sophiaserpentia | If I was a Christian, for Easter

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If I was a Christian, for Easter

I am a spiritual refugee, exiled from my home forever. I could be a Christian if not for scripture, if not for doctrine.

If I was a Christian, this is what I would believe.

That Jesus believed in us.

That Jesus wanted us to see that no matter what we had experienced or done before, that we could rise above it by living in accord with the spirit of compassion and love for the divine.

That Jesus wanted us to understand that we are all in this together, and that together we could make anything happen. There is no "us versus them," there are no enemies; those who limit or oppress us are lost in their own nightmare and suffer their own limitations, and there is always hope of helping them to wake up.

That Jesus wanted us to stand together in solidarity and love in the face of brutality.

That Jesus refused to cower in the face of persecution, and was killed for challenging injustice.

That Easter is a clear sign from God that resistance against wrong and limitation is not futile -- that living in perfect love and perfect trust is the key to victory over death and fate.

That Paul wanted us to understand that the Resurrection is a promise that God is on our side when we work to transcend the limitations of fate.

That Paul wanted us to play our part in the reconciliation whereby God will become all in all.

crossposted to my journal and crossposted to

convert_me

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...But, for the most part, I'd rather be in your "church" than in mine, nowadays.

I am sure no Xian theologian, but it seems to me that had you written that statement back 800 years ago, you might well have been burned at the stake.

Congratulations, you heretic you.

;) Except that there is nothing heretical about what I wrote (except maybe the last line which hints at universalism).

The heresy is in what I omitted. All of these issues I raised are ignored or glossed over by the creedal statements.

Found you on

convert_me and simply *had* to friend you! Fabulous post! :D

Thank you! And welcome to my journal.

I don't see why this seems so revelutionary. I'm Christian, it pretty much sums what how I personally feel. And though sometimes I feel as if I'm in a minority when it comes to Christians, this does seem very basic teaching done even to children in Sunday schools.

Nothing I wrote here is at odds with Christian doctrine -- but it is a very different emphasis from that expressed in the creedal statements or typical doctrinal treatments of Christian teaching.

I agree that it's true that it's not found in the creeds but I don't agree that it's not typical doctrinal treatments of Christian teaching. The creeds are not constitutional definitions of Christianity- they're an attempt to list the distinctive features of Christianity as opposed to any other religion at that time. Believing and agreeing with the creeds is not necessary to be Christian, however; I believe there are many more Christians who have some disagreements with them than there are who do not. The idea of creeds is repugnant to Quakers, does that make them not Christian because they won't say the creeds? Hardly so, I'd guess most people would think.

That's based on my own studying and experiences, and obviously yours may differ, but I'm not making blanket statements about an entire religion.

I don't believe that I'm making blanket statements.

Stop any Christian on the street and ask her what Christians believe, and she is most likely to list many doctrinal points I omitted, and may or may not get around to adding anything that I listed above.

For example, that average Christian would start with doctrinal points such as: Jesus is Lord; God is a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion in accordance with the scriptures; the Bible is the word of God; and so on.

I do not believe any of those things. I also know, from direct experience, that the average Christian will insist that I am not a Christian. She is likely to say that Quakers aren't, either.

Stop any Christian on the street and ask her what Christians believe, and she is most likely to list many doctrinal points I omitted, and may or may not get around to adding anything that I listed above.

Well, yes. That just goes to confirm what was said earlier about the creeds being enumerations of the distinctive points of Christianity as opposed to, say, Buddhism or Islam; likewise, the question "What do Christians believe?" carries an implicit rider of "...compared to anyone else?". Most Christians believe that Providence is the capital of Rhode Island, too (assuming they've heard of the place) but that doesn't make it on to a list of distinctive things believed by most Christians because so does everyone else. The danger is assuming that what's distinctive is exhaustive.

The points listed in my post are not meant as a list of things I feel Christians don't believe. I apologize if that was not clear.

So the list itself is not new or innovative. For the most part it is not disagreeable to Christians.

But what I think is revolutionary is to assert that points such as the ones I raised constitute the defining message of Christianity. If so, that message is not Christian-specific, but is one that anyone of any faith or creed can get in line with.

What I have concluded is this: Jesus and Paul thought that "religion" (doctrine and ritual) was a trap that prevents us from seeing the spirit and humanity in everyone around us. Therefore their message bore not a new set of beliefs, but instead metanoia followed by orthopraxis.

What do you mean by 'blanket statement'? You said you don't believe you're making one, but you're saying 'Christians believe..', 'Christians don't..' so on, all of which are, to me, examples of blanket statements.

