Lang is a piece of shit. Jusssay'n.
@truthbait Let me guess, he's never been to the Wall and refused to support America's greatest "ally".
But, I think you both do the fediverse a great service by keeping this debate alive.
@truthbait @amerika I'm just waiting for the "veil of Moses" (2 Corinthians 3:12–18) to fall from your eyes and for you to realize "that's what to come has already been" namely Jesus your Messiah.
And between you, we get more depth on the issue! I think this is why open discussion is so important, even if it seems acrimonious.
@truthbait @amerika The King of Kings and Lord of Lords: Jesus Christ.
AKA some guy who wrote a book claiming to be that. Could simply be hallucinogens or schizophrenia.
Not just a Jew, but a Jew of the line of David, if memory serves. So... like... Jewish royalty.
ALTIFAgs are just looking for easy answers. Most of humanity is. Wisdom begins with recognizing that there are very few easy answers that actually work.
Literature fans will notice of course that this fulfills an Old Testament promise.
Reading the Bible as literature, it has its moments, and it would be ridiculous to assume that all of it is incorrect.
True. I have sympathy for anyone trying to find their way in this world (shades of Joyce's "Ulysses").
He was in the world, & though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him.
He came to His own, & His own did not receive Him.
But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.
(John 1:10-13)
When you become a Christian, it won't be torture at all. It will be a wonderful thing. Finally, your blinders come off.
Jews worship the same deity and the same ideas, so have no need to give up their ancestral faith, culture, and genetics.
People do not understand that in parts of the Bible where it says "the Jews" they mean _the Jews who were there_ in that particular scene, not Jew*.* worldwide.
"Who is the liar, if it is not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son.
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well."
(1 John 2:22-23 )
Because we reject the AntiChrist spirit in today's Judaism, does not mean that we don't hold out hope for individual Jews.
"I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh"
(Paul in Romans 9:2-3)
The first Christians were former Jews. Jesus came to separate the wall dividing the Jews and the Gentiles. To bring all the sheep into one fold. This is why yesterday's Jews and today's Jews hate Him.
They do not, in my experience. Jews tend to view Christianity as too idealistic and not savvy enough (goyisch kopf) perhaps, but feel safe around Christians, who they know are well-intentioned and will generally try not to hurt them. They do put out feelers for Nazis but I think often recognize that the Nazi and the Jew are more similar than either party would like to admit!
This is not meant as a slander on either group, just that Nazis and Jews are both ethnonationalist realists while everyone else is deluded with symbols and feelings.
There's obviously direct parallels with today. A lot of people are so focused on following arbitrary rules that they don't care about the justice or truth of their actions, only that they're following the rules.
And of course some people misread that criticism and assume that it means we never have to follow the rules, but the reality is of course we need to follow rules, but we also need to use our brains to make sure that the application of the rules is both just and true.
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"Their greatest sin is mindless adherence to the rules without proper concern for what is just, or what is true."
Means-over-ends, just like the sophists.
Jews are stuck in the here and now and establishing their own kingdom on earth by "any means necessary."
True Christians realize that the Kingdom of God transcends ethnonationalism, this life, and goes from here to eternity.
That's why true Christians will always be a thorn in the side of ethnonationalists and their limited vision. And that's why @truthbait has more in common with you than he cares to realize or admit.
I am glad you said the quiet part out loud. Thank you.
"True Christians realize that the Kingdom of God transcends ethnonationalism, this life, and goes from here to eternity.
That's why true Christians will always be a thorn in the side of ethnonationalists and their limited vision."
Metaphysical dualists deny the holiness of physical reality and nature. They want you to think about the afterlife instead of this life.
But this life is holy, too, to monists. This is why I will never be a Christian.
@elston_ @amerika The back flips you perform to avoid admitting you worship a Jew are my favorite form of entertainment.
And I, a Jew, have no hatred for Jesus. I think he was right to overturn the tables. I just don't think he was "the messiah" because I thin the entire concept of God and savior is man made. Oddly, your brain can't handle that and as a result you have to see my opinion as hatred. You also have to simplify all Jews into one group target for your hatred. It's ignorant bliss.
