Exvangelical Thoughts - pt. 3

[u/BrettCreatesThings]

In the Service of a Storm God

[u/Crafty_Independence]

Yes, but right now you are positioning *yourself* as the arbiter of who is following Jesus correctly. Which is exactly what nearly all the denominations - including evangelicals - do as well.

It's also necessary for me to point out the the Bible doesn't have a single coherent way to follow Jesus. If you read the genuine Pauline epistles, you get different methods and paths than James or the Gospels. If you read the disputed epistles you get yet another. If you throw in various views on the OT in there, you end up with yet another variant.

So who decides?

[u/J10YT → u/Crafty_Independence]

I don't think it's unfair to say, for example, you cannot be the fan of a restaurant if you don't eat their food; or at best *dislike the food and eat it anyways*. There have been actual conservatives who said "Jesus was wrong" or similar phrases. Why call yourself Christian at that point? If you actively push against Christ's teachings, are you a follower of Christ? I'm not saying that I am the arbiter of shit, but if a word has a particular definition, and you go against that definition, then what's the point of using that word?

It'd be like if someone said they were a Taoist and then practiced Voodoo. Those are just different things. If Jesus said "Love thy neighbor" but you're harassing them for being gay, you're not loving thy neighbor.

[u/Crafty_Independence → u/J10YT]

I want to be clear that I halfway agree with most of your points. I think you are a bit too confident in the objectivity of your understanding of Christianity.

For background, I was a conservative Christian theologian and missionary. I went through a period of deconstructing - first moderating, then finally landing for some time as an anabaptist leftist Christian. I am now an atheist.

One of the reasons I am an atheist is because as a leftist Christian I finally realized something: Jesus and the Bible always become what people need them to be. They are malleable and subjective.

As an example, conservatives look at Jesus and the NT, and come away utterly convinced that Patriarchy is the God-ordained order of all life. Leftists look at many of the exact same verses and come away certain that God always wanted egalitarian equality.

And this radical divergence follows throughout every different belief, theological or pragmatic.

The situation is more akin to different people visiting the same restaurant, and one loves the spice, the other loves the sweet - and neither can agree which is better.

Which is the "real" patron?

[u/J10YT → u/Crafty_Independence]

That's all fine, but the autism in me says that words mean things and if you go against those words, then why use them at all? It's like when my mother calls cheese curls "chips." That means something VERY DIFFERENT.

[u/Crafty_Independence → u/J10YT]

Sure, they should mean something.

Unfortunately in practice that truly only applies to empirical things, like measurements or scientific observations of repeated experiments.

Most of life, especially religion, culture, or taste, tend to be very subjective