What makes someone random? Do I not count as a Christian; I am an example of one you might come across in a street and who'd answer 'yes' were you to ask me 'Are you Christian?'. I wouldn't say many of the things that you think an average Christian would say when asked what Christian believe, nor do I believe all of them.

I live in a very religiously conservative area and yet I know of NO Christians who do not consider Quakers Christian. I would only say that you're not Christian because you yourself don't identify as Christian. Were you to say you're Christian, I'd take you at that.

You said you don't believe you're making one, but you're saying 'Christians believe..', 'Christians don't..' so on, all of which are, to me, examples of blanket statements.

I am very careful and precise when making general statements. Every general statement I've made in this discussion has disclaimers and qualifiers:

"typical doctrinal treatments of Christian teaching"
"she is most likely to list many doctrinal points I omitted"
"Doctrinal debates within the church have focused on those issues and largely ignored the issues I've listed here"

I *know* these are generalizations and that therefore there are exceptions to every one of them, but it's not always possible to avoid making generalizations, and it is just too awkward and unwieldy to include parenthetical comments ("excluding exceptions") every time. I assumed that this was just a natural part of rhetoric and debate.

If you feel that my generalizations are inaccurate, that is another thing. It may be so; my generalizations and conclusions are based solely on my extensive experience of discourse with Christians. It could simply be that the Christians with whom I have dialogued represent a skewed subset. I honestly do not think so.

I did not mean to discount your perspective, and I apologize if that is what I seemed to be saying with my comments. I can only go on my experience, and depend on people to correct me if I am wrong.

I assumed that this was just a natural part of rhetoric and debate.
By qualifying your statements in this way, you're making them unfalsifiably, aren't you? In which case it's not possible to have a debate. Even within the bounds of philosophical discourse it becomes undiscussable. You said "a", I've given you "b". So far as I can understand you've come back as saying "yes, I did qualify that it was only largely a, which allows for instances of b. but it's still largely a."

I don't invalidate that your experience has been such, and that the generalisations fit those that you've come in contact with, but I disagree that they fit Christians as a whole. I do feel as if you're, perhaps unconciously, invalidating mine, though, based on your language. I feel as if the "extensive experience of discourse with Christians" bit was thrown in as if to imply that I've had less, and therefore don't know what I'm talking about. I'm not even attempting to correct you or your experience, as I don't necessarily feel that you're wrong (nor do I think that there IS a 'wrong') merely give you my own, which does not agree with yours, for consideration. But you've said you "honestly do not think so.", and so ends the conversation.

you're making them unfalsifiably, aren't you?

That wasn't my intent, honestly. I truly did not think that those statements would cause contention.

So far as I can understand you've come back as saying "yes, I did qualify that it was only largely a, which allows for instances of b. but it's still largely a."

If my conclusions are based on skewed experience, then I'm wrong and require correction.

I feel as if the "extensive experience of discourse with Christians" bit was thrown in as if to imply that I've had less, and therefore don't know what I'm talking about.

I realized after clicking "post" that that came across as snarky, and for that I apologize.

I honestly didn't mean to imply that you don't know what you're talking about -- I only wanted to explain somehow that I have had a lot of conversations with many different people who call themselves Christians, and my conclusions about what Christianity is and what Christians believe and do is based on those encounters.

Truly, if I am wrong, I would be happy about that, because it would mean that I am not the 'refugee' I have come to feel that I am.

I don't think you're wrong; I'm not attempting to correct you. I don't think this is a case of right/wrong, nor do I think most things are. To want to find someone wrong in order to prove your (general you, not you personally) beliefs right is not something Jesus taught was proper. Dogma and all aside, what Christians are generally expected to do is follow the teaching's of Jesus. The need to prove other people wrong often demonstrates an immense lack of security in one's beliefs. It irritates me when I catch myself behaving as if its the proper way to conduct myself, and it often means I need to spend more time being deliberately conscious of my relationship with God.

Since it came up in the thread you linked to, I will mention that I use belief to mean "something I've accepted as true based on any mixture of my own experience, studying, instinct, perception, etc-- which necessitates that no other person will have the same 'beliefs' as I do. This means, by definition, there is no reason for me to get upset if people don't believe as I do. We're blind, and and everything is an elephant (http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/curriculum/socialstd/grade7/india/Blind_elephant.html).

I do think that the Christians you've talked to are primarily the more conservative ones, and they tend to be the more vocal, simply because the most mindful of liberal Christians will not discredit your relationship with God.

I live in a very religiously conservative area and yet I know of NO Christians who do not consider Quakers Christian.

