But child molestation is OK

The catholic church followed the european conquerers that invaded the Americas and converted all of the natives that followed pagan rituals like animal sacrifices to a more civilized religion like the church's teachings...
The church's development over the centuries mirrored the invasions and destruction of very primitive yet sophisticated societies. All one has to do is visit some of the ancient pyramids and ruins of the Mayan and later the Incan civilizations in Mexico and South America to realize what was lost or destroyed in the name of the conquerers and the god they worshiped.

 

Ghandi walked.

 

There's a story about a guy who would bet people that this or that unlikely quote was in the Bible. Then he'd show his Bible, in which he had written the quote himself in the margin. "It's in the Bible!"

:focus:

 

good one!:rockon:

 

What Ghandi thought of Christians:

Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Ghandi nevertheless admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. Once when the missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Ghandi he asked him, “Mr. Ghandi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?”

Ghandi replied, “Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”


Apparently Ghandi’s rejection of Christianity grew out of an incident that happened when he was a young man practising law in South Africa. He had become attracted to the Christian faith, had studied the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, and was seriously exploring becoming a Christian. And so he decided to attend a church service. As he came up the steps of the large church where he intended to go, a white South African elder of the church barred his way at the door. “Where do you think you’re going, kaffir?” the man asked Ghandi in a belligerent tone of voice.

Ghandi replied, “I’d like to attend worship here.”

The church elder snarled at him, “There’s no room for kaffirs in this church. Get out of here or I’ll have my assistants throw you down the steps.”

From that moment, Ghandi said, he decided to adopt what good he found in Christianity, but would never again consider becoming a Christian if it meant being part of the church.

 

that's why you have the protestant church and the many divisions within it. but the bible teaches not to discriminate. "if a well dressed wealthy person comes in to worship, and you tell them to take the best seat, and a poor looking person comes in and you tell them to stand over there, haven't you discriminated?" (not exact quote)
if anyone thinks any body of believers are perfect, they are kidding themselves or are sadly mistaken. "you judge a tree by it's fruit"
you can only control yourself, (and even that ain't easy!)

 

As I've often said, it all comes back to Paul. Jesus was a Jew who preached to Jews and taught a way of life for Jews. Paul invented a new religion, now called Christianity, which rejects Jesus's religion (Judaism) and all but rejects Jesus's teachings, and requires members only to believe that Jesus was the christ.

Ghandi's mistake (which was corrected by the South African) was in thinking that there was some relationship between the teachings of Jesus and Pauline Christianity.

Jesus preached the Golden Rule (in it's simplest form: "Be nice to everyone") and Ghandi responded to that, which he respected because it coincided with his own beliefs. Pauline Christianity teaches that it's good to be nice to people, but that will not get you into heaven, because only faith that Jesus was the christ will get you into heaven. Thus, while it's good to be nice to people, you don't have to. If you feel like being mean to people, you may, because your faith in Jesus will be what gets you into heaven. (Or, in some Protestant versions, not even faith, but only god's grace gets you into heaven -- which still means you can be mean to people if you prefer.)

It's likely that a religion which demanded belief in Jesus's teachings, and demonstration of that belief through action, would never have lasted. Paul created a religion which could spread because it allowed people to be as nasty as they wanted to be; it allowed them to use murder and torture as means of conversion; it allowed them to amass wealth and political power and still belong; it allowed them to trample on every precept that Jesus preached, and still receive the religion's promise of eternal salvation, while condemning the good, and kind, and upright unbeliever to eternal torment.

In a very real sense, Paul was the anti-Jesus.

 

however, james said, "faith without works is dead."

 

Sure would be nice if Christians believed that. To be fair, a few do. But not many. In particular, the most vociferous of the Christian political right believe in and preach faith alone.

 

I've never heard / read this before (and I've read some scholarly biographies of Gandhi). Can you give me a secular source for this ?

 

Your first part & the third are true. Not sure about the second.

The most commonly accepted Jesus story among secular historians goes something like this. Jesus was one of the Jewish preachers who wanted to drive away the occupying Romans and re-establish a true Jewish state. He belonged to a sect (or ideology that) opposed to the ruling priests (who cooperated with Romans).

The Raman-Jewish war that Romans won and destroyed the temple changed the story of Jesus. His opposition to Roman rule was wiped out of the history books and a religion unlike anything Jesus would have ever dreamed of and a persona that didn't match him was born. Paul takes full credit for that. See the reference books at the bottom of the post.

To give a contemporary example - this is as if an Anglo-Indian made a religion in which Gandhi was the messiah. The books never mention his fight against British rule and Gandhi is portrayed as a militant.

Checkout these books :

 

A Christian friend of mine agrees with you that Jesus opposed Roman rule. My friend believes that Jesus was trying to foment a nonviolent revolution. My friend is deeply involved in the nonviolent peace movement today, and was a very significant influence on me when I became involved in nonviolent civil disobedience.

 

the great thing about history is, you can't believe everything you read. nonetheless, you're throwing a lot of gasoline on the fire with those revisionist sources.

 

Not necessarily secular, but stated in many different articles, here are a couple:
Christian Today India > Printable Version

Another line I like in that one:
“If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today,â€

And this one:
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/552.htm

 

india being one of the more peaceful nations today, just looking for a good example to follow?

 

Nope, not buying it at all. As I said, I've read a lot about Gandhi - and not a word about this.

BTW, Gandhi thought - almost in typical Hindu fashion - that all religions are "true" and lead to salvation through different means. So he studied not only Bible, but also Quran, Budhist literature. Infact you could say Gandhi's religious philosophy was actually very close to Budhism.

http://www.iop.or.jp/0414/anand.pdf

ps : More than Bible, what actually attracted Gandhi to Jesus's story was Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You.

http://www.tolstoyfarm.com/the_past.htm

 

Unfortunately, unlikely to be true.

 

True - but I'd leave Christianity alone, if they left this country alone

 

unfortunately, "Chritianity" encompases a lot of different people with differing viewpoints on what being a Christian means. you can get a pretty good idea by reading the gospels, but living up to the standard is the difficult part. evan ghandi is not perfect.