"I think the entire concept of God and savior is man made."
Maybe a charitable take, but I see them as metaphor not intended to be literal.
Sort of like any other philosophy or literature, people writing their observations, hopes, and fears.
The human species is at least filled with pathos and manages to be interesting on a regular basis.
Seriously, it’s the sugar in my cornflakes.
You can just buy frosted flakes
Breakfast cereal is basically indistinguishable from donuts, nutritionally.
You miss a lot. Christianity is a religion of paradox, not of gnostic dualism. We Christians are not gnostics. We do not say Spirit=good, matter= bad.
Lots of Christians have allowed gnostic thought to creep into their doctrines, but from the beginning it was not so.
The scandal: matter becomes a vehicle of grace.
This is why John 9 ends not merely with healed eyes, but with confession and worship (John 9:38).
The healing prepares the logic for the Eucharist.
“This is my body… This is my blood.”
Jesus does not say:
“This represents my teaching”
“This symbolizes your escape from the material”
“This points away from the physical”
He points to the elements themselves.
Real Christianity explodes two modern idolatries that look opposite on the surface but are structurally similar:
Materialism (matter is all that exists)
Ethnonationalism / race essentialism (biology determines worth and destiny)
Christianity rejects both by insisting that matter is real and good, but never ultimate, and never the basis of human value.
And that right there is why I will always oppose you and your ethnonationalism. You deny the Creator and his creation.
Human value is a Christian construct and not one involved in my thinking. It is a question of what works, and ethnonationalism works.
Second, the "ultimate" determiner in Christianity is the dualistic Heaven, which means that matter is subordinate, which is an anti-realistic view.
Valentinianism, Marcionism, and several others all existed between 100 ~ 300 AD, all with varying beliefs about spiritual vs physical world. Not all believed in the Demiurge, the Monad, Sophia, etc. The whole idea of "gnosticsm" didn't exist back then. It's a blank term used today to refer to a ton of early Christian group, some which were quite large.
Early Christians murdered a lot of these sects and destroyed many of their texts. The ones that survived to make the 27 NT books were never canonicalized officially anywhere, arising organically from what was popular, and therefore, what priests continued to copy by hand. The Shepherd of Hermas, The Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, The book of Enoch I, II and III are just some of the many books that didn't make it.
It's also important to note modern evangelicals like to talk about the "inerrant word of God," specifically calling to John and how "the word was God .. he was in the beginning." Christians don't want to admit this, but it turns the "word" into God himself in some sense; a quadrinity so to say. But the "word" as cannoned scripture did not exist in the early church at all ... you could argue by 300 AD it had solidified, but for all of early Christianity, there was no such thing, except for the Greek Septuagint and its translations. Even then, what about Maccabees or the Babylonian Talmud?
Christianity, as it is today, was made the same way every State is made: Might makes Right. Christians killed all the heretics:
https://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/06/christian-atrocities-three-centuries-of-pagan-persecution/
You might say "people misused the name of Jesus for horror," and I say is God so inept he cannot protect his trademark? oh it's because of free will, even thought he knows everyone who will "chose" him? The Calvinist or Puritan elect?
The modern progressive LGBT church, thought a heresy to most evangelicals and reformed, is actually the natural progression of how Westernized Christianity has emerged in the past century. Christianity did grow because the "covenant was now open to all," so the evangelical will say, but why then in 30~60AD and not before? Did God have different rules for different ages? That's where you get modern day dispensationalism and rapture theology.
From a secular perspective, Christianity was used to solidify the empire under Constantine and Constantine used Christianity as a means to legitimacy around 300 AD, in the exact same way ibn Marwan married the Arab caliphates to Muhammad and Islam around 600 AD to legitimize his empire. Both of these cultures were initially very tolerant of other faiths, as the Roman Empire was filled with those with vastly different gods and the Caliphates deeply relied on trade through their regions.
