What is christianity.

As I understand it, since I used to be Christian, Christianity is simply believing that Jesus Christ was/is God's one and only son and he was sent down to earth to die on the cross for the sins of mankind, and accepting him as your savior. That's the fundamental aspect of Christianity as it was taught to me. There are other aspects, though, like the Ten Commandments and whatnot.

 

Its all about sharing love, being humble, forgiveness, and sharing God's message.

 

I believe it's more so what Peter Griffin said. I used to be Mormon, but I have an understanding of other Christian faiths. Through all the different "rights and wrongs" that each faction of Christianity teaches, it all comes down to treating others with love and respect, and to better yourself through God. Serving others is serving God, which is why you see so many people donating time and resources to better people that might as well be strangers.

The fundamentals are there that Jesus was the son of God, that he died for the sins of everyone. But if you look at the bible, the new testament, you'll find that it's more an overall message of peace and understanding, and to accept all people. That is the true message, and the true message of God.

But really, you must find God on a personal level. If you look at all types of Christian faiths, most teach of the fundamental personal relationship with God. That before you devote to a religion (which can honestly dilute and confuse your relationship with God) you must first find what your personal beliefs are. What you feel is right, and what you feel is the purpose between you and God, and life itself. Organized religion is the idiots escape, to having someone else decide what your principles are. Christianity should be a personal relationship, before you go devoting your life to a church. Devotion should be to God and to understanding. Not to a church and their fundamentals.

 

It depends on which 'Christianity' you are talking about. It's a big, diverse faith. Also, are you talking about Christianity as a set of doctrines (which most Christians don't know anything about), or as a set of popular practices (which most theologians don't think are worth paying a lot of attention to)? Modern Christianity, medieval Christianity, or ancient Christianity? There have been Christians on both sides of every major debate in the history of Europe and America since the Middle ages:

-Christians were on both sides of the slavery debate in the US.
-Some Christians strongly oppose(d) Socialism and Communism. Some Christians think that socialism and communism are closer to Real Christianity than capitalism and republicanism.
-Some Christians opposed fascism and antisemitism. Other Christians have historically (and currently) embraced these things.
-Christians were at the forefront of the civil rights movement. Christians were also at the forefront of attempting to prevent equal rights for black Americans.
-Many Christian churches condemn homosexuality. Some churches hold gay weddings in their sanctuaries.
-Some Christians don't think Mormons are Christian. Mormons disagree.
-Some Christians think Catholics aren't really Christian. Catholics disagree.
-Some Christians think all non-Christians are going to hell. Some Christians think only those non-Christians who have rejected Christ's teaching will go to hell. Some Christians think any good person can go to heaven. Most Christians, if pressed on the point and presented with the real implications of it (Bangladeshi babies in hell) will say that they aren't really sure how it works.

In short, be skeptical of anything or anyone who purports to be telling you what "real" Christianity is, or any single thesis that seems to apply to "all" Christians or Christianity. In particular, be skeptical of the idea that Christianity, or any religion, is "really" something that is in a book somewhere, as opposed to something that people are doing in the world.

 

i think the main thing that links all forms of christianity is a belief in Christ somehow.

where that goes from there is anybody's guess.

i.e. Fred Phelps and his ilk believe themselves to be christian and they preach hate and intolerance.

 

The OP is correct...it's slavery. ALL religion is slavery. In the sense that you give up your free will to someone/something else. All government is slavery...society is slavery...you give up your freedom to live within the bounds set for you. There are only different degrees of slavery.

