• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

If the Abrahamic faiths are culturally designated, where do I fit in?

TransmutingSoul

Veteran Member
Premium Member
But the gospel's mission is not to just go around erasing cultures and replacing them. Just fixing them.

I see in the Message of Jesus Christ an all embracing Love. A love that works only when we show it is all embracing. I do not see that eliminating a culture had anything what Christ taught.

I do see wisdom in teachings that are in reality, universal. It would be up to each individual to decide if that universal thought is part of their culture or not part of it and if not, if it would be benificial to the whole if included.

Then there are those that would only think of themselves and always reject universal thought.

Regards Tony
 

siti

Well-Known Member
But the gospel's mission is not to just go around erasing cultures and replacing them.
What a pity no-one told the "Christians" that for almost 2000 years!
Just fixing them.
Ah! So if it ain't "Christian" it needs fixing?

Maybe that's the answer to the OP then - if someone doesn't feel that the "culture" fits them, that person needs "fixing".

Unbelievable!
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Your folk of this fine country can understand, when presented in their own language the very simple tenants of Christianity.

If their culture finds it good to crack open your fathers head, eat his brain, then use his skull as an ashtray, then there is a lot of patient work ahead.

I could go to villages in South east Asia or Africa, and if they are Christian villages, the bond of our mutual faith would overcome the cultural differences between us.

I think you are missing what is the cultural designation of Christianity. It is more in the Roman/European nature of the beliefs of Christianity that represents the cultural designation. This overlays the Hebrew cultural designation of the Torah and Tanach.
 

74x12

Well-Known Member
Ah! So if it ain't "Christian" it needs fixing?

Maybe that's the answer to the OP then - if someone doesn't feel that the "culture" fits them, that person needs "fixing".

Unbelievable!
Yes, all cultures are degenerate and without God they're in varying degrees and states of brokenness.
 

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
Please don't be concerned about "fitting" somewhere? One huge problem I see with organized religions is that many try to define God, and make all sorts of rules and admonishments to be suitable to God. In a way, aren't we making ourselves to be God? I think that such things are the machinations of the evil one. Lately, I have been living as having been pleasing and suitable to God, the day I was born. I make mistakes, sometimes willfully, and usually when I feel convicted I ask for forgiveness.

There is scripture that says one like me is entirely suitable to God. Shouldn't that be all we need.

Men drag you down because of their own egocentric minds.
 

whirlingmerc

Well-Known Member
And by "I," I mean those who are inquiring about a particular religion among the Abrahamic umbrella. Realizing that all three faiths including their sub sects all relate to the origin of the people in a particular region of the world, where do I the observer belong considering the doctrinal traditions tends to favor the people of those regions? Some Judeo-Christian traditions say the cradle of civilization began in Ur (although scholars have differing criteria for what they determine to be a civilization). Some say the language of "heaven" is Arabic (some even said Hebrew), more importantly all things are related to the people that existed in that time in those specific regions. With that being said, how does a skeptic approach a supposed universal faith if the faith itself is culturally unrelatable to the individual him/herself?

The trend is that most Christians in the world living in Africa by 2060

I would say that being narrowly culturally focused least true of Biblical Christianity, more strongly true of Islam and Judaism Most religions locus of belief remains close to it's origins and some like Islam even carry forward the original language

Christianity has moved around. Most Christians in the missile east, then the medeteraniean coastal places, then Europe but spread out, then the Americas now most christians may be in the Global South and China

From Mark Knoll:
  • This past Sunday it is possible that more Christian believers attended church in China than in all of so-called “Christian Europe.” Yet in 1970 there were no legally functioning churches in all of China; only in 1971 did the communist regime allow for one Protestant and one Roman Catholic Church to hold public worship services, and this was mostly a concession to visiting Europeans and African students from Tanzania and Zambia.
  • This past Sunday more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Canada and Episcopalians in the United States combined—and the number of Anglicans in church in Nigeria was several times the number in those other African countries.
  • This past Sunday more Presbyterians were at church in Ghana than in Scotland, and more were in congregations of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa than in the United States.
  • This past Sunday the churches with the largest attendance in England and France had mostly black congregations. About half of the churchgoers in London were African or African-Caribbean. Today, the largest Christian congregation in Europe is in Kiev, and it is pastored by a Nigerian of Pentecostal background.
  • This past week in Great Britain, at least fifteen thousand Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelizing the locals. Most of these missionaries are from Africa and Asia.
see A Snapshot of the Global Church: Mark Noll on What This Past Sunday Looked Like
 
