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matttowndrow · 6 years

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Talking to a Christian.

Stranger: hi

You: hi there

You: religious?

Stranger: yes

You: nice, what religion?

Stranger: christianity

You: protestant or catholic or?

Stranger: non-denominational for the most part

You: wow whats that exactly?

Stranger: i don't go to a particular church, i haven't found the one that truly clicks with me. although i do have an interest in catholicsm and orthodoxy

You: okay interesting

You: Im personally agnostic, just interested in religion and why people believe or don't believe etc

You: so my question to you is why do you think that christianity is the right religion?

Stranger: ahh thats cool. i can feel that lol

You: or in other words why are you christian and not another religion?

Stranger: well, i've had an interest with all sorts of religions, but in my opinion, christianity is one of the richest, both culturally and theologically; i don't necessarily think that christianity is the ONLY religion with "truth" because, as a rule, all religions or people who seek truth and goodness participate in christ

Stranger: but i feel like christianity is a full expression of it

Stranger: even though, i'll be the first to admit, a lot of christians make christianity look awful or childish lol

You: were you born in to religion ?

Stranger: reading about the history of the church and it's roots in judaic religions helped me appreciate the uniqueness, but also universality of christian belief

Stranger: i was raised in a vaguely protestant christian home

Stranger: not very observant, strictly, but still god was important to us

Stranger: still is, i should say

You: okay, nice, would you say perhaps that if you were born in iran you would be a muslim or do you think you would still be christian ?

You: and also how do you mean other religions participate in christ?

Stranger: it depends, if i had the ability to learn about christianity in an unbiased way, i think i would become one. especially since twelver shia is good at straining credulity lol

Stranger: well, christ is the logos, the universal reason that everything that exists was made through and within, any one who looks for truth and virtue will find the logos, even if they do not know of the person of jesus as he lived upon the earth, or the traditions handed down by him

You: so even if you're family were muslim for example you still believe you would convert to christianity?

Stranger: there's a saying from the gospel of thomas, which isn't considered canon by christians, but it still has some very correct things to say. one is "Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.

Split a piece of wood; I am there.

Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

Stranger: yes, like i said, if i was able to learn about it. but it would be very difficult, considering islam makes it hard for anyone to convert to another religion. especially a theocracy like iran

You: okay what is your point by that though, that jesus is everything almost?

You: okay fair enough

You: I don't personally agree that you would but we'll never know I guess ahaha

You: don't agree*

Stranger: yeah, by the grace of god i was born into a country with religious freedom lol

Stranger: for better and worse, at times

You: so for people like myself who perhaps don't believe or are part of another religion

You: will they go to hell when they die

Stranger: alright, this is a very complex question, and there's many christians who will say i'm wrong, but this isn't an alien idea, or novelty, my understanding is similar to orthodox belief. there is no "hell" as in a pit of torture for non-christians and immoral christians. hell is a state of being (or non-being if you prefer). god doesn't send people to hell, they choose it for themselves by rejecting the truth; and truth is christ, whom, like i have said is the pre-existent universal logos. jesus says "i am the way, the truth and the life" and also "those who do not believe are already condemned". people think of hell as a fiery place, but the book of hebrews says "our god is a consuming fire", and the letter of john says "our god is love". so, hell itself is a person experiencing god, that is, his love, but they turned themselves away from it, so they feel it as pain

Stranger: being a non-christian doesn't mean you will "go to hell", no one knows who will. but if you choose evil over good, and lies over truth, just in general, you're not living in accordance with god's will and purpose, and so you're making yourself unlike god

Stranger: i dunno if i'm explaining it well, lol

You: yeah no I understand that

You: my philosophy teacher said a simiar thing about how some christians see "hell"

Stranger: mankind is made as the image and likeness of god, and our purpose is to mirror his glory, as christ said to the pharisees when they said he was claiming to be equal with god "isn't it in your scriptures, that you are all gods, sons of the most high?"