The Christianity of today would be unrecognizable to the Christians of 150 AD or 300 AD or even the 1600s puritans in Boston.
Jesus came to fufill the old covenant & establish a new one by offering His own body & blood as a sacrifice, a ransom to free mankind from sin & death.
Early Christians eschewed the sword, coercion, & alliance with the state basically Anabaptism.
Don't blame them for sacrilege of uniting state & church under Constantine.
The rest that flows from that is Babylon & not true Christianity. I would agree with many of your criticisms of what followed subsequently.
I do realize Christianity is an important foundation for modern Western morality. It is the foundation of British Common Law (vs Roman Civil Law). I realize it's importance and the dangers of uprooting Chesterton's fence, but it's also obviously a construction of various mythos.
In your world view, did God guide all of those believes into what we have now? Is Eastern Orthodox, with greater emphasis on mysticism but less on direct personal interpretation, still a "true Christianity?"
Do you believe God has different rules for different ages, or dispensations? Do you believe in rapture ideology? per-tribulation or post-tribulation?
@amerika @truthbait
Materialism says:
* Only the physical is real
* Meaning, morality, & consciousness are reducible to chemistry
* Humans are advanced animals, nothing more
* History has no telos, only power, survival, & efficiency
This is the inverse of Gnosticism, but it ends in the same place.
Ethnonationalism treats:
Race
Bloodline
Ancestry
Ethnicity
…as ontologically determinative.
It says:
Who you are is decided by what you are made of.
That is materialism applied to identity.
Christianity affirms ethnicity—but denies racial ultimacy
The Bible does not erase peoples or nations.
Scripture affirms:
Real tribes
Real nations
Real genealogies
Real cultures
Real languages
But it denies they are salvific or ultimate.
“From one man He made every nation of mankind.” (Acts 17:26)
Not:
Different creations
Different divine intentions
Different inherent worth
Ethnicity is creational, not redemptive.
The Incarnation destroys racial absolutism.
Jesus doesn't become a “generic human.”
He becomes:
* A Jewish male
* Of the house of David
* Under the Law
He assumes a particular body to redeem ALL bodies.
If race were ultimate:
* Salvation would be ethnic
* Covenant would be genetic
* Inheritance would be biological
(This is what Jews & ethnonationalists share)
But Paul says opposite:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Gal 3:28
This is why @truthbait is such an idiot lumping me in with the likes of ethnonationalists like you. At best, we see some of the same problems, but our solutions are totally different. You are a materialists & deny spirit (an inverted gnostic)
My criticism of the Left is that they are trying to build a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural global society without dealing with the inherent sinfulness of all mankind & without Christ. All they are building is a Tower of Babel.
I agree with the last line. However, to survive, each population needs to be mono-ethnic. Jews see this, Christians do not. The solution is not cruelty to anyone but establishing mono-ethnic societies.
Salvation is unrelated to practical living.
This would be a personal choice of the individual, in my view based in mental state (I am a sola fide Calvinist).
In my view, as a Platonist, everything that Christian morality brought was already here. It was just not a means-over-ends calculus but a consequentialist one.
Christianity either (1) became what it always was or (2) decayed rapidly because it was paradoxical, based on your statement here.
Religions based on the equal value of individuals are always going to swim Left.
The universalism problem is that it denies differences of essence between groups, which is not important re: morality but elemental for survival and the survival of culture.
Religions, like bureaucracies, try to replace culture.
Two dispensations: Old & New (& the old one is obsolete) I reject the Darby/Scofield nonsense.
Second coming only. No "secret rapture" doctrine. That's an Irvingite heresy and dovetails with dispensationalism while ignoring Jesus clear teaching in Matthew 24.
As for Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics etc. whoever can say the Nicene Creed (with or without the filoque clause) and BELIEVES IT....is my brother.
When you posit a perfect Heaven versus an impure Earth, you deprecate reality in favor of a symbolic, emotional existence.
“When you posit a perfect Heaven versus an impure Earth...”
