Greatest Sect of Christianity

[Hauldren Collider]

There will always be loud dumb morons in any group of people where the label is self-applied.

[loinburger]

I don't understand what it is about converts that makes them such douchebags. It seems as though the Inquisitors are always composed of at least half converts, even though converts are only 10-20% of the religion

[Kidlicious]

That's not obvious trolling loinburger.

[loinburger]

That's not obvious trolling loinburger.

"Obvious trolling"? You call Jon and Imran dumbasses with no provocation, and you're going to accuse me of "trolling"?

[Elok]

I don't understand what it is about converts that makes them such douchebags. It seems as though the Inquisitors are always composed of at least half converts, even though converts are only 10-20% of the religion

Convert's zeal is a complex phenomenon, but at its most basic level, it's just a matter of novelty. If your religion is new to you, you embrace it with greater passion than if you grew up with it and are used to it. This isn't always a bad thing; a lot of converts take the rules about piety much more seriously than we lax "cradle" believers do. They add new life to the church. The downside, of course, is that they sometimes overstep bounds in their eagerness to advance the faith.

With that said, I assume that Kid, not being a cherry picker, believes that the bread and wine are literally Christ's body and blood. And that, as per the epistle of James, sick people should be anointed with oil.

[Elok]

Also, Loin seems to have forgotten that thread a few months back where Kid told all the atheists that they were necessarily immoral. And don't forget that Imran, at least, is a convert. Don't recall how JM started.

[Elok]

http://www.oodegr.com/english/ekklisia/stages_of_conversion.htm

THE STAGES OF CONVERSION

Phase 1: The Cage Phase

So you've found your new tradition, and you've finally discovered all the answers to life's problems encompassed within it. You've also read a few books that explain how every other Christian tradition (especially the one you just left) has absolutely ruined the piss out of the Christian faith as a whole. As God's apostle to the unconverted, it now falls upon you to save the world (especially your friends and family in the old tradition) by enlightening them as to just how perfect everything is about your new tradition and how stupid and wrong everything about their current tradition is. It is very important for you to have a blog during this time so that you can enlighten as many people as possible.

Phase 2: Addiction

After having ruined all your relationships from your past life, you are now disillusioned with the willful ignorance and impiety of all those outside your new church. Let the heretics stew in their heresy. It is now time to busy yourself with drinking as much religious Kool-Ade as you possibly can, preferably until your skin becomes the same color as Purplesaurus Rex and your body's pH levels are completely thrown off. You need to read every theological or devotional book you can, buy lots of the assorted trinkets associated with your tradition, and make lots of pilgrimages to either theology conferences or monasteries, depending on how your church rolls.

Phase 3: Apostle of Renewal

You've recently noticed that most of the other people in your church are not nearly as obsessed with it as you are. They aren't reading those books, and they aren't buying all that crap you've strewn your house with. They're more concerned with paying the bills than why those awful sectarians are wrong. They even have friends outside the church! Many of them are not aware just how right and perfect their church is, or how great their lives would be if they would just fling themselves with total abandon into the kind of obsession you yourself have. This is clearly a problem that must be fixed, for it threatens to destroy the purity of the faith. As God's chosen agent of change, you busy yourself with trying to whip up everyone in the congregation into the same frothing devotion you yourself exhibit.

Phase 4: Beaten by Reality

You've finally faced the harsh truth: The people in your new tradition are, at their core, a whole lot like all those people from your old tradition that you despised so much, with all the same foibles and failings. You give up on saving the world, on restoring your tradition to its purity, and have lost your confidence that God himself has appointed you to fix everything. You've discovered that your new church in fact has a lot of ugliness in its history, has a lot of jerks in its power structure, can't solve all of life's problems, and isn't always all that consistent or believable in what it teaches or what it does.

Phase 5, Option 1: The Rat Leaves the Ship

Clearly, you were had. You thought you had found the One True Perfect Tradition, but you were deceived. You know what you must do--find the tradition that really does get it all right, because it must be out there. Back to Phase 1 for you!

Phase 5, Option 2: Complete Disillusionment

You have realized, perhaps after going through this cycle several times, that you are perhaps the only sincere, thinking Christian in the world. Everyone else is a hypocrite or a dunce, and all these corrupt denominations and hierarchies have ever accomplished is completely screwing up everything. Completely embittered at the idea of organized religion, you isolate yourself in order to go be a true follower of Christ without all those awful other people screwing things up. If you meet some like-minded folk, you start meeting up with them in order to transcend organized religion by organizing a religion. It's very likely that you eventually realize that all religious people are deluded fools and become an atheist or agnostic.

Phase 5, Option 3: Partial Disillusionment and Accommodation

After facing the harsh reality in Phase 4, you've further realized that phases 1 through 3 ought to be renamed "Jackass," "Nutjob," and "Know-it-All," respectively, which suggests that you are, for the most part, much worse at being a decent human being than all those people too stupid and impious to realize how awesome your new religion is. While many of the reasons that you had for joining your current tradition remain, and thus so do you, you decide it's time to cut yourself, your church, everyone else's churches, and rest of the world some slack.

[Kidlicious]

Loin,
Let's consider three sins.

1) Having the authority as a teacher of God's word and teaching that God's word is wrong. (false teaching)
2) Aggravating religious people such as to encourage them to sin.
3) Telling stupid asses what they are.

Three is the least evil.

[Kidlicious]

Loin,
Let's consider three sins.

1) Having the authority as a teacher of God's word and teaching that God's word is wrong. (false teaching)
2) Aggravating religious people such as to encourage them to sin.
3) Telling stupid asses what they are.

Three is the least evil.

[Elok]

But continually double posting is the worst of all.

[Kidlicious]

Of course, please forgive me.

* still reviewing the favorite Bible book of recent converts (James)

[Barnabas]

See, this is way regular people shouldn't be interpreting the Bible by themselves. BTW, the Church is more important than the Bible, that is why Jesus founded a Church, but he did not write or hand out any book.

[Kidlicious]

Oh yeah the Catholic Church is always right. I forgot. Um Molly Bloom ....

[Kidlicious]

http://www.oodegr.com/english/ekklis...conversion.htm

Is phase 5 showing off your boobs in church?

Edit: That's just an example. We could talk about men dressing flashy as well.
Of course people are probably thinking I'm being legalistic, but it's not really about how you dress. A person could wear a head covering and still have no respect for God, but if they are showing off their tits even a fool can see that they don't have respect for God. And the same goes for anyone who encourages them to disrespect God.

[Kidlicious]

Anyway, I'll make sure that you're wrong about my future Elok. Also, you don't seem to know that many Christians. Many have been converted for a long time and never lose their piety. And if they do a lot of the time they get it back. Did you know that most of the people who got saved at Billy Graham Crusades were already christians?

Edit: Also, it didn't take me long to realize that christians today don't much resemble how they are talked about in the NT. It's already been awhile. But I read Kierkegaard, who by the way was baptised at birth. His father was an ordained Lutheran priest. He was a christian his whole life although he refused to take communion from a priest on his death bed.