Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

No, I do not think I am mistaken.

Yes, you never do...

Warning: You are right on the verge of getting SENT TO THE LIONS. Just keep it up Immanuel.

Doesn't your kind ever learn any new tricks?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Relgious maniacs don't want explanations, especially not sociopathic narcissists like IC who already 'know everything'.

[Alexis Jacobi]

All conquered territories then, by your definition, including the Northern Europe conquered and tamed, including the Indian subcontinent -- quite literally the whole world -- 'should still be as they were'.

But they are not.

Correct. I fail, though, to discern your point.

Of course you fail to discern the point. The reasons why you fail to discern is, in my view, the very source of what I term *problems of perception*.

All the world that we know has been molded and modified by conquests, power-pushes, expansions, and as well by man's cultivation of the earth through his agricultural efforts. All such activity is an act of violence against nature (in the sense of nature left to itself).

The point is this is part-and-parcel of human existence. For us to exist, we must cultivate. And I referred to the Mississippi Basin -- the very core of America's agricultural power -- as an example.

My view? You cannot and you will not accept the *reality* of the way things are. And I regard that as a serious defect.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yes, you never do...

Warning: You are right on the verge of getting SENT TO THE LIONS. Just keep it up Immanuel.

Doesn't your kind ever learn any new tricks?

Hmmmmm. I like where you are going here. You wish to participate in the enactment of your martyrdom! Very civil! That's brilliant. OK, go for it. What do you recommend? (Please nothing so brute as in Slingblade and preferably something lingering and slow. The best tortures are spiritual tortures).

[Harry Baird]

The point is this is part-and-parcel of human existence. For us to exist, we must cultivate. And I referred to the Mississippi Basin -- the very core of America's agricultural power -- as an example.

This is quite blatantly self-contradictory. First, you pointed out that the Red Man had lived in that Basin (clearly for a very long time) without cultivating it. Then you claim that we "must" cultivate.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Sorry Veggie, nothing actually. I'm not good at arithmetic and stuff. I did not understand your comment , but your post was the latest that pertained to Immanuel's latest intransigence.

He has everything arse about face because he's a religious maniac.
I suppose it's like when someone dies, the universe ceases to exist for that person. IC seems to think that's the same as saying the universe is 'caring' about us

Sorry to have to jump in with my outside of the norm box of fortitude of thought, but atheist thought that you are born once, you exist, and you die to never exist again, although at times I have wished for that last contemplation, it is extremely shallow and short of sight when considering the plausibile nature of physics (of which we are entwined) in comprehension of recursion of matter through time.

Perhaps you might consider editing this because it makes no sense. I'm not into translation (or double translation).

[Immanuel Can]

Warning: You are right on the verge of getting SENT TO THE LIONS. Just keep it up Immanuel.

Doesn't your kind ever learn any new tricks?

Hmmmmm. I like where you are going here.

Whereas, I am rather concerned about where you're going...but not for my own sake, of course.

[seeds]

To be such a Christ-follower [as one who follows the admonitions of the Sermon of the Mount] is to be, fundamentally, a renunciant.

You are mistaken. Christ promoted a community of loving souls, not a community of renunciants. His aim is for one to ensure that one's brothers and sisters are cared for and have their needs met, not for one to isolate oneself and ignore the needs of one's brothers and sisters.

I think you're both right.

However, as I have stated elsewhere, isn’t it a strange irony that if we were to fully mimic the lives of some of our most important spiritual icons,...

(for example, mimicking Jesus' alleged celibacy, which is a form of renunciation)

...humanity would soon cease to exist.
_______

[Harry Baird]

[A]s I have stated elsewhere, isn’t it a strange irony that if we were to fully mimic the lives of some of our most important spiritual icons,...

(for example, mimicking Jesus' alleged celibacy, which is a form of renunciation)

...humanity would soon cease to exist.

My understanding is that from Christ's perspective, this would be a good thing. This world is a world of sin, but there is a world after it. If there were no more occupants of the world of sin, then the world to come would be hastened.

[Immanuel Can]

[A]s I have stated elsewhere, isn’t it a strange irony that if we were to fully mimic the lives of some of our most important spiritual icons,...

(for example, mimicking Jesus' alleged celibacy, which is a form of renunciation)

...humanity would soon cease to exist.

My understanding is that from Christ's perspective, this would be a good thing. This world is a world of sin, but there is a world after it. If there were no more occupants of the world of sin, then the world to come would be hastened.

No, that's actually not the case.

The present world has a function: the preparation of people who can freely choose to know and love God. And sin has a solution: the atonement. The Bible itself is quite explicit that, "[God] is not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance." And it's available to all. Or again, as John 3 puts it, "God so loved the world..." Not just the cooperative part of the world; all of it.

That being said, that does not entail that the whole world loves God. The nature of human freedom is that some may choose otherwise; and that they can choose otherwise is the sine qua non of freedom for every person. If you can't choose "no," you can't choose "yes" either. You can't choose at all. So free will means that some may choose "no."

