage and cheer on crucifixions and other public punishments--it was a popular form of entertainment in that era. People who didn't even know who he was or really what he stood for would have cheered on his execution anyway because that's how people acted a lot back then (and still do, in lesser ways).
Who gave you this idea that the entire population at the time was filled with rage at this man? Most of them barely knew him. He looked like just another rabble rouser to most of them.
That series of beliefs is what invalidates all other religions to the Christian. I would submit that anyone who doesn't believe those three basic tenets are not Christian.
And please, anyone who considers themselves to be a Christian that disagrees with what I've stated, don't get up in arms about me saying your not a Christian. Let's just discuss it, 'kay? Who knows, you might enlighten me.
No seriously, it is. The Southern Baptists and a few of their Evangelical cohorts will tell you that that's clearly what the Bible says, but if you read it carefully it's really not as clear as they like to make out--you can't just slap one or two verses out of context and then triumphally declare, "that settles it!" Most sources of Christianity will tell you it's a source of hot debate (heheh)--and has been since the days of the early church fathers.
To discuss this question honestly, you have to ask questions that are not directly answered anywhere in the Bible. For example: what happens to people too young to hear and understand the message to believe anything? What if they simply never hear the message? What if they're insane and can't understand the message? What happens if they're confused? What happens if they are simply invincibly ignorant, try to believe but just can't make themselves?
These questions have been debated forever because they're *not* clear in scripture at all.
Sometimes? They fricking nailed the dude to a chunk of wood without cause. You're saying they did they because He upset them sometimes? I'd hate to see what they would have done if He upset them all the time!
What I'm fighting against is the Hallmark card version of Messiah. In fact if people aren't hating Christians then Christians are not representing their Master (Matthew 15:18-27, 16:1-4).
Yeshua tells us the world will hate us and try to kill us because the world hates Him and killed Him. Why is there so little talk about this? Why are people afraid to talk about this? Why are you afraid to talk about this?
A Christian that is doing what they should will be hated by the world. The Master was killed. Most of His Apostles were killed. What did they die for? Tell me, Dean, if the message of Messiah was kindness and hugs, why were they killed?
Some of your points are addressed through the principle of "the ability to understand." A child too young to comprehend the message of Christianity is considered innocent, and gets a pass on the whole "belief" thing. While I haven't considered it before, someone who grew to adulthood without the capacity to understand would also seem to be deemed innocent.
The others, who have the capacity to understand, but don't believe, would be damned. And the point about those who just never heard of Christ? That's where it falls on Christians to proselytize them, for even if they never hear the message, they are still damned.
And I don't particularly know how much of that belief is scriptural and how much is doctrinal. I'll have to do a bit of reading, maybe even ask my brother (who is a Southern Baptist minister and former missionary).
That's not exactly accurate. Read Luke 12:48, James 4:17, Romans 4:15, Romans 5:13, 1 Timothy 1:13 and Romans 10:14 &17.
Essentially, we are all responsible for what we hear. Those who have heard little will be held to account for little. I have no doubt in my mind there will be those in heaven that never heard the name of Yeshua in life.
G-d will not judge by the Law those who know not of it.
What many have noted before, too, is that if you take this doctrine of salvation through faith alone too literally, then an inescapably logical conclusion for most Christians would be that if you truly love your fellow Christians you should kill them. You get salvation and eternal life as soon as you are baptized and believe, right? Then if you really love them, you should kill them on the spot. You should kill all your kids right after baptizing them too. After all, that's the only way to assure that they won't fall away from the faith and thus face eternal hellfire, isn't it?
This is what happens when you have a very simplistic view of things. There are no Christians who practice such things of course. But if I really believed this doctrine--everyone burns for eternity who doesn't believe--I'd probably make it my mission in life to run around killing Christians just to help them avoid the temptation of falling away.
This is silly stuff. The real debate on this goes back 2,000 years. Augustine wrestled with it, as did many of the early Church fathers. In part because the Bible really is not all that clear on the matter.
I'll try to get to those tonight. That takes more time.
Being Christian doesn't mean thinking Christ had some pretty good ideas, but rather it means believing that he was the son of God and allowed for the redemption of mankind. At the end of the day this is a binary question, either he was (and is) or wasn't.
