found online by Raymond
From John Pavlovitz:
The Jesus these Christians need, is the Jesus of the Gospels; the one who gets all up in your personal business, the one who turns over tables in the sacred temples of your greed and hypocrisy, the one who demands that you give half a damn about the poor and the hungry around you—enough to give all that you have for their care.
“And please don’t get me wrong, I know that I fully and desperately need this Jesus too. ”
I agree with John. In my opinion, we ALL need this Jesus.
That said, when the woman caught in adultery was brought before Jesus by the crowd ready to stone her, Christ told them that the one among them without sin should cast the first stone at her. All of them left, as they and we are all sinners. What is often overlooked though, is that our Lord then turned to the lady, forgave her, and told her to go and sin no more. It is that part of trying not to sin that so many folks forget in this gospel story or perhaps even ignore.
I know I have much to answer for when my judgment day comes for I am indeed a sinner. I hope that many others that comprise the body of Christ on earth also realize and repent of their sins instead of camouflaging them or taking what they know to be sins and justifying or normalizing them.
We need the Jesus that expects us to love one another as ourselves, but we also need the Jesus that expects us to love him with all of our hearts, minds, and soul. One way to do that is to try and live a life where we make the serious attempt “to sin no more”. Sadly, that part is forgotten in our world today.
Thank you, T. Paine.
If I read him correctly, Mr. Pavlovitz is telling us that we need to give up the Jesus he believes conservative Christians simply made up, accepting instead the actual Jesus of the Gospels.
He may be right that some conservative Christians do indeed believe in such a Jesus as he described. I know many that believe in Jesus of the Bible.
But he is correct that this is part of the new atheism of today though. It goes something like this, “There is a god and he thinks just like me.” It isn’t confined only to conservative Christians though.
That said, I think Mr. Pavlovitz may be painting too many people with broad strokes of an ideological brush.
At best, that’s non-religious, not atheistic–new or otherwise. By definition, the person who believes that “there is a god and he thinks just like me” is a theist.
Anyway, it’s hardly a new perspective. People like to think of themselves as righteous and right, so it’s only natural that they believe that a being defined as such shares their beliefs and desires. I wouldn’t say that this has been true since humans started to believe in gods, but it has certainly been true for many people for millennia.
Perhaps Ryan.
The fact of the matter is, according to the old saying, that you can tell me about the god you don’t believe in and chances are I wouldn’t believe in him either. Mr. Pavlovitz describes a god that he thinks “conservative white Christians” believe in and deplores that god. Interestingly enough, I am a conservative white Christian and I too deplore the god he describes. It is not the God I know and love.