So, I woke up this morning to the realization that I've been a Protestant Christian (as opposed to the Catholic Christianity with which I was raised) for almost exactly four years now
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I'll only make the one comment, because I'm not particularly big on religion (spirituality, yes, but not religion):
It's not just the branding, it's the weird social mutilation that goes on. It's like they systematicaly cut the ties that could be used to help other people form links with them, and they do it in such a way that people no longer want to try and make those ties. "I tried to offer Bob D. Christian a beer and a friendly guy's night out, and he totaly snubbed me, and then tried/succeeded in making me feel like trash for going out and enjoying my buddies' company. Hell if I ever talk to him again." On some level, it affects people, I'd say it even hurts them, and it colours a lot of what non-crazy Christians try to say; their message is already phrased in a very triggering way, the added load of some of their more dubious kin just kills it, you know?
Oh. I wanted to ask. Does anyone teach why things are sins? Not just what the major sins are, but why they are considered sins? Like, murder, theft, adultery, even suicide? I'm not Christian, and I've been wondering if anyone's bothered explaining to people why the rules are rules.
Generally, they don't with what you might call "cultural sins" - the "sins" that God doesn't come out in the Bible and say "Thou shalt not". They either tell you "Because good Christians don't. It will damage your witness if you do." or they'll give you a Bible verse that is taken grossly out of context and stretched to kingdom come to justify it.
The deeper reasons why they do it is never admitted...probably even to themselves. They want a clearly-defined, easy way to differentiate "Christians" from "Non-Christians". Quite frankly, the true fruits of the spirit are too subtle for them. I'll give you a quote from on of John Fischer's earlier books Real Christians Don't Dance.
Which is easier to follow: real Christians don't envy or real Christians don't dance? Which one gets noticed first: real Christians don't lust or real Christians don't smoke? Which one is harder to comply with: real Christians love their enemies or real Christians go to church on Sundays?
I give you two quotes as to why certain things are sins:
When a Gentile who wished to become a Jew asked him for a summary of the Jewish religion in the most concise terms, Hillel said: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Law; the rest is the explanation; go and learn"
And the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:
13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
13:10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Paul really sums it up beautifully: don't do these things because you hurt the people you should love when you do.
The mutilation is part of the branding, though. Many Christians are programmed by I-don't-know-what to believe that they can't do something and/or are supposed to disapprove of something simply because Christians Don't Do That(TM). Thus, they get sanctimonious about things. The more sanctimonious they are, the more holy and closer to God they think they are and the stronger the stand they think that they're making for Christ. (Mr. Fischer has much to say about this, too, and it's all right here.)
I'm reminded of an acquaintance of mine. Frosty went to a Bible study with her. The woman was praising her son for "taking a strong stand against (the suddenly unChristian) Valentine's Day" because the kid refused to accept valentines from the other kids in school, no doubt sanctimoniously claiming that he couldn't do so "because he's a Christian." As if there was some commandment in the Bible that says, "Thou shalt not accept little paper felicitations of love and friendship on February 14th." (Even though love and friendship to all no matter what beliefs they hold are, indeed, THE central tenets of Christianity.) So what message does this send to people? That Christians are sanctimonious jerks who can't deal with the real world so they condemn it. So is it any wonder that a lot of people actually define Christians that way? *shakes head in exasperation*
As for sin...Well, you ask different people and you'll get lots of different answers. A big part of apologetics is understanding why God disapproves of certain things and explaining it to others. I do know that the question has been answered dozens of times by many different people. The folks who already replied to you gave you some of those answers. But I'll give you my personal one.
First off, the four sins that you listed...the reasons are rather obvious for those. All of those things hurt you and/or other people either physically, emotionally, or fiscally. (I happen to think that suicide is the most selfish thing that you can do not because YOU die but because you hurt so many other people by doing it. And I say this as a person who "tried" it three times and very nearly succeeded once.) On the spriritual/Christian front, Christians are commanded to love their neighbors as themselves, so obviously to do something which hurts their neighbors in any way goes against that greatest of commandments. Sin is most easily defined as that which goes against the will of God. If God commands Christians to love and we hurt instead, then obviously that's going against the will of God which means it's sinning.
There are some commandments that actually make more sense in light of modern knowledge. Like the stricture against eating pork and sea floor crustaceans, for instance. At the time, pigs were the ultimate scavengers, eating anything, roving trash compactors. As such, they were riddled with all sorts of nasty parasites. If undercooked, those parasites in a pig's body can be transmitted to human beings. Trichinosis is the most common one, and it can be fatal. Ill-prepared seafood can also have the same effect. Dead sea crustaceans are (now!) known for releasing toxins which can easily kill a human being if ingested. So think about it. These folks lived in the Bronze Age. They knew nothing of this stuff. But God did. So, many of the commandments, I believe, were meant to protect clueless people from their own cluelessness. Of course, these days we know how to husband and cook pigs and crustaceans, so this isn't as much of an issue. But it made perfect sense at the time.
