Theological Issue

Over at Minnesota Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis “Progressive” Project (a group blog that actively solicits defamatory fabrications), Grace Kelly, noted 9/11 truther, thinks  she’s onto something:

One of the strongest differences between progressives and conservations is the reaction to the suggestion of recent movies the Jesus might be just a guy, outstanding by his life and by his teachings. Another variation is that Jesus is the son of God, in the same sense that all humans are children of God.

{{facepalm}}

That’s right, Grace Kelly, 9/11 truther and habitual liar.  Theological debate about the nature, humanity and divinity of Christ started with George McGovern’s nomination.  And it’s purely an American debate.  Why, it’s not as if debates about the nature and divinity of Christ (to say nothing of Mary, the Saints and the Pope) haven’t led the church to divide, fragment, schism, lather rince and repeat for the past 1,600 years or anything.

And I’d very, very, very much like to see you take that “Christ was a guy” bit into a good black southern baptist church sometime.  They might vote “progressive” (I’m puking in my mouth a little as I write that), but you’ll look long and hard for a sympathetic theology, I suspect.

But why?

For progressives, the idea if Jesus might just a guy was interesting and not at all challenging to faith. In fact if Jesus – as an ordinary guy – could do such great things, then it meant that all of us could do more in what we do.

It’s the reverse of that idea – that a divine Christ would threaten their faith – that interests me.  I wonder if some left-leaning Christians don’t chafe at the idea of a 2,000 year old religious figure competing with their current religious icons, Wellstone and Obama?

I think that “power” is the essence of the conservative’s beliefs. So the important essence of believing in Jesus requires the deity power, not how Jesus lived or what Jesus taught.

Which is, indeed, perhaps the most incredibly stupid generalization I’ve ever read about conservatives, ever.

Indeed as I asked questions at “Jesus” stands in conservative gatherings, they did not engage in discussions of key passages of the bible

To be fair to the unnamed “Jesus stand” operators, I’ve met Grace Kelly, and I wouldn’t engage in a serious discussion with her, either.

“Jesus” was a marketing tool, where one simply invoked the name and was saved. The essence of this religion seems to be “what the religion can do for me!” It is not a do-it-yourself kind of religion.

No – correction:  THAT was the most stupid generalization!

But if one has faith, one will eventually find a nugget of truth in even the most (intellectually) desiccated environment:

So what I am seeing is that religion is a projection of what people already believe or want to believe.

Um, yeah.  And so Jesus was just a guy, like Wellstone and Franken and Larry Pogemiller.

Theologians and philosophers will debate the nature of divinity until one day we all find out for ourselves.

But the real question that is beating those theologians and thinkers about the face:  Would a truly loving God really put writing like this in front of His people?

17 thoughts on “Theological Issue

  1. What Kelly has written is bizarre.
    First she trots out the ‘Jesus was just a guy’ thing and then she goes on as though what this person said should matter more than what some other guy has said.
    She quotes the passage from mark where Christ tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves and insists that this means that Christ endorses socialized medicine.
    The most ridiculous passage is this:

    Another difference seems to where religion affirms the importance of all people or where religion affirms the importance of a chosen few. In the progressive tradition, one is supposed to seek out the person who is different from you, to show compassion and understanding. Indeed I have personally been admonished to not demonize the other. (OK, I am not very good at that.) In contrast, the conservative religions seem to seek out a group to make the embodiment of evil – gays, Muslims, Chinese or the poor. The concept is that prosperity and wealth is given to the deserving, which is my group. Anyone who is suffering must have deserved it. The tortured logic of deserving involves allowing anything in the community that might be morally condemned. “Condemned”, “jails” and “execution” are all favored words that support and justify the superiority of the group that one is in. It is the opposite of equality.

    “Conservative” religions make “gays, Muslims, Chinese or the poor” “the embodiment of evil”? What religion is she talking about, exactly? She doesn’t name any particular denomination because she can’t. She also leaves out the one group that can claim a long history of persecution by Christians, the Jews. That is just plain weird.

  2. Tibetan Buddhist, baby!
    (yeah, we have an itty bitty problem with the Chinese occupation)

    . . .and lovin’ it even more by the day!

    Woo-hoo!!