 

What is God's message ? The majority of the Bible falls on the governing of people's lives. The Ten Commandments are a good example , and in the Old Testament it instructs parents to kill teenagers who don't obey their parents. This is the same God in the New Testament. It's a bit odd how the OT was all about wrath and judgement , whereas the NT suddenly changed into the grace of God , no ? A tactical change , to gain more followers perhaps ? The OT had to be tried and trialed by people in order to guage the people's reactions towards it and produce its sequel accordingly. If God were so omnipotent , he wouldn't find need in doing such superfluous acts of trial and error , correct ?
The following of a religion can't be fairly outlined by the people who have nitpicked what they like and what they don't , but only as the original teachings for what it is. This is because humans are flawed and susceptible for misinterpretation , whether knowingly or unknowingly done - and they act accordingly. Therefore the actions of a certain religion's followers can't be used to judge or fully condemn a religion to that individual's opinion , however valid it may be; but rather only the original teachings in it's original form , unmolested by humans with their own agenda.
Of course the Bible is a human construction. So , you have to ask yourself , while totally ignoring the fact that the Bible is a false plagiarism with many contradictions and flaws , what was the agenda of the Bible's creator ?

 

You're exactly right.

A "Christian" is technically someone who's accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior... As stated above.

Their beliefs on other doctrines may vary, but that is the core belief shared by the overwhelming majority of Christians. There are exceptions, however, like the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and SOME Catholics. Some Catholics believe in Jesus as the only way to heaven, like is described above, but a lot of them also believe they have to complete the sacraments to achieve eternal life - which isn't taught anywhere in the Bible. Catholicism is a combination of Christianity and Roman Paganism, so it's not technically 'Christianity'.

 

i believe christianity to me(i consider myself christian to a point) is being a fallower jesus's real teachings, not this pegan/freemason washed down misinfo bullcrap.

some of you guys should read, "the sermon on the mount".
its a very good book that agrees with my beleifs that jesus's teaching were only a couple things(no-ego, alwasys doing good, finding that inner enlightenment, ect.)

 

Catholicism wasn't the original Christianity. It didn't form for a few hundred years after the apostles had already spread Christ's message across the lands (They were called Christians first, in Acts). Jesus didn't proclaim Peter 'the pope'. That is a blatant lie made up by the Catholic Church so they could claim to be 'the one TRUE church'. They took the Christianity the apostles preached, and blended it with the paganism that was popular in Rome at the time (thus the sacraments, alms for the dead, confession, etc.).

 

Just because some people CHOOSE to make themselves a slave to religious dogma doesn't mean that religious texts themselves aren't at least partially significant in an allegorical sense. Any slavery caused by religion is because of people and their inability to realize that that religious texts aren't infallible and should be subjected to reason, not because of the man-made texts themselves.

 

This guy knows what he's talking about.

 

The Bible is a document from thousands of years ago- when life was unrecognizable compared to our life now. It is tied up in political acts and divisions that no longer exist. People understood much less about science and how the world around them actually worked. Parts were originally written in ancient Hebrew, then translated into classical Greek, then into Latin, and then into modern languages. It is sometimes difficult for biblical translators just to establish what is being said in a particular situation because the words and translations are ambivalent.

Most of the Bible is stories. There are always multiple interpretations that can be given to stories when someone believes that they are meant to be didactic in some way. Some of the stories are fragmentary, or composed from composite sources (as a simple example, there are multiple versions of the life of Jesus in the gospels, and they contradict each other in numerous details). Scholars have spent generations trying to figure out why certain things were important at a particular time- it is often the case that things that are mentioned in the bible are tied to some specific historical event that is not very well known.

Here's an example: there is a verse in Deuteronomy that prohibits the people of Israel from wearing a mixture of wool and linen (seriously). Look at the volume of research that has gone into understanding why this might be the case: Shatnez - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The human mind is an extremely flexible maker of meaning. Why is it surprising that looking at a very large, very confusing document with its origins in a time and place very different from our own that a lot of interpretations emerge?

 

I could be mistaken, but I believe he was more so referencing doctrine - in which case - the Bible is very specific. There are a lot of metaphors in Scripture, but as far as the 'how to lives' are considered, the Bible is very clear.

 

Pagan beliefs didn't "export" well- just like Judaism never really grew outside of the Jewish people. Real pagan traditions were tied very strongly to particular places and people- much like Judaism- though assimilation did happen. Every ancient people personified natural forces that their lives were controlled by- storms and thunder, for instance. In one culture, it was called Thor. In another, it was called Indra or Zeus. When people from one culture met another, they assumed that the other culture's god for a particular natural force was the same as their own, under a different name. This is particularly visible in India, where there are still multiple regionally different names for the "same" deity.

