Yeah but...why is there so much of that in Christianity?

[nobspeople]

In seeing so many conversations here, there seems to be a lot of 'yeah but's' and 'well you need to understand's' ' the original text says' and on and on and on.

It makes me wonder:
If Christianity is supposed to be for everyone, why is it not crystal clear?
Why do some think you need to 'understand' the original text, the culture of the time, what they 'meant'?
You see people saying Christ hates and others saying Christ loves, all quoting the same scriptures!
Some would say that what happens when people get involved - they muddy the waters. But why isn't God clearing out the pond then?

It's madness!

Or, does all this little stuff (how ever one defines that) - all the minutia not matter? Only the main message matters (whatever that may be which even Christians don't all agree on) matters?

If the minutia doesn't matter, why are we here 'debating' it?

Seems to me, God should be a lot more clear and should be weeding out those that sow confusion of his message to the people!

For discussion:
If Christianity is supposed to be for everyone, why is it not crystal clear and why hasn't God eliminated those that cause confusion with his word?

[nobspeople]

Peace to you,

In seeing so many conversations here, there seems to be a lot of 'yeah but's' and 'well you need to understand's' ' the original text says' and on and on and on.

It makes me wonder:
If Christianity is supposed to be for everyone, why is it not crystal clear?

I'm not sure it is for everyone (though I am not sure if by "Christianity" you mean faith in Christ and God - or - if you mean religion: organized and institutionalized religion. Faith and religion are not the same thing).

That being said, it is not crystal clear to everyone because not everyone is looking to Christ to understand. Some look to religion, some look to tradition, some look to the bible or to the scriptures, some look to religious leaders, some look to themselves (their own understanding; their own wisdom).

Only one of the above is the Truth. Only one of the above is the One to whom God SAID to listen.

I will quote from the bible so that people have something to see, but the best one to turn to in order to hear and know the truth of this matter would be the One to whom God told us to listen:

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." John 14:6

"This is my Son, whom I have chosen. Listen to Him." Luke 9:35

Why do some think you need to 'understand' the original text, the culture of the time, what they 'meant'?

I might be misunderstanding this question (feel free to correct me if so)... but don't you need to understand what someone meant in order to... well... understand what they meant?

You see people saying Christ hates and others saying Christ loves, all quoting the same scriptures!

I'm not sure we do see that.

Some would say that what happens when people get involved - they muddy the waters. But why isn't God clearing out the pond then?

God gives people the freedom to choose to listen to Him (and so also the One He sent)... or not. He has also given us pure (and clean) water to drink. Why not stop splashing around in the mud, drinking from those muddied waters, and instead move upstream to the source (and so to the clean water): Christ Jaheshua?

It's madness!

Indeed.

Or, does all this little stuff (how ever one defines that) - all the minutia not matter? Only the main message matters (whatever that may be which even Christians don't all agree on) matters?

I'm not sure how to answer that question; or how to qualify the 'big stuff' over the 'little stuff'.

Sometimes misunderstanding the 'little stuff' leads to misunderstanding the 'big stuff' also.

If you build your "house" on a false foundation, what happens to that house?

Truth matters ('big' or 'small').

That does not mean that people cannot disagree with one another on some matters, in peace (and also in love). To our own master, each of us stands or falls.

Seems to me, God should be a lot more clear and should be weeding out those that sow confusion of his message to the people!

Seems to me that Christ anticipated this question and responded to it (from Matthew 13):

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest.

For discussion:
If Christianity is supposed to be for everyone, why is it not crystal clear and why hasn't God eliminated those that cause confusion with his word?

It is not yet the harvest. In pulling the weeds, some wheat might also be uprooted.

At the moment, and until Christ returns, the call and invitation to come to Him yet stands; anyone may come who wishes to come. Some (or many) who belong to Christ, may have at some point contributed to sowing confusion (due to having been confused or misled themselves, often by religion). But such ones have come out of what was false; and come instead to Christ. Until Christ returns we have time still to repent, to make amends, to come to Christ, and serve the Truth instead. The door is still open. It won't be open forever, but for now, it is.




