Booko
Deviled Hen
I'm sorry, Mini, but we may just have to agree to disagree on this point.theMINI said:Jesus transformed people's lives. Because he provides atonement for sin and reconciliation with God, Jesus brings peace, joy, and purpose into people's lives. Apart from faith in him, there is no basis for true peace or direction, for as the psalmist says, "Man is estranged from the womb." That this estrangement is healed by the reconciling ministry of Jesus is the common experience of those who believe in him.
The Tenach's view of THE Messiah is that he will be the cause of real peace, not just to the individual, but to the community, on a global scale. We are promised 1000 years of a Golden Age, which is not something you can claim for the first 1000 years of Christianity.
I have no problem whatsoever with the notion that Jesus brings peace to people's lives. In fact, that's pretty much how I see His mission -- to the individual. In a way, it's getting people ready for the 2nd chapter.
I also don't buy the idea that the only basis for true peace or direction is through Jesus, despite Christian views to the contrary. If it were so, we should see the Christian world to be noticably a more peaceful place than the non-Christian world, and it isn't so now, and hasn't been unusually so in human history. I don't think that makes Christianity "bad" or anything like that -- it's just that the time for peace had not yet come.
In early Christian history there was a coming together of peoples who normally would have nothing to do with each other. That I grant you, and it was a great accomplishment. A great civilization was built on the back of Christianity, and that is not an accomplishment to be pooh poohed. But then, I submit this is the case in the early centuries of any of the major religions where we have history enough to tell.