You: I don't fully understand what you mean by that last bit

Stranger: yeah, i definitely don't think you can go up into the sky and find "heaven" or under the earth and see a hell. that is a childish sort of view, in my opinion

Stranger: well, one very old idea in christianity is that our purpose to become "gods", st. athanasius, who lived in the 4th century said that we're like a piece of metal put into a furnace, it takes on all qualities of light and heat, but doesn't become "fire", that is what salvation is like, it's becoming a child of god and a brother of christ, we all share in his inheritance, which is all that the father has

You: okay, okay so what I dont personally like about christianity especially catholic christianity is this dogma of faith in which you can't ever question god or in particular the religion and its scripture.

You: also when you think of the bible, do you believe in things like creationism?

Stranger: catholic's enjoy making dogmata far more than they should. that's one thing i dislike. in orthodoxy they have less dogmatic opinions, but dogma are important to a degree, since they help separate truth from error, and there's been a lot of error spread that is contrary to what the traditions of the apostles say, which would make them against the words of christ

Stranger: no, i'm not a creationist

You: okay interesting

You: so what parts of the bible do you disagree with?

Stranger: i don't disagree with any of it. i just don't take everything in it as being a science or history textbook. thats not it's purpose

Stranger: st. augustine has a FANTASTIC quote on taking the bible literally

Stranger: lemme find it

You: so when the bible says god created the earth and the heavens in 6 days, thats not supposed to be taken literally?

Stranger: Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”

Stranger: it's not a history book, it's purpose is to show that god is responsible for the world, and give a spiritual meaning behind it

Stranger: this is also from augustine, before the above passage

Stranger: In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.

Stranger: i'd like young earth creationists to read that bit lol

You: I might take sometime to read this give me a few minutes ahaha

Stranger: no problem, i bombarded you a bit lol

You: okay yeah I get that

You: so tell me how was the bible written ?

Stranger: by putting pen to paper :p

You: yeah i mean who wrote it

You: and did god tell them what to write or speak to them how did it happen

You: sorry im not familiar ahaha

Stranger: the old testament is a collection of books that were penned down and compiled by scribes in the kingdom of judah, and the new testament is mostly letters, and a couple of books written by early christians and were eventually collected together

Stranger: well the bible is not the quran, christians don't (or at least shouldn't) see it as being the literal words of god to some person who simply records the words

You: okay but how did they know this stuff?

You: did god speak to them

Stranger: the bible has an extremely complex history. some parts of it are sacred histories, some parts are collections of oracles spoken by prophets, and others are books that focus on a story or person. the old testament was born out of the priests of the temple, who served the god of israel

Stranger: and even then, a lot of the bible isn't written by a single person. but countless scribes who worked material together until it reached it's final form. there was never a book that fell out of the sky and told everyone what to do (unless you're a muslim lol)

Stranger: it's also wrong to think of the bible as a single book

Stranger: we tend to think of that since we have it in a book format, but that was only possible until around 1800 years ago

Stranger: before then, they were collections of scrolls used by the temple and synagogues

You: yeah okay thanks that makes more sense

You: but say they have all this knowledge about god and christianity and about the origins of the universe

You: why when you trace back to adam and eve was it only around 6 thousand years ago

You: when the earth supposedly began

You: when ofcourse we know that not to be true

Stranger: the bible itself never mentions how old the earth is, per se. the idea of the earth being 7 thousandish years old is something people have done by counting genealogies and ages. but it's irrelevant, since the purpose of adam and eve is to show that humans are the image of god. but we've become separated from him through sin. it doesn't matter how it happened in a literal, physical sense, because in a way, we're all adam, because in our daily lives we choose to do bad, rather than good

Stranger: some church fathers even said that if adam never sinned, christ would've still been born into the flesh

Stranger: so the literal sense of what happened isn't very important, because it's message is a spiritual one. not a biological one

Stranger: and thats hard for us, since we value "objectivity"

Stranger: when there's multiple meanings behind something, for many, it lessens it's truthfulnes

You: do you not find it strange that previously though only a few hundred years ago they believed that to be true and with new scientifical knowledge christians change there mind and say its not meant to be taken literally or it was only a message

You: when previously that was the religion and all it stood for

You: not all it stood for sorry

Stranger: many people believed it to be true, but most people aren't very learned. even in the medieval era most educated christians knew the earth was spherical, when the church objected to marco polo's journey to india, it wasn't because they thought he'd fall off the end of the world, it's because they thought he was a fool and would get himself killed

Stranger: if christ is the logos, and christians believe he is, nothing discovered by science, by it's definition can conflict with it, since all reason is ultimately from the logos

Stranger: we only have to adjust our opinions on certain things

You: sorry what is the logos?