Peace again to you,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy

By Christianity I mean the ability to believe in and follow God as outlined in the bible. Rather or not that means one must follow a religious standard...?
While not everyone is looking to Christ or God, there are some that do and still don't find the peace they seek.
I agree not everyone needs to understand what someone 'meant' but so often Christians make that, and other, claims. To me, that's just an excuse as to why a passage means something else than what it literally says in words.
Yes there have been debates in this very forum saying Christ hates and others saying he loves.

[nobspeople]

In seeing so many conversations here, there seems to be a lot of 'yeah but's' and 'well you need to understand's' ' the original text says' and on and on and on.

It makes me wonder:
If Christianity is supposed to be for everyone, why is it not crystal clear?
Why do some think you need to 'understand' the original text, the culture of the time, what they 'meant'?
You see people saying Christ hates and others saying Christ loves, all quoting the same scriptures!
Some would say that what happens when people get involved - they muddy the waters. But why isn't God clearing out the pond then?

It's madness!

Or, does all this little stuff (how ever one defines that) - all the minutia not matter? Only the main message matters (whatever that may be which even Christians don't all agree on) matters?

If the minutia doesn't matter, why are we here 'debating' it?

Seems to me, God should be a lot more clear and should be weeding out those that sow confusion of his message to the people!

For discussion:
If Christianity is supposed to be for everyone, why is it not crystal clear and why hasn't God eliminated those that cause confusion with his word?

All of which raises the question: If god is truly the author of the Bible whose goal was to bring his message of salvation to the world, why has he done such an abysmal job of it?

It's very badly written: it's repetitious, contradictory, filled with egregious claims, morally confusing; replete with with awkward constructions, boring asides, and passages where it's nigh impossible to tell what is being talking about. And, it fosters immoral behavior and incites intolerance, among other loathsome acts. Plus it's a book that has been so open to mistranslation that it's fostered thousands of contradictory and competitive denominations. One would think a perfect and all powerful god would do far, far better to insure none of these faults would ever crop up, and that although now at least two thousand years old it would remain exactly the same as it was the day it was written. But evidently that's Yahweh for you.

All in all it's a sign of incompetence writ large.


.

I've maintained this for years, but was always told I didn't 'understand' the circumstance, I have to look at the original text, I didn't have the Holy Spirit and a mess of other nonsensicalities.
If a being can created everything (even things we don't know about yet but still proclaim 'he did it himself' and can't even write a book?)....come on now.

[historia]

Is the Nicene Creed crystal clear regarding the deity of Christ?

Sure. It may not go into as much detail as you would like, but creeds are not meant to be detailed.

What could very easily have been disregarded as inconsequential differences in nuance and opinion instead became a source of schism and oppression whose effects still linger today.

The fact that you don't like the decision of the Council of Nicaea seems neither here nor there in our discussion.

The real question is why God didn't make it clear which doctrines/practices are necessary (and what they consist of) and which are tangential or open for disagreement among believers. Claiming that God made it all clear through the quasi-political efforts at Nicaea three centuries after Jesus' death would obviously be a bit of a stretch!

Why? How did the primitive Christian community resolve disputes? They met together in a council and decided the matter.

If it "seemed good to the Holy Spirit" (Acts 15:28) that disputes should be resolved in that way, then why is it "obviously a bit of a stretch" to extend that to later councils?

[historia]

Right, and as we know the Nicene Creed provided unity among the Christian church... or not.

I'm not sure why anyone would assume that a single creed would resolve all potential theological disputes among all people for all time -- the chart you posted even included Deists, for example.

In fact, that seems kinda silly. After all, the point of a creed is not to create "unity," but division: it delineates what is and what is not orthodox, thus excluding from the community those who choose to retain heterodox views.

[Mithrae]

Is the Nicene Creed crystal clear regarding the deity of Christ?

Sure. It may not go into as much detail as you would like, but creeds are not meant to be detailed.

Without having addressed the apparent incoherency of terms like 'eternally' begotten (without an eternal mother) and a single God which is both begetter and begettee, a mere assertion that it offers clarity on the subject really doesn't carry much weight.

What could very easily have been disregarded as inconsequential differences in nuance and opinion instead became a source of schism and oppression whose effects still linger today.

The fact that you don't like the decision of the Council of Nicaea seems neither here nor there in our discussion.

