What is Christianity "designed to accomplish"?

[Zzyzx]

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In one of the threads someone commented on what Christianity was designed to accomplish.

1) Who decided?

2) What is accomplished (or intended)?

[bishblaize]

[Replying to post 1 by Zzyzx]

I think the second point is more interesting to me personally.

I believe that most of us have a spiritual aspect to us. It may not be totally ubiquitous, but a significant number of us seem to be drawn to things to satisfy our spiritual needs.

I believe the aim of Christianity is to meet this spiritual need. For me it represents a bit of a dead end in this regard, but it may go just far enough.

On the one hand it encourages people to take part in some self-inspection through prayer and to cultivate a spirit of compassion & kindness, to try and perceive the world in a way that is compatible with those spiritual needs. In my mind that's a good thing.

The reality is that, left to their own devices, most people don't start exploring the inner workings of their mind and their emotions. They're pulled by the tides of attention to the day to day images of their mind. Even now meditation or similar forms of contemplation are seen as a bit of an odd thing in most western societies (maybe not California...), compared to prayer, which is still socially commonplace. Christianity then gives people a ready made way to satiate spiritual hungers without the need to figure them out themselves. They can get their spirituality from a book off a shelf, with no need to relearn base principles.

On the other hand, it limits spiritual development. It does so partly by offering very little focus on the path of individual development that goes beyond pre-determined rules (Ignatian spirituality is sadly an uncommon aspect of christianity) and instead boils down spirituality to a simple position of faith without question, rather than by encouraging personal development. The spiritual needs are met, yes, but in a limited way and in such a way certain types of people are unlikely to be satisfied.

Many of the questions that lead people to ponder spiritual matters - why are we here, why do people suffer, where do we go when we die - are bluntly answered. Because God.

Deeper analysis than this can and does take place in Christianity, which has some very adept & deep thinkers. But to the average Sunday church goer that's as far as it goes. Few church goers are encouraged to take part in deep reflection, in most stands of Christianity anyway. Compare that with the kind of introspection that the average Buddhist is encouraged to take part in and the difference is stark.

So you have a position then where on the one hand it encourages a form of spiritual development, on the other hand it may prevent people from going the whole way and developing a truly personal and satisfying spiritual perspective.

So to answer to the second point - it tries to achieve something worthwhile. It fails to do it fully. But it may do enough for its overall existence, in spiritual terms, to be worthwhile.

[YahDough]

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In one of the threads someone commented on what Christianity was designed to accomplish.

1) Who decided?

God, the Father. Jn:3:16

2) What is accomplished (or intended)

Peace with God and everlasting life in Christ for the chosen. Rom:5:1:, Jn:3:16

[Zzyzx]

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[Replying to post 3 by YahDough]

Thank you for the bible quotes. Perhaps you are not aware that this is a debate forum in which the bible is NOT considered authoritative (or convincing). That approach may work in church where it is unopposed -- but does not work out in the world where opposition views challenge religious pontifications.

Do you have anything to present in the way of actual debate?

[Divine Insight]

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In one of the threads someone commented on what Christianity was designed to accomplish.

1) Who decided?

2) What is accomplished (or intended)?

I believe that Christianity was designed to steal the patent rights for God from Judaism. The people who decided to do this were the people who basically put together the New Testament books by using hearsay rumors that would ultimately accomplish the goal of setting Jesus up to be superior in importance to Yahweh.

This type of religious competition to own the patent rights on God was very common in the Mediterranean region. It clearly existed in Greece where Zeus had been proclaimed to be the "God of Gods". It continued on in the Hebrew culture where Yahweh was proclaimed to be jealous God. And then culminated in Christianity as Jesus being a demigod who is the "only way" to get to the jealous God.

We also see this in Islam where the patent rights to God are owned through Muhammad as the God's last profit, the Qur'an as the infallible word of Allah, and of course the use of the name "Allah" to further own the rights to a very specific God.

