If Christians believe in Christ,

[Deja Q]

will they do what Christ did?

In other words, give of themselves, help one another, and when arrested by a corrupt country's poilce for whatever screwy thing they never did, wilfully die for the sake of everyone else?

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Obviously, not all of them. The US is dominated by Calvinism brought here

by the Puritans.

Three Rules of Calvinism.

<snip>
ALTHOUGH CALVINISM WAS central to the faith of the Pilgrim Fathers, and its tenets remain embedded in more than one form of modern Protestant Christianity, few Americans consciously believe in Calvinist doctrines in a religious sense. Yet a great many, of all religions and none, who may know nothing at all about Calvinism as such, nevertheless act in accordance with its principles. How it came about that an almost forgotten religion has left such a powerful non-religious residue is a question that has been much studied and debated. What is beyond debate is the enduring authority of Calvinist values. However often overlaid by transient moods, however often proclaimed dead and buried, they remain vigorously strong just below the surface of American life, invisibly shaping everyday choices and fundamental attitudes.
<snip>
The Calvinist rules are simple, and binding. Rule Number One is for high-earning winners. Rule Number Two is for the great mass of working stiffs of varying affluence or poverty but all losers in their own eyes. Rule Number Three is for the non-Calvinists among the losers, most of them poor, who refuse to accept Rule Number Two.
<snip>
Rule Number One states that earned wealth is no impediment to virtue. That this rule contradicts the reported remarks of Jesus has been ignored. Likewise, the underlying Calvinist doctrine, which states that wealth is actually a sign of divine favor for the predestined, has long been forgotten. Yet this rule induces Americans to view the desire to become rich as most praiseworthy, and success in doing so as a moral achievement as well, for earned wealth is seen as the result of both sacrificial exertion in earning money, and self-denying restraint in spending it. Far from being viewed as self-seeking materialists, those who accumulate wealth are respected in rough proportion to the amount, so long as it is the fruit of their own individual efforts. As for the super-winners who earn the most fabulous amounts, they are greatly admired, more so than all other Americans, including the most famous war heroes.
<snip>
Rule Number Two: failure is not the result of misfortune or injustice, but of divine disfavor. Just as the ability to become very rich is next to sanctity, an inability to do so is next to sin, indeed almost sinful in itself.
<snip>
Many Americans who may be affluent but who cannot earn whatever amount of money they consider adequate and proper, are oppressed by a powerful sense of guilt. In a country that so greatly respects and admires high-earning winners, losers find it hard to preserve their self-esteem. A great many merely lead lives of quiet desperation, searching for distractions, eager to immerse themselves in whatever will take their minds off their failure, from vehement religion to televised sports. Others remedy despair with addiction to drink, to drugs, and above all to food -- the only fully legal, hence most widespread, addiction. Rule Number Two has powerful political consequences. It explains why the United States has never had a significant socialist party: losers blame themselves rather than the system, hating themselves instead of resenting the winners. It explains why no major presidential candidate has even tried to challenge the sharp inequalities of turbo-capitalism.
<snip>
The result is that in a country that is literally of the winners, by the winners, for the winners, the losers have no political expression of their own. Nobody denies it to them--it is the losers themselves who want so much to identify with winners that they deny their votes to any candidate who tries to represent their interests. So, many losers vote for one or another of the winners' candidates; others prefer not to vote at all, not only because of lethargy or ignorance, as the winners always say, but because they have nobody to vote for. In recent national elections, almost half of all the eligible voters of the United States did not bother to cast their votes.
<snip>
There are plenty of non-Calvinists among the losers, and mostly they are actually poor rather than just under-achievers by their own estimate. For them there is Rule Number Three: those who do not accept Rule Number Two, who are not paralyzed by guilt, and who are too uneducated to express their resentment in legally approved venues, are destined to end up behind bars. Rule Number Three is implemented very effectively in strict laws that prohibit many things which are allowed or tolerated in other countries, in strict law enforcement, and in long prison sentences including an abundance of 40, 50, or 60-year terms as well as mandatory life sentences without parole. Only the sadly impoverished and chaotic Russian Federation has as great a proportion of its citizens in prison as the affluent and well-governed United States. There were over 1.8 million Americans in prison at last count.
<snip>

more....
http://www.inequality.org/threerules.html

[trotsky]

5. Fascinating read.

Thanks for that link.

[autorank]

10. Redemption through Good Works...thats Calvinism!!!!!

Some caution is advised when you start up on this or that religious doctrine. They're all subject to this type of analysis. Where can you find more concern for morality and ethics in every day life than Judaism? And look at what Israel has to do (in it's own analysis) to stay "safe."

The Calvinists had one major belief that is fundamental to any Christian persuasion: redemption through good works. Most Christian sects believe in redemption through accepting Christ as the savior (no matter how late in life and despite what's been done to the point of accepting Christ).

Give the Calvin's a break. After all they make great jeans.

[Erika]

2. My opinion - Christ was the Gandhi type

He didn't run from the government oppressors. He championed causes of the needy. His Golden Rule, if followed, would have stopped our invasion of Iraq and the deaths of almost 1,500 American troops plus 100,000 and above deaths of innocent Iraqis.

Nothing about this administration shows Christianity.

[0007]

14. Absolutely nothing, zero, 0, zilch, Nada, this administration is on empty

with all their halfwits, nitwits, dimwits and feather-headed morans when it comes to Christianity. When it comes to Christianity there is no quantitative value with these heartless creeps.

junior and the boys give 110% to the corporations, the rich and assholes like Kenneth Lay. While millions go without!

