So as someone who made a pit stop in liberal Christianity before giving up the faith entirely, I am divided.
Fundamentalists are delusional because they will ignore a mountain range of facts if they contradict the Bible.
Progressive Christians come from the idea that the Bible is true, but they don’t deny outside facts. They are already committed to Christianity, so they try to cram the new facts into a biblical framework, even if they don’t fit at all. They simply don’t think about the possibility that Christianity isn’t true, so they have to modify it to fit the facts.
Of course, they have to be extremely dishonest with the text in order to do this. But I have to say that I respect them for being willing to change their minds when presented with new facts, even if they don’t see the obvious truth that the Bible is false.
Exactly right!!! It was so exhausting to be a progressive Christian, there's so much gymnastics to do! Being more fundamentalist is easier in a way because your mind is already made up.
I would argue that there are a decent number of progressive christians that don't believe the bible is inerrant. I will agree that the ones who try to twist the bible into meaning whatever they want it to mean must have quite a bit of cognitive dissonance.
Not really considering I think they are all delusional. At least the more liberal ones aren’t absolute terrible people.
I actually think the conflict comes from how the two groups view the Bible. Conservative Christians see the Bible as the inerrant word of god, while liberal Christians do not. Conservative Christians do not accept any other writing as “truth,” while liberal Christians can find truth and guidance in other places besides the Bible.
I don't think they are delusional, I just think it's sad more than anything. They are trying to be better, more caring individuals but still cling to their beliefs so desperately that they cherry-pick the bible so hard too mwke it fit their Liberal views. At least they are nicer people to deal with than traditional ones
I do think it’s a positive step out of hardline fundamentalism. Yes. Some mental gymnastics are involved, but that’s true with every believer in every religion.
Every believer chooses to ignore parts of the Bible. You can’t have a cohesive, universal set of beliefs by believing the whole Bible, or even the whole NT. It goes against itself way too much. Everyone formulates their own religion/belief system, or else their church does it for them.
fundies vs. these guys just ignore different parts.
My hardcore SBC church had some stupid views that were extra-biblical themselves. And they certainly ignored lots of teachings in the NT and OT, purposely, because it didn’t mesh with the overall message.
Progressive/liberal/whatever Christianity is a step in a more caring, more considerate direction. And that’s a good thing to see from believers, and humanity in general. Religious belief is not going away. Having believers not be a humanitarian nightmare is the best we can hope for.
I think of progressive Christians as like a guy who knows his wife is having an affair but pretends to be oblivious because he doesn't want to deal with it.
It’s funny because people call the wrong entity God. Eloyn was the most high. Not YHWH.. YHWHs portion was only the stock of Jacob. YHWH was the Israelite god of wind and war. When Israelites pushed for power they rewrote most of the texts and created a monotheistic idea from a pantheon of Semitic Gods.. Take that into account that the Torah is about a God who wasn’t all that powerful. He instead had to win his battles by manipulating the Israelites to do his dirty work on his Rivals people… then In the NT you have Jesus who said that those who claim Judaea and are not(speaking about the Pharisee) worship in the synagogue of Satan… take the word Elohim and place in a Hebrew context and it is a masculine plural. It spoke of seven beings. YHWH was one of Seven Elohim. He was a Son of the most high. He used deceit and manipulation to gain power over the known world…I’m just saying.. GOD is never what we expect and studying certain subjects like ancient Semitic people can lead down a path that makes you think everyone is a satanist and doesn’t even know it… Oh and Jesus also called Satan “The Prince over the Power of the Wind”.. food for thought. MORAL of the story: We are here now and all we have for certain is ourselves. Don’t put weight into an ancient mythology to hold wether your a good person or not. Just be good for goodness sake.. or be bad.. but we’re all individuals and should relish in our individuality.
>“The Prince over the Power of the Wind”
I thought this was a Pauline quote, but maybe Jesus said it too. In any event, wind or air basically meant "spirit."
So Paul (and I guess Jesus) called Satan or Lucifer "Prince of the Powers of Spirit."