Stranger: the scriptures never say that you have to believe that the flood literally covered the earth, etc

Stranger: the logos is a greek word for the fundamental principle that undergirds everything in existence. nothing is apart from it. it's usually translated as "word" but it's sense is broader than that

Stranger: it also means "reason, discourse" so on

Stranger: it's also important to not mistake scientific theories for reality. i'm not rejecting science, but science is not a fool proof concept that is unassailable. it's a process for learning about the universe's laws and interactions

You: but so you're saying because christ is the logos, you can't conflict science with christianity

You: because he is the fundamental principle that undergirds everything in existence you can't question it

You: why was nothing written in either the new or old testament about the big bang ?

You: or evolution ?

You: god created man

Stranger: because those are theories we've come up with in the past 200 years. the man who came up with the big bang theory was a catholic priest. the bible was written in a time before we had our modern idea of "science", which isn't to say they were stupid, but it wasn't the purpose of their writing

Stranger: the purpose is sacral

Stranger: to illustrate a spiritual reality, which, by it's nature is immaterial, something science cannot speak of, since for something to be scientific it must be subject to testability

You: but surely god didn't create man

You: because man evolved

You: we certainly know this to be true

You: there is too much evidence to support it

Stranger: again, this sort of idea doesn't sit well with the modern mind, since we want clear-cut facts and logic

Stranger: of course, but everything was created through the will of god

You: it's almost like your moulding your reasoning around it all though

You: okay another question why were we around for almost 40,000 years and only 38,000 years later did god decide to speak to us then

You: I think that we are simply intelligent beings with a want for something more than ourselves

Stranger: well, anatomically modern humans have been around for about 150,000 years or so. and god is always speaking to us, even neanderthals buried their dead and had some seemed to be a religious spirit. when you look at humans religion is hardwired into us, when you look at cave paintings, they are not simple representations, but they're an attempt for humans to transcend every day experience

You: okay so why is christianity the only right religion then

You: if you believe its hard wired in to us why is it not just a need for something bigger than ourselves

You: why aren't we just scared to die and there be nothing else afterwards

Stranger: it's not the "only right" it's the fullness of truth, since the church has borne witness to god becoming man, and making man into god

Stranger: well, saying there is nothing is just as much as an assertion as saying there's something. we cannot know scientifically speaking. how does one test that? lol

You: no I think maybe there is something higher than me

Stranger: not to mention the importance the dead have had for humans throughout all of history. it's not merely a vain hope, always. people didn't have any trouble thinking about the dead returning to interact with the living in various ways

You: but I don't think its christianity or any other religion for that matter

Stranger: and thats okay, i don't think any one should force themselves to believe something if it conflicts with their reason or conscience

You: yeah I know sorry im not trying to force my beliefs on you

You: or anything

You: just very curious about it all

Stranger: no worries, i know you're not, i'm not either

You: like stuff about homosexuals for example

You: do you agree with that or ?

