From: John Klassa (klassa@mail.com)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2000 - 13:53:03 PDT
This always seems to happen when this topic comes up...
When people say that organized religion is bad (and on and on), they
generally cite an example (or several) from something they witnessed
a Christian doing (or not doing) at some point in the past, and so
Christianity is given a bad name.
By that, I mean that I rarely see instances where somebody says,
"organized religion is bad... I once saw a Muslim do thus and such".
It always seems to come down to "some [Christian] preacher did this",
or "some [Christian] person did that", with the implication that
Christianity is flawed.
Please bear in mind that what most of this country thinks of as
Christianity, and what most of this country practices as Christianity,
aren't really Christianity. Also bear in mind (this didn't come up, but
it generally does as part of the whole flame fest) that Christianity
isn't a western religion. It's an eastern religion. It started in
middle-east, about, oh, two thousand years ago.
And while I'm rambling :-)... Since the whole "so and so is a
hypocrite because he calls himself a Christian drinks beer all day, so
Christianity sucks" argument seems to appear just as regularly, let me
also note that Christians aren't (and shouldn't claim to be) perfect.
It's not about being perfect. I can very well have the belief that
drinking beer all day is a bad thing, and still be an alcoholic who
can't control my drinking. That doesn't make me a hypocrite... It
makes me a person with a drinking problem.
If you had a bad experience with "Christianity" while you were growing
up, maybe you were exposed to something that wasn't really Christianity.
May I humbly suggest that you give the real thing a try...
[ Note that I don't have anybody in particular in mind with these comments.
I mean them in general, since this particular thread always seems to spark
the same sorts of arguments. :-) I just thought I'd get my reply in early
this time. ]
My $0.02.
John
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Sep 12 2000 - 13:57:37 PDT