In the Thursday Bible Class at St. Clement's Church here in El Paso, we've been reading one of the Books in the Old Testament. One of the pet peeves I have is to approach the Old Testament Scriptures as if we Christians were Jews--I mean devout Jews. We know that the Jewish priests of Jesus' time did the most to persecute him. They objected to His attempts to instruct the priests at the temple in His interpretation of the Jewish scriptures at His age of 12. They scolded Him for failing to observe the rules and regulations that guided the believers of His day; and they regarded His contention that there are only 2 rules basic to religion: love God and love your neighbor as yourself! Outrageous!
And, to be sure, these clerics must have rejoiced that they rid Him on the cross at Calvary.
It is with this backdrop of their treatment of our Lord that I refrain from regarding the origins of our Lord's ministry stemming from Judaism as something sacred to Christianity. Indeed, Paul had to disassociate himself from the Church of Jerusalem's tendencies to insist that Christians become "good" Jews first!
My own approach to the Old Testament writings is to see them in anticipation to the divine revelation of the New Testament, i.e., the New Covenant, where Jesus declares He leaves us with God's Comforter, the Holy Spirit. For God as the Holy Spirit attests to God's forgiveness of our shortcomings and through His Absolution imbues us with the power of God the Father, the Creator, to go forth in newness of life and determination to do what He has planned for us to do.
Let us never forget nor gloss over the fact of the hell Jesus endured lo those year of His Ministry at the hands of His religious priestly tormentors that wanted Him dead! Nevertheless, Jesus forgave them.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
CD: Christianity's Religious Progress over Judaism and Islam
Sometimes, religious clerics balk at thinking that in religion, there's progress in religious belief and practice. Yet, no one today believes in the advocacy of throwing human beings as sacrifices off mountain-tops; and few parishioners today practice the burning of women at the stake. Then too, the concept of religious progress can account for the popularity among Christian believers in the efficacy of the mass or Eucharistic service as the mode to worship God.
It is in the spirit that the concept of religious progress can account for how current practices and beliefs in Christianity differ from those in either Judaism or Islam, which are, admittedly, related religions.
World Religions based on nationalism, i.e., believers belonging to a political entity they espouse
I place Judaism and Islam closer together in belief structure because both take a believer's belonging to a nation or a political entity seriously. In Judaism initially, Yahweh God was the invisible "king" of the Israelites. Through its founding leader of Yahweh worship, Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt into God's promised land--a land flowing of milk and honey. Then prophets after Moses' leadership, became conduits of a dialogue with His people, the Jews. With the coming of the prophet Samuel, kings were crowned as the kingdom became divided into two, Israel and Judea. Nevertheless, the original covenant between Yahweh and the Jewish people (embodied in the Ten Commandments given to Moses) was maintained to proclaim the Jews as the people of Yahweh-God. That tradition continues to this very day through the variants of Judaism, e.g., Orthodox; Conservative and Reformed.
It is interesting to note that although Muhammad, knew of Jesus and the Christian faith, he leaned toward the structure of Judaism for understanding the ways of God, whom he called Allah. He himself became a warlord, conquering the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. God revealed Himself in revelations and direct encounters; and Muhammad became a conduit by which the Koran, the Holy Scriptures, was to be written down, even memorized.
As in Judaism, in Islam, God's kingdom is identified with temporal nation(s) of a time and a place; and religious believers are known as those who cherish a divine Scriptures--in Islam, the Koran and in Judaism, the Old Testament that incorporates the Pentateuch supposedly stemming from the time of Moses. Traditionally, the political entity in Islam was the Caliphate and its head was a Caliph. But in modern times, the several Muslim nations simply announce their allegiance to Islam and retain an independent political structure from the Islamic.
The "Advance in religion" made by Christianity: personal relation to God, The Creator
The Old Testament Book of Genesis recounts how God, The Creator, made and sustains the universe.
It takes the entire New Testament to explain how God, through the works of His Son Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit upon which we Christians rely to accomplish God's plan for our lives. For he wants us to lead a happy life in His care henceforth.
It is the essence of Christianity that we can call upon the Creator of the Universe to provide us the power sufficiently adequate to sustain us through the Holy Spirit's ever-constant infusion into our being. Central to this understanding, we must all call upon the name of the Lord. The service said daily is the Mass or Eucharist in which we declare our shortcomings and inadequacies as descendants of Adam and Eve to a life of sin, pursuing worldly goods and material "things," forsaking our spiritual, fundamental nature. Nevertheless, Paul, in his epistles, urges us to prefer to do and say those things that seek the good for our fellow human beings as well as ourselves--to give up our tendencies toward selfishness and a debased yielding for self-gratification at the expense of doing things that benefit the community of believers to which we have become enjoined into the Kingdom of God.
