On 11 May 2004, at 6:29 pm, Nick Arnett wrote:
Travis Edmunds wrote:
This is funny. Yes, it is decidedly unchristian to give much thought to people who *sin*, or to people of other religions (meaning that every religion is THE religion) going to Hell, Hades, the 'fiery deeps', or whatever you want to call it. Although...on second thought I will call it Hell as we are after all talking about Christianity. Anyway, my point is this - the actual belief that sinners and everyone else who for whatever reason cannot make it into Heaven (supposedly most go to Purgatory) is a key part of Christian dogma.
No, that's a part of church-ianity dogma. Christ taught quite the opposite -- that God loves us in our failures. It seems that many churches only give lip service to the unconditional love that the Bible illustrates in parable after parable. Instead the message comes out that you must repent before you can be forgiven, which is backwards from the gospel.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_defn.htm
"There are on the order of 1,000 denominations, para-church organizations, and other groups in the U.S. who consider themselves to be Christian. One could assemble a random group of adults and ask each individual to sort the 1,000 groups into two piles: those which are "truly" Christian, and those that are not. In many cases, an individual will select their own faith group as the only truly Christian denomination, and define all of the other 999 as sub-Christian, quasi-Christian, or non-Christian. Other individuals might say that all 1,000 denominations are Christian. Most likely, a given individual will select most of the 1,000 groups as Christian, and reject the others. There is no possibility of reaching a common definition which would identify which groups are "truly" Christian"
http://www.religioustolerance.org/evan_dic.htm
"An Evangelical who visits a Mormon web site might well be surprised
to find that Mormons consider themselves to be Christians. He or she
might have been taught that Mormons are sub-Christians, quasi-Christians, or non-Christians. He might be further confused to find that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regards their denomination as the "true" Christian church. They view other Christian denominations as having strayed from the teachings of Jesus and of the Bible.
A liberal or mainline Christian might be confused if they visit a
counter-cult web site, and find their own denomination listed as a
non-Christian cult, simply because it does not teach that God inspired the authors of the Bible to write books that are inerrant -- free of error.
Since there are so many different definitions of the word "Christian,"
we recommend that the term rarely be use alone. If it is qualified by an adjective, such as "born-again" or "conservative" or "Evangelical" or "mainline" or "liberal," then confusion and even hurt feelings will be minimized.
Sorry, not always. Some want to be called "Christians", to emphasize that they are *Christians*, as opposed to, say, those "non-Christian Mormons" . . .
-- Ronn! :)
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