Subj : Bible
To   : CURTIS JOHNSON
From : TODD HENSON
Date : Sun Oct 22 2000 09:27 pm

>  FM> these centuries.  I have no problem in consenting to recognize WITH
>  FM> YOU the injustices and wrongs of institutional Christianity.  Were
>  FM> people in those first three or four centuries of its dawning, then,
>  FM> simply perverse and bent on doing as much harm to fellow men as
>  FM> possible when they became enrolled in it?   Is what you said just
> 
>  Not most Christians, no.  Few people have "doing as much
> harm to fellow men as possible" as a motive, even when that is the
> result.  It is also quite relevant that Christians in the first
> three or four centuries lacked the means to do significant harm
> to their fellow men.  However, wishing and proclaiming that harm
> would befall their fellow men (especially, but not only Christians 
> who disagreed with them) was endemic to early Christianity, starting
> with Paul's wish that those who disagreed with him about circumcision
> should accidentally castrate themselves.  Students of the rhetoric of 


If anyone is a preacher of hate (and lies), it's you, you who chooses to
exaggerate small 
secondary issues (and even outrightly reinterpret them) in order to cast a
cloud of dishonest 
smearing around a revelation of truth. Paul, the man you spoke of, can only
be interpretted as 
seriously wishing for people to castrate themselves by someone who simply
isn't being serious 
or honest. But, the hallmark of the Bible haters is to take forms of
expression and insert their 
own hate into it, and complain about it. 

The hate you assign to Paul is a manifestation of your own. This is the
same Paul who wrote 
about how even the heathen gentiles had the law of God written in their
hearts, and could 
adhere to that moral light even though they didn't have the benefit of the
Law of God as detailed 
and manifestly as the Jews did. This is the same man who cetainly preachd
about the reality of 
 hell, but who also expression great love, zeal, and compassion for his
fellow Jews, so much so 
that he would have gone to hell for them if he could.

No Curtis, you would rather see what you want to see. You're revealing
quite a lot, but not in the 
way you think.


> vituperation and hatred can only stand dumbstruck with awe at the
> early Church Fathers (of which I've read much).  There's also ill-
> concealed glee about the supposed fate of sinners and heretics.  
> Just as Nazi rhetoric itself was a strong clue as to what they would
> do when they came to power, so also was this Christian rhetoric.
> 
>  FM> above meant to echo the call of Voltaire for destroying the "Church"
>  FM> as the center of the evil as a prescription also for today?
>  FM> Voltaire was a little shaken that his rhetoric influenced atheism
>  FM> among many of those who followed him.   
> 
>  FM> I'm not defending the Christian revelation.  It needs no
>  FM> defense from me.  It certainly may need a powerful lot of
>  FM> clarification and the revelation of God to man through the tension
>  FM> in his soul is not, in my estimation finished - certainly not for
>  FM> those who are on the side of openness to science and the further
>  FM> illumination of human wisdom in the greatest measure permitted by
>  FM> the boundaries set for man's intellect in his present under God.
>  FM> Such language as this is not popular in modernity and I'm well aware
>  FM> of that.
> 
>  Is it possible that you've gone a little overboard in 
> reaction to me simply pointing out that belief in Hell was a part
> the earliest Christian belief?


Or perhaps he sees your agenda.
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