The latter notion--the kingdom of God--is not an earthly political reality but a spiritual communion shared among those who have come to know and believe in Jesus as our personal guide to bring about a happy state in ourselves (as prayerful members in the mystical realm of religious practitioners) and a dedication to seeking peace in our world of brothers and sisters.
Rather than abiding by a host of rules and regulations, Christians ask God to provide us the strength to live up to our capacities to become a unique ideal of God's handiwork in the world. We seek His guidance to come know ourselves as creatures molded by God Himself to live for a time and place for His and our neighbors' and our own self-delight. For it is with His image and His nature He has sent us into the world insitu.
It is in the spirit that the concept of religious progress can account for how current practices and beliefs in Christianity differ from those in either Judaism or Islam, which are, admittedly, related religions.
World Religions based on nationalism, i.e., believers belonging to a political entity they espouse
I place Judaism and Islam closer together in belief structure because both take a believer's belonging to a nation or a political entity seriously. In Judaism initially, Yahweh God was the invisible "king" of the Israelites. Through its founding leader of Yahweh worship, Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt into God's promised land--a land flowing of milk and honey. Then prophets after Moses' leadership, became conduits of a dialogue with His people, the Jews. With the coming of the prophet Samuel, kings were crowned as the kingdom became divided into two, Israel and Judea. Nevertheless, the original covenant between Yahweh and the Jewish people (embodied in the Ten Commandments given to Moses) was maintained to proclaim the Jews as the people of Yahweh-God. That tradition continues to this very day through the variants of Judaism, e.g., Orthodox; Conservative and Reformed.
It is interesting to note that although Muhammad, knew of Jesus and the Christian faith, he leaned toward the structure of Judaism for understanding the ways of God, whom he called Allah. He himself became a warlord, conquering the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. God revealed Himself in revelations and direct encounters; and Muhammad became a conduit by which the Koran, the Holy Scriptures, was to be written down, even memorized.
As in Judaism, in Islam, God's kingdom is identified with temporal nation(s) of a time and a place; and religious believers are known as those who cherish a divine Scriptures--in Islam, the Koran and in Judaism, the Old Testament that incorporates the Pentateuch supposedly stemming from the time of Moses. Traditionally, the political entity in Islam was the Caliphate and its head was a Caliph. But in modern times, the several Muslim nations simply announce their allegiance to Islam and retain an independent political structure from the Islamic.
The "Advance in religion" made by Christianity: personal relation to God, The Creator
The Old Testament Book of Genesis recounts how God, The Creator, made and sustains the universe.
It takes the entire New Testament to explain how God, through the works of His Son Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit upon which we Christians rely to accomplish God's plan for our lives. For he wants us to lead a happy life in His care henceforth.
It is the essence of Christianity that we can call upon the Creator of the Universe to provide us the power sufficiently adequate to sustain us through the Holy Spirit's ever-constant infusion into our being. Central to this understanding, we must all call upon the name of the Lord. The service said daily is the Mass or Eucharist in which we declare our shortcomings and inadequacies as descendants of Adam and Eve to a life of sin, pursuing worldly goods and material "things," forsaking our spiritual, fundamental nature. Nevertheless, Paul, in his epistles, urges us to prefer to do and say those things that seek the good for our fellow human beings as well as ourselves--to give up our tendencies toward selfishness and a debased yielding for self-gratification at the expense of doing things that benefit the community of believers to which we have become enjoined into the Kingdom of God.
The latter notion--the kingdom of God--is not an earthly political reality but a spiritual communion shared among those who have come to know and believe in Jesus as our personal guide to bring about a happy state in ourselves (as prayerful members in the mystical realm of religious practitioners) and a dedication to seeking peace in our world of brothers and sisters.
Rather than abiding by a host of rules and regulations, Christians ask God to provide us the strength to live up to our capacities to become a unique ideal of God's handiwork in the world. We seek His guidance to come know ourselves as creatures molded by God Himself to live for a time and place for His and our neighbors' and our own self-delight. For it is with His image and His nature He has sent us into the world insitu.
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