This is a false premise. Christianity does NOT teach:
Heaven = real
Earth = fake, symbolic, or disposable
That is Platonism/Gnosticism, not biblical Christianity.
Biblical contrast is heaven RENEWING earth.
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Matt 6:10
Heaven is not an escape hatch.
It is God’s reign, destined to invade & transform creation.
You're just big mad that the conversation has gone well beyond your chosen people and is operating on the level of cosmology instead of ethnic superiority of a tribe that wear small caps and plan world domination.
Judaism ( post crucifixtion of Christ) — Cosmology of Chosenness
Gnosticism — Cosmology of Escape
Materialism — Cosmology of Closure
Ethnonationalism — Cosmology of Blood and Soil
Christianity — Cosmology of Redemption
Essentially: We are God's pet and he doesn't give a rat's ass about the rest of you so why should we care about the goyim?
Ethnonationalism actually. Just the all Jew version of "Blood & Soil".
So the Talmud is off limits??
How convenient for you.
I see a general stubborness & refusal to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, as sent by God, as Saviour & Redeemer of the Jew first & also the gentiles...as dooming Judaism to being a dead end religion. Too narrow in its focus, too restricted to a particular tribe or people, too parochial.
Also the fact that Ashkenazis are converts of convenience unlike the Sephardic who are probably the only true Jews.
Ethnonationalism is how ethnic groups survive.
If you hate Jews so much that you will throw out an important principle of your own survival, you are addicted to symbols (which maintain your mental state) and have rejected reality.
Chosenness = for the purpose of being an ethnic group, the members of those ethnic group are essential. They are chosen by the deity for the purpose of being themselves.
Like the question of the meaning of life: the meaning of life is to live.
Ethnonationalism = one of several necessary ingredients for survival.
It is not related to religious feelings. For Jews, religion, culture, and ethnicity are linked, as they were for all ancient populations.
We are seeing that this is a better way.
I find it interesting how Jew-hatred and hatred of the wealthy are parallel pathologies.
Those afflicted blame everything on the scapegoat, justify what they want because it is not the scapegoat, and somehow expect not to be off on a tangent irrelevant to actual survival.
"destined to invade & transform creation"
In other words, a higher principle which must "fix" creation.
Monists -- including Platonists -- see the Heavens and Earth as parallel.
And oh yea, Jews like Ben Shapiro and Prager don't impress me. Then again neither do the secular libtard Jews. And the Greater Israel crowd are very annoying too.
Shapiro is one of the few conservatives who understand law and its interaction with economics.
Prager is good at popularizing things and capturing a public mood, but his "Benedict option" solutions are not realistic.
@truthbait expects Christians to genuflect when he enters a room. If they don't, then he thinks that's "hate".
And he isn't even religious to boot. He's a secular, non-kosher Jew living in the West with no plans for Aliyah because he's a non-believer.
Only difference between him & the leftist Jews is he is aligned with the Republicans but only in so far as they support Israel. Don't want your tax dollars going to Israel? Then you are a hateful antisemite.
Your problem is that you do not recognize the Fall of Man. You live under the spell that you are part of some mystical special race that is superior and immune to the consequences of sin and death.
Judaism -- from my limited knowledge -- frames the fall (essential wickedness) of man differently, in more economic terms describing opportunism and hubris.
It is not a single doctrine like Christianity, as far as I can tell, but a general perception of humanity.
More materialist "Blood & Soil" schlock.
Not once have I said that I hate the Jews. I just don't give their "we are the chosen & therefore better than anyone else & therefore what we do is justified" arguments. They broke their covenant with God, & He then extended his salvation to all nations, tribes & tongues through his Son.
Deeper truth: even if there was no eternal life, my life on earth is better knowing & trusting Jesus than not doing so.
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
— Augustine of Hippo
“The knowledge of God ennobles the soul, and the life of virtue renders it happy; the mere fact of loving and following Christ is a treasure in itself.”
