It is not drilled into my head, but this is the Good News we have.
Jesus' teachings about how to live mostly come from Judaism. He departs in a couple of places, such as he wasn't particular about observing the Sabbath, and in those places, rabbis today, just like the Pharisees in Jesus' day still hold that he erred.
As for the business about dying on the cross for our sins, that appears to have been borrowed from other religions and added later. There is nothing in Judaism that set a precedence for that.
What else is there but your experience? Everything beyond what you have seen and been through. There are things I have never experienced, but I know them from others. Our own experience is not enough. I have not experienced and of the events that happened in the Bible. If I judged only on my own experience, I would not be a Christian (although giving my life to Christ was a personal experience).
When someone tells me about an event that they experienced, they event they are describing might be their experience but hearing them tell the tale is my experience. And likewise, I know what the Bible says because of the experience of reading about it. And so I am still confined to looking at things only through my own experiences.
Right, this is what all the commandments came to. And yet the Jews had forgotten this. They were too caught up in following the laws and condemning those who did not obey the laws. Where is the love in that?
Not condemning them unless the specific law someone broke demanded condemnation.
The love in that is that world is harsh and so the best way a parent or a leader can prepare someone else for the world is strict adherence to the rules. What's unloving is not requiring someone to live by the rules and letting learn the hard way, by letting them wind up dead or imprisoned or otherwise harmed because they didn't know the consequences of their actions.
We do not observe the law because it has been fulfilled by Jesus.
And what exactly does that mean? It is not true that everyone is set free of the consequences of not keeping the law and so how is it that the law was fulfilled?
Jesus' new covenant holds firm to the principles of God's commandments. Can you not agree to this, even if you don't see Christians exemplifying it?
I'm not sure I do. Christians don't follow the commandments because they don't see it as a necessary part of their religious practice whereas in Judaism, if you are not following the commandments, you are not following the religion. Period. There is no such thing as practicing Judaism outside of keeping the commandments. Jews don't ask each other if they believe. They ask each other if they practice.
This is not coherent with what the Bible says on how we are to live. As James said, "Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, Go in peace; keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."
Actually, I agree with you 100% here. Or I should say I agree with you and James. Paul seemed to the think the point was belief whereas James here says its action. You address this below, but in Christianity, they idea is that you will do good works because you have faith. But having faith is the important part. As if their is some difference.
In Judaism, faith is works. If you keep the commandments, you have faith and if you don't, you don't have faith and that's the end of the story.
So these people were not exemplifying living faith. You came to them with your troubles, and they gave no consolation to you. I thank God I have never had this experience in my Church.
Or they just don't have faith.
You just got lucky. This has happened to a large enough number of Christians that we now have the saying about the Christian army shooting its wounded.
I think it's because the religion itself is broke. That faith and works are two separate things and that you can somehow have faith, even a dead faith, without practicing the commandments is a deeply flawed concept.
This is news. Jews don't hold prayer in much significance? It was answered prayers by God that led me to become a Christian.
I never said that. Prayer is a very significant part of religious practice but it doesn't quite work the same as Christian prayer. Christians make their petitions known to God and ask they be granted in the name of Jesus. Jews make their petitions known but instead of just asking that they be grant, they ask that God make known to them what their part is. A Jew doesn't pray to ask God to give what the Jew requires but rather asks God what God requires of the Jew.
When I was a kid, I was taught to pray the Christian way and if my prayer went unanswered (they always did) or if "God said no" there was nothing I could about it. It was all about grace anyway which meant that everything that God did give me was a gift and so there was no way to earn God's favor.
Jewish prayer empowers the individual to conquer life's problems while Christian prayer strips it from him.
A Jew is not allowed to offer prayer in place of actual action or work that a Jew can perform on your behalf. Christians though often think that prayer is the most they can do and so think that is enough.
"Life is better than when I was Christian." I have heard the same from Atheists, Muslims, and other ex-Christians. If you say you are happier, then I believe you. The Christian life is not as happy as many would like it to be.