Luke 12:42-48 (NIV)As per the above, it could very well be concluded that those who did not know their master's will and did nothing to deserve punishment will not be punished, or am I "reading" that wrong?
Kevin, the same Jesus who said "if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out" also prevented a woman from being stoned to death as prescribed for adultery under Jewish law. So there is no contradiction between Jesus the opponent of sin and Jesus the merciful. So why wasn't Jesus merciful to the money changers? The money changers were taking advantage of the poor. There is a distinction to be made between self-harming sins and other-harming sins. We in this world should be merciful to those who commit the former, for they already harm themselves, which is a punishment itself -- further, God can punish these sins further if He wishes. However, we must vigorously prosecute those who commit the latter type of sin, for if we don't, they will profit unjustly with no consequence. Further, "social justice" was on the list Ali quoted, which would presumably include sticking up for the oppressed (such as the poor) against the oppressors (such as the money changers); so I don't think he was forgetting about this side of Jesus.
Muhammad too taught that humans should be merciful, but he also taught that we should fight against injustice. I think this is what Ali meant, and I agree with him. Christians and Muslims alike should strive for such standards regarding mercy and justice.
And please, anyone who considers themselves to be a Christian that disagrees with what I've stated, don't get up in arms about me saying your not a Christian.
I'm not a Christian, nor do I really disagree with you about what being a Christian means. However, I do think that when we talk about what people believe, there is an enormous amount of gray area that normally gets glossed over in these discussions - in large part because people tend to be extraordinarily literal when discussing the issue.
For instance: if someone picks up one of those little tracts that are all over the subways in Atlanta and signs their name on the part saying they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, does that mean they actually believe in Jesus? Will they still believe in Jesus a half hour later, when the train gets stuck and they're late for work?
Conversely, does someone who has never heard of Jesus, but who lives their attuned to a kind of kind of grace they cannot explain, but perhaps share with friends, family members, or co-religionists - in your theology, would these people believe in Jesus if it is indeed God's grace they are attuned to?
Believing that people are going to Hell because they haven't or won't sign on to the given definition of Christianity doesn't strike me as an inappropriate view for devoted Christians to hold, given what they are taught. But as an outsider, it strikes me as enormously limiting and barren way of perceiving God's grace.
And I say that as an atheist.
Sorry, it's you who's obfuscating.
This is not a marginal question. It's core to one's view of the faith. And to one's view of the Bible, come to think of it.
It's not marginal at all. It is one of many things that defines fundamental differences between Christians.
Being Christian doesn't mean thinking Christ had some pretty good ideas, but rather it means believing that he was the son of God and allowed for the redemption of mankind. At the end of the day this is a binary question, either he was (and is) or wasn't.
Such a statement is usually what I expect to hear from Evangelicals, and a few others. The problem is that it's loaded with a huge slew of assumptions that are necessary to make it "binary."
When I'm faced with assertions like that, I usually assume I must be talking with a Biblicist, i.e. an Evangelical who believes that the Bible and the Bible alone is authoritative on Christian doctrine. Although you'll occasionally find a mainline Protestant or an Orthodox or a Catholic thinker who talks that way, it's not so common anymore. Which one are you?
There are a lot of Evangelical Christians, fundamentalists and not, through all of central and south america and puerto rico. So it is existing, and in some decent numbers outside english speaking areas.
i was raised catholic in puerto rico, and never met any christian fundamentalists - mainly evangelical - until I moved to the states.
As a Catholic Christian, anyone who believes that anyone else will be dammed b/c of anything else other than their behavior is out of their mind. Yes I'm aware the bible has Jesus saying, I am the only way to the father. But maybe he was talking out of example. What about people living in tribes, will they be dammed? Heck no.
Often in this discussions people tend to forget that as Christians we believe Jesus to be the son of God, the messiah. And they also tend to forget that God still exists, and he is one compassionate, merciful and forgiving God. That's what the new covenant, a.k.a. Jesus the messiah, was all about.
Sometimes? They fricking nailed the dude to a chunk of wood without cause. You're saying they did they because He upset them sometimes? I'd hate to see what they would have done if He upset them all the time!