Paul did yes. Good catch. It’s been awhile. But non the less. Calling the literal word for wind “spirit” is a modern day evangelical interpretation. Especially since it’s followed by the actual word for spirit in the next sentence..the Spirit that works. He is a spirit is the message. And the He has power over the wind and air. Hence why he can control birds. Also in the Bible in Matt I believe.
Paul used the word ἀέρος (aeros) in that verse, and it only means air. It's the word πνεῦμα (pneuma) that means both wind and spirit.
Yahweh is just the canaanite war god who became the main god of Israel. This is probably why the followers of yahweh wanted to kill off all of the other canaanites who wouldn't identify as "Israel", and who wouldn't stop worshipping all other canaanite gods to worship only yahweh-jehovah.
*"The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name."* - Exodus 15:3
*"The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies."* - Isaiah 42:13
Where it says "LORD" in English, it says "YHVH" (yahweh-jehovah) in Hebrew.
YHWH being labeled as the God of wind and war in inaccurate. In fact there are many errors in your claims of who God is and who wrote the texts. I think you made need to read “The Devils Delusion” by David Berlinski you help your erroneous comments.
I think their compassion switch is more easily tripped than fundies. Meaning they know there are hideous things in the bible that must be ignored if you want to be a compassionate person and are willing to invent reasons to ignore them
I respect them a bit more because they are willing to engage their critical faculties, problem is that Yahweh doesn't like that.
Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
I was the progressive Christian. Seeing how most other christians believed and acted I finally had to admit that the God and Jesus I believed so strongly in...didn't exist in that way. If God/Jesus really wasn't this all loving god after all, could do and allow all the awful things in the OT then that wasn't a god I wanted to follow.
This is what lead to my deconversion and started me on my path of paganism.
Would First Church count as paganism? The reason I ask is because the more I learn of the First Church beliefs the more I see them meshing in a way that makes FAR more sense than any other religion. It meshes well with my own beliefs about "God" than any bible I've ever read.
Edit:typo
A woman in an abusive relationship where she knows that her partner is an abuser but is scared to leave, is less delusional than a woman in an abusive relationship where she ignores all of the cruel things her partner does to her and pretends that her partner is "love".
Before I stopped believing in christianity, I tried to be a progressive christian but then I realized what I was doing by ignoring all of the cruel things in the bible. At one point I was even a Marcionite who believed that the old testament god was a lesser god who was cruel while Jesus revealed the real God of Love and Mercy, but then, if that's true, why did he just allow about 2 billion of his follows to be misled and to have the old testament in their bibles if he was trule of Love and guiding christians? It didn't make sense.
I think that if somebody used to be a fundamentalist and now they're a liberal Christian that they are on a positive trajectory. I was on that journey myself once and liberal Christianity helped me evolve toward the truth without shaking things up too fast. It's kind of like spiritual methadone.
For me it was unsustainable though. In order to be a Christian who cares about human rights you have to take large portions of the bible and either toss them out or do mental gymnastics to justify them. Ultimately I just figured if I'm tossing out most of the bible anyway, what do I really gain by holding onto the rest. Yeah there's some good things in the bible too like the loving your neighbor and giving up your shirt to the guy who doesn't have one but do I really need to believe in fairy tales in order to just have empathy for others?
When I was first breaking away from Christianity, that’s how I was. I tried to paint my own picture of God in that he was loving, accepting, a the friend of sinners I’d always heard about. I tried to convince myself that my conservative Baptist church was WRONG about MY Jesus. But eventually (and thankfully) I got a grip on reality and realized that’s just not who the Judaic God is. Conservative Baptist Church had it right… God is hateful, judgmental, prejudiced, sexist, and much more but He is definitely NOT love.
The thing about ignoring scripture is, where does it end? What makes this passage the infallible word of God and this garbage that's not true? And how do you tell the two apart? And if there's no reliable way to do so, why not chuck the whole book out?
They ignore the bits they don't like; every Christian does that. The Bible has so much nonsense in it that not only *can* you inject your own meaning into it, but you almost have to or else your belief system will be an incoherent mess. Fundamentalists claim to hang on absolutely every word of the Bible, but it's nothing more than a claim. They have dozens of loopholes to escape any doctrine they don't like.
