Because I was working on a post when the thread closed:

I do.

Coming out of Christian Science, I drifted around various modes of agnosticism, atheism, alcoholism, and cafeteria-style "spirituality." Entering 12-Step recovery, I was comfortable with a generalized "Higher Power" concept for a while: "it worked for me," as they say.

I started noticing that there were quite a few differing, and even contradictory, "Higher Powers" around the fellowship. They may all "work" for people individually, but they can't all be true. Truth has to be something more than feelings of comfort and validation.

I started checking out various belief systems, even the Hare Krishnas. I eventually delved into the New Testament and books by Charles Colson ("Born Again"), Francis Schaeffer ("How Are We Then To Live?"), McDowell's "More Than a Carpenter," and, especially, Morrison's "Who Moved the Stone." I eventually found myself at a Billy Graham crusade where I was born again--much to my surprise.

I believe in Christianity because it is true. Not because "it work for me" (sometimes it doesn't), not because it's "a comfort" (there are the "hard sayings of Jesus" I still have trouble with). There are a lot of "dots" to explain the spiritual, the mystical, the supernatural. The teachings of Jesus --and Paul-- do the best job of connecting them.

It's something I think about, now and then.

In the Reorganized LDS Church most of us did not profess
"testimonies" quite like the Mormons do -- but I suppose
one might say that I at least had "an appreciation" of Jesus.

Spending some years in graduate seminary changed my outlook,
however. Eventually, there was no longer a single "Jesus."

I'm not sure how to explain it; but "Jesus Christ" ceased
to be a reality for me, and in its place was a series of
questions and possible, intriguing answers.

If I have a "testimony" of anything these days, it would be to
say that those questions are important -- even life changing.

But the guy whose only writings were scrawlings in the dust
has vanished, and with him the very notion of messiahship.

Perhaps that's the way he wanted things to turn out...

UD

> I believe in Christianity because it is true.

FALSE

I can't beleive in Christianity because it isn't true. I know where you're coming from though because I've been there. Peace.

I'm in the "not sure" camp myself. I was raised as a Presbyterian until about age 8, then my parents stopped going to church because... well it was boring I guess. Jesus was never the center of our religious life, it was all about the social aspect or the common belief that religion is needed to provide guidance and social structure. My parents weren't deeply religious themselves. When I became a Mormon I immersed myself in the church, reading the bible and the BOM several times, to this day I have no problem reciting verses.

My biggest problem I with the whole idea of Jesus is why would God need to send a "chosen" son to save us? Why is that the only way back to our Father? The atonement makes no sense if you take a step back and just examine it. Do that before you except that Jesus the person might have existed and the story seems dubious in my opinion. I know the scriptural reasons laid out, but has always been perplexing to me.

The only way to really start to understand this is to look back at history and to really examine the culture at the time of Jesus's supposed birth. I once took a class on world religion from a Biblical scholar who did a great job of describing the events of the time before the birth of Jesus. What I took away from it all was that the story of Jesus really evolved and developed out of long existing Jewish messianic and apocalyptic literature and beliefs at the time. We've all heard that most people in biblical Jerusalem thought their son would be the next messiah. The story of Jesus virtually marries existing Jewish beliefs and the multitude of stories told of ancient pagan deity.

Uhh... so I guess the answer is no, I don't.

The propitiation of Christ ("blood atonement") is not easy to summarize succinctly. Coming out of Mormonism further complicates things, because you've been involved in a works-based doctrine with very odd tangents like a finite, physical deity, and the "blood atonement" doctrine regarding murderers.

I'd suggest a simple reading of portions of the N.T. and just let the text teach you. Consider Luke's gospel, which is the longest and has a good balance of Christ's teachings, history, and demonstrates his outreach to the poor, the gentiles (non-Jews, especially Greeks), women, lepers and cripples--people regarded as being outside the pale of elite spirituality back then.

I'll just say that we finite humans, limited by our mortality and gross imperfections (sins) cannot work, earn, or think our way to an infinite, perfect, eternal God. That help is provided by Jesus. Sometimes this is called a "sin debt," which we cannot, by ourselves, pay. I realize that on the surface payment by blood is a weird concept, but Paul explains it (partially), "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6.23).