But if so, they will choose it. And if they do, they shall receive what they chose. For otherwise, again, it was never really any "choice" at all.

Still, there is no incentive at all to hasten the end of the world. The world has a job to do; and in a manner of speaking, it's doing it just fine. It's sorting out those who freely love God from those who freely do not.

[seeds]

[A]s I have stated elsewhere, isn’t it a strange irony that if we were to fully mimic the lives of some of our most important spiritual icons,...

(for example, mimicking Jesus' alleged celibacy, which is a form of renunciation)

...humanity would soon cease to exist.

My understanding is that from Christ's perspective, this would be a good thing. This world is a world of sin, but there is a world after it. If there were no more occupants of the world of sin, then the world to come would be hastened.

Well, if this lower world, with its human bodies constantly dancing the "horizontal mambo," represents the physiological means by which God awakens his own literal offspring into existence,...

...then, no, it would not be a good thing.
_______

[Harry Baird]

Immanuel Can; seeds:

Say what you like, the inescapable truth is that Christ - according, at least, to the Gospels - taught that celibacy is preferable.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If you water it down, don't be surprised that there's no flavour in it.

It is not I that does this or that or anything. It is *what is*. There is no pure 'Christianity' anywhere. Absolutely nowhere. You might be able to say that such a Christianity existed with Jesus of Nazareth and his small group (which did it seems number perhaps a few hundred?)

But all other Christianity's are adaptations and, necessarily, modifications. The greater investment in ownership interest, the less it is possible to be Christian (in the original sense). The more wordly the more, by definition, christianesque.

Your metaphor does not work because I do not suggest 'watering down', I suggest just other and different levels of interpretation and adaptation.

The question is one of relevance, which you raised.

If you are interested in Christianity per se, then those which are relevant are the teachings of Christ.

If you are interested in the socio-political machinations of so-called Christians, then, sure, study "the Christianesque".

I think Christ's teachings will persevere long after those socio-political machinations do, though, so your studies are of limited relevance given the flow of time.

I have, largely, examined 'Christ's teachings' and as you now now (if you did not before) I find them impracticable except by a solitary individual (committed to renunciation in one degree or another) and also by a smallish community. A State cannot even be 'Christian'. However, a people can be christianesque. And I came up with this term in former conversations with soon-to-be martyred Immanuel Can. He helped me to see with more clarity that the thing that really must be paid attention to is the christianesque (Christendom).

I am interested in The Culture Wars and especially in the American context. There are really no *Christians* in America (of the chemically pure variety) except, perhaps (and this is even doubted) in isolated pockets: smallish groupings, in a monastery, etc.) Please reference my post to BigMike where I spoke of Bloom's The American Religion. Because this is so, and because it is these sorts of Christians that dominate, I am more intereted in them and what they do than in the ideal form.

I think Christ's teachings will persevere long after those socio-political machinations do, though, so your studies are of limited relevance given the flow of time.

Yes, and they will always be put in practice in situations and environments that are christianesque.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Doesn't your kind ever learn any new tricks?

Hmmmmm. I like where you are going here.

Whereas, I am rather concerned about where you're going...but not for my own sake, of course.

That makes sense: to agree to martyrdom in principle. It fits into the larger pattern, no?

And when you are slowly toasting on the spit you will, as per regulation, pray for me, right?

[Immanuel Can]

The point is this is part-and-parcel of human existence. For us to exist, we must cultivate. And I referred to the Mississippi Basin -- the very core of America's agricultural power -- as an example.

This is quite blatantly self-contradictory. First, you pointed out that the Red Man had lived in that Basin (clearly for a very long time) without cultivating it. Then you claim that we "must" cultivate.

It's the old "Noble Savage" myth, Harry. It was started back in the 18th Century with Rousseau et al, actually. It's the belief that aboriginals and "red men" (ugh. What a term!) are automatically "closer to nature" and hence, "closer to the divine" than more modern people are. There was never any reason for that belief: it was born of wishful thinking and complete ignorance on the part of Europeans, and later reinforced by the American Transcendentalists. Nevertheless, it persists even today (see Disney's Pocahontas, for example).

Anyone who knows the actual details of life in an actual aboriginal tribe knows full well that any imputation of special nobility or wisdom is just a delusion. The Iroquois murdered all the Hurons, and the Comanches nearly successfully wiped out all the Apaches...the latter only being preserved by making a treaty with the Spaniards, actually. And they routinely practiced slavery, ritual torture, and even cannibalism, at times. They were superstitious, vicious and largely mendicant. Land ownership was not a concept they had at all. And they were far too primitive to have any means to "cultivate" the Mississippi Basin. We're talking about people who had only recently acquired the horse, and had never discovered the wheel. Large-scale agriculture was well beyond any possibility they had.