Christian Inclusiveness

Motar

Motar

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gopher said:
His church sure had a lot of women in leadership roles:

Women Pastors in the Early Church
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Agree, Gopher. Jesus is scandalously inclusive. Notice the inclusive language:

"So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:28 NIV)

Christ is the glue that holds people together in community.
 
C

Cliffy

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Motar said:
Agree, Gopher. Jesus is scandalously inclusive. Notice the inclusive language:

"So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:28 NIV)

Christ is the glue that holds people together in community.
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...but excludes all who do not buy into all this bunk, which is the majority of humanity. I would say that is very exclusive.
 
Durry

Durry

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How come all this religious stuff was invented thousands of years ago and today we still follow this stuff like it's all fact???

How come God or Allah or whoever is not talking to anybody alive today?? Could it be that all this is just someone's imagination that everybody liked because it gave them hope and now the religious geeks accept it all as fact??

I think it's time we got to see some actual proof, a smoking gun, so to speak!!
 
C

Cliffy

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Motar said:
Don't "all who do not buy into all this bunk" exclude themselves by willful choice, Cliffy?
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Why would someone who has a religious or spiritual path want to change to suit your beliefs? I look at the bible and those who believe in it and think: this only appeals to the ego. The ego wants to think it will live forever, it desperately wants to believe in an afterlife. The soul/spirit already knows this. It does not need religion or books or preachers to tell them that we are all part of the whole, that everything is oneness. The spirit does not fret about the afterlife, the future or regret the past. It lives in the moment. All this intelectualizing of religious hokous pokous is of no significance in the overall scheme of things.
 
Motar

Motar

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Cliffy said:
Why would someone who has a religious or spiritual path want to change to suit your beliefs? I look at the bible and those who believe in it and think: this only appeals to the ego. The ego wants to think it will live forever, it desperately wants to believe in an afterlife. The soul/spirit already knows this. It does not need religion or books or preachers to tell them that we are all part of the whole, that everything is oneness. The spirit does not fret about the afterlife, the future or regret the past. It lives in the moment. All this intelectualizing of religious hokous pokous is of no significance in the overall scheme of things.
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There's a remedy for "all of this intellectualizing...", Cliffy:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 NIV)

Notice the inclusive language ("all you who are") in the invitation.
 
gopher

gopher

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Motar said:
Agree, Gopher. Jesus is scandalously inclusive. Notice the inclusive language:

"So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:28 NIV)

Christ is the glue that holds people together in community.
Click to expand...


Good post - in theory Jesus was very inclusive. However, the church evolved into something exclusively patriarchal and this was not his intent. As I mentioned on another thread a long while ago, the exclusion of women from the pulpit was only intended in Greek churches (Corinth/Macedonia) and the Book of Romans lists an entire roster of female preachers.

Now if only Jesus would send some wealthy heiress in my direction ....
 
C

Cliffy

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Motar said:
There's a remedy for "all of this intellectualizing...", Cliffy:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 NIV)

Notice the inclusive language ("all you who are") in the invitation.
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Ya. Blindly follow the blind down blind alleys. The language was written by men, for men. The whole book appeals to the ego, not the soul. You are the one who is intellectualizing biblical texts. It means nothing to me or most people I know.
 
Motar

Motar

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Cliffy said:
The language was written by men, for men. The whole book appeals to the ego, not the soul.
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I genuinely appreciate your thoughts, Cliffy.

"An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest." (Luke 9:46-48 NIV)

A keyword search of "the book" turned up 73/15 hits for humble/humility.

Cliffy said:
You are the one who is intellectualizing biblical texts. It means nothing to me or most people I know.
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The gospel of Luke in particiular was written for the intellectual:

"At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do." (Luke 10:21 NIV)

"But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Luke 18:16 NIV)

There is repeated reference in this gospel to the heavenly value of child-like humility.
 
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Motar

Motar

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Motar said:
Is it true that Jesus was inclusive? If so, in what sense was Jesus inclusive? Were there limits to Jesus’ inclusiveness?
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Paul notes the inclusion and unity of Jews and Gentiles in Christ in the New Testament church:

"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in onebody to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." (Ephesians 2:13-18 NIV)

The glue in this new body of Christ is peace.
 
darkbeaver

darkbeaver

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Motar said:
Paul notes the inclusion and unity of Jews and Gentiles in Christ in the New Testament church:

"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in onebody to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." (Ephesians 2:13-18 NIV)

The glue in this new body of Christ is peace.
Click to expand...

AB KHUN
He elucidated the principle that the tomes of sacred writing bequeathed to early humanity by the gods or by men of far advanced evolutionary stature were susceptible of interpretation at four different levels of understanding: (1) the literal-physical; (2) the moral-sentimental; (3) the allegorical-intellectual; (4) the anagogical-mystical. That is, the books of Holy Writ could be read as historical events; as moral instruction; as intellectual conception of truth; as the incitement to the most exalted spiritual mystical transports. Even before Philo's day the great and learned Jewish scholars and interpreters of the Torah, the Tanaim and Amoraim, had expounded the principle that he who reads the Scriptures only at the level of their surface meaning will never grasp the truth of the living Word of God, that only he who pierces the coarser veils to grasp a far deeper sense and experience a more vivid illumination of consciousness will receive the cathartic purification of his nature. They went so far as to say that he who was content with the surface meaning of the words was a fool and a simpleton. As long as religions cling to the lower rungs of the scale of interpretation of their Scriptures, there will be endless points of difference between them; if they will lift the sense to the upper third and fourth levels, the apparent outer grounds of difference will dissolve in the unity and harmony of a lofty conceptual enlightenment. The later philosophers Kant and Spinoza were to arrive at about this same basis of understanding. Philo himself so well succeeded in elucidating Scriptural meaning at the highest level that he was able to make a synthesis of the Hebrew Pentateuch, or first five books of the Old Testament, with the rationalistic systematism of the Platonic philosophy of the Greeks. It can with a great degree of plausibility be asserted that had his interpretative achievement

But this is only the beginning of what etymology, philology can do for us in this green-red symbolism. It is no wonder, incidentally in passing, that green and red are the two colors typical of the Christmas season and its symbolism, as green stands for the natural man, and red, as the color of fire, typifies the spiritual man, and it is the ultimate marriage of these two components in man's nature that gives birth to the Christ consciousness.
 
Motar

Motar

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gopher said:
One thing that is often overlooked is the fact that there must be equal treatment to everyone within the body of the church: What does the Bible say about favoritism? Favoritism is a problem we still deal with. Favoritism and partiality are not from God, and Christians are called to love
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Agree, Gopher. Favoritism/partiality are unregenerate human attitudes based upon superficials such as age, gender, race, etc:

"The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7 NIV)
 
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