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Originally Posted by wilbjammin
Well, tell me what you think about the large bloc of people in the United States who voted for Bush because they felt he was helping bring rapture to the world. Has the "life story" of the Bible been perverted by the uneducated and misguided? Or is this rush to the end by so many a representation of something else?
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this i suppose is also addressed to livia.
Yes, i do think that Christianity has gotten hijacked. American Christianity owes an unfortunate debt to Calvin, who's theology began with grace but ended with injustice. now, the dispensationalist millenarians (left behind, etc...) that are being so loud now... They gravely misread the text, and that pun is intended. They are using one verse to support the theology of the rapture. One. It's in thessalonians. Go find it yourself...it's a short book, but i'll wager that you won't see it very easily. Neither should we. It is one verse in a book with a larger message. That message is not rapture. It is about how to wait for life in a world of death. Most of the folks who claim to be reading their bibles the best, are making some very questionable interpretive choices. Some of them are curious choices, some are down right dangerous.
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God created man in God's image; in the divine image God created them; male and female God created them.
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Theology that disrespects the human, disrespects the creator. There are strains of Christianity, and Hebrew(later Jewish) theology for that matter, that stress the dignity of the human being. There are those that do not. I firmly believe it is not an act of disobediance to refuse the latter in place of the former.
I keep them both in my Bible, lest i forget what can become of our images of God. They can be hardened in to idols, distorted in to monsters, used as weapons to repress and to kill. It is frightening to know such things have been done in the name of Christ, but i would never wish to forget and risk repeating such sins.