Last edited:

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
And by "I," I mean those who are inquiring about a particular religion among the Abrahamic umbrella. Realizing that all three faiths including their sub sects all relate to the origin of the people in a particular region of the world, where do I the observer belong considering the doctrinal traditions tends to favor the people of those regions? Some Judeo-Christian traditions say the cradle of civilization began in Ur (although scholars have differing criteria for what they determine to be a civilization). Some say the language of "heaven" is Arabic (some even said Hebrew), more importantly all things are related to the people that existed in that time in those specific regions. With that being said, how does a skeptic approach a supposed universal faith if the faith itself is culturally unrelatable to the individual him/herself?
Race or culture does not matter to God. -- Acts of the Apostles 10:34-35
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
The trend is that most Christians in the world living in Africa by 2060

I would say that being narrowly culturally focused least true of Biblical Christianity, more strongly true of Islam and Judaism Most religions locus of belief remains close to it's origins and some like Islam even carry forward the original language

Christianity has moved around. Most Christians in the missile east, then the medeteraniean coastal places, then Europe but spread out, then the Americas now most christians may be in the Global South and China

From Mark Knoll:
  • This past Sunday it is possible that more Christian believers attended church in China than in all of so-called “Christian Europe.” Yet in 1970 there were no legally functioning churches in all of China; only in 1971 did the communist regime allow for one Protestant and one Roman Catholic Church to hold public worship services, and this was mostly a concession to visiting Europeans and African students from Tanzania and Zambia.
  • This past Sunday more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Canada and Episcopalians in the United States combined—and the number of Anglicans in church in Nigeria was several times the number in those other African countries.
  • This past Sunday more Presbyterians were at church in Ghana than in Scotland, and more were in congregations of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa than in the United States.
  • This past Sunday the churches with the largest attendance in England and France had mostly black congregations. About half of the churchgoers in London were African or African-Caribbean. Today, the largest Christian congregation in Europe is in Kiev, and it is pastored by a Nigerian of Pentecostal background.
  • This past week in Great Britain, at least fifteen thousand Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelizing the locals. Most of these missionaries are from Africa and Asia.
see A Snapshot of the Global Church: Mark Noll on What This Past Sunday Looked Like

It remains the cultural designation of the NT compiled, edited and redacted by Romans and Greeks is distinctly European regardless of which culture the believer is from or lives in.
 

whirlingmerc

Well-Known Member
It remains the cultural designation of the NT compiled, edited and redacted by Romans and Greeks is distinctly European regardless of which culture the believer is from or lives in.

The Bible is mostly Jewish... from the Jews for the world.
The gospels may be looked at as Matthew (mostly toward Jews), Mark (mostly toward Romans) Luke (Mostly toward Greeks) and John ( mostly toward the world)
You can tell they mostly dress difference groups as the coinage and ways of reckoning time are more fitting of those different groups.

The book of Hebrews is more Jewish facing.
The book of Romans is more Romans facing (is that a surprise)
The books to greeks are more Greek
 

Firemorphic

Activist Membrane
And by "I," I mean those who are inquiring about a particular religion among the Abrahamic umbrella. Realizing that all three faiths including their sub sects all relate to the origin of the people in a particular region of the world, where do I the observer belong considering the doctrinal traditions tends to favor the people of those regions? Some Judeo-Christian traditions say the cradle of civilization began in Ur (although scholars have differing criteria for what they determine to be a civilization). Some say the language of "heaven" is Arabic (some even said Hebrew), more importantly all things are related to the people that existed in that time in those specific regions. With that being said, how does a skeptic approach a supposed universal faith if the faith itself is culturally unrelatable to the individual him/herself?

Bro, start from the point of not trying to label yourself. You know what you believe, explore the things that are deepest to your heart. When it comes to the Abrahamic tradition, some people hover between or around them and other's reject it entirely. But not forcing a label on yourself until you come around is probably the most proactive. There is a wide range of religious traditions, as with philosophical schools of thought.
I don't limit my own spiritual explorations to merely the religion I firmly attest to, I keep my perspective as wide as I can. Language itself is agreeably a polarizing thing to some degree, I do empathize with you. Language and cultural formalities (in their seeming contextual distance) are something I can see being a stumbling block for some people which can radically change in a persons perception with familiarity. However truth, the most universal aspects within any given religion aren't bound to culture or language, but more experience and knowledge.
 
Top