While I don't like the idea of posting video links here - I know few of us click on them - I felt this one was really worth a look. It's a clip of an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong, and honestly, I've rarely heard wiser words from a man of the cloth. Whatever your spiritual persuasion, I urge you to take three minutes to watch this, be you atheist, christian, muslim, or whatever.
http://www.upworthy.com/best-explanation-of-religion-i-have-ever-heard-and-im-practically-an-atheist
Originally posted by avalanchethecatWatched it, I like a lot of it, but as you can imagine I reject where he
While I don't like the idea of posting video links here - I know few of us click on them - I felt this one was really worth a look. It's a clip of an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong, and honestly, I've rarely heard wiser words from a man of the cloth. Whatever your spiritual persuasion, I urge you to take three minutes to watch this, be you a ...[text shortened]... ://www.upworthy.com/best-explanation-of-religion-i-have-ever-heard-and-im-practically-an-atheist
dismisses Jesus Christ and being born again. Thanks for sharing though.
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Originally posted by avalanchethecatDoes the link match up pretty well with the following from Wikipedia?
While I don't like the idea of posting video links here - I know few of us click on them - I felt this one was really worth a look. It's a clip of an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong, and honestly, I've rarely heard wiser words from a man of the cloth. Whatever your spiritual persuasion, I urge you to take three minutes to watch this, be you a ...[text shortened]... ://www.upworthy.com/best-explanation-of-religion-i-have-ever-heard-and-im-practically-an-atheist
quote:
These "Twelve Points for Reform" come from Spong's book A New Christianity for a New World:
Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
Originally posted by avalanchethecatMore and more traditionally bible/jesus bound clergy are finding a real ways to help people.
While I don't like the idea of posting video links here - I know few of us click on them - I felt this one was really worth a look. It's a clip of an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong, and honestly, I've rarely heard wiser words from a man of the cloth. Whatever your spiritual persuasion, I urge you to take three minutes to watch this, be you a ...[text shortened]... ://www.upworthy.com/best-explanation-of-religion-i-have-ever-heard-and-im-practically-an-atheist
Power to ya, bishop man.
Originally posted by karoly aczelI wouldn't call his views 'traditional'.
More and more traditionally bible/jesus bound clergy are finding a real ways to help people.
Power to ya, bishop man.
Bishop of what, I wonder.
EDIT: Oh, dear Lord. I just found out he's a Bishop in the Episcopal church. And I thought my views were liberal. This guy seems to have lost the entire thread. I'll have to research him a bit more to find out how a man with his views ever became a Bishop. In my own church, no less. Grumble, grumble. 🙁
Originally posted by JS357The last point in this list is about all I can agree with, but since this appears to be a keystone element in my church, it's not all that earth-shaking, or new. I have a more difficult time with the rest of it, though.
Does the link match up pretty well with the following from Wikipedia?
quote:
These "Twelve Points for Reform" come from Spong's book A New Christianity for a New World:
Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
Since God can no longer be conceived in ...[text shortened]... or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
Originally posted by SuzianneI was trying to imply that he WAS traditional in his early days.
I wouldn't call his views 'traditional'.
Bishop of what, I wonder.
EDIT: Oh, dear Lord. I just found out he's a Bishop in the Episcopal church. And I thought my views were liberal. This guy seems to have lost the entire thread. I'll have to research him a bit more to find out how a man with his views ever became a Bishop. In my own church, no less. Grumble, grumble. 🙁
Certainly doesn't sound traditional with his current views.
Originally posted by JS357Would be better called "twelve points of deform", subtitled "how I know better than God".
Does the link match up pretty well with the following from Wikipedia?
quote:
These "Twelve Points for Reform" come from Spong's book A New Christianity for a New World:
Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
Since God can no longer be conceived in ...[text shortened]... or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
"Is Religion at the Root of Mankind’s Problems?"
“WHEN religion is not encouraging strife it is acting as a drug which numbs the human conscience and fills the human brain with escapist fantasies. . . . It causes human beings to be narrow, superstitious, full of hatred and fear.” The former Methodist missionary who wrote that added: “These charges are true. There is bad and good religion.”—Start Your Own Religion.
‘Surely that is unfair criticism,’ some may say. Yet, who can deny the facts of history? To a large extent, religion—defined as “the service and worship of God or the supernatural”—has a shocking record. It should enlighten and inspire us. More often than not, however, what it does is engender strife, intolerance, and hatred. Why is that?
A Misleading “Angel of Light”
According to the Bible, there is a very simple answer. Posing as “an angel of light,” Satan the Devil has misled millions into following his teachings rather than God’s. (2 Corinthians 11:14) The apostle John showed that Satan’s influence is so extensive that “the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.” (1 John 5:19) John knew that Satan was “misleading the entire inhabited earth.”—Revelation 12:9.
What have been the consequences of this? Satan has promoted religious systems that on the surface appear to be holy. They have “a façade of ‘religion,’” but their true condition is exposed by the evil fruitage they produce. (2 Timothy 3:5, J. B. Phillips; Matthew 7:15-20) Instead of helping to solve mankind’s problems, religion actually becomes part of the problem.
Do not quickly dismiss that idea as being farfetched or unreasonable. Remember, the very nature of deception is that the one being deceived is unaware of it. The apostle Paul gave an example of this when he wrote: “The things which the nations sacrifice they sacrifice to demons, and not to God.” (1 Corinthians 10:20) Those people would likely have been shocked to think that they were worshiping demons. They thought that they were worshiping a good god, or gods, of some kind. Yet, in reality they had been deceived by “wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places,” who support Satan in his efforts to mislead mankind.—Ephesians 6:12.
Let us consider, for example, how Satan managed to deceive and mislead many professed Christians who chose to ignore the apostle John’s warning about that evil influence.—1 Corinthians 10:12.
Originally posted by galveston75Seriously galveston?
Let us consider, for example, how Satan managed to deceive and mislead many professed Christians who chose to ignore the apostle John’s warning about that evil influence.—1 Corinthians 10:12.
1 Corinthians 10:12
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
The Apostle John didn't write Corinthians. Why are you so obsessed with deceived Christians? Consider the deception that diminishes WHO Jesus Christ is for example. I was once almost tricked into believing that Jesus was someone other than what the scriptures teach by what the Watchtower teaches, but I took the time to find out the truth.
The greatest obstacle to truth is fear.
