Oh, I accept you are doing this with best intentions
In other words, I was referring to Catholics who they themselves believe are Christians whilst believing most of their fellow Catholics are not.
Except you don't know any. Or very very few. And you certainly have an outsider's view, with very little research, so you are delving in an area you could not possibly know.
And then you made a broad assumption about select people within the group, what they believe, and even sillier, what they believe about other within their select sub-group.
You guys came later and grabbed the term, the broader one, the first one, and then decided it applied only to you. Note: The you here is the historical group of people that came before the "individual" you. And this term, being a christian, is used by every religion that has Christ as a cornerstone. I've met many, of varying branches, and I'm always willing to trigger a religious discussion to see where it goes. To tell one of these people they aren't christian is an incredible insult. Any of them.
At least when this group of people broke off from the Jews they didn't simply decide to call themselves Jews and the elders needed to come up with a new name.
You seem to feel it applies just to your subgroup (or any-sub group that shares your beliefs, but certainly not the Catholics) in the specifics. Which sets them up nicely as being "others", and not part of your core group.
This comes down to identity. Who gets to choose their own? And when an outsider is labeling the group, and the group competes with the outsider, someone is going to lose. Go read up on "The Whore of Babylon" to get a feel why some people may be touchy about it.
So there seem to be a couple of problems here.
#1 - You don't get to appropriate such an important historical term while denying it to others. Especially if they were using it first. Wars get started over this. It is a direct provocation.
#2 - You make assumptions about levels of deeply held beliefs in others that seem to be very contradictory to their stated beliefs to justify these assumptions. I suggest you try to get to know a few. As much as this broadly shared delusion may cause damage, I've found that the Catholics (when they aren't running the inquisition or supporting Hitler) usually aren't the ones trying to kill the Jews. That is usually the later splits. So I have an affinity to that branch as opposed to most of the others.
Remember, from an outsider's point of view (an outsider who doesn't believe that Christ was any more special than any of the thousands of prophets babbling in that time frame) whether or not you are Christian is really easy. It means you went to a church that has a cross on it, said a few select things, the priest (and/or congregation) said a few select things back, and poof, you're a Christian. It doesn't mean that on a day by day basis you are a "good" Christian, people can judge you on your actions for that, but only the individual gets to state the claim that they are a Christian. At that point, if they are part of the sub-group that believes in hell (a large portion of them), if you tell they they are not a Christian, you are telling them they are going to hell. It's pretty clear.
To me, the varying Christian branches can be shown via a Venn diagram of overlapping beliefs, with the center being the belief in Jesus being something special that is shared by all of them.
Oh well, as long as you guys are fighting amongst yourselves, at least the rest of us have a bit less to worry about.
Edited by
crazy
Jan. 6, 2010, 05:48:48 AM EST
Oh, I accept you are doing this with best intentions
In other words, I was referring to Catholics who they themselves believe are Christians whilst believing most of their fellow Catholics are not.
Except you don't know any. Or very very few. And you certainly have an outsider's view, with very little research, so you are delving in an area you could not possibly know.
And then you made a broad assumption about select people within the group, what they believe, and even sillier, what they believe about others within their select sub-group.
You guys came later and grabbed the term, the broader one, the first one, and then decided it applied only to you. Note: The you here is the historical group of people that came before the "individual" you. And this term, being a christian, is used by every religion that has Christ as a cornerstone. I've met many, of varying branches, and I'm always willing to trigger a religious discussion to see where it goes. To tell one of these people they aren't christian is an incredible insult. Any of them.
At least when this group of people broke off from the Jews they didn't simply decide to call themselves Jews and the elders needed to come up with a new name.
You seem to feel it applies just to your subgroup (or any-sub group, just not the Catholics) in the specifics. Which sets them up nicely as being "others", and not part of your core group.
So there seem to be a couple of problems here.
#1 - You don't get to appropriate such an important historical term while denying it to others. Especially if they were using it first. Wars get started over this. It is a direct provocation.
#2 - You make assumptions about levels of deeply held beliefs in others that seem to be very contradictory to their stated beliefs to justify this attitude. I suggest you try to get to know a few. As much as this broadly shared delusion may cause damage, I've found that the Catholics (when they aren't running the inquisition or supporting Hitler) usually aren't the ones trying to kill the Jews. That is usually the later splits. So I have an affinity to that branch as opposed to the other.
On the other hand, as long as you guys are fighting amongst yourselves, at least the rest of us have a bit less to worry about.
