Ouch.
Yo been Bible-slapped!
Seriously though, great letter.
The Christian catch-all:
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1)
See also:
(1 John 2:15-17) 15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
The most striking distinction seems to be that neither the gluttons nor the liars praise their respective vices publically, so there is little confusion about the sinful nature of such actions that needs to be cleared up.
And even if there was such confusion, it wouldn’t touch fundamental anthropology as directly as denying the procreational end of the sexual function does.
The Gospel of Wealth enshrines greed as a Christian virtue, and parades it around in defiance of everything Christ allegedly stood for. Well, hung for. From his wrists. And that’s pretty much what every megachurch pastor stands for by definition.
And even if there was such confusion, it wouldn’t touch fundamental anthropology as directly as denying the procreational end of the sexual function does.
How fundamental do you want to get? Even if we go by the ludicrously subjective standards of the deadly sins, it is unclear that sex for purposes other than procreation constitutes lust: if that’s the case, then I expect that the epidemic of pill-popping, condom using, post-menopausal sex having Protestants out there would be in big trouble long before public homosexuals, who are small in number and hardly drivers of social mores. Just in case that’s too tactful, by unclear I mean you’d have to be full of the amounts of shit that generally requires Arks to navigate over if you believe that gays constitute the cutting edge of immoral or useless sex, or even the top ten. Every time one of these bloated morons procreates because society has managed to shelter him and his 15 whelps from natural selection it is an offense against nature that a little sodomy can’t begin to compare to.
Hey! There is no such thing as “natural selection”. Just the will of god, which manifests itself in the form of voices in the megachurch pastors’ heads; and those voices have been pretty clear in identifying sodomy and the often neglected gomorry as the most sinful, err, sins against Mother Nature and the happy Smurfs.
I miss The West Wing.
I touched some unclean things last night and this morning! Helllll yeahhhhhh
Can you afford a maid?
And yet Jesus spent his time in the midst of prostitutes and thieves and the tax collectors (which, in that area at that time, were essentially Jews that bought a tax collecting franchise and used it to cheat the people) - a point the Pharisees repeatedly pointed out.
Jesus taught over and over the #1 commandment was love your neighbor. “Love not the world” meant spend your time loving and helping others rather than spending all of your focus on accumulating worldly possessions and satisfying your own selfish needs. (I know you know that, just saying what I say to people who try to use those verses.)
There is absolutely no way to get around what Jesus so clearly taught, simple clarity and consistency: Love others, help others, turn the other cheek, forgive others. His prayer on the cross for the people who were torturing him and spitting on him and making fun of him was “Forgive them Father.” His only condemnation was for the Pharisees, for doing EXACTLY what finger pointing fundamentalists do.
I agree with most of your post, but Jesus did also condemn people who refused to repent. At least, it sounds like condemnation to me when he says people will deservedly end up in hell if they reject God and God’s laws. The Pharisees were criticized specifically, but sinners were still criticized in general.
Thanks, bro! Bring 'em way up high and gimme that high ten!
No, “sinners” were not criticized by Jesus. All are sinners. Only those who rejected Jesus’ message were criticized; but His harshest criticisms were against those who led others to reject His message.
Also: good letter, Dave. :)
Where does Jesus himself say that people will go to Hell?
Edit: That wasn’t very clear. I wasn’t challenging your point per se. I was just asking for some specific passages to get a feel for the context.
I will add though, that arguably there is NO Hell in the Bible at all:
Admittedly using various different terms and glossing over theological differences between “levels of Hell” or whatever:
Matt 3:12; 5:22,29-30; 8:12; 10:28; 11:23; 13:40; 18:8-9; 22:13; 23:15,33; 25:30,41; Mark 9:43,45,47; Luke 3:9,17; 10:15; 12:5; 16:23-24
And probably others.
Also: Robert, that website doesn’t say there’s no Hell, it says there is no everlasting or eternal Hell. Big difference. :) The idea of no Hell whatsoever is quite rare among Christians, whereas the idea that there is a Hell but it is somehow temporary is much more common (and related to other ideas such as the temporary purgatory in Catholicism).
If you say so:
At This Site, You Will Discover:
* How this unholy triune alliance snuffed out the truth of the early Christian faith. * That early Christianity did NOT teach Hell. * The Bible in its original Greek and Hebrew languages does NOT contain the concept of Hell. * Where our modern Christian concept of Hell came from. * Bible translations which do NOT contain the concept of Hell * What Christianity devoid of a two-faced god who says he is love but plans to torture most people endlessly really looks like. * And much, much more…
I’ve talked to many Christians that don’t believe in Hell as it is sold (fire, devil, etc.). I even know plenty of Christians that believe that I will be saved (even though I am an atheist) because God’s love is infinite, as is his forgiveness.
That’s a much more logical and defensible position than the standard fire and brimstone spiel. Are we seriously supposed to believe that a loving deity would condemn unbelievers (and others, of course) to an eternity of torment just because they refuse to accept one particular millenia-old tale as (ahem) gospel truth? Modern notions of justice and the concept of Hell are wildly at variance. No one deserves infinite torture for finite errors/crimes/sins. The fact that my church insisted that a large majority of humanity was nonetheless doomed to that exact fate is a large part of the reason why I became agnostic.
Hence, Catholic Purgatory.
I’m no Catholic, but we Protestants tend to forget they realized most of contradictions 1500 years ago and lawyered their way out of it (except for the whole Pope thing of course).
Dogma was right!