What I understand about Christianity would probably surprise you, as well as my understanding of what religions actually are in general, but I don't think you actually care. I don't need to be a Christian to understand what Christianity is.
I doubt that you understand it all that well. Why? because you're taking one slice of it, lumping all the differences together into a facsimile of that slice, and saying that the whole thing isn't worth it. When you look at a religion -- not just Xy -- you'll see exactly what you want to see. Your statements aren't purely evidential; they're largely opinion.
Your opinion -- which is fine, except that your opinion doesn't speak for the collective reality.
What you don't understand is that I am perfectly aware of how "diverse" Christianity is, and the claims that it's somehow counter-cultural or up to some process of reinterpretation. I just disagree with them, and I think they're dishonest, for a wide variety of reasons. That's precisely what I'm critical of.
I'm sorry you disagree and that you think they're dishonest. I'm not going to waste time and bandwidth going into some kind of apologetic, because you're not going to buy it. Suffice to say that my initial summarization and judgment of your first post stands pat. It was a terrible post, and your subsequent posts have done nothing to defend it.
Unless it's a New Religious Movement, it's pretty likely that your religion is inherently tied to tradition and culture. Surely enough, if we look at Christianity, it is.
All religions are. What's your point? Being rooted in a cultural tradition is not to say that it can't and doesn't grow beyond that particular root.
you're going to have to give me a more substantive reason for why same-sex marriage is supported by scripture than the church fathers just not knowing any better given that Greco-Roman culture had gone quite a way towards normalizing homosexuality before the church fathers showed up.
I didn't say it was supported. I did, however, say that the Bible is not the be-all-end-all of the Faith. In fact, the Bible mentions nothing about homosexuality. If you are as "aware" of the Bible as you claim to be of the religion, you'd know that.
I think the defining trait of Christianity has never really been love.
Some people think the world is flat too. That doesn't make it so.
As a cultural movement, it's mostly been about xenophobia and church politics.
We're not talking about the "cultural movement," though. We're talking about the countercultural claims.
The Bible itself has its construction overseen by an Emperor, and would later be canonized through political movements.
See above concerning the Bible.
I do question, however, how one manages to divorce themselves so completely from what Christianity as a movement was composed to do and how it was originally interpreted and still call themselves Christian.
You seem to think that at some point, the religion was a tidy, uniform package. It never was. Apparently, not even the disciples could agree among themselves -- or with Jesus.
And I'm not saying they're being insincere, either
You said they were pretending. I'd call that "being insincere." You're either backpedaling, or you don't have a solid argument to begin with.
There is something wrong with that. It artificially inflates the numbers of Christianity while not bringing anything of uniquely Christian substance to the table.
What is unique about Xy has not yet been mentioned. But you will touch on it a little later.
Why call yourself Christian if that's all you're referring to? Why repurpose political propaganda to mean something completely different from what it was intended to mean by the ones who created and enforced it?
The religion is far more than just its political intrigue. And I thought we'd covered the whole "changing, transforming" thing. And by the way, I don't think Xy has departed all that much -- at least in some important ways -- from what it was "intended" to be.
Why would you believe that your savior, the supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful God, would incarnate just to give teachings that would mislead people into causing so much systemic oppression against you?
Remember I said that you'd mention it later? Here it is. I don't think you understand what I believe at all. Xy is largely a religion of myth, metaphor, allegory and theological construct to help us make meaning of our experiences. The Incarnation is not an ontological truth -- it's a metaphorical truth. But the truth is still truth. What Xy intends is to mend the "gap" we have mistakenly perceived between humanity and divinity. I find that it accomplishes that quite well, if one takes the time to truly understand the theology and the mythology.
Oh! And: I don't understand why you believe the church is systematically oppressing me? Why do you think that?
Why would you venerate a deity that knowingly (and presumably, if omnipotent, intentionally) became the icon of homosexual persecution for millenia? Where's the sense in that?
God hasn't become that. People have become that. Many people have made God into that. but that's not God as I find God. The Bible certainly doesn't paint God as "persecuting homosexuality" -- unless, of course, if you're reading it incorrectly.
It's been real, but you're simply too entrenched in your own bias to carry on a decent discussion with. Too difficult to fight through the inconsistencies to get to what's really there.