On the other hand, a long-accepted idea about how Christianity spread through Europe was that Christianity had mythical structures and characters that were compatible with those of European mythology. There were elements of overlap with Mithras, the Roman mystery religion that was popular among the military. In Western Europe, the story of Jesus on the cross resonated with the stories of Odin/Wotan nailing himself to a tree to gain wisdom, or the numerous stories of the Hanged or Wounded King returning fertility to the land in Celtic myth. The early writers like Saint Paul made explicit efforts to take the covenant between God and the Jewish people and extend it to all people- the 'son of the flesh vs. son of the spirit' distinction raised in his discussion of Abraham and Isaac. Explicit efforts were made to associate local festivals with Christian ones. In a very real sense, you can look at Christianity as paganism packaged for export, in the same way that Alan Watts once called Buddhism Hinduism packaged for export. Now, that identification may seem to reduce one to the other, but in many people's opinions there are some insights in the 'export' version not present in the domestic, and vice versa.

The idea that paganism is the "real truth" is a little hard to figure for me, because frankly we as modern people know bupkis about what ancient pagan people really believed. The Greeks and Romans are somewhat well documented, but there are a lot of elements of popular religion that were neglected by ancient writers, and we have primarily later, more sophisticated versions of their philosophy. Regarding other ancient faiths, we have some references to festivals and rituals, a few prohibitions... lots of customs of some sort, like the events in the Norse edda related to hospitality. More ambivalent stories about divine people doing weird things that don't have modern analogues. Very little about how ancient people believed that life should be lived, other than "don't piss off our numerous, extremely touchy gods". We can be pretty certain, though, by looking at other early societies that we know more about, that their lives were controlled by a lot of customs and taboos that we wouldn't readily understand the purpose of. Paganism was never a single religion; that idea itself is Christian in origin. There were millions of little "paganisms" strewn around, each one specific to a tribe, a language, a village, etc. They shared some features by assimilation and by the fact that the same basic forces were important in all human lives at the time, but lumping them together into a single group is a modern notion.

There are modern pagan revival movements, but they are exactly that- modern. Their interpretations of the historical material that they have is strongly influenced by scholarship circa 50-100 years ago (the age of the first "revival" of pagan belief, influenced by the emergence of folk lore as an academic discipline), but there isn't any continuity with the pre-Christian traditions; this is modern people looking back and trying to figure something out, not a secret that has been carried forward for a couple thousand years.

 

In many cases, the metaphors are meant to convey 'how to live'. Other times, it's just ambiguous. Judaism has written huge, huge volumes of works trying to interpret what is meant by the commandments given in the old testament.

Quickies: Observe the sabbath and keep it holy. Don't do work on the sabbath.

Well, when does 'the day' begin and end? Does it start at sunrise and end at sunset? What if you can't tell when the sun rises and sets because of clouding. What constitutes work? If I tell someone else to do something I need done, do I break the sabbath? What if I need to do something in order to save a life (dig to get someone out from under a landslide)? What if my crops will fail if I don't do something right then, and that means my family will starve in three months from now?

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 commands parents to stone to death disobedient children at the gates of town. Well, how disobedient is disobedient? Pretty much every child is disobedient at some point. So does god want every Jewish child to be stoned to death? How does that jive with god's promises to Abraham and Jacob that their descendents would increase and become a nation?

Jesus says: 'upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.'

Catholics believe that Jesus is punning on the fact that he just changed Simon's name to 'Peter' ('rock' in Greek) and that he is establishing the papacy and saying that what Peter decrees on Earth will be followed in Heaven. Protestants believe that he is instructing Peter to build a church on that spot, and that your behavior on Earth determines your treatment in the afterlife.

It may be obvious to you what things like this "really" mean, but somewhere there is someone who is just as sure that you are obviously wrong.