In my post above, I said that Christianity does the best job at connecting the dots. This does not make the picture a detailed oil painting, but it does pull temporal-spiritual things together into an understandable pattern. TSCC tells you to put things you don't like or understand "on the shelf." I say, keep reading and asking. There's an eternity ahead; as C.S. Lewis said, "You have never met a mere mortal."

I recommend the ESV Study Bible: very readable, good scholarship, study notes, maps & illustrations. Consider checking out the books I mentioned in my post, above. Also, "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis--once an atheist himself.

Isthisnameok? Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> My biggest problem I with the whole idea of Jesus
> is why would God need to send a "chosen" son to
> save us?
...

Such a scenario probably made a bit more sense to the
Hellenized Jews of 2000 years ago -- or, more particularly
to the Greek would-be Jews who hung around the Levant
synagogues, without ever being fully converted.

It makes less sense to most modern people, no doubt.

All of which leaves open the compelling possibility that
(1) either there was no such crucifixion, or (2) if there
was indeed a crucifixion, that it resulted in no vicarious
universal atonement for humanity's "sins," past, present
and future.

If that "passion story" were removed from the discussion,
then what sort of testimony might a Jesus-follower profess?

Perhaps something more along the lines of the religion
exemplified in the old Coptic "Gospel of Thomas," in which
the purported passion of Christ has no essential place.

A gnostic "testimony" of Jesus from 1900 years ago would
have bypassed to question of God sending a son to save,
altogether. It would have expressed a different perspective
on what divinity and salvation meant to the Jesus disciple.

I'm not saying that Gnosticism is anything like the One
True Religion -- but it demonstrates that a community of
early Jesus followers could have testified to something
other than the "crucified, dead and buried... rose again"
of the Apostles Creed.

UD

I do. But it is so different from being mormon. I do not have to "know" anymore, just have faith and be aware that I can be mistaken and that many things probably are in a different way from how I think now. As a mormon I said I knew but now I live in a relaxed faith and curiosity of life and the future.

as a very good man at least, but testimony? No freaking way!

"Truth has to be something more than feelings of comfort and validation."

"I believe in Christianity because it is true."

Contradict yourself much?

I do not know. Why only 2000 year old writings? why not part the clouds every five years and have all listen to a comfirming message?. Why the hundreds of billions humans never hearing about Jesus over the past 50 to 100000 years?


Respectfully shrugging.

Actually, the numbers are smaller but as man evolved (and may be today) the need for answers has required both the concepts of religion and the progress of science.

Take your pick, Jesus is in the Middle-Eastern gods section:

http://www.godchecker.com/

Me, I'm partial to Baron-Samedi. As an expression of my faith, I dress in black and smoke cigars.

I am a fan of Yam, he knows when to keep his mouth shut

Once I realized that most of what I had always considered "faith" in myself was really just "hope," it changed my perspective on Jesus completely.

I wasn't there. I don't know anybody who was there. So, everything I know about Jesus is hearsay and legend, so I would feel foolish accepting it as anything more without good reason.

Some of the teachings credited to Jesus many years later are nice, but many in the world have taught the same, and most of us feel those good things in our hearts naturally. I worry about people who can't be good or nice unless they have a religious leader to tell them what to do, even if that religious leader has cherry picked the best of what Jesus said--Jesus's greatest hits-- and teaches only those.

Whoever Jesus was, he has been whitewashed and sanitized. It is a pretty story. Glinda the Good Witch is also a lovely person to believe in. She knew how to get you home as well. But in the end I don't find a big difference between clicking your heels together three times or getting baptized.

You have to save yourself.

"You have to save yourself."

It's interesting that Jesus didn't save himself, and they "wagged their heads" and made fun of him for not saving himself from the cross.

I wonder, what does salvation really mean? Or which definition is most important?

Believing in Jesus is like believing in a father who went out for ice cream and did not return for 20 years

Except in Jesus case it has been almost 2000 years.

So some people will continue to profess it is real and wait thousands of more years.