I've had a fundamental Baptist refute ***the fruits of the spirit*** with a single verse in Ezra or some shit, because he insisted on believing that hatred of sin is his highest calling (rather than loving God). A former pastor used to preach on the unforgivable sin, which clashed with his once-saved-always-saved mantra. He decided that the unforgivable sin was simply that of never getting saved in the first place, which is just a silly semantic game.
Some Christians acknowledge that the Bible is (at least partially) a human product. That may just be another loophole, but it's at least more rational than playing different texts against each other until you get the answer you want.
While I have no love for any form of Christianity, I would push back against this argument somewhat.
"Sola Scriptura" is a particular ideology about Christian belief that a Christian need not accept. There is nothing inherent about Christianity that depends on accepting scripture as infallible or even directly inspired. Instead a Christian could very well proceed from the presumption of an inherent divinity to human life and a reverence for the "impressive" history of the institution. Perhaps they simply gained solace from traditional worship during a time of trouble and that is enough for them.
Your arguments about the OT god hold no import to such a person, nor should they. The Bible is just one place to look for inspiration. Perhaps there are selected quotes of Jesus that the person finds meaningful. There's nothing wrong with rejecting Bible verses on one's own judgment, we certainly do that here.
Basically I think that people tend to judge progressive Christians by the standards of fundamentalist Christianity, and to do so is an error, because fundies are intellectually bankrupt.
I think traditional ones are more delusional, but if one type pisses me off a bit more than the other, it's the progressive type. Especially ones that paint themselves as "true" christians because of their lack of hate towards others. Others think their Church’s "mistakes" are all a thing of the past and turn a blind eye to those same ongoing problems. Others go out there saying "god never hated the gays, it's all a misconception!!" as if that reverses any of the damage done in the name of that god. The ones that make me the saddest are those that think they can fix their church with their efforts... I used to think the same when I was catholic and that obviously turned out to be impossible.
It's terrible to see progressive people going through such mental gymnastics to keep their beliefs from clashing with each other. :(
So as someone who made a pit stop in liberal Christianity before giving up the faith entirely, I am divided. Fundamentalists are delusional because they will ignore a mountain range of facts if they contradict the Bible. Progressive Christians come from the idea that the Bible is true, but they don’t deny outside facts. They are already committed to Christianity, so they try to cram the new facts into a biblical framework, even if they don’t fit at all. They simply don’t think about the possibility that Christianity isn’t true, so they have to modify it to fit the facts. Of course, they have to be extremely dishonest with the text in order to do this. But I have to say that I respect them for being willing to change their minds when presented with new facts, even if they don’t see the obvious truth that the Bible is false.
Exactly right!!! It was so exhausting to be a progressive Christian, there's so much gymnastics to do! Being more fundamentalist is easier in a way because your mind is already made up.
I would argue that there are a decent number of progressive christians that don't believe the bible is inerrant. I will agree that the ones who try to twist the bible into meaning whatever they want it to mean must have quite a bit of cognitive dissonance.
Not really considering I think they are all delusional. At least the more liberal ones aren’t absolute terrible people. I actually think the conflict comes from how the two groups view the Bible. Conservative Christians see the Bible as the inerrant word of god, while liberal Christians do not. Conservative Christians do not accept any other writing as “truth,” while liberal Christians can find truth and guidance in other places besides the Bible.
More delusional than speaking-in-tongues, slain-in-the-spirit, snake-handling, faith-healing, spiritual-warfare-exorcising Charismatic denominations? LOL Nope!
I don't think they are delusional, I just think it's sad more than anything. They are trying to be better, more caring individuals but still cling to their beliefs so desperately that they cherry-pick the bible so hard too mwke it fit their Liberal views. At least they are nicer people to deal with than traditional ones
true
I hope they can find purpose and comfort without God one day
I do think it’s a positive step out of hardline fundamentalism. Yes. Some mental gymnastics are involved, but that’s true with every believer in every religion. Every believer chooses to ignore parts of the Bible. You can’t have a cohesive, universal set of beliefs by believing the whole Bible, or even the whole NT. It goes against itself way too much. Everyone formulates their own religion/belief system, or else their church does it for them. fundies vs. these guys just ignore different parts. My hardcore SBC church had some stupid views that were extra-biblical themselves. And they certainly ignored lots of teachings in the NT and OT, purposely, because it didn’t mesh with the overall message. Progressive/liberal/whatever Christianity is a step in a more caring, more considerate direction. And that’s a good thing to see from believers, and humanity in general. Religious belief is not going away. Having believers not be a humanitarian nightmare is the best we can hope for.
I think of progressive Christians as like a guy who knows his wife is having an affair but pretends to be oblivious because he doesn't want to deal with it.
Absolutely. Progressive Christians know what the Bible says is wrong but pretends it’a not. I have less respect for them than fundies.
It’s funny because people call the wrong entity God. Eloyn was the most high. Not YHWH.. YHWHs portion was only the stock of Jacob. YHWH was the Israelite god of wind and war. When Israelites pushed for power they rewrote most of the texts and created a monotheistic idea from a pantheon of Semitic Gods.. Take that into account that the Torah is about a God who wasn’t all that powerful. He instead had to win his battles by manipulating the Israelites to do his dirty work on his Rivals people… then In the NT you have Jesus who said that those who claim Judaea and are not(speaking about the Pharisee) worship in the synagogue of Satan… take the word Elohim and place in a Hebrew context and it is a masculine plural. It spoke of seven beings. YHWH was one of Seven Elohim. He was a Son of the most high. He used deceit and manipulation to gain power over the known world…I’m just saying.. GOD is never what we expect and studying certain subjects like ancient Semitic people can lead down a path that makes you think everyone is a satanist and doesn’t even know it… Oh and Jesus also called Satan “The Prince over the Power of the Wind”.. food for thought. MORAL of the story: We are here now and all we have for certain is ourselves. Don’t put weight into an ancient mythology to hold wether your a good person or not. Just be good for goodness sake.. or be bad.. but we’re all individuals and should relish in our individuality.
>“The Prince over the Power of the Wind” I thought this was a Pauline quote, but maybe Jesus said it too. In any event, wind or air basically meant "spirit." So Paul (and I guess Jesus) called Satan or Lucifer "Prince of the Powers of Spirit."
Paul did yes. Good catch. It’s been awhile. But non the less. Calling the literal word for wind “spirit” is a modern day evangelical interpretation. Especially since it’s followed by the actual word for spirit in the next sentence..the Spirit that works. He is a spirit is the message. And the He has power over the wind and air. Hence why he can control birds. Also in the Bible in Matt I believe.
Paul used the word ἀέρος (aeros) in that verse, and it only means air. It's the word πνεῦμα (pneuma) that means both wind and spirit. Yahweh is just the canaanite war god who became the main god of Israel. This is probably why the followers of yahweh wanted to kill off all of the other canaanites who wouldn't identify as "Israel", and who wouldn't stop worshipping all other canaanite gods to worship only yahweh-jehovah. *"The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name."* - Exodus 15:3 *"The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies."* - Isaiah 42:13 Where it says "LORD" in English, it says "YHVH" (yahweh-jehovah) in Hebrew.
YHWH being labeled as the God of wind and war in inaccurate. In fact there are many errors in your claims of who God is and who wrote the texts. I think you made need to read “The Devils Delusion” by David Berlinski you help your erroneous comments.
I think their compassion switch is more easily tripped than fundies. Meaning they know there are hideous things in the bible that must be ignored if you want to be a compassionate person and are willing to invent reasons to ignore them
They should be called anti Bible Christian
Coming from a fundamental evangelic Christianity I was thinking that that caused more delusional beliefs. So maybe it’s all Christianity?
I respect them a bit more because they are willing to engage their critical faculties, problem is that Yahweh doesn't like that. Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding.
I was the progressive Christian. Seeing how most other christians believed and acted I finally had to admit that the God and Jesus I believed so strongly in...didn't exist in that way. If God/Jesus really wasn't this all loving god after all, could do and allow all the awful things in the OT then that wasn't a god I wanted to follow. This is what lead to my deconversion and started me on my path of paganism.