Christianity further tries to own the patent rights for "God" by trying to use the term "God" whilst trying to refrain from giving him a specific name. But clearly he has been given tons of names from Yahweh, to Jehovah, etc.

It was clearly just the behavioral attributes of these Middle Eastern cultures to argue and fight over the patent rights on God. And sadly they are still doing this to this very day.

[YahDough]

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[Replying to post 3 by YahDough]

Thank you for the bible quotes. Perhaps you are not aware that this is a debate forum in which the bible is NOT considered authoritative (or convincing). That approach may work in church where it is unopposed -- but does not work out in the world where opposition views challenge religious pontifications.

Do you have anything to present in the way of actual debate?

There is nothing for me to "debate" here. I was just answering your simple questions. Feel free to debate the answers if you can.

[ttruscott]

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In one of the threads someone commented on what Christianity was designed to accomplish.

1) Who decided?

2) What is accomplished (or intended)?

According to PCE Christianity, life was to accomplish a series of events.

GOD elected some folk who accepted HIS deity to heaven by the salvation from sin found in HIS Son, in the case they needed it.

Some elect stayed in heaven without sin where they serve GOD but others did indeed chose to be evil in HIS sight and so are born on earth to be redeemed and brought to righteous holiness, that is, to be heaven ready.

Christ's sacrifice is the method by which GOD is reconciled to HIS elect who have gone astray so they can be brought to repentance and holiness. Christianity is faith in this gospel, the good news that we can escape addiction to sin and judgement upon us for our sin, both.

At the deepest level, we decided to be Christians ourselves when we accepted YHWH's deity and salvation by putting our faith in HIS Son, pre-earth. Our election was in response to our putting our faith, our unproven hope, in HIM as a GOD who will reward those who are faithful to HIM. But by choosing evil, probably a rebellion to HIS plan to judge the reprobate, we have lost our free will to the addiction of sin and have repressed our memories of HIS deity and power. We are only freed in our spirits from these things by Christian rebirth.

The end result of Christianity is three fold: 1. all the sinful elect brought to holiness and 2, all those who cannot repent, the reprobate, banished to the outer darkness so 3. the heavenly link of telepathic communion of pure love and holiness can be initiated whereby every person in created reality will be in communion with every other person, created or Divine.

Is this what you wanted?

Peace, Ted

[Overcomer]

Zzyzx wrote:

Thank you for the bible quotes. Perhaps you are not aware that this is a debate forum in which the bible is NOT considered authoritative (or convincing). That approach may work in church where it is unopposed -- but does not work out in the world where opposition views challenge religious pontifications.

Given that Christianity is rooted in the Bible and its purpose and design are explained there, I think it is unfair -- and more than a little ridiculous -- to suggest that people must answer your questions apart from it.

It's like asking everyone to discuss communism without referring to the Communist Manifesto or Russian literature without mentioning Tolstoy or Dostoevsky simply because you have no regard for them.

If you truly want to understand a religion -- Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Mormonism, or whatever -- then you HAVE to look at the religious texts and what they say and why people believe them. There is no way to discuss Christianity without talking about what the Bible says. And, as YahDough said, you are welcome to debate the information in the verses he provided.

[Divine Insight]

If you truly want to understand a religion -- Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Mormonism, or whatever -- then you HAVE to look at the religious texts and what they say and why people believe them. There is no way to discuss Christianity without talking about what the Bible says. And, as YahDough said, you are welcome to debate the information in the verses he provided.

I agree with you completely on the part about having to look into the dogmatic claims of a specific religion like "Christianity".

However, I totally disagree with you that I would need to debate the verses that YahDough provided. On the contrary if someone wants to debate Christianity with me they are going to need to start debating at Genesis Chapter 1 and move forward from there step-by-step making sense the whole way before they get up to anything in the New Testament like as if those verses should just be accepted as pure authority.

I personally don't believe that it's possible to make a sane case for Christianity. If I thought that was possible I would have done it myself. But it was actually the scriptures that prevent it from being possible.