First off, these were people who nailed people to crosses every day for all sorts of offenses, many smaller than what they accused Jesus of. Indeed, they were a bit on the lenient side by Roman standards; he was on the cross much less time than the typical victim of crucifixion. They even broke his legs--historically, an act of mercy so he'd suffocate quicker. They also stabbed him in the side to make sure he was dead. He was only up there a couple of days. They typically let people suffer up there for a week or two or even more. For offenses less than what Jesus was accused of.
They were being nice to him when they broke his legs and stabbed him. If you don't know this you don't know what crucifixion really was, historically.
That's just history, by the way. I didn't make it up.
The idea that they had a special rage toward Jesus is simply inaccurate. They treated other people who'd pissed off the local political leaders a whole heck of a lot worse. They were a cruel people, quite barbaric by modern standards.
Any study of Roman history will confirm this. Your average slave who offended Pilate or Herod would have been treated worse.
What I'm fighting against is the Hallmark card version of Messiah. In fact if people aren't hating Christians then Christians are not representing their Master (Matthew 15:18-27, 16:1-4).
What I'm fighting against is a childish "Jesus told us to go forth and piss people off" theology, as well as the shallow "He wrote us this book so we could read it and decide for ourselves what the truth is" theology.
So anyway, let's look at these bible verses. We'll have to use the inferior translations available at Biblegateway.com, but they're usually reliable on the broad issues, so:
Matthew 15:18-27.
Now as it happens this is one of my favorite passages, as it points out the obvious fact that someone could argue with Jesus and he might relent. This happens a lot in the Bible: people arguing with God, arguing with Prophets and Judges, arguing with Jesus--and winning.
All you have to do to understand it is read just one verse further, to include verse 28, which closes out the story: the woman argues with Jesus, and Jesus relents, and praises her faith.
So instead of this being about the Hardass Jesus Who Treats People Like Garbage, it turns out to be a story about Jesus being argued with and showing forgiveness and mercy.
All because you dropped just one verse.
I don't accuse you of being intentionally duplicitous. But whichever printed source you used--I'm expecting some Fundamentalist Evangelical book--is guilty of cherry-picking quotes to distort the message.
This is a powerful story of grace, and of being merciful, and the fact that people could argue with Jesus and Jesus might relent. It is not a story of the Hardass Jesus Who Hates People.
Then you give us matthew 16:1-4. Christ curses the pharisees who ask for miracles and notes that they are part of a wicked and adulterous generation.
How this supports your view of the Hardass Christ Who Constantly Condemns Everybody I have no idea. Looks like a snotty answer to some Pharisees he didn't like to me. But let's just open this up a little more. Let's look at the entirety of Chapters 15 and 16, and notice what comes just before and just after this little snippet you quote: just before the Pharisees came up to him demanding a miracle, he had just committed a huge miracle, and fed a throng with only seven loaves and a few small fish. Immediately after doing so, the Pharisees approach him and demand a miracle. And then afterward, the Twelve immediately show once again that they have no faith in him.
Upshot: Jesus curses the Pharisees (whom he constantly pissed off) and berates those closest to him for not having enough faith in him.
This isn't "Angry Jesus Acts Like A Dick." It's "Jesus is sick of the fracking Pharisees and their garbage, and his faithless disciples, AGAIN."
It must have been frustrating.
Honestly, Kevin, for someone who sits around accusing others of interpreting the Bible however they want, you seem pretty transparently to want to create Christ The Punisher and to twist the scriptures at your own will so you can produce this ludicrous image of the Raging Jesus.
I call this hypocrisy: you are what you claim to hate. It's what comes from thinking you can just read the Bible outside of oral tradition and the church fathers and history and context, in primitive English translations no less, and figure you've got a unified Explanation of Everything that every other Christian should buy into just because you're so obviously right and everyone else is so obviously wrong.
I'll try to get to your other verses later. Haven't had time to look at them yet. But I didn't reject Christianity because I wanted it to say what I desired, Kevin. I've never done that. I find people who do that to be sad.
That's not exactly accurate. Read Luke 12:48, James 4:17, Romans 4:15, Romans 5:13, 1 Timothy 1:13 and Romans 10:14 &17.
