The end goal of Christianity should be to love as God loves everyone, and to will for the salvation of all men, to have no enemies.
The end goal of Christianity should be to love as God loves everyone, and to will for the salvation of all men, to have no enemies.
Yet, Matthew 7:1 is judge not lest ye be judged.
It is hypocritical and goes against Christianity to do this.
[There is a famous story of a monk in Eastern orthodoxy… He was lazy, slovenly, slow to pray, even eating too much and complaining about conditions. He never advanced as a monk… Yet, when he was in the process of dying the angels gathered and one of the elders who was holy could see them coming to take him - they asked him, how is it so that angels would come directly here to bring you to heaven? He said,
“I am not sure, but I have worked very hard in my life to do one thing… To never judge anyone.”
There are other stories that reinforce the idea of non-judgment since it is at the core of Christian virtue of humility.
Obviously, some people are not doing this. I agree with you. We are bd at this. But I feel it is the case that doing this does absolutely go aginst Christian virtues.
If the followers of Christianity are going against “Christian virtues” then Christianity is clearly failing to promote Christian virtues. If your goal is to promote Christian virtues then promoting Christianity will hamper your efforts. Promoting Christianity works against your goals.
This has become something of a tautology, though - you are equating Christianity with the behavior of its followers, and saying that the promotion of the actual text and classical understanding of Christianity is not the real one… And so “Christianity is not real Christianity because Christianity is only the Christianity filtered through imperfect people.”
But here is another argument for you:
Christianity has proven to be a pioneering and tolerant religion because it ultimately gave birth to the movements that enshrine the political rights of people that have lifestyles that run counter to its norms.
I don’t understand this sentence.
You’re the one who said there are followers of Christianity who are not acting in accord with the Christian virtue of humility.
I am just insisting that the authentic Christianity is the one of the teachings, not the one of the people who fail to live up to them.
(I would also contend it is probably not as bas as you are saying. We will get into that in a minute.)
I think it’s acutally the case that Christians tended to be very tolerant of divergent lifestyles in comparison to other religions that wielded political power, like Islam, or even what we see from political Judaism today in Gaza.
Christianity trended toward the secularizing the government, and it also traditionally tolerated all manner of sexual vice. 17th century England and France were pretty wild places, so was late Renaissance Italy, and this is quite different from the excesses of the Confucianists in the Song Dynasty or the Buddhits in the late Tang or late Tong Shilla dynasties in the sense that Buddhism was a very low intensity religion throughout the far East and Mahayana Buddhism tended towards endorsing transparently false and unbuddhist doctirnes when it comes to Buddhist soteriology (or should I say 'Nirvanology? lol)
I don’t understand this sentence.
Nothing you’ve said here contradicts what I said. Promoting Christianity works against your goal of promoting Christian virtues.
So, there is some kind of disconnect here…
You are saying that Christianity actively opposes the virtues of Christianity, right. Would you like to expand on that so I stop confusing your position?
No. You’re saying that followers of Christianity do not display Christian virtues. I’m saying therefore Christianity is having a negative impact on the spread of Christian virtues and so if your goal is to promote Christian virtues then promoting Christianity is working against your goals.