Jethro Bodine
“What's the connection between arguing about head coverings and deciding not to accept God's offer of the forgiveness of your sins?
Sometimes I'm terribly frustrated with what people see and defend in scripture, but to use that as a reason to reject God's forgiveness isn't rational.â€
I can understand your perplexity if you don’t understand where I’m coming from. Even when I do explain where I’m coming from, there isn’t always the experience that enables understanding. That is sometimes frustrating to me. The only reason I bother to write this post is that I feel the pain of your frustration.
If according to your perception, Christianity, or a denomination thereof, is the current communal expression of what the Bible describes, then let me say this. If I had that same perception, I would be an Atheist. Or I would be an Eastern Orthodox or a Roman Catholic wherein there is at least a more reasonable historic connection between the Bible and what we see in those two denominations today than I see in Protestantism. Either way, you wouldn’t have been frustrated because I would be on forums more in keeping with Atheism or Orthodoxy or Catholicism. I’m only here because I’m neither Atheist nor Christian. Neither Orthodox/Catholic nor Protestant. And perhaps because I haven’t as yet been asked to leave due to my lack of faith in the Historic Biblical Christian Faith, whatever that may mean in the minds of the monitors. There is more than one philosophy of the Historic Christian Faith in Protestantism, and the philosophies of Orthodoxy and Catholicism concerning the Historic Christian Faith are different from them all and from one another.
What you may have missed is that in my perception of reality, the Bible and Christianity are two different things. That which the Bible presents, as I believe I understand it through Jesus teaching me what it means by what it says through the Holy Spirit, it is that which I believe to be true. I don’t believe that what I believe is merely an opinion or some personal theory. But I’m open-minded enough just in case there is something that I believe that is my own opinion. And I’m relativistic enough to realize that no one, including myself, knows everything. To that extent I’m reasonably tolerant of the beliefs of others. But I too can feel frustration. And the post you responded to is an expression of one of those moments of frustration. If I hadn’t been feeling that frustration, a lot in that post would have been left unsaid. And perhaps you would have ignored it, feeling nothing at all.
If you’re one who thinks that Christianity, or any denomination thereof, is communally connected to the Bible, then I must clarify my own position. To me, there isn’t any connection between the Bible and Christianity save one. And that is the Biblical interpretation practiced by Christians. It’s a Traditional practice that is the keystone upon which the denominations of Christianity have been built.
To me, Christianity is a man-made religion by nature and denominational in character as a natural expression of it’s man-made nature. There is a gulf in my mind between the Bible that I still believe has its source in a supernatural God, and Christianity that has its source in natural man. I don’t believe in the teachings of Christianity. But I still believe in the teachings of the Bible. Not in the Bible alone as Protestantism claims. The Bible being a written document of ancient writings is dead in itself. It must have a connection with some kind of life that becomes its life. I believe that life is intended to be Jesus Christ in whom is unity through the Spirit. In Christianity, through the practice of Biblical interpretation, that life is human life, through which is division.
The division over head covering is just one example of that human life. An example that is unnecessary because Paul said what he said to prevent any division over the matter. But according to the human nature of Christianity that expresses itself in division, even what Paul said to prevent division has become a source of division in Christianity. Making what Paul said of no effect in that religion. The division over this issue is only one such example of many that’s frustrating to me.
The fact that Christianity is full of such examples is what finally brought me to the realization that Christianity is merely another man-made religion, like modern Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.
According to the Bible, there’s only one Divinely created religion. The religion described in the Old Testament. According to the New Testament, that religion no longer exists because reality has moved on. Reality as it was, was expressed by the religion that God himself created. Reality as it is currently, is expressed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. It is expressed communally in the ekklesia as described in the New Testament. It is NOT my perception that the ekklesia as described in the NT and the Churches of Christianity are one and the same. To me, the NT was written to counter-act Judaism as it existed in the first century, and the Christian Judaizers who existed in that same time period. I don’t think anything was written about groups that would have been very obviously off base, such as Mithraism or the Gnostics. Christian writers in later centuries wrote against such groups.
Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism claims that many of their practices came out of Judaism, such as the homily/sermon and the extra-Biblical hymns. I agree. But not the Biblical Judaism described in the OT. Rather, Judaism as it existed in the first century. The Judaism that Jesus said was composed of the Traditions of men. Something that Protestantism never really freed itself of. Christianity is the true representative of the Christian Judaisers today. Two religions had it’s source in Judaism as it existed in the first century. Modern Judaism directly descended from the Pharisees, and Christianity directly descended from the Christian Judaisers.
In conclusion, what the NT proclaims of the provision offered by God in Christ, that I accept. What I don’t accept are the many authoritative proclamations in Christianity that claim to be explanations of that provision. Among them Justification by human faith alone, (Luther, Calvin, Protestant Evangelicals) and Justification by human faith and the human works that express that faith (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and many Protestant groups today).
I believe that Justification is by the faith and works of Jesus Christ alone, realized only in those who are in Christ, due to their belief in God and the acceptance of his provision in Christ (referred to as believing into Christ in the NT) as expressed by the work of water baptism, and by being baptized by the Holy Spirit into Christ. Jesus Christ is the Justification of the one who is in Christ. Human faith only puts one into the position to be Saved....in Christ. Because I believe that Christianity is a man-made religion, and because I believe that the term Christian (follower of Christ) is associated with a man-made religion and is insufficient as a term of self-denotation for the one who is in Christ, I simply refer to myself as one who is in Christ.
I can’t accept the authority of human leaders over or in lieu of the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, the situation as it is in Christianity. I can’t accept how Christianity with it’s many denominational Churches has usurped the true expressions of the body of Christ on the earth that are the ekklesia. I can’t accept how brethren, the ones who are truly in Christ, have been deceived by Christianity into their present state of division. I can’t accept how these brethren have been deceived into thinking that unity is in doctrine more than in Christ and the Holy Spirit. I can’t accept most of the doctrines of Christianity, that to me are just the Traditions of men. And what I can’t accept is a source of a lot of frustration.
I can feel the pain of your frustration. Can you feel mine?
FC
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