Essentially, we are all responsible for what we hear. Those who have heard little will be held to account for little. I have no doubt in my mind there will be those in heaven that never heard the name of Yeshua in life.
G-d will not judge by the Law those who know not of it.
And now you start to come with issues that the early church fathers--whom evangelicals typically disrespect if they even know about them at all--wrestled with.
You're also touching upon issues that Christians had answers for before there was any Bible.
You're also, sadly, doing something that's so frustrating with evangelicals: cherry-picking verses. It was probably a terrible mistake, the choice to add these verse numbers. Which didn't even happen until centuries after the books of the New Testament were written, but which are a part of TRADITION and not part of what was originally written.
Still, let me get to the point: If I were to take all of this literally, then, I would conclude that the harshest, cruelest, most selfish thing you could ever do to anybody is spread the Gospel. For the Gospel would basically be a sentence to death and torture and suffering to the vast majority who ever heard it.
If you're fortunate and never hear the message, then, all you have to do is live a fairly decent and honest life, and God will reward you. But if you should be unfortunate enough to hear the Gospel, or even part of it, then God will punish you in the most unimaginably awful ways, for all eternity, if you don't believe what you're told to believe.
The Good News becomes a curse: if you're lucky enough not to hear it, then you'll be okay. But if you're unfortunate enough to hear it, then you'd better believe every fracking word of it or God will punish you forever and ever and ever if you make the mistake of saying, "Nah, I don't believe that."
It's very much like the primitivist idea of Baptism: if I really believed what the "fundamentalists" taught us about being baptized, then the kindest thing I could ever do for my children would be to baptize them, then cut their throats. For then they would be assured a place in Heaven and immortality forever. Sure, I might burn in Hell for eternity, but I love my children more than myself, so I'd willingly make that sacrifice for them.
And really, wouldn't that be the ultimate Christian expression? "I'll go to Hell so you don't have to," and so I'll run around killing every Christian I can find, as an act of mercy, just so they never make the mistake of falling away from the faith.
You may laugh at this but it's nothing new; Andrea Yates and others killed their own children based on exactly such thinking. Andrea Yates thought that Satan was after her children, so she drew the logical conclusion and decided that drowning them in the family bathtub would save them.
It's what her fundamentalist preachers told her, after all. They'd be safe in Heaven if only the devil didn't take them.
If I believed what you believed--truly believed it--then I'd never have children for I'd constantly be terrified that they might lose faith in Christ. Or I'd just go ahead and kill them, entirely out of love. Or I'd at least make sure to raise them as atheists and do everything I could to confuse them about the Gospel just so I could make sure that they would not be punished forever.
This is Christianity As Psychosis, and I'm often shocked at how many intelligent people I know buy into it.
No they aren't. They're questions that every Christian should be expected to answer for, front and center.
Do you really believe in Christ The Cruel? Do you really believe that everybody who hasn't heard the Gospel will burn forever? Alternatively, do you believe that everyone will be okay unless they make the mistake of hearing the Gospel and not treating it seriously enough?
The Church--the Church that Christ established--has wrestled with these questions forever. Those who are arrogant and silly enough to think that Christ established a Bible instead of a Church are often magnificently unaware of such fundamental questions.
I really really really don't think I should be stepping into the middle of this argument. BUT.
Kevin's quote doesn't say that unbelievers who live decent lives will be granted entrance to heaven. Jesus makes that abundantly clear in the "no path to heaven but through me" thing. What he says is that the remiss servant who didn't know what was expected of him would be punished LESS than the servant who did. Like the situation described in the Inferno. Unbelievers who didn't know of the Word (ancient greeks for example) are still in hell. Just the least bad level of it.
Kevin says, to quote:
Essentially, we are all responsible for what we hear. Those who have heard little will be held to account for little. I have no doubt in my mind there will be those in heaven that never heard the name of Yeshua in life.
G-d will not judge by the Law those who know not of it.
It's a standard answer from many who have not bothered to wrestle fully with its implications.
It clearly states that if you haven't really heard the Gospel, then, you'll be okay. It's only if you're cursed by having heard the Gospel that you'll be damned for eternity if you don't accept it.
What kind of selfish beast would you be to spread the Gospel if you truly believed this to be the truth?