It's impossible to make a sane and coherent picture of Christianity. This is why there are so many disagreeing sects and denominations of Christianity. They all claim that only their interpretations make any sense, and they reject all the other denominations as having it "all wrong".

And just stop and think about that. That pretty much blows away your claim that any coherent sense can actually be made from these scripture. If any coherent sense could be made from them in any convincing way then there would only be one Christianity and all Christianity would agree that there is only one convincing interpretation that can be had.

In the meantime, all you can do is cherry pick verses that you like (like YahDough has done) whilst ignoring or making extremely lame and unconvincing excuses for the scriptures that you don't like.

That's not the scriptures "speaking for themselves".

In fact, if you tell me to allow the scriptures to speak for themselves then I can assure you that they have convinced me beyond any reasonable doubt that these scriptures were written by none other than immoral male-chauvinistic men who think that a God should try to solve problems using the same kinds of ignorant barbaric methods that they would employ.

And have you even noticed that none of the methods attributed to the God of the Bible have ever solved anything?

There is no indication in any of the Christian scriptures that convince me that there is any all-wise all-intelligent supreme being behind them. On the contrary, they have convinced me that this could not possibly be the case.

Don't be quoting to me from the New Testament that God spoke from a cloud proclaiming Jesus to be his son, and that whoever believes in him will have everlasting life.

That is nothing more than an empty claim. I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that such a claim is anything more than superstitious religious propaganda invented by men.

After all, we know full well that men make up this kind of nonsense. I mean look at the Muslims, they have God awarding martyrs with a bunch of virgins in a heavenly afterlife.

Does that make this claim TRUE?

Of course not.

So you can't just point to these outrageous superstitious claims and act like they should be taken seriously without any reason to believe them.

So if you want to convince me of the New Testament you need to first convince me of the Old Testament, and good luck with that.

[Zzyzx]

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Thank you for the bible quotes. Perhaps you are not aware that this is a debate forum in which the bible is NOT considered authoritative (or convincing). That approach may work in church where it is unopposed -- but does not work out in the world where opposition views challenge religious pontifications.

Given that Christianity is rooted in the Bible and its purpose and design are explained there, I think it is unfair -- and more than a little ridiculous -- to suggest that people must answer your questions apart from it.

Forum Rules and Guidelines allow the bible to be quoted to show what the bible says – WITHOUT the assumption that anything said is true.

Notice that YahDough attempted to prove "who decided" and "what was accomplished" with bible quotes. Since neither of those quotations can be shown to be truthful and accurate they are not evidence in debate.

One CAN address either of the OP questions with reasoning and evidence.

In one of the threads someone commented on what Christianity was designed to accomplish.

1) Who decided?

God, the Father. Jn:3:16

2) What is accomplished (or intended)

Peace with God and everlasting life in Christ for the chosen. Rom:5:1:, Jn:3:16

What is the evidence that "God the father" decided – WITHOUT attempting to use "because the bible says so."

What is the evidence of "Peace with God and everlasting life in Christ" – WITHOUT attempting to use "because the bible says so."

Refer to Forum Rules and Guidelines regarding attempting to use the bible as proof of truth.

It's like asking everyone to discuss communism without referring to the Communist Manifesto

A thinking person CAN discuss communism as an economic system without reference to the Communist Manifesto – or discuss religious systems without reference to the bible. There is more to communism than the Manifesto – and more to religion than the bible.

If you truly want to understand a religion -- Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Mormonism, or whatever -- then you HAVE to look at the religious texts and what they say and why people believe them.

One need not study the blueprints and engineering drawings of a military tank in order to discuss what it was intended to accomplish. One need not understand the totality of a religion in order to discuss its origins and apparent intents.

There is no way to discuss Christianity without talking about what the Bible says. And, as YahDough said, you are welcome to debate the information in the verses he provided.

Both you and YahDough are welcome to discuss the OP if you can do so without attempting to use the bible as proof of truth.