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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Answers for Larry W.
Message-ID: <1604@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Jan-84 02:15:28 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1604
Posted: Mon Jan  2 02:15:28 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Jan-84 06:33:28 EST
References: <719@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
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Did you know that this business of viewing the Trinity as water/ice/steam is
an explicit heresy called modalism? I can post more details if you are
interested... It was punishable by excommunication and death as well...

I am taking a whole battery of Christian Theology courses at university
right now. The more I study  the more I see that most of the Christians
I know take whatever they like about Christianity and define this to be
Christianity. This is conveninet if you want to forget about the things
you don't like about Christianity. As classes go on I see more and more
shocked faces as the Christians who are also taking this courses find that
their cherished beliefs are actually heresies. Some of these people are
seriously reexamining their faith. Some are claiming that the professor is
lying, though he keeps producing the original references and photocopies of
documents which does wonders for laying this one to rest. The Protestants
are often caught saying that these are all Catholic problems which will get
cleared up by the Reformation. (this is the opinion of my tutor, by the
way).

I came to a certain set of conclusions a long time ago, but they are really
being driven home now. The first is that religion is not good for everybody.
This of course is a real problem for those who believe that there is only
one life time and that one will be judged by one's "faith", but the alternative
is to let the ignorant use their religion to do horrible things which is, in
my opinion, far worse.

What I cannot understand is why people would prefer to not view the horrible
aspects of their religion and keep a 'good-bits' verison which they consider
the real religion as opposed to rejecting the whole thing outright. 

There are other things which I find hard to understand. For instance, of the
30 people that started the tutorial with me (the tutorial is down to 10
people now) only 5 of us had actually read the Gospel of Mark. Of the 5,
there is pagan me and a Jewish theology student, and 3 Christians. I wonder
what the other 25 actually do as Christians? From what I have observed, they
do not know a single thing about Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Islam
of Confucianism, which puts them out of tough with a great deal of religious
thought. I cannot see that they know much about Christianity -- for instance
they could not tell the difference between the Greek Orthadox Church and
the Roman Catholic Church, which is a pretty fundamental split. 

However, they were perfectly willing to tell the Jewish Theology Student why
he ought to be a Christian. Eventually, he gave up and dropped the course.
This struck me as a very good version of "the grass is greener on MY side
of the fence". With 2 notable exceptions (my tutor was NOT one of them)
none of these people knew very much about Judaism. They said things that
*I* knew were wrong, and I am not exactly an expert...

Now the firghtening thing is that these people are the people who are
interested enough in their religion to take a university course in it
(or perhaps they thought it would be an easy credit?). Now what this
says about the people who consider themselves good Christians who didn't
think that it was worth the effort is rather frightening to consider.
Misinformation spreads. My tutor is getting his Masters degree in 
Christianity and is training to get his own Church. I had to explain to
him that the Temple in Jerusalem was not just another synagogue....

I am wondering why the various Christian Churches put up with and encourage
these uneducated sort of Christians? I should theink that they would be the
ones that would give the religion a bad name and so should be weeded out, but
this does not seem to be happening. Indeed, Christians seem to, if anything,
be becoming more lenient in outlook and producing the lowest-common denominator
type religion. The people taking this course claim that their Churches do
not give any instruction beyond the  sort they give children, which will not
help the problem.

I get the impression that it is the Christian attitude that it is better that
they be lousy Christians than not-Christians. Of course, this is not the
first think which comes to mind when I question the wisdom of Christianity
but I do find it extremely strange. Is there any reason why bad Christians
are better than non-Christians that i have missed? I can't find any. In fact,
I would think that the non-Christians would be better off under certain
versions of Christianity, since Limbo, while not considered a great place,
is not Hell.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura