How Much is Forgotten ...

Gandhi answered this question once, in addressing Hitler, and I think it is probably as close to what Jesus would say as any other answer, and that is, that to overcome such evil (or in better terms, to borrow from Lord of the Rings, "such reckless hate" - love that term ), meeting it with love would need to include great loss of life for it to eventually win, but that it will win, and that this kind of loss is no worse than the loss of life that comes from war. I'd venture to say that perhaps it is even better, since such an attitude grants victory beforehand and therefore has nothing to lose.

And, again, I see similarities in Siddhartha's attributed original message as well.



And I'd add to that, the longer we move in time from the original messenger, the more distant we become from the original intent and we instead get reinterpretations and opposing literalism. This is due to a variety of factors, most of which are self-serving.





Siddhartha's message was of compassion towards others after reaching Nirvana, if I remember correctly.




I don't think he became obsessed either, but he did lay out several ethics-oriented rules for his followers that ranged from food, clothing, speaking in church, haircuts, sexual activity (including homosexuality), slavery, marriage, and obedience to the government, some of which were quite specific.



Agree. Outsiders don't see that, for whatever reason. And I think the church needs to be blamed for this than anyone.

Gandhi, like a depressingly large number of others, liked Christ, but disliked Christians. The fact that it is perfectly legitimate for him and others to think that way only makes it more depressing.

There are plenty of Christians in places around the world at the moment who are facing incredible persecution at the hands of Muslims and are not fighting back. To overcome hate with love is their aim. We can only hope it works, I suppose.



To some degree this is true. No one can know exactly what someone else means, but we can be fairly certain of their overall intent if we look. For example, that Jesus never attacked "sinners" but did speak harshly to religious people who thought they were better than others very strongly suggests that being judgemental and arrogant is not a thing He approves of.

I accept that there are times where I am unsure of what the right thing to do is, but there are times where I can clearly see that certain things are wrong too.




I suspect so (I read this stuff decades ago). A lot of it was internally focused though. The denial of self was very much a product of an internal battle and focus as I see it. Charity may come later, but the removal of self was a primary goal as I understand it.



A lot of his letters were addressing problems in churches. His message that in Christ we are free was being twisted by people to mean we are free to do anything. Paul said, this is true, but if you are truly in Christ, your freedom will not lead you into slavery to tings like immorality etc., not least of all because if Christ lives in you, you will want to do what is best for others.




Absolutely. The church has no option other than to take the entire blame for the *legitimate* hate people have towards it. When you stand on a moral high horse loftily proclaiming a moral superiority over others, you damned well better have that moral superiority.

The fact is, Christians don't have it, and we never will. Christians are people, and people do both good and bad.

It may not ever work in the manner we would like - but in terms of the internal and eternal, victory can already be claimed. This is what Jesus taught.



I do apologize, as I don't think I was very clear on that, based from your reply here. I wasn't referring to not knowing or, at the very least, being able to know the original intent. I believe we certainly can do that. I was just referring to how much mankind strays from it in reinterpretation, usually to fit self-serving needs, although sometimes blinded opposing literalism does result from what you're talking about, although that is more in reaction to such reinterpretation.





Fair enough. But I think that Jesus would say that the individual would greatly benefit internally as well to his message.

I think we are just splitting hairs here though.




Fair enough. But of course, you and I know that Christians since have gone away from that original intent and treated such rules like the Pharisees. Things don't change, do they? I suppose Paul couldn't be blamed for this however.

Personally, I get a lot more inspiration reading the teachings of Jesus than Paul.



Which is probably why Christians should just shut up at this point. The Great Commission has over served its purpose anyways - quite overdone in my opinion. Nobody needs another bumper sticker telling them who Jesus is. Time to focus on themselves and start showing by example.

True. I was looking at it from a different angle though, I suppose. For individual people who have accepted Christ, it is true that the victory is accomplished. In my reply, I was actually thinking more about non Christians than Christians. It is for the sake of most people I care about (who are not Christian) that I say I hope love can overcome hate.



I agree that the original intent can certainly be known (even if we can not know it absolutely). Usually, I think we stray from the original meaning by reading a religious text and looking for a truth we want to find, or, not reading the text in context. Grabbing decontextualized fragments to twist to our own ends is depressingly popular. The KKK did this type of thing. I think the anti gay marriage guys do this as well.

As far as literalism, I am not sure that they really are literalists. Literalism will generally leave the literalism out of some texts (for example, any that tell Christians to love others). Jesus, Peter, Paul and John to name just a few, do tend to bang on about the whole love thing. You would not know that from talking to the "literalists" though. I have had discussions along that line with people both here at TFS, and in the real world.

I honestly do not think it is possible to read the bible as a literal text for a few reasons. Two of which are, 1) It is not written as a literal text, and 2) It is completely incoherent and contradictory if you do.




No doubt. I have witnessed that first hand in my own life. Helping others helps us.



Absolutely. Not all of do, of course. But the noisy ones do. I have had a few debates with Christians about the gay marriage issue. It is difficult to say what the majority opinion is, as the vocal tend to be anti gay marriage. If I had to venture a guess on Christian views here in Australia, I would suggest it is probably around 60% don't oppose it (but that is purely anecdotal).



We can only blame ourselves for our actions at the end of the day. As I said to you in another thread, people can say that they did horrific things because the koran told them to, but they can not blame the koran for their actions. At some point, we make a decision to allow ideology to negate our moral sense when we choose to do evil. We are 100% to blame for that.



Fair enough.



I would reword that last sentence to say, "Time to focus on others and start leading by example." The focus on others should not be telling people how bad they are though, but telling them how important to God and us (Christians) that they are. We should be saying, no matter who you are, or what you have done, God loves you. His son died for you. Christ is not your judge, and neither are we.

Exactly. It looks like you get what I'm saying. And those are just the obvious large-scale examples of course, along with the Catholic Church over history. But, even from a minor-scale, individual standpoint, we all have, at least at some point or another, fit interpretation to what we want to hear rather than what was intended to be heard, even if it is just in reference to what we choose to read. I would be the first to admit this myself, such as my preference in gaining from the teachings of Jesus over Paul.

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Couldn't agree more on this. That was pretty much the point of the original post of this thread - these so called literalists seem to forget much of what Jesus said. Everything I posted in it is direct from the Bible.



1) Yep. Genesis, for example, was more a poetic retelling than a historical/scientific textbook. We need to realize that this was a great part due to the need of retention through the generations before it was finally written down. Of course the problem today is many choose to treat it as the latter.

2) That's being human.




Sure. Any focus on others needs to be with love in mind rather than judgement. My comment was based on the latter - we only should focus on ourselves when judging or determining how one should live.

Yep. I do this myself. My starting point with Christianity was that if God does not love everyone, then God is the most evil being to ever exist. As I do not believe that he is, I have to interpret the bible through the paradigm of "God is love" (which the bible says that he is anyway). It may not be more 'right' to read the bible from that viewpoint in some people's eyes, but I think it is still better than interpreting it through the paradigm of "God is judge." The latter just seems to make people unpleasant.



Agreed.