Babylon 5 jumped the shark when the Vorlons went evil and humanity managed to defeat both the Vorlons and the Shadows. They spent all that time building up up to the great climax and then it was over so fast.
I know several former Jehovah's Witnesses. They all had to give up being JW because they started doubting the teachings of JW. Now most of them are "normal" Christians. They are not fanatical but they are nice people.
As far as being perfect is concerned, the fruits of the spirit as for instance mentioned by Paul are all concerned with social interaction somehow. Like love, joy, patience, forgiveness, etc. How do you show these fruits without interacting with other people? But you cannot be perfect when you are interacting with other people. You can only be without sin, if you are a recluse.
If you read Matt. 25 you will see that you can go to Heaven just for giving a drink of water to a thirsty man, and you can go to Hell for not doing it.
I know people who have lived in Russia and Eastern Europe under Communism and I must really question your idea about what it was like. For an idea to be good, it also has to be workable in real life.
The theory of Islam, the Koran, political power distributed via Imams and religious leaders is very good, in some ways better than christianity.
What proof do you have of this? Islam basically has a lot of rules and some draconian punishments for those who transgress them. That's hardly original. In fact every dictatorship is run that way. They make the trains run on time that way, and everyone is afraid to speak their mind, so everyone around you is always praising the government, but it is not a place you'd want to live, if you know what's good for you. Just because you claim that the rules are from God doesn't make it work better. Theocracy has been tried and it doesn't work - just like Communism. You are saying that the basic idea is OK, the implimentation is just wrong. That's what Communists in the West also said about Stalin, then Mao, then Pol Pot etc. Just try and try again, untill you get it right - while the corpses keep pilling up...
disciple literally means "disciplined one" or "follower of a discipline or teaching"
Actually the Greek "mathetes" simply means student or apprentice.
Hence, it could be said that living a Christlike life is a condition of being a Christian, by definition.
Where in the Bible does it say that you have to live a Christlike life (good luck with that!) in order to be a real Christian? If that's a condition then there are hardly any Christians in the world, except maybe for a few saints.
What Jesus said to Levi was simply: "Follow me". Aren't you reading too much into this?
Fermantation was the way to preserve beverages when you didn't have refrigerators. I suppose if you left grape juice standing around in jars for a few months it would automatically turn into wine anyway. Thus the wine that Jesus gave to his disciples (and ordered them to drink) must have been alcoholic. Also they probably ate lamb.
If people reject eating meat and drinking alcohol on the basis of economy and health, than it's ok, but if they do it on the basis of the Bible, they are creating confusing with regards to the gospel. They are putting their own strict morals over the Bible.
If I understand correctly, socialism is much like the Norwegian system. People view themselves as members of a community, and they make policy accordingly. And from what I understand, it seems to be reasonably effective. If any.no folks want to comment on this, I'd enjoy reading their posts.
The scandinavian wellfare state isn't purely a socialdemocratic invention, in fact I think it has deep roots in the culture and government for hundreds of years. Read f.ex. Kierkegaard's critique of the danish state church. His main critique was that it had betrayed christianity by taking away the individual's decision and turned salvation into a government task. Of course, just like your libertarians, Kierkegaard was a rather paranoid and over the top.
Socialism is about solidarity (that's what a socialist told me), not about strong government or dictatorship or anything like that, in fact the socialists that I know tend to be rather antiestablishment and antiauthoritarian. Socialism means that the individual isn't allowed to race ahead and not have to worry about those who get left behind.
I remember once in gymclass, we we're going to play basketball and immediately we wanted to make 2 teams they way we usually did, by having 2 guys get up and start picking all the best players and the worst player ended up on the team that was one short (that was usually me, except when we had sports with another class where they had a retard, sometimes I got picked before him). When our socialist teachers saw it, they became completely incensed and wanted us to sit down in a circle and talk about it. It really bothered them that we divided ourselves up after ability instead of being all equal members of one group. I hated sports and always just wanted to get it over with, so it annoyed me that they made such a big deal out of it, but come to think of it, they actually saved me from one of my weekly humiliations so I guess socialism isn't all bad.
I don't know where you americans get all your ideas about Europeans and socialism from, but you're supposed to be the smart people in your country, the USA is in worse shape than I thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Babylon 5 jumped the shark when the Vorlons went evil and humanity managed to defeat both the Vorlons and the Shadows. They spent all that time building up up to the great climax and then it was over so fast.
As far as being perfect is concerned, the fruits of the spirit as for instance mentioned by Paul are all concerned with social interaction somehow. Like love, joy, patience, forgiveness, etc. How do you show these fruits without interacting with other people? But you cannot be perfect when you are interacting with other people. You can only be without sin, if you are a recluse.
If you read Matt. 25 you will see that you can go to Heaven just for giving a drink of water to a thirsty man, and you can go to Hell for not doing it.
I know people who have lived in Russia and Eastern Europe under Communism and I must really question your idea about what it was like. For an idea to be good, it also has to be workable in real life.
What proof do you have of this? Islam basically has a lot of rules and some draconian punishments for those who transgress them. That's hardly original. In fact every dictatorship is run that way. They make the trains run on time that way, and everyone is afraid to speak their mind, so everyone around you is always praising the government, but it is not a place you'd want to live, if you know what's good for you. Just because you claim that the rules are from God doesn't make it work better. Theocracy has been tried and it doesn't work - just like Communism. You are saying that the basic idea is OK, the implimentation is just wrong. That's what Communists in the West also said about Stalin, then Mao, then Pol Pot etc. Just try and try again, untill you get it right - while the corpses keep pilling up...
Actually the Greek "mathetes" simply means student or apprentice.
Hence, it could be said that living a Christlike life is a condition of being a Christian, by definition.
Where in the Bible does it say that you have to live a Christlike life (good luck with that!) in order to be a real Christian? If that's a condition then there are hardly any Christians in the world, except maybe for a few saints.
What Jesus said to Levi was simply: "Follow me". Aren't you reading too much into this?
What church do you belong to? ICoC?
Birger bl@dci.dk
Ulysses? Isn't that book pretty much unreadable?
If people reject eating meat and drinking alcohol on the basis of economy and health, than it's ok, but if they do it on the basis of the Bible, they are creating confusing with regards to the gospel. They are putting their own strict morals over the Bible.
The scandinavian wellfare state isn't purely a socialdemocratic invention, in fact I think it has deep roots in the culture and government for hundreds of years. Read f.ex. Kierkegaard's critique of the danish state church. His main critique was that it had betrayed christianity by taking away the individual's decision and turned salvation into a government task. Of course, just like your libertarians, Kierkegaard was a rather paranoid and over the top.
Socialism is about solidarity (that's what a socialist told me), not about strong government or dictatorship or anything like that, in fact the socialists that I know tend to be rather antiestablishment and antiauthoritarian. Socialism means that the individual isn't allowed to race ahead and not have to worry about those who get left behind.
I remember once in gymclass, we we're going to play basketball and immediately we wanted to make 2 teams they way we usually did, by having 2 guys get up and start picking all the best players and the worst player ended up on the team that was one short (that was usually me, except when we had sports with another class where they had a retard, sometimes I got picked before him). When our socialist teachers saw it, they became completely incensed and wanted us to sit down in a circle and talk about it. It really bothered them that we divided ourselves up after ability instead of being all equal members of one group. I hated sports and always just wanted to get it over with, so it annoyed me that they made such a big deal out of it, but come to think of it, they actually saved me from one of my weekly humiliations so I guess socialism isn't all bad.
I don't know where you americans get all your ideas about Europeans and socialism from, but you're supposed to be the smart people in your country, the USA is in worse shape than I thought.