— Clement of Alexandria
“Even if the hope of immortality were removed, a soul united with God by love would still live rightly, joyfully, and freely in this life.”
— Origen
The "therefore better than anyone else" applies to (1) no one else can be Jews and (2) we want to rise and not squander our lives like most people do.
Hard to hear, but most likely true. Jewish families tend to aggressively educate their kids and school them in real-world understanding.
Abraham received certain promises & blessings from God under old covenant. These were passed down through Isaac & Jacob to the rest of Israel. But Israel continually fell into idolatry & did not fulfil their part of the covenant. Most of them were led into captivity. A remnant was restored after the Babylonian captivity & rebuilt the temple. In the fullness of time, God sent Jesus to redeem his people. But they rejected him & now old covenant is replaced.
Yes, exactly. The idea of "original sin" which is a central concept to modern Christianity, didn't come about until Augustine around 400 A.D. That leads eventually to Calvin's concept of "Total Depravity."
But the Hebrew people likely didn't have any concept of heaven/hell or a battle between good and evil. The book of Job predates Genesis, and is more closely related to the Epic of Gilgamesh. The word satan in Hebrew is a term that just means adversary. Even in Job, God is part of a pantheon he calls together, and it's unclear if satan is a title or a specific individual, but he is an advocate to God in that story, not a fallen enemy.
The entire good v evil aspects likely started getting introduced 400 BC ~ 300 BC on-wards via Zoroastrianism. But this is assumed because they're so similar. There's no direct evidence.
The whole Lucifer falling from heaven isn't really in the old testament unless you really stretch versus from Isiah and Ezekiel. This is a concept that came much later and was retroactively interpreted to the old text.
Verses:
Genesis 12, 15, & 17; affirmed in Romans 9:6–13. The covenant line is explicitly Abraham → Isaac → Jacob.
Covenant renewed by Moses & had conditional blessings tied to obedience (Deut 28).
Gal 3:16 – “The promises were made to Abraham and to his Seed… who is Christ.”
Gal 3:29 – “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
Eph 2 – Gentiles grafted in, one new man
Rom 11 – one olive tree, not two parallel plans
In Christ, the promises made to Abraham are now inherited by all who belong to him—Jew & Gentile alike—who together form the one people of God, the Church.
Dispensationalism & Christian Zionism err by separating Israel & the Church & by failing to see Christ as the fulfillment of the covenant promises.
Abraham received certain promises & blessings from God under old covenant. These were passed down through Isaac & Jacob to the rest of Israel.
This is what's in the text, but isn't reflected in history. There were many many different faiths throughout that entire region that had Abraham in their history, as well as some of the stories that are traditionally considered Jewish today. The idea of religion itself as we know it didn't come about until Christianity. People just believed in different gods or a monotheistic God.
On top of that .. David doesn't really exist outside of the Old Testament. There's almost no mention of him as any type of king from the records of any neighboring empires. The whole story of Jews escaping Egypt doesn't exist in any other civilizations. (There was some Canaanites that went back to Egypt and became Pharaohs, which might be where this story originated). Solomon seems to be the first real "king" that's documented elsewhere, but much of the early Jewish history that's in the Bible doesn't fit any of the archeological record.
Yahweh was part of another pantheon of Gods in proto-Yahwehism, and early versions of Yahweh have him paired with Asherah, his female consort .. gone from all later texts.
Abraham appears in Jewish, Christian, & Islamic traditions — but Islam inherits Abraham from Judaism, not from some independent regional memory.
There is no evidence of multiple ancient Near Eastern religions independently venerating Abraham as a historical figure.
What does exist are shared cultural story-forms (genealogies, covenant narratives, migration stories), which is exactly what we expect in the Bronze Age.
“Religion didn’t exist until Christianity”
This claim is simply false.
Religion as a scholarly category is modern, but religion as lived practice is ancient.
Temples, priesthoods, sacrifices, sacred laws, ritual calendars, & divine kingship existed millennia before Christianity.
Religion as a scholarly category is modern, but religion as lived practice is ancient.