The real question is why God didn't make it clear which doctrines/practices are necessary (and what they consist of) and which are tangential or open for disagreement among believers. Claiming that God made it all clear through the quasi-political efforts at Nicaea three centuries after Jesus' death would obviously be a bit of a stretch!

Why? How did the primitive Christian community resolve disputes? They met together in a council and decided the matter.

If it "seemed good to the Holy Spirit" (Acts 15:28) that disputes should be resolved in that way, then why is it "obviously a bit of a stretch" to extend that to later councils?

That seems like a strange verse to make your case with:

• Acts 15:28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”

If it "seemed good to the Holy Spirit" that no further burden than those essentials be placed on believers, that would be a pretty solid theological case for rejecting the dictates of later revisionist councils (in addition to the obvious rational scepticism of any claims to be speaking on God's behalf).

As I suggested in my first post, seems to me that anything purporting to be for everyone of all times, ages, cultures, personalities and educational backgrounds would necessarily require a great deal of latitude in most areas to accommodate all those differences, with only a relatively few essential core beliefs/practices. The wide range of different authors' perspectives to be found in the bible is one of its strengths, I've always thought, and dogmatists' efforts to try to "harmonize" the whole canon or (in this case) enforce rigid and even incoherent doctrine on even the most inconsequential issues are both irrational and exclusionary.

The real problem for the bible and for Christianity isn't the lack of clarity on inconsequential issues like Jesus' divinity, but the lack of clarity regarding what actually is important. There's little or no agreement on what the essential core of beliefs/practices should be, as we see with the wildly abstract Nicene additions to the practical concerns that the Jerusalem council considered essential. Jesus himself said that to be his disciple or to have eternal life one must forsake all their possessions and give to the poor, but according to the beliefs and practices of virtually all later Christians even Christ didn't know what was really important

[Purple Knight]

[Replying to 1213 in post #2]

If person doesn’t remain in truth and begins to give own meanings to it, it will seem unclear.

So how does one come to it initially? I would assume no one is perfect and 'not in the truth' at some point being 'unclear' as it were.

The only way to do it would be to assume that if you see a contradiction, you have it wrong, and then try to select another interpretation.

[nobspeople]

[Replying to 1213 in post #2]

If person doesn’t remain in truth and begins to give own meanings to it, it will seem unclear.

So how does one come to it initially? I would assume no one is perfect and 'not in the truth' at some point being 'unclear' as it were.

The only way to do it would be to assume that if you see a contradiction, you have it wrong, and then try to select another interpretation.

That doesn't seem very logical at all really
At least not from the standpoint of someone (God) wanting you to understand and 'get it right' initially.
Perfect sense from the standpoint of anyone else I suppose.

[William]

Without having addressed the apparent incoherency of terms like 'eternally' begotten (without an eternal mother) and a single God which is both begetter and begettee, a mere assertion that it offers clarity on the subject really doesn't carry much weight.

Unless it is clear within the context that the being referred to is actually Hermaphrodite...

The real problem for the bible and for Christianity isn't the lack of clarity on inconsequential issues like Jesus' divinity, but the lack of clarity regarding what actually is important. There's little or no agreement on what the essential core of beliefs/practices should be, as we see with the wildly abstract Nicene additions to the practical concerns that the Jerusalem council considered essential. Jesus himself said that to be his disciple or to have eternal life one must forsake all their possessions and give to the poor, but according to the beliefs and practices of virtually all later Christians even Christ didn't know what was really important

Christianity should forever be known as that which is implicated in historical atrocity and as such, the identifying label "Christian" should be avoided by all who acknowledge that truth.

[Mithrae]

Christianity should forever be known as that which is implicated in historical atrocity and as such, the identifying label "Christian" should be avoided by all who acknowledge that truth.

The same could be said of labels like 'American,' 'Chinese,' or simply 'human.' I take it you're not identifying yourself as Christian any more?

[William]

Christianity should forever be known as that which is implicated in historical atrocity and as such, the identifying label "Christian" should be avoided by all who acknowledge that truth.

The same could be said of labels like 'American,' 'Chinese,'

True. Religion and state are similar monsters.

or simply 'human.'

Not true. Human is the default.

I take it you're not identifying yourself as Christian any more?

Correct.