You must not live in the land of Southern Baptists then. A frighteninly large percentage of Southern Baptists will tell you that Quakers are not Christian, that Catholics are satanic, etc.

There are Southern Baptists here, but not many, and those here seem to be fairly tame. I guess there's a difference between 'conservative' and 'rabid'.

LOL

A very definite difference, unfortunately.

Having lived most of my life in an area where rabid Southern Baptists either are the majority (or definitely make enough noise to make themselves sound like the majority), I find it easy to comprehend how a person can come to feel that most Christians in general are more interested in doctrine than in the actual teachings of Jesus himself. These are places where the major emphasis of Christianity, due to the loud rabid ones, seems to be placed on messages of eternal punishment for those who deviate the slightest bit from the creeds; where the importance of being "born again" far outweighs the importance of compassion, charity, and good works. It is disheartening and divisive to say the least. Even the non-rabids become a little more rigid under the attack, an understandable human response, as they cling more tightly to the creeds of their specific denomination as a defense against a very real attack.

Extremists of any sort are definitely toxic.

Ironically, the Baptist movement was started as a non-creedal movement, and up through about the 1970's even the Southern Baptist branch probably still qualified as being honestly called such. After conservatives staged a coup on the national Convention level, seizing leadership away from the moderates, it became less and less so (and also moved away from some other freedoms historically associated with Baptism). Today the SBC is still nominally non-creedal, but has in practice adopted some belief statements as creedal statements used to test whether a church should be able to remain in fellowship with the larger convention, etc.

*grins* I'm a queer poly Christian; my beliefs entirely aside, I've some concept of what it's like to be attacked ;) I've just found that I'm much better on a whole if I focused less on other people's perceptions of my spirituality, and more on my own. Afterall, their perceptions do not have a direct affect on my relationship with God, however my own do.

this is my experience as well

My evangelical parents, when I told them what I'd learned about Quakerism, were horrified and considered it the blackest of heresies - specifically, the idea that everyone has a bit of God in them (I'm a little fuzzy on the actual name of this idea - something about light, if I remember correctly) My mother started yelling that we are ALL born evil and utterly without God and that to teach otherwise is to lead people to hell...
Quakers used to get branded and run out of town on rails a few hundred years ago, so I think the idea that they sre heretical non-Christians isn't new.

(deleted comment)

Thank you! Yes, you may link to this or cross-post it. :)

These statements reflect an emphasis not demonstrated in the creeds. The creeds focus on the birth of Jesus, his death, his resurrection, and the Trinity. Doctrinal debates within the church have focused on those issues and largely ignored the issues I've listed here -- which most mainstream Christians would find agreeable (except perhaps my hinting at universalism in the last point).

I am a strong believer that any truly catholic (universal) Christian church would emphasize fraternity and agape over doctrinal or creedal agreement. There will always be doctrinal and factual disagreements between people -- but we can still hold strong the fraternal bonds of compassion, and take sacrament, even with people with whom we disagree. This I strongly believe was Jesus' vision of the church.

I am a strong believer that any truly catholic (universal) Christian church would emphasize fraternity and agape over doctrinal or creedal agreement...

That's exactly what I believe as well. To me it seems like too many churches/people focus on the minute details of Jesus's message and they lose the big picture. People love to get caught up on defining which acts are sinful and which specific beliefs are valid and all that.

and take sacrament, even with people with whom we disagree.

This really resonates with me as well. I was raised in the Methodist church, and one of the things that I really liked is that when it came time for communion, everyone was invited to partake. When I learned that other churches prohibited non-members from joining in communion, I was shocked. Excluding people based on their beliefs is the exact opposite of what I understood of Jesus's teachings.

What you just said pretty much runs in-line with my own Statement of Faith, and I am a Christian.

I pretty much agree, except that I think you're being too easy on Paul. :)

thought so myself. the Great Usurper.

Paul's innovations on the message of Jesus are important to the understanding of Christianity. A lot of liberal theologians want to downplay Paul's contributions or discard him altogether, but I do not see that as constructive. Paul is complex and not every writing attributed to him is helpful. But it is obvious that he did not write everything attributed to him and the differences are quite astounding between what he did write, and what he didn't.

BTW have you seen the "Scholarly Smackdown" about Paul between Elaine Pagels and Ben Witherington III on Beliefnet?

you don't have to be christian to believe any of that. in fact, most christians i knew/know never got that far in their reason.

christ, my friend, was never a christian.

If that's what you believed then you wouldn't be considered a Christian - at least not by any of the denominations I'm familiar with.

Mind you, I don't disagree with any of it personally...

