The NT is very loose documentation of the life of Christ coupled with a scattered early church history (that identifies as many goofs as successes) and a few pointed letters that dance around moral and operational issues. The honest student must conclude that either it’s all a sham, or church practice and most doctrine was just not important enough to preserve in the holy writ.

There’s no description of worship practices (only motivation and focus). There’s only cursory mention of leadership, and that appears to be comments on the traditional or opportunistic. There’s no training guide for soul winning, meditation points for soul development or FAQ for problem situations. With such a lack of explanation, you’d be drawn to assume that Christianity was merely a moral reformation of Judaistic practice - except for Paul’s nasty habit of telling his Gentile cohorts to ignore the people pushing that belief system on them.

I think if you’re a traditional CoC patternist and continue your studies you’re going to come to the conclusion that either Christianity is a sham, or you’re dead wrong about things. The only alternative is to admit that God is a lot more inclusive than we’ve traditionally pictured him to be and is honestly focused on our hearts and not our denominating.

The fact of the matter is that we, as Christians, should be more interested in fighting the devil than each other.

Maybe it was due to a glare on my contact lens, but I read your last line as “But it does demand a bit of HUMANITY. Don’t you think?” Rather than “…humility…”

That small error really started me thinking about how appropriate that word would be (though humility also works quite well).

I taught the Bible in Italy for a few years, and I was often very humbled by the fact I was asking people to do something I never had to do: to turn their backs on their families, history, and tradition in the name of Jesus Christ. In fact, that feeling was almost so strong at times that I could have been immobolized without conscious effort to let God work out the details for them.

The HUMANITY involved is that we need to realize, beyond spiritual truth, there is a physical truth that we all share this planet and must treat each other with decency and respect. It shouldn’t change our message, but it definately changes how we choose to present it.

Is that what the Church of Christ is?

So if the born-into-Christianity Christian is “right” and the Morman born-into-a-Morman family is “right” and the Hindu born-into-Hinduism is “right”…then can they all be right? Would that mean that the atheist born-into-atheism is “right?”

I know most of the readers of this are thinking at this point, “well of course, not. CofC is ‘right.’” I mean as Mike mentioned…there is that “exclusivistic version of some churches.” But as I suggested earlier, this comment is for the “open-minded” readers; the ones willing to imagine themselves in the others positions. Imagine yourself as the “Hindu born-into-Hinduism” or, if you are Hindu, the Morman “born into-a-Morman family.” In those cases, it’s just as easy to say you are “right” and CofC is not “right.”

I don’t know, but the gist of this just makes me think this is some religious form of ethnocentrism. Is there a term for that that I’m just ignorant of? Religocentrism works for me!

I think it is in the college years that one can not help but question their religion and their up-bringing. Whether one comes from Christianity or an Islamic background, it is during the college years that one is faced with the questions of “who am I?” and “what is my purpose?” And in answering those questions and searching for an identity, questioning one’s faith is almost a MUST.

I find it interesting to see how many people, college-aged specifically, actually do “throw up [their] hands in complete agnosticism” during this identity-crisis when asking themselves questions such as “Was I really that lucky . . . to be born into the one small little group that happened to nail interpretation?”

So I don’t know. I don’t know which religion is “right.” Maybe the uncertainty does make me “throw up my hands in agnosticism”…but having said that I’ll end with this thought…

A friend once said to me, “how can you (or anyone for that matter) say there is no God, and be ‘right,’ when there have been for years millions of God-believers around the world?” To that I would have to respond with this, “Look at all the people that thought the world was flat for many years versus the people that thought it was round. Just because one group outrageously out-numbers another doesn’t mean they are “right.’”

P.S. Mike, for someone who wrote “I’ve been braindead recently” only 24 hours earlier you, sure went above and beyond the “deep-thought-provoking blog” today! Thanks for the GREAT discussion piece!

Thankful for you Mike and other believers who have the right spirit.

In a sense, I’m a rookie, but I’m going through a similar experience…not sure what to tell you…Don and Mike’s advice sounds like the right thing…if we can only DO it. If you want to, you can find my e-mail through my blog…

And about Joseph Smith’s tablets, here’s a better one: from about 95-1812 A.D., there’s no Christian history.