Yea you just contradicted yourself .. I mean you're contracting yourself a lot but you just did so here specifically. Religion is a retroactive application of a concept (same with Gnosticism. None of those groups considered themselves "Gnostic" .. they just believed what they believed).
Temples and priests existed everywhere and they had their gods, but they didn't have the distinct categories of religion and ideology we have today. People believed in gods, and those people over there have their own gods, and people generally though these gods existed.
Each nation's gods, and especially later monotheistic God, helped define each people group as "special." It gave them distinct status to go conquer and kill others, reducing them to less than. That was one of the effects of these belief systems that helped expand certain kingdoms and empires.
Christianity gained such a strong foothold with the idea everyone could enter into redemption, submitting themselves before one true God. It made everyone special .. well sorta. Not right away. After a few centuries. First they killed a lot of heretics and had many variations of the faith.
I feel like we're talking in circles because you keep going back to just the text and propaganda of your religion and are unwilling to address any of the historical dependencies. I'm addressing the reason things ended up they way they are, but you're coming from the perspective it must be true as you know it and working backwards.
Hebrew Bible itself distinguishes between true worship & false worship, which presupposes a concept of religion.
What Christianity did was:
* Universalize monotheism
* Sever worship from ethnicity & geography
* Center religion on a person (Christ) rather than land or temple
You’re right that “religion” is a modern analytical category, just like “Gnosticism,” or “economics". I'm not pretending ancient people thought like moderns.
Yes — Christianity universalized access to salvation, & once it became entangled with empire, it behaved like other imperial systems, including suppressing rivals.
The real question is why a marginal Jewish sect with no army, no land, & no political leverage spread at all.
There are a thousand possible answers and they all make more sense than its god being "real"
Christianity is monotheistic the same way as Hinduism.
Christianity has Trinity, Hinduism has Trimurti.
The "Christian God" is a concept, not a person.
HaShem is God, there is no other.
"I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God."
(Isaiah 45:5)
@km @amerika @djsumdog @truthbait
You’ll win more friends and influence more people when you stop telling others what true Christianity is. If you reject the Nicene Creed, that’s your choice—but it also means you aren’t part of historic, orthodox Christianity.
We don’t need to replay the debates of the first few centuries with Marcion, Arius, or Nestorius or any other heresies so your reading of Jesus can dodge His divinity.
Same with pagans, who saw their religion as indistinguishable from philosophy and literature, expressing folkways that included but were not confined to the metaphysical.
Not only that, but Plato described Christianity before it even existed.
I believe in the divine. I think this universe has a purpose of its own and it is benevolent and that there is an afterlife. But, I really cannot get any more specific than that other than to say that a monist conception makes the most sense.
I don't hate you @truthbait. You're my favorite Jew and the only one I converse with on a regular basis. Shalom!
God's oracle people. The vehicle for his revelation to mankind until Christ came.
The Christian monad is Christ—the bridge between God and man.
For He was made man that we might be made divine; He became what we are, that He might make us what He is.
— St. Irenaeus
Christ is the mediator who reconciles the Creator to the creature, so that God is not far from us, & we are not far from God.
— St. Augustine
He became the path by which we might come to the Father; He is both the way & the bridge from earth to heaven.
— St. John Chrysostom
"that we might be made divine" -- this is metaphysical dualism, as I am sure you see. The divine is an improvement on the Earthly in this view.
In the Platonic view, wisdom and nature are paired, and after death, only the thought-like parts remained, at least until the body was reincarnated somewhere else.
Wow. That's quite a climb down from:
"Essentially: We are God's pet and he doesn't give a rat's ass about the rest of you so why should we care about the goyim?
Ethnonationalism actually. Just the all Jew version of "Blood & Soil"."
Your new description is much closer to the truth, and it's fascinating that you imply Christians are now the chosen. It's evil when Jews say they're chosen but it's kosher when you do it.
That's good comedy.
Rubbish.