But there are myriad other commandments that, so far as our modern mind can comprehend, are on the surface pretty nutso. Like, for instance, who cares if a person wears a shirt made of mixed fibers? (Oh yeah, all you Pharisees: If you wear a cotton/polyester shirt YOU ARE SINNING! Better watch out... *rolls eyes*) These are the ones that I believe were meant to "mark" the Israelites as the chosen of God, to give them a cultural identity starkly separate from the cultures that surrounded them. There are more details about that about half-way down this post.
The nice thing about all of this, for Christians, is that most of this was fulfilled at the death of Christ. We are not under the cryptic and complex Mosaic law anymore. The New Covenant (AKA the "Christian Code of Conduct") is outlined in the New Testament. Some of it is the same as the Mosaic covenant, but certainly not ALL of it...
It's not just the branding, it's the weird social mutilation that goes on. It's like they systematicaly cut the ties that could be used to help other people form links with them, and they do it in such a way that people no longer want to try and make those ties. "I tried to offer Bob D. Christian a beer and a friendly guy's night out, and he totaly snubbed me, and then tried/succeeded in making me feel like trash for going out and enjoying my buddies' company. Hell if I ever talk to him again." On some level, it affects people, I'd say it even hurts them, and it colours a lot of what non-crazy Christians try to say; their message is already phrased in a very triggering way, the added load of some of their more dubious kin just kills it, you know?
Oh. I wanted to ask. Does anyone teach why things are sins? Not just what the major sins are, but why they are considered sins? Like, murder, theft, adultery, even suicide? I'm not Christian, and I've been wondering if anyone's bothered explaining to people why the rules are rules.
Reply
The deeper reasons why they do it is never admitted...probably even to themselves. They want a clearly-defined, easy way to differentiate "Christians" from "Non-Christians". Quite frankly, the true fruits of the spirit are too subtle for them. I'll give you a quote from on of John Fischer's earlier books Real Christians Don't Dance.
Which is easier to follow: real Christians don't envy or real Christians don't dance? Which one gets noticed first: real Christians don't lust or real Christians don't smoke? Which one is harder to comply with: real Christians love their enemies or real Christians go to church on Sundays?
Reply
When a Gentile who wished to become a Jew asked him for a summary of the Jewish religion in the most concise terms, Hillel said: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Law; the rest is the explanation; go and learn"
And the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:
13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
13:10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Paul really sums it up beautifully: don't do these things because you hurt the people you should love when you do.
Reply
I'm reminded of an acquaintance of mine. Frosty went to a Bible study with her. The woman was praising her son for "taking a strong stand against (the suddenly unChristian) Valentine's Day" because the kid refused to accept valentines from the other kids in school, no doubt sanctimoniously claiming that he couldn't do so "because he's a Christian." As if there was some commandment in the Bible that says, "Thou shalt not accept little paper felicitations of love and friendship on February 14th." (Even though love and friendship to all no matter what beliefs they hold are, indeed, THE central tenets of Christianity.) So what message does this send to people? That Christians are sanctimonious jerks who can't deal with the real world so they condemn it. So is it any wonder that a lot of people actually define Christians that way? *shakes head in exasperation*
Reply
First off, the four sins that you listed...the reasons are rather obvious for those. All of those things hurt you and/or other people either physically, emotionally, or fiscally. (I happen to think that suicide is the most selfish thing that you can do not because YOU die but because you hurt so many other people by doing it. And I say this as a person who "tried" it three times and very nearly succeeded once.) On the spriritual/Christian front, Christians are commanded to love their neighbors as themselves, so obviously to do something which hurts their neighbors in any way goes against that greatest of commandments. Sin is most easily defined as that which goes against the will of God. If God commands Christians to love and we hurt instead, then obviously that's going against the will of God which means it's sinning.
There are some commandments that actually make more sense in light of modern knowledge. Like the stricture against eating pork and sea floor crustaceans, for instance. At the time, pigs were the ultimate scavengers, eating anything, roving trash compactors. As such, they were riddled with all sorts of nasty parasites. If undercooked, those parasites in a pig's body can be transmitted to human beings. Trichinosis is the most common one, and it can be fatal. Ill-prepared seafood can also have the same effect. Dead sea crustaceans are (now!) known for releasing toxins which can easily kill a human being if ingested. So think about it. These folks lived in the Bronze Age. They knew nothing of this stuff. But God did. So, many of the commandments, I believe, were meant to protect clueless people from their own cluelessness. Of course, these days we know how to husband and cook pigs and crustaceans, so this isn't as much of an issue. But it made perfect sense at the time.
But there are myriad other commandments that, so far as our modern mind can comprehend, are on the surface pretty nutso. Like, for instance, who cares if a person wears a shirt made of mixed fibers? (Oh yeah, all you Pharisees: If you wear a cotton/polyester shirt YOU ARE SINNING! Better watch out... *rolls eyes*) These are the ones that I believe were meant to "mark" the Israelites as the chosen of God, to give them a cultural identity starkly separate from the cultures that surrounded them. There are more details about that about half-way down this post.
The nice thing about all of this, for Christians, is that most of this was fulfilled at the death of Christ. We are not under the cryptic and complex Mosaic law anymore. The New Covenant (AKA the "Christian Code of Conduct") is outlined in the New Testament. Some of it is the same as the Mosaic covenant, but certainly not ALL of it...
Reply
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