If you honestly believe this, then, going about the land to spread the Gospel would be a way of going about cursing everyone who wouldn't listen to you.
Alternately, maybe we just live in a nightmare world wherein a God you never even heard of will torture you forever if you don't hear the right message?
Andrea Yates was terrified that the devil would get her children, so she drowned them to prevent it. She got that idea from somewhere. Ideas have consequences, you know.
I don't blame Christianity for this, but I do blame shallow Christians for spreading warped ideas. What kind of horror show version of the faith do you have to believe in to swallow such madness?
I don't have all the answers but I do have problems with fulminating "a righteous God will destroy you" and "you have only a binary choice, the Bible says so" Christians. Whom I am all too familiar with, having known so many of them my whole life.
It is though an obvious fallacy to go from some who have never heard of Christ will obtain salvation to not hearing of Christ guarantees salvation. As an example, if I were to assert that some people who don't work hard and don't save will become rich, if you were to conclude from that that not working hard and saving is a guarantee to riches it would be a huge mistake. It seems also obvious to me that just because you can get rich without doing those things, working hard and saving money increases one's chances of getting rich.
While there are some versions of Christianity that don't hold with spreading the word of Christ at all, and a whole lot of difference in how to emphasize that message, it does seem to me to be pretty clear both from the Bible and the traditions of Christianity that you are so fond of that spreading word of Christ is something that should be important to Christians.
If you look very carefully at Christianity in all its magnificent history and glory and diversity, you will discover that only one message is consistent: that all people are imperfect and Jesus was the Son of God sent to redeem mankind through his own sacrifice.
That's it, and it's the only thing you can say is truly consistent for all Christians.
Others in this thread have made far greater claims, which simply are not true for all Christians. The question of Hell and what it *really* means and who *actually* goes there are among the many issues that divide Christians deeply. So do such issues as the authority of the Bible, the authority of the Church, the nature or even the existence of the eucharist, and more.
"Everyone is going to burn forever in eternal fire in Hell who doesn't believe in Jesus," as Boyd suggests, is fundamentalist dogma, not a universal Christian believe. Sorry, it just isn 't. At minimum, it's a gross oversimplification for most denominations.
Mind you, this fundamentalist dogma may be correct and all others may be incorrect, but you can't claim that that statement by itself is the definition of a Christian, unless you want to exclude the majority of the world's self-described Christians.
By the way, since this is a subject I'm particularly fond of:
Hell: Satan's Biggest Lie.
I don't agree that everything on the site is right, by the way. But if you investigate what most Christians believe, you'll discover that there's much debate over what "Hell" actually means. There's also substantial evidence--and I do mean substantial--that the obsession over an eternal burning Hell that most people are thrown into was inserted erroneously into the King James Bible and has been a pernicious overinfluence on the English-speaking world.
The fact that Jesus was the Son of God sent to redeem a sinful mankind by his sacrifice is the only universal Christian doctrine. Anyone who told you otherwise either lied or is ill-informed.
Certainly different Christian denominations have all sorts of definitions for sinners, hell, damnation and what constitutes 'belief' in Christ. That doesn't change the underlying 'universality' as you point out. That is why I call these issues 'marginal' in the context of this underlying question.
The core problem here I believe is that Christians have failed to understand that the Bible and the teachings it contains are instructions for man. It doesn't contain any instructions for God and therefore does not particularly address what God will or will not do in individual cases. At their core, most of Christianity's schisms are related much more to what God must do, rather then what man must do.
This is I think fairly foolish.
I note once again that the Bible is full of cases where individual people argue with God and win.
If you believe Jesus was/is God, then Matthew 5:18-28 (which Kevin brought up) is an excellent example from the New Testament. And it's not the only one.
Then just read about Jacob who wrestled with God and became Israel. Or Moses' multiple arguments with God, including right at the moment of the Burning Bush.
I also note once again that there is precious little Biblical support for the idea that the Bible alone contains all of God's word to man.
Which is why I argued with Boyd's assertions in the first place.
By the way, what amuses me most about this discussion is that so many people will claim that the arguments I make are "liberal theologian" arguments from someone who is "interpreting things symbolically instead of literally." Hahaha. Really? How so?
It is however much simpler to use the bible to create a set of instructions that Man has to follow.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.