At some point people need to realize.....You have been duped.

Excellent analogy.

I never did.

Funny how that wasn't really essential to mormonism.

Nope, never really did. But I have family members who get all teary eyed when they look at a picture of a kindly faced bearded man who undoubtedly looks nothing like the original. I find that odd

Google DM Murdock aka Archarya S


She will ruin anyone's testimoney of Jeezus.

Achyra S is a hack and has been disproved

Oh hell no. The Jesus fraud is as obvious the mormon fraud. I'm not falling for that crap again.

No. The fraud of JS is so much clearer. The question of Christ is merely an issue of historicity rather than the absolute history of JS et al being frauds. One can ask why one should have a positive belief without physical proof clearly in favor, but this is far different from the case of TSCC where the physical proof in its falsity is clear.

One cannot disprove Christ. The problem of proof that he existed and did and said what is in the Bible may lead one to question, even doubt, but not to decide that he did not exist nor perform miracles.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 12:12PM by rhgc.

I think the inconsistencies between the gospel narratives and the writings of Paul can certainly cast doubts on the claims of the miraculous nature of Jesus as the prophesied messiah. The author of Matthew's sloppy insertion of Jesus into passages from the Torah and the cribbing of elements of the passion narrative from Psalm 22, for instance, definitely make it appear that much of the legend of Jesus was fabricated from patches of older scripture and other legends.

I think the "Christ" from the New Testament can certainly be disproved.

The realization that there are consequences to all of our actions, good or bad, regardless of whether there is a life after death or an atonement, made me realize alot of things. One of which was the idea that a third party accepting the consequences of my actions ahead of time, before I even made any decisions, before I even existed, just made absolutely no sense.
Second, by the time I die, the consequences of all of my decisions will have already been played out, for better or worse.
So the idea of someone taking the rap for all of my mistakes just made no sense.
Whether Jesus was real or not is a whole 'nother debate which has been beaten to death already on this board several times over.

I believe in Jesus as the God I wish for. But the part of Christian doctrine that gives pause and has no good moral explanation is the God the Father would require a human sacrifice to pay for our sins. Many of us have to look away from this foundational element of Christianity when we're believers. Because to look at it directly is to be repelled.

There is no way the bible reflects a true doctrine of a loving God. If Jesus could come to earth to die because he is God and wanted to show us he would experience the same as us and that he could have complete empathy for us and cause us to love him because he loved us first---that is a God I can believe in. But a Christ that comes because he must pay the Father a debt we owe by dying to pay for our sins, because God's JUSTICE demands this, would make Christ the very antithesis of God the Father. But they come as a pair, so to recognize the Father as blood thirsty, irrational, unforgiving unless his debt gets paid while his Son is the exact opposite makes the whole thing unbelievable.

I hold out hope that Christ is true while the written doctrines about him and the Father are false.

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I believe in Christianity because it is true.

That's the same rationalization for why Mormonism is true, or any other religion based on belief. You believe Christianity is true. I don't doubt that, and I don't doubt your sincerity. However, what fundamentally changed for me was 2 things: One, I could be wrong about something, because I have been wrong before. and two, personal conviction is probably the absolute worst method of determining truth.

I have decided that if something is true, it is true, and the facts and evidence will confirm what is already known. You can keep believing in Christianity, that is fine. I have come to a different conclusion. Ironically, it was Christians that convinced me that facts and evidence override faith. Not sure what that means, but there you have it.

Not in the way you're asking, rather I see him as a mystic--one of many. John Shelby Spong's interpretation resonates with me.

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/books.php?id=16822

"Jesus was not divine because he was a human life into whom the external God had entered, as traditional Christology has claimed; he was and is divine because his humanity and his consciousness were so whole and so complete that the meaning of God could flow through him. He was thus able to open people to that transcendent dimension of life, love and being that we call God."

Your fear of death propels you to believe. You also like the feeling of superiority it gives you, because you see yourself not as just a Christian, but a Christian who has investigated heavily other belief systems and finally settled down with your "One true gospel" that gives you hope for an afterlife.

Nope, sorry. Its still BS.