Stranger: agree with them how

You: as in its a sin to be homosexual

Stranger: i don't think it's a sin to be homosexual, but i do believe that homosexuality is a misuse of our bodies and isn't a part of the natural order god intends. so having sex with a member of your own sex is a "sin" a missing of the mark, that mark being proper order and goodness

You: okay so essentially it is a sin, and I get that because yeah it would make sense especially if it says it in the bible, I mean I don't agree with it but yeah

Stranger: the act is a sin, but the inclination to it itself isn't one. everyone has a temptation towards misusing the things god provides us, whether it's sex, emotions, strength, etc. there's always a way to turn a good into a bad, or disordered thing

You: I think that in modern times we have moved on for secular reasons, for example we've abolished slavery (something that the bible condoned) , we now give equal rights to woman and the vote etc and I think thats nothing to do with scripture that's actually come about in spite of the bible and then people go back to the bible and say oh we'll leave out that bit, and cherry pick parts that suit their own moral code

Stranger: the bible never condones slavery. slavery was a fact of life for most of human history. and the people who championed anti-slavery were christians almost always

Stranger: slavery was essential for most ancient economies in various ways

Stranger: something like 20% of the roman empire were slaves in the imperial era

You: doesn't make it wrong though

You: doesn't make it okay though sorry ahaha

Stranger: LOL

Stranger: you wanna know one of my favorite odd laws from deuteronomy is

You: sure

Stranger: if two men are fighting and the wife of one of the women grabs one of the men's testicles to stop them from fighting, her hand has to be chopped off

Stranger: i always wondered when that situation would arise lol

You: yeah I have heard that one ahaha

You: I mean is that technically a rule by god

You: is that what its saying

Stranger: it's part of the law handed to moses

Stranger: according to deuteronomy

You: do you never just look at it all though and just think about how outdated it all is and thats all there is to the christian faith

You: is a 2700 year old book

Stranger: not really. i think modernism is self-destructive

You: that has a lot of errors and contradictions in it

Stranger: like what?

You: I mean I don't know exactly what ones but there are lots all you have to do is look them up

Stranger: and most of them are irrelevant to the truth of christ

Stranger: such as how many animals god ordered moses to put on the ark

You: for a holy book to have contradictions and errors in, surely thats not ideal though

You: I don't know

Stranger: as i have said, the bible isn't a history or physics text book. and it was compiled from various sacred writings by priests and scribes. it's not the particulars that effect it, because it's purpose is to be a witness and testament to the person of christ, and even then, most apparent contradictions have simple explanations. like the two different genealogies of jesus given in matthew and luke

You: I understand that its man made and therefore it does have errors and contradiction and even plagiarism if I'm correct

Stranger: plagiarism is a modern idea lol

You: and therefore I just think there is nothing divine about it and the apeal to saying I can trump anything you say because heres gods word on the page is a contemptible way of arguing

You: what do you mean its a modern Idea

You: copying something

Stranger: no one in the ancient world had the same concept of plagiarism as we understand it. the author as a creator of a mental world or ideas was a non-existent, all that mattered was the authority of the knowledge they used

You: earlier you said you were interested in catholicism

You: why is that

Stranger: i'm a big fan of tradition, and my father's family was catholic, i even got a nice collection of saints in my family tree lol. but i can't stand how catholicism is trying to modernize itself and francis makes me wanna puke

You: what sort of traditions?

Stranger: just tradition in general, the fact that catholicism doesn't ignore christianity after the last books of the NT were written, like some protestants do

You: what do you mean by that

You: they don't ignore the history of christianity ?

Stranger: well, a lot of protestants, due to the reformation, reject most writings from the early church that aren't considered canon proper, so if anything isn't explicitly in the bible, it must be a pagan innovation that sneaked into the church. for instance, ignatius of antioch who was a student of the apostle john uses the phrase "catholic church" and teaches about the hierarchy

You: ah okay

Stranger: but, i'm not as big of a fan of catholicism compared to orthodoxy, since catholicism has had some "developments" that aren't necessarily rooted in early christianity, but at the same time, there's decent arguments for certain catholic dogma that the orthodox don't share

Stranger: you have to remember that they were the same church, officially until 1054

You: have you seen the debate on is the catholic church a force for good in the world ?

Stranger: hmm, i don't think i have

You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRcYaAYWg4

You: give it a watch sometimes

You: its very long

You: anywho It was lovely speaking to you

You: my brain is so dead now, im so tired ahaha, had so many other points to make and ive forgotten them all

You: but oh well

Stranger: no worries, i feel that way all the time :p

Stranger: it was a great convo

You: yeah was very interesting