If that's what you believed then you wouldn't be considered a Christian

And why is that? Can you cite anything to back that up?

I use the term "Christian" to denote mainstream Christianity, i.e. the Church in all of its various denominations. The part I see as not fitting in with mainstream Christianity is "...that we are all in this together, and that together we could make anything happen. There is no 'us versus them,' there are no enemies..." Obviously this all follows Jesus's quote "whoever is not against us is for us".

Most denominations don't practice this creed. Throughout history, Christianity has always been its own worst enemy. If you want I could cite dozens of examples of inter-denominational bickering, bloodshed, warfare, even genocide. One quote that has always stuck in my memory comes from the Albigensian (sp?) Crusade - when the Catholic church tried to wipe out the Cathar heresy. When a soldier asked how to tell Catholics from heretics, the local bishop replied, "Kill them all. God will know His own".

Even today, most denominations still view each other as rivals. This has affected me & my family personally. For example, a leader at a large Baptist church recently told my 8-year-old daughter she wasn't welcome there because she couldn't attend full-time. My oldest daughter lost several friends to the local Church of God, whose youth ministry teaches its members not to associate with or even talk to non-members. One close friend of mine is a member of a Jehovah's Witness family - the only time I really talk with her offline is when I go to their religious events. The Church of Christ is even worse about segregating its members away from society and family. It's as if they all have the attitude of "let the dead bury the dead".

Personally, I belong to a non-denominational church with strong Gnostic leanings. It's the only church I've been in that has given me a strong, positive, rewarding experience. I'm sure all of the other denominations offer positive some value to their members, but if they aren't teaching the greatest commandment (Mark 12:28-34) then they're so caught up with being Christians that they've missed the true essence of being a follower of Christ.

I like your thoughts!

I am a Christian, and I do believe these things.

The difference being what I *didn't* put in the post. As I mentioned above, this is all perfectly reflective of the New Testaments, but it does not include everything included in the New Testament -- and shows an entirely different sort of focus from the creedal statements, which reflect very little about what it was that Jesus actually wanted people to *do*.

Just a thought: are you aware of why the creeds were written?
It seems as if you're going under the assumption they were meant to be a primer of Christianity, when they were emphatically not intended to be so.

Most of my research into church history has preceeded the writing of the creeds -- but I do know they were intended to root out heretics -- to exclude the Adoptionists, the Gnostics, the Docetae, the Arianists, the Monophysitists, the Pelagians, the Donatists, and various others...

Yes, exactly. It was a "We're not them because we believe 'fooo', which they don't believe" thing, not a primer. It's not meant to tell people what the main focus of Christianity was/is. I don't dispute that there are likely churches and possibly entire denominations that use it as such, or that doing so was/is wrong, but that honestly does not mean that the whole emphasis of Christianity as a whole is focused too much on negativity and not at all on compassion.

and shows an entirely different sort of focus from the creedal statements, which reflect very little about what it was that Jesus actually wanted people to *do*.

That is the problem, that is not what the Creeds are for. But you highlight the danger of a tradition that focuses so much on the salvation aspect of the faith that the righteousness aspect suffers.

Unfortunately, I've had it put to me over and over again recently that--even if you follow Jesus' teachings, even if you love God and try to be a good person--if you don't accept Jesus as lord and savior, you're just not a Christian. Period.

Which basically makes Christianity useless to me.

I would say this is where the emphasis is placed in my church, and probably the denomination to which it belongs (UCC), at least generally speaking. In our church we have a wide variety of backgrounds, and so a wide variety of ideas about scripture, doctrine, etc. But everyone seems to get along because of this difference in emphasis, I think. In a way we are NYT Christian church, but OTOH I think we are fairly typical of liberal-leaning Christianity...which I think is more numerous than its voice on the public square might indicate, but is by no means a majority at this point in history.

I saw this in someone else's journal and I guess I missed the part that said you wrote it...
I'm not sure about the Paul parts. I don't think Paul has any place in scripture that could truly be considered "Christian" - I think scripture should stop with Jesus' life, since he fulfilled scripture and anything past that is just the equivalent of post-game punditry.
But yeah... I feel like a refugee in this country, where it is assumed that the modern American way of Christianity is *the* definition of goodness - whereas in reality, it isn't even anything much like what Jesus (remember Jesus? He was supposed to be the reason for Christianity) lived and taught.

*claps*

Thank you!

I am a spiritual refugee, exiled from my home forever.

i hope that turns out not to be true, although i sure do see how it can feel that way.

thank you, thank you, thank you for this post

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If I was a Christian, for Easter

I'll bring a "scripture" or a "doctrine" or two along...

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