  3. I think this is great. I think the Democratic Party should start advertising itself as “the party for people who think Jesus was just a guy.”

    Truth in advertising. It’s a good thing.

  4. “In the progressive tradition, one is supposed to seek out the person who is different from you, to show compassion and understanding.”

    Typical week for a moonbat:

    Saturday: Tour the ‘hood (from the safety of your Prius) and empathize with the African-American and chemically challenged communities. Spend the afternoon in Loring park; share your concerns, your tabouli salad, your chianti, and show off your new PFLAG bumper sticker.

    Sunday: Vegan potluck to discuss ways to use your superior intellect to help all of those poor, uneducated wretches you empathized with yesterday.

    Monday through Friday: Drag your compassion up to the capital and demand someone else subsidize it with their cold, hard cash.

  5. It is reassuring that the modern world has bloggers like Grace and Peev… folks who are interested and able in discussing the really big topics that no on else ever dares to write, much less consider.

    Without them, these big ideas would die on the vine. Thank (who?) that we have these geniuses in our time… until now, mankind (personkind) has been in the dark.

    So, here’s to you Mr. and Mrs. I-totally-banal-without-realizing-it.

  6. Why, it’s not as if debates about the nature and divinity of Christ […] haven’t led the church to divide, fragment, schism, lather rince and repeat for the past 1,600 years or anything.

    You’re off by around 400 years, or at least the Gnostics, Circumcisors, Montanism. Sabellianism, and Arianism would disagree (naming just a few of larger early heresies). The debate about Christ’s nature began before his death and led to the initial schism from Judaism, after all.

    It’s funny seeing Grace try to wrap her feel-good love everybody-ism in Christianity. The same religion telling you to love your neighbor as yourself also tells you to shun sin and reproach believers who are straying — the idea of real Christianity as a passive religion is absurd. And isn’t the idea of the divinity of Christ the whole basis of Christianity? Her version of Arianism is one of the more persistent heresies, rising every few centuries.

  7. Nerd,
    Does it keep resurfacing every so often due to the thinkers believe themselves to be so original?
    😉

  8. New DFL bumper sticker:

    “Who CARES what Jesus would do, how does this affect Al Franken?”

    .

  9. You’re off by around 400 years,

    Yeah, I know; I started counting from when the Armenians, Maronites, Chaldeans, Indians and the rest split. But I could have gone back a ways further.

    Not only does it not change my main point, it reinforces it…

  10. I thought the Johanites were Hospitalliers and much later (Crusader era), while it was the Mandeans who revered John the Baptist. It’s all so confusing!

    But the whole list of heresies and the history of the battles against them and the Inquisition is rather fascinating. Just a tidbit: the Inquisition itself almost never killed anyone and very rarely did they denounce anyone except for repeat offenders and that cheesed off the populace to no end; watching someone burn on the weekends was the equivalent of tailgating.

    What the Inquisition did do was remove the protection of the Church and denounce someone as a heretic. It was the secular authorities that then pronounced sentence on the heretic. As to the Spanish Inquisition, let’s just say that the Roman rules of court were just a bit different than ours, and the Spanish followed Roman procedures.

    In any case, the split on Jesus’s nature was quite evident even to Pontius Pilate, who had the typical reaction of any outsider listening to a bunch of Jews discuss theology: he just wanted them the heck out of there. (Listening to my cantor Reform roommate argue with his Orthodox mother when the issues inevitably came up on Saturdays sure made me find other things to do when she came to town. I sure learned a lot about Judaism and its factions, a lot more than I ever wanted to know.)

  11. I found the comment section very interesting. They talked about Christians as if we were perplexing creatures from an exotic land. *hushed tone* The Evangelical Christian believes that God exists. Absolutely fascinating! */hushed tone* I’m not trying to be the least bit snarky about this. I just hadn’t realized how exotic Christians are to folks like Grace.

    One other point, some of them had a very low self-awareness. That is to say, they didn’t seem to realize that they too have certain assumptions about life that they hold to and which are based purely on faith, not on some kind of universal empirical. I’d say getting out more and meeting some new people would broaden their horizons. Well, so long as they avoid that whole proselytizing thing that they were talking about.

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