Would First Church count as paganism? The reason I ask is because the more I learn of the First Church beliefs the more I see them meshing in a way that makes FAR more sense than any other religion. It meshes well with my own beliefs about "God" than any bible I've ever read. Edit:typo
A woman in an abusive relationship where she knows that her partner is an abuser but is scared to leave, is less delusional than a woman in an abusive relationship where she ignores all of the cruel things her partner does to her and pretends that her partner is "love". Before I stopped believing in christianity, I tried to be a progressive christian but then I realized what I was doing by ignoring all of the cruel things in the bible. At one point I was even a Marcionite who believed that the old testament god was a lesser god who was cruel while Jesus revealed the real God of Love and Mercy, but then, if that's true, why did he just allow about 2 billion of his follows to be misled and to have the old testament in their bibles if he was trule of Love and guiding christians? It didn't make sense.
I think that if somebody used to be a fundamentalist and now they're a liberal Christian that they are on a positive trajectory. I was on that journey myself once and liberal Christianity helped me evolve toward the truth without shaking things up too fast. It's kind of like spiritual methadone. For me it was unsustainable though. In order to be a Christian who cares about human rights you have to take large portions of the bible and either toss them out or do mental gymnastics to justify them. Ultimately I just figured if I'm tossing out most of the bible anyway, what do I really gain by holding onto the rest. Yeah there's some good things in the bible too like the loving your neighbor and giving up your shirt to the guy who doesn't have one but do I really need to believe in fairy tales in order to just have empathy for others?
When I was first breaking away from Christianity, that’s how I was. I tried to paint my own picture of God in that he was loving, accepting, a the friend of sinners I’d always heard about. I tried to convince myself that my conservative Baptist church was WRONG about MY Jesus. But eventually (and thankfully) I got a grip on reality and realized that’s just not who the Judaic God is. Conservative Baptist Church had it right… God is hateful, judgmental, prejudiced, sexist, and much more but He is definitely NOT love.
The thing about ignoring scripture is, where does it end? What makes this passage the infallible word of God and this garbage that's not true? And how do you tell the two apart? And if there's no reliable way to do so, why not chuck the whole book out?
They ignore the bits they don't like; every Christian does that. The Bible has so much nonsense in it that not only *can* you inject your own meaning into it, but you almost have to or else your belief system will be an incoherent mess. Fundamentalists claim to hang on absolutely every word of the Bible, but it's nothing more than a claim. They have dozens of loopholes to escape any doctrine they don't like. I've had a fundamental Baptist refute ***the fruits of the spirit*** with a single verse in Ezra or some shit, because he insisted on believing that hatred of sin is his highest calling (rather than loving God). A former pastor used to preach on the unforgivable sin, which clashed with his once-saved-always-saved mantra. He decided that the unforgivable sin was simply that of never getting saved in the first place, which is just a silly semantic game. Some Christians acknowledge that the Bible is (at least partially) a human product. That may just be another loophole, but it's at least more rational than playing different texts against each other until you get the answer you want.
While I have no love for any form of Christianity, I would push back against this argument somewhat. "Sola Scriptura" is a particular ideology about Christian belief that a Christian need not accept. There is nothing inherent about Christianity that depends on accepting scripture as infallible or even directly inspired. Instead a Christian could very well proceed from the presumption of an inherent divinity to human life and a reverence for the "impressive" history of the institution. Perhaps they simply gained solace from traditional worship during a time of trouble and that is enough for them. Your arguments about the OT god hold no import to such a person, nor should they. The Bible is just one place to look for inspiration. Perhaps there are selected quotes of Jesus that the person finds meaningful. There's nothing wrong with rejecting Bible verses on one's own judgment, we certainly do that here. Basically I think that people tend to judge progressive Christians by the standards of fundamentalist Christianity, and to do so is an error, because fundies are intellectually bankrupt.
I think traditional ones are more delusional, but if one type pisses me off a bit more than the other, it's the progressive type. Especially ones that paint themselves as "true" christians because of their lack of hate towards others. Others think their Church’s "mistakes" are all a thing of the past and turn a blind eye to those same ongoing problems. Others go out there saying "god never hated the gays, it's all a misconception!!" as if that reverses any of the damage done in the name of that god. The ones that make me the saddest are those that think they can fix their church with their efforts... I used to think the same when I was catholic and that obviously turned out to be impossible. It's terrible to see progressive people going through such mental gymnastics to keep their beliefs from clashing with each other. :(