Don't you love Jesus?

[Sasq]

Why don't you focus on your ritual slaughter in 21st century and not discuss religions you know jack shit about?

Enough Utwig, I am well aware of your views that the Jooz are respoinsible for pretty much every damn thing that has gone wrong for the last 6000 years.

I recomend getting a life instead.

To that end, you are now restricted from the lounge and Temp, until I see fit to allow you back in.

[schmosef]

Jesus I can understand. He's supposed to be an extension of God. So it's ok to pray to him. But what's up with the Saints? People praying to Saint Jude? Or Saint Patrick? Or Saint Nicholas? PUH-LEEZE.

Last time I was in Jerusalem I asked a friend of mine, who is an archaeologist and co-owner of a tour guide company in Israel about the whole praying to Saints thing. He said that officially, they are not praying to the Saints, they are asking the Saints to intercede with God on their behalf. He said that unofficially, Saints were a way for Christianity to absorb the worship of local Gods into the religion so as to make Christianity less of a shock to the system for someone converting from a pagan religion. He told me that in practice, many devout Christians don't know that they shouldn't be praying to the Saints themselves.

I began writing out a description of an older Catholic woman I know who completely misunderstands the tenants of her religion but it started to come across as an attack against her so I deleted it. Suffice it to say that we probably all know people who profess to be good Christians but are actually in severe violation of commandments like "love thy neighbour" and "don’t give false testimony", etc.

To be sure, I know lots of Jews who are constantly breaking the rules, but we don't have a get out of jail free card.

A Priest once told me that for Christians, wanting to do good was most important, while for Jews, actually doing good was what counted. He said that no matter who you are, we're all complete failures compared to Jesus and that God's given us the key to salvation by accepting him as our "L&S". For Jews, we don't have a guide book that tells us how much "good" is enough to guarantee salvation and come to think of it, I guess I would say that Judaism is less preoccupied with the next life than Christianity.

[Jammrock]

The problem with depicting most people from 2000 years ago is that the closest we have to a picture are artists representations of a few figureheads. And since the portrait wasn't mastered for many many many centuries to come, cannot be deemed highly accurate (color fades and all you know, and finding the perfect hugh is not easy). And since that time The Hebrew culture has spread and mixed with so many different cultures that it would impossible to say for sure what Jesus looked liked based off the current Hebrew people ... so the art would give us the best general idea.

Not that I believe Jesus had fair skin and blue eyes. Don't really care what he looked like, that's not supposed to be the important part.

A Priest once told me that for Christians, wanting to do good was most important, while for Jews, actually doing good was what counted. He said that no matter who you are, we're all complete failures compared to Jesus and that God's given us the key to salvation by accepting him as our "L&S". For Jews, we don't have a guide book that tells us how much "good" is enough to guarantee salvation and come to think of it, I guess I would say that Judaism is less preoccupied with the next life than Christianity.

Like most things in Christianity, that statement is heavily debated between different ... uh ... practices I guess would be a good way to call it. It's the "works vs. grace" arguement. Some believe that as long as you accept Jesus as your "L&S" you are saved by his grace, while others believe that you can only be saved by his grace if your actions are befitting a follower of Christ and that simply accepting Him isn't enough.

It's a huge logical circle that is highly annoying and impossible to debate with any certain outcome.

... wait ... that's most things ... (not refering to just religion )

Jammrock

[schmosef]

And this leads me back to my first question about graven images.

Because we'll never know what Jesus looked like, aren't these all defacto false idols?

If not, what kind of depiction would be considered graven or false? I understand that a downright insulting image, say, Jesus as a snake, is wrong. But aren't these all wrong too?

[Jessterw]

It's not about what he looked like, as they are representations of Jesus. A false idol would be the golden calf, as a graven image is that of anything in heaven or earth that is not God (or by extention, Jesus). At least this is one argument. As no divinity is bestowed up the representations of Christ or the Saints, they are not considered idols; they are not being worshipped, but rather, in the case of Jesus, what they stand for is.

Here's a decent summary: http://users.binary.net/polycarp/graven.html (Note that it has a Catholic bias).

[Jon P. Inghram]

My question is, how do body thetans factor into all this?

