Commandments?

[David Horn]

(08-29-2018, 11:47 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-29-2018, 10:17 AM)David Horn Wrote: Your list comports with traditional religious belief and practice as we've understood it for a long time.  Does it comport with more modern forms -- evangelicalism for instance?  For evangelicals, there is only Jesus, and failure to believe is tantamount to breaking all 10 commandments.  On the other hand, believing and calling on him to be your personal savior is almost a get-out-of-jail-free card.  This also makes Jesus the center of a personality cult, with non-believers being the sad and misinformed (good interpretation) or the evil enemy (the less generous alternative), and overflows into our political and social life in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Something to consider.

Hmm, yes,  That would be the equivalent of believing in the One Commandment, to love Jesus completely.  The forgiving of all else renders the other commandments and their derivatives as irrelevant.  But if one lives that way, does one truly love Jesus as one rejects though action his core beliefs?

I see the above and the ideal that all evangelicals hold that world view as vile stereotype.  Most evangelicals are more complex than that.

But I am a devout agnostic, and should not say a lot about religious world views.  A lot of the devoutly religious make good neighbors, but the religious can be the victim of stereotyping too.

I don't think that all evangelicals hold these black-and-white views, but many do.  At least one a day has a Letter to the Editor in our local paper with some variation on the theme I noted.  It's not remarkably different from the views of some Roman Catholics that a trip to confession resets the clock.  

Religion as an opiate of the people (Karl Marx, of course) is not as far fetched as it seems.