>On Dec 16, 2004, at 6:01 PM, Tommy Kelly wrote:
>
>>I "believe" you are over stretching it a little bit. Its more similar to
>>Linus and his blanket. Most of the people, when spoken to one-on-one, do
>>not show the TBN style of spirituality. If so, why do we southerners
>>have so many problem's alcoholic, drugs, and high divorce rates? If they
>>where "really" fundamentalist, they would not do these things.
>
>If they fully lived out what their religion officially teaches, perhaps.
>But hardly anyone, in *any* religion, does that. A lot of Christians, as I
>see them, either try to use prayer, etc., to solve their addiction,
>relationship, etc., problems, or hope that God's grace will keep them from
>going to hell even if they don't solve them.
>
>The big problem with this kind of religion is that it encourages people to
>project their problems onto others, and then preach to and try to convert
>those others, as a way of helping them forget their own shortcomings.
>(Ironically, their own "Master" warned against this in his mote/beam
>analogy.) That's what makes them so obnoxious.
>
>Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
Isn't part of the problem that almost any organized religion but particularly xtians cannot live faithfully by the tenets of their religion because of the number of contradictions in their religious texts? Xtianity is such a hodge podge of nonsense from different sources it suffers from this problem more than most. There are conflicting directives about how to deal with perceived transgressions so it is impossible to remain true to the directives themselves. There are also many vague passages that can be understood to mean a variety of different things to different people. In the west most xtians have learned to simply ignore the most egregious conflicts but the ability and willingness to do so varies from person to person and group to group. Islam suffers a similar problem since it has less of the xtian equivalent of "love thy neighbor as thyself" in the Quran and Sunnah or even the hadith to counter the numerous edicts to extract vengeance. This means a moderate muslim is quite different from a moderate xtian. I don't know that trying to convert others has much to do with projecting the evangelicals problems onto others. Religious adherents fear other religions will lead their offspring and friends and perhaps even themselves down the "wrong" path so the other religions must be minimized or destroyed. Ultimately it is all superstitious nonsense and belongs shelved at the library in the mythology section with stories of Hercules but that isn't going to happen any time soon.
John Thornton