[Jessterw]

Hrm, you'd have to ask Tom Cruise about that

[schmosef]

Ok, I get what you're saying. You're saying that representations of Jesus and the Saints are ok because it's understood that they are not God and not worthy of worship.

I guess what was confusing me was that in Judaism that explanation wouldn't fly.

Even though we know that say, some statue of Moses isn't worthy of being worshiped that statue would still be considered a graven image because some person, some time in the future, could get confused and start worshipping it. In fact, I've never seen a Jewish depiction of Moses at all.

It's really only recently that Jewish art allowed depictions of people and animals. And unless the group happens to be a messianic sect (or maybe a very open minded reform sect), we don't have pictures depictions of people or animals in our synagogues, etc. That is, we separate our "images" from our places of worship.

[schmosef]

My question is, how do body thetans factor into all this?

roflmao!

I remember seeing John Travolta and his unfortunately hot wife get interviewed a few years ago and they were eventually asked about Scientology. They said that Scientology worked in parallel with religion and that they knew of many Jewish Scientologists and Christian Scientologists.

I just don't understand how the two concepts are compatible.

[Jessterw]

Some Christian sects follow those beliefs as well, others only have issues with the ones that are not represenations of Christ.

I honestly don't think God cares about such things, but then I was kicked out of Sunday school for questioning such things

[Nowhere]

Gurm, schmosef, it's very simple.

About all the things you wonder, higher representatives have good answer ("good" - remembering that this is faith we're talking about).
However, most people don't. They even don't know/realise about such dillemas. Simply because they don't believe in God really, they believe in Catholic Church...

(note: might be different in some other places, I'm discussing situation here - however Poland is, I think, second to Vatican only (in Europe) when it comes to percentage of people who claim to be Christians...so it shows something)

[schmosef]

Some Christian sects follow those beliefs as well, others only have issues with the ones that are not represenations of Christ.

I honestly don't think God cares about such things, but then I was kicked out of Sunday school for questioning such things

Well as far as I'm concerned we'll never know what God really does or does not care about... I'm a big time proponent of the idea that God is inherently unknowable.

For Judaism, the issue is relevant to the concept of ethical monotheism. One set of rules for all. It was very important in early Judaism to not allow parallel worship of other gods because of the inclusiveness of the rule set as applying to all.

They didn't want people to be able to claim divine re-interpretation/re-prioritizing of the rule set that would be inevitable if worship of other gods was permitted. Christianity being a good example of this.

Although I've seen it in the movies, I've never heard of someone getting kicked out of Jewish religious studies for asking questions. I've heard of people being advised to leave for not asking questions/showing an interest. I supposed that with certain small Jewish sects, you could get kicked out for questioning some hard and fast belief they have about Jewish law, etc. But that wouldn't happen in any of the major streams.

[Jon P. Inghram]

After digging around Wikipedia, I think panendeism is probably the closest to my current religious stance.

[Nowhere]

As far as I'm concerned we'll never know if God really does or does not exist. I'm a big (well, OK, not really ) proponent of the idea that existence of God is inherently unknowable.

[schmosef]

Gurm, schmosef, it's very simple.

About all the things you wonder, higher representatives have good answer ("good" - remembering that this is faith we're talking about).
However, most people don't. They even don't know/realise about such dillemas. Simply because they don't believe in God really, they believe in Catholic Church...

(note: might be different in some other places, I'm discussing situation here - however Poland is, I think, second to Vatican only (in Europe) when it comes to percentage of people who claim to be Christians...so it shows something)

That's a really good point Nowhere. Quite thought provoking.

When the Pope visited Toronto I didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

On TV they showed people in line to meet him and afterward they were almost always crying. I didn't understand why. Seemed sacrilegious to me.

I remember thinking how hypocritical it all was. The pilgrims left a holy mess behind and the Church didn't make much of an effort to clean up. Eventually they recruited volunteers to assist. Also, there were some local business that were ruined because one of the portable toilet subcontractors tied into the city's sewage system against regulation (overloading it and causing backups throughout the neighbourhood). From what I recall from the newspapers, the Church just said "not our fault, sue the contractor" and refused to assist those businesses.