I said this on Talen's post, I say it again here:
The church shouldn't be the gauge anyone uses to judge the christian faith. One is an institution, the other is about God. If you are judging the faith, judge based on those individuals who actually hold to the faith, rather than the institution which provides people with a bastardised version of the faith as a justification for their own exclusionist and self-centred prejudices.
The faith represents itself in those who live the faith. Not in the church, not in the bible, but in the individuals who live their lives by what God tells them to be true in the bible, by those who hear the message and change accordingly, who welcome God and His teachings into their hearts and lives. The bible, as I've said before, is law; christianity is about faith. Always faith, first and foremost. The bible has problems but these flaws are not fatal to either the faith or to the bible itself as a passage towards the faith.
And, in the end, you find your own way. You can take the view that flaws in an imperfect reflection of a perfect God is to be expected in a flawed world and that things would be different in a perfect world. Or you can require that everything in religion and philosophy function perfectly before you believe and therefore be disappointed in any faith and article of faith, irresepective of what it refers to. And that includes humanism.
The church shouldn't be the gauge anyone uses to judge the christian faith. One is an institution, the other is about God. If you are judging the faith, judge based on those individuals who actually hold to the faith, rather than the institution which provides people with a bastardised version of the faith as a justification for their own exclusionist and self-centred prejudices.
The faith represents itself in those who live the faith. Not in the church, not in the bible, but in the individuals who live their lives by what God tells them to be true in the bible, by those who hear the message and change accordingly, who welcome God and His teachings into their hearts and lives. The bible, as I've said before, is law; christianity is about faith. Always faith, first and foremost. The bible has problems but these flaws are not fatal to either the faith or to the bible itself as a passage towards the faith.
And, in the end, you find your own way. You can take the view that flaws in an imperfect reflection of a perfect God is to be expected in a flawed world and that things would be different in a perfect world. Or you can require that everything in religion and philosophy function perfectly before you believe and therefore be disappointed in any faith and article of faith, irresepective of what it refers to. And that includes humanism.
3 comments:
Except that we are willing to overlook any flaws in the cause of humanism.
don't know what you mean by 'overlook' any flaws in humanism, but ok.
if only everyone thought this way we probably wouln't have a many problems as we do. living your faith and not idolizing dogma is something most of world hasn't figured out i think.
Well, it was the entire point behind the movie Dogma, which incidently most fundamentalist christians (meaning the very ones it was aimed at) think is a dreadful movie which makes a mockery of the faith (rather than the church.)
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