“On many past occasions and in many different ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets." -Hebrews 1:1
This is when Israel was his "chosen" vehicle of revelation and activity. That's over!
"But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe.” =Hebrews 1:2
Anyone can join the chosen now. Jesus paid the price of admission on the cross. Will you accept Him?
In your narrative only YOU & your kin get to be in the "chosen" club.
But your exclusive contract with God has been REVOKED because you rejected His Son.
"A landowner planted a vineyard & rented it to tenants. When harvest time came, he sent servants to collect his fruit, but the tenants beat or killed them. Finally, he sent his son, thinking they would respect him—but they killed the son."
Under Jesus, EVERYONE can get into the "chosen" club by accepting HIm.
Right, so through a rabbi of noble blood, the Jewish people extended their religion to others _as well_, and this is bad?
They are the chosen because of their original role, and they are chosen for their own purposes, not universal ones. That is where Christianity misunderstands Judaism: it is not universalist, instead very particularist.
From my reading, this is too exoteric. Jesus said he would show us the path to mental clarity and through that, to enlightenment and eventual union with the divine.
The Jewish tradition recognizing the necessity of each tribe having its own blood & soil type of bond with reality. When one thinks about this, if more tribes had this, we would have less pollution and globalism.
The impression I got from most Christians is that they saw themselves and Jews as traveling a parallel path.
Agreed. It is sensible to have specific rules and practices for each group, and the groups that insist they do not are usually concealing something.
It is even worse without cultural cohesion, since then people tribe up over stuff like pickleball and liberalism.
In one sense, it is game theory in reality: the best option is to neutralize all others, misdirect them to false options, and then quietly seize the prize for yourself.
In my somewhat positive-orientation view, it helps if we have actual diversity where each group has its own culture and rules and we can sort of "prime directive" each other and leave each other alone.
This allows among other things parallel evolution, but also more than tolerance, acceptance and/or respect, which is the basis of not murdering each other in stupid wars.
I was looking at some of the footage from the Ukraine war and, while I want Russia to lose hard, I cannot help thinking how cruel and pointless the whole thing is. What a bore and waste of time.
Ukraine is losing harder.
Russophobic ideologues completely brought this on themselves. I have ZERO pity for the leaders of Ukraine or EU but sympathy for the regular poor Ukrainians being used as cannon fodder while the rich oligarchs and their children all vacation in Europe for the last few years.
Prof. John Mearsheimer told you in 2015 how this was going to play out but Ukraine and EU leaders ignored the warning.
Mistakes were made, but the invasion of sovereign Ukraine was not the solution.
Right now, Western weapons are chewing up the Russians and they begin to tire of war.
I can't see how this mass destruction is a true win for anyone, so yes.
Keep coping. The West pushed Ukraine to act tough with the Russians and now it suffers.
It's the EU, and Merz in particular, that has finally been honest and see they need to make peace with Putin because USA is unreliable overlord.
I want to see Russia take Odessa and Romani and Hungary take their parts and Ukraine a rump-state with no access to the Black Sea.
Relevant to the Christian Question:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/01/pantheist-monotheist-and-jesus-centred.html
For centuries, the apostate Christianity sought to define “the Nature of Christ”
there is an answer to the question of who Jesus is in Matthew 16:16:
“Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
the man Christ Jesus is the mediator between God and mankind:
“For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5)
@km @amerika @djsumdog @truthbait
This is a revival of Arian / Unitarian Christology: affirming Jesus as Messiah & mediator while denying His eternal divinity.
“God, who at sundry times & in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. (Hebrews 1:1-2)
Off with you heretic!
I don't know what has become of the Unitarians but these 100 Scriptural Arguments are very good.
https://www.biblicalunitarian.com/100-scriptural-arguments-for-the-unitarian-faith
I don't count myself as an Unitarian
nobody knows what the Arians once were, the history is written by those who destroyed them.
Realistic view: religions describe what humans can intuit but not visualize.
Stick with the basics like loving reality, rising to the good, excluding the bad, and believing in some kind of afterlife and benevolent force to existence.