Does hell really make sense?

[kentonio]

Worshiping God is sacred too.

I don't think you understand the concept of sacred.

JM

Possibly not.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So someone dies for your sins (or rather doesn't because he's god anyway, but lets not quibble), ok that makes sense as a sacred thing, but then later people stand around remembering it, and they've somehow also become part of something sacred? Sounds like people wanting to be part of something sacred without actually sacrificing anything or doing anything to earn it.

You share in the cleansing power of Christ's blood. By participating in the ritual to commemorate his giving the bread and wine as His body and blood to the disciples, you are participating in the event and keeping it alive throughout the generations. It has always been sacred.

And the point of Jesus's sacrifice is that we did not, nor could, earn salvation. Only God could give it to us.

[Jon Miller]

Well it didn't exactly take very long for the early Christians to start fighting with each other about what it all meant, so I think it's safe to assume it wasn't so clear even back then. Presumably just saying how things should be run would have been immediately clearer than all the parables for a start. Also I'm assuming an omnipotent creator could have made his message as clear as he wanted it to be. Maybe writing the bible himself and making it so it could be read and understood by any human in any time wouldn't have been out of the realms of possibility for someone who can do literally anything.

Most agreed with Paul/Peter, basically the beliefs as presented by the Bible.

When you consider the broad range of possible beliefs (for example, the gnostics, which didn't get started for another hundred years), it was actually pretty clear.

JM

[kentonio]

And the point of Jesus's sacrifice is that we did not, nor could, earn salvation. Only God could give it to us.

I don't really understand that either to be honest, you can't earn yourself salvation through your own actions, but if you don't at least try you won't be saved anyway, but if you do try (knowing its not enough) then you do get saved?

[Imran Siddiqui]

I don't really understand that either to be honest, you can't earn yourself salvation through your own actions, but if you don't at least try you won't be saved anyway, but if you do try (knowing its not enough) then you do get saved?

Depends on who you ask.

[Elok]

Well it didn't exactly take very long for the early Christians to start fighting with each other about what it all meant, so I think it's safe to assume it wasn't so clear even back then. Presumably just saying how things should be run would have been immediately clearer than all the parables for a start. Also I'm assuming an omnipotent creator could have made his message as clear as he wanted it to be. Maybe writing the bible himself and making it so it could be read and understood by any human in any time wouldn't have been out of the realms of possibility for someone who can do literally anything.

The earliest squabble I'm familiar with is the battle with the Gnostics--a pre-Christian sect derived from Neoplatonism (mixed with various pre-Christian religions from the area) which later incorporated Christian ideas and used entirely different scriptures from the Xianity we know today. You'll notice we don't have "The Gospel of Thomas" or "The Gospel of Judas" in our bibles. If I take half of my doctor's prescription, mix it with some homeopathic stuff from a hippie friend, and chug it all down, the consequences are hardly my doctor's fault.

As for writing scripture himself--you mean like Muhammad did? Does Islam look unified to you? And Muhammad had the advantage of being a political leader who could establish the "correct" version himself, and make it stick. We were an unrecognized minority for the first couple of centuries--which I think was better for us in the long run, considering what the alternative made out of Islam, and what it did to Christianity later on.

[Elok]

Kentonio, the problem here, AFAICT, is that you're looking for a kind of clarity and precision that just isn't there to be found. I don't see that as a weakness, myself--it's more of a strength than anything else. If you disagree, that's cool--at least you're being polite, thanks for that, by the way--but bear in mind that most of the people you're talking to here believe in the Trinity. How do you clearly express "1=3?"

[Ben Kenobi]

How do you clearly express "1=3?"

St. Athanasius did a pretty good job.

[Jon Miller]

I don't really understand that either to be honest, you can't earn yourself salvation through your own actions, but if you don't at least try you won't be saved anyway, but if you do try (knowing its not enough) then you do get saved?

You are not saved by trying.

You try because you are saved.

JM

[Elok]

St. Athanasius did a pretty good job.

I suspect Kentonio might disagree with you there.

[Barnabas]

Could it be that people are reading too much into this, and he was just kinda saying 'remember that nice dinner we had together when you eat food in future' rather than all this bread = sacred stuff? When you step away from the huge thing it's been built up into, what sense does it actually make that bread/wine somehow becomes sacred and you have to be in a certain state of mind and suchlike?

This is one of the things that made me reject religion in the first place, the core message of most religions is pretty good (within limits) but a couple of thousand years of theologians putting their own interpretations on things and you end up with all this crazy ****. Seriously, if there was a creator and he came to earth to try and get people to live better lives, isn't it a bit more likely that he'd have just said what he wanted people to do and how they should act, rather than going to all that bother and leaving insanely tenuous clues that people then spend thousands of years misunderstanding?

How many christians are there at Poly, a dozen? More? Do any of you actually agree on anything to do with religion?

The issue is that it didn't go that way.
1500 years after Jesus, Christian denominations could be counted with the fingers of one hand (Western Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Nestorian Church of the East) and the differences were small, about complex theological points with regards to the Nature of Christ (his divinity and humanity), which were sometimes almost semantic differences.
And Church organization, how much authority does the Pope of Rome have, is he just a primus inter pares or does he have authority over all the Church?

On most things, all Churches agreed on everything.

Only with the protestant reformation Churches become over a thousand, each one with different beliefs, because every man suddenly thinks he has the right to interpret the Bible as he wishes. As if Jesus had not founded a Church, and as if the bible were an object that fell from heaven, instead of being a collection of books made by the Church.
If some fourth century pope had wanted it, protestants nowadays would have the Shepherd of Hermas or the Book of Clement in the Bible and consider it inspired by God.

[Jon Miller]

Except that the protestants do not include all the same books as the Catholics.

Additionally, the books that are included in the Bible were quoted from and mostly agreed about in the 2nd century AD.

The Priests basically didn't do their job (at least, the Catholic ones). Otherwise the reformation would not have been required.

JM
(you missed some like the mar thomas and copts and so on)

[Ben Kenobi]

Depends on who you ask.

I highly doubt anyone here would disagree with Ask, Seek, Knock.

[Kidlicious]

That's fine, I don't expect agreement on the existence or not of god, but why is there so much disagreement over stuff that really isn't even vaguely important in the grand scheme of things? Is there really a single issue important enough to have caused the church to schism into so many parts? It just seems like people care so much about the details that they overlook the entire point of the thing.

First, it doesn't matter if you think the bread actual flesh or not (Barnabas disagrees with me but that's ok). That's not what makes you a christian.

Second, not everyone is meant to.understand. This is God's will, because some people are wicked. If you love God and you are humble you will understand enough.

[Kidlicious]

So someone dies for your sins (or rather doesn't because he's god anyway, but lets not quibble), ok that makes sense as a sacred thing, but then later people stand around remembering it, and they've somehow also become part of something sacred? Sounds like people wanting to be part of something sacred without actually sacrificing anything or doing anything to earn it.

The Isrealites made sacrifices but this way was not satisfactory to God going forward. It's much better now that God has made the sacrifice. People now have a closer relationship with Him.