[Mr_Spock]

15. I agree - Bush admin. are the farthest thing from Christians

These folks are angry uncaring folks who are so concerned about some great "conquest" or "legacy" that they could care less that they are killing innocent people in other counties and destroying the good name of the USA in the process. It's a colossal disaster.

[mitchtv]

3. Fat f'n chance

they don't believe in Christ, they believe in "the bible" and forgot the new testament- No, for some reason they are not kosher

[all.of.me]

4. somebody has this in their sig line

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Gandhi

It is so true.

[Swamp Rat]

6. Well, if they actually do, then I will be more than happy to supply timber

and nails. :evilgrin: ... just kidding goddammit!

[drduffy]

7. Often it has been pointed out

on various sites that being a christian is not equivalent to trying to be Christlike.
Indeed, the christian extreme right and the neocons are less Christlike than any bunch I can think of.

Also, with regard to the Calvinist thing. When I was a philosophy student at Kent 35 years ago I did not pay much attention to Calvinism.....it was so patently false to the principles Christ expressed. But my inattention may have been a mistake given what the other writer (above) has pointed out. The past and present day calvinists are as satanic as anything I can think of.

rw

[Warpy]

9. That is a result of Romanizing the early Jewish sect

by kicking its founder upstairs to be a god.

Think about it. If they were following the words of a human prophet, they'd feel a little more constrained by them. Because they kicked him upstairs and made him divine, well, that meant he was a god and everybody knows mere mortals can't presume to be godlike, so why bother?

I'm sorry if I've offended any believers, but that's basically the effect that his divinity had on his supposed followers. It relieved them of the necessity of trying to emulate him in daily life.

[Roland99]

17. Well, the divinity of Christ came about before Constantine's involvement

Constantine took things even further and declared that Roman Emperors were divine and were descended of God. That lasted until the Visigoths and Vandals sacked Rome.

[newyawker99]

16. Hi drduffy!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[2cents]

8. I haven't even walked on water yet...

...so I'll have to get back to you on the martyr stuff.B-)

[vixengrl]

11. Christ did it so they don't have to.

Or so I've come to understand some of the Christian sentiment. He died for "our" sins. He "saves and washes clean". Which seems to translate, for some, into, "I can do what I want and lay it at the foot of the Cross, and it'll go away." I do believe there are many Christians who, if push came to shove, value the charity and brotherhood of their faith, and try to live it. But the other side of the coin is being a parasite on the body of Christ, not a part of the body itself. They preach without teaching, advertise their prayers like the Pharisees, and never healed a soul. (I guess there's people like this in any church--but Christianity is more of what I've experienced.)

When I consider the man Jesus of Galilee--as depicted in the Gospel, without the supernatural parts, I see a reformer who wanted to humanize religion and deliver the word of God even to the tax collectors, prostitutes, and poor people. Because they were God's children, too. When people asked why he went to those "bad" people, he said something to effect of, "Because it's the sick people who need physicians." He told people to feed the hungry, tend to the sick, visit people in prison, and told the rich to give to the poor if they wanted a shot at heaven. He was put to death, if you read between the lines, because if people followed him, what would it have done to the existing religion--to the existing government even? I think he knew that was the consequence, and faced it well.

I'm not religious--I'm an old-fashioned philosophic agnostic-pagan. But it seems like, as it's said--"By their fruits you shall know them." It's what people do, not what they say, that counts.

[RevCheesehead]

12. You zeroed in on the heart of the matter:

"It's what people do, not what they say, that counts."

I keep trying to remind my people of that. And I tell them that I could give them the most wonderful sermons in the world, but if I led a crappy or duplicitous life, it would be worthless. They also need reminding that a good number of people see the church as full of hypocrites who stab one another in the back regularly.

I love these threads, because they give me much to ponder. And I do not take offense at "blanket statements." I know my heart and my faith. And I also know that there are many who have deceived themselves that they are "God's Chosen." (That's reserved for the Jews alone.)

[Fovea]

13. Thomas a Kempis

'The imitation of Christ.'

http://print.google.com/print?id=eSvNMIxrLDgC&prev=http://print.google.com/print%3Fq%3Dthe%2Bimitation%2Bof%2Bchrist&pg=cvi&sig=1N3Qy2vnCCRiFJ-Xr0gtV4dVO9E

This stands in the face of Calvinist Greed Doctrine, AKA predestination, IMO.

Now as a Wiccan Priest, I don't have a dog in this fight. But I do have opinions of which version of Christianity nudges closest to truth, as my petty powers can perceive them.

Grace alone is salvation via smoke and mirrors. Works, and the content of your soul mean infinitely more than the approval of the pharisees. It is that positive imitation of Christ, not in meticulous rigor, but in openness of spirit, that fulfills Christ's mission to Christians.

But Christian Tartarus is so awful that fear of it warps the real meaning of salvation. It is not the neurotic avoidance of legalistic errors, or the sumptuousness of the chapel that guarantees salvation, but the active reaching out to the sick, the needy, and the persecuted. But in PATRIOT act Amerika, fear of Islamist populated Hell empowers the meanest among us for their mischief.

Kempis' advice walks that rough, narrow, walk in rags with greater dignity than John Calvin can mince it in cloth of gold among the courts of the mighty.

But what do I know? Je suis un bete noir.


RealP