It isn't just that I was unhappy. It was the reasons. When I was a Christian, other Christians treated me like absolute crap. I didn't matter because it was all about Jesus, not me. And I thought I was completely powerless to solve my problems because it was all grace and we didn't deserve anything anyway.
By the the time I deconverted, I felt so deeply alone and depressed, my self esteem was so morbidly low that I was really on the point of committing suicide. It was either that or escape and I finally elected to escape and leave Christianity behind.
And so I am the hardest skeptic you'll ever meet. You might meet someone as hard but none harder. That is because I would need to be absolute convinced because nothing but the most extraordinary proof would ever convince before I would ever return to Christianity. I would have to be convinced that Hell really does exist beyond the grave and I would have to fear Hell more than I hate life as a Christian.
Hm, there are many Jewish laws that clearly would not fly in today's social setting. There was a time for them, and it was for the Jewish people, but that time has passed.
Not sure what you are talking about unless you are referring to some of the punishments for breaking specific laws.
Christianity is also based on how we live, just not by our deeds. It's by our faith. Living faith is evident by our works, not brought about by them. Obedience to God doesn't save us, it's what we do because we are saved.
And there in lies the problem. You have separate faith and deeds into two different things. To your neighbor, it matters not one iota what you belief or
have faith in. It's what you do. I am effected by your actions, not your beliefs. If you feed the poor because God commanded or because you
have faith and your faith led you to so, it makes no difference to the poor. All that matters to the poor is that they got fed.
And there in lies the difference between Judaism and Christianity. Christianity is a deeply selfish religion because it focuses on whether or not you have faith, whether or not you did good for the right reasons (how can good be done for wrong reasons?), what God is trying to teach you through those poor people and your actions toward them, etc.
Judaism is about feeding the poor because they'll starve to death if you don't.
Was your heart right place? Did you learn the right lessons? Never mind that, just feed those people or they'll die. This isn't Christianity which means we have work to do. You can worry about your personal relationship with God after everyone is well fed.
No one has followed the instructions perfectly. No one is without sin.
I'm not convinced of that, but okay. Suppose you are right. Doesn't make any difference at all. Keep the law anyway.
By trying to follow the laws of God, instead of accepting salvation by grace, we are rejecting God's grace.
Grace? what Grace? I don't see any grace in this universe. Do the forces of nature show grace when you don't like the effects of your actions? No, not at all. You are always stuck with the effects of your action because
this universe runs by cause and effect completely without grace.
Try relying on grace for the poor to get fed. Try relying on grace for the naked to be clothed or for the imprisoned to be ministered to. Oops, it doesn't quite work, does it. That's because you cant just conjure up resources out of thin air with grace. What's required is action, you actually doing it, keeping the law. If no one keeps the law, then it doesn't get done and no amount of clinging to the fiction of grace has ever changed that in the least.
We would rather earn our salvation so God is obligated to give it to us.
No, this is demonstrably entirely false in that Christianity, not Judaism is the dominant religion and is so because we would rather have salvation given to us without having done anything at all to earn it. And since it is entirely free, why do anything at all. Just relax and be a Christian because Jesus already did it all.
Except for he didn't. People are still hurting, starving, dying, being oppressed by tyrants, you name it someone is suffering from it and no one is doing anything to stop it because Jesus already did it all.
When we sin under the law, we are indebted to God's justice. But under Christ, when we are indebted to God's love, for he paid for our sins out of love.
Except for if you sin against me, I still suffer the consequences for that and Jesus' death on the cross didn't change that at all. And so you will not be forgiven, I will seek justice against you (read my signature). And so you are still under the law and if you sin, you are still under the Judgement of the law. So what exactly was it that Jesus changed?
You did not seem to agree before, which is why I said this. You said we should put each family member a knew family. What method is it you say I'm suggesting?
If the family is to be repaired as a family, the individual people that make up the family must first be repaired and sometimes the best way to do that is to separate them from each other for a while so they can heal without being effected by each others sickness. You seem to be suggesting to just throw one more person into the mess to be infected by everyones' sickness and I just don't see that working.
). And yet, when everyone else in the world ignored me or put me down, here was a body of people that loved me when I finally did reach out to them. They showed me kindness.
