On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Sisk, Kris <ks...@gckschools.com> wrote: > Some may not agree, but I don't consider Judaism to be a separate > religion. After all, Christ himself was a Jew. As for the Gnostics, most > of them were rejected for good reason (for instance many of them didn't > appear until centuries after their supposed authors were dead). I'll > grant you some of them were chosen or not chosen for more editorial > reasons, but it's still the best we have.
What is your opinion on the Gospel of Thomas? It doesn't seem to be any later than the canonical gospels, yet represents a drastically different way of viewing early Christianity. > Absolutely a personal relationship is the most important thing, but a > church serves an important role as a place to gather with those of like > faith. You may question the importance of that but I've feel it's very > important. Definitely a matter of personal preference. I think that the Church (as a set of institutions) has done more harm than good. Faith, within the loose definition of a "religion", as a sort of small-c church seems more important and useful to me. Of course I make the same argument about political parties, I favor the notion of republics and democracies, not so much the Republicans and the Democrats. >>Still, I find it hard to believe that any modern religion has sprung >>up fully formed. Human institutions change through time, borrowing >>ideas, changing ideas and discarding ideas. That isn't necessarily a >>good thing or a bad thing, it just is. I suppose I can support the >>idea that you want your religious institution to be "more pure" but >>shouldn't that purity be based on what you feel God wants rather than >>tossing aside ideas because they were also used by other institutions? > > Actually that's exactly it. We feel that what God wants is in the Bible > and the paganism that's seeped into the church over the centuries is not > it. Hmm..still seems to me like the paganism was there from the beginning but it is largely a matter of how you want to define things. I figure that if you believe something with absolute faith, then the faith is the important thing. If you're happy with your relationship to God and you've got a set of rules, books, rituals, habits and whatnot that works for you, that's what is important. Cheers, Judah ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:322996 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
