Time For A Rant

I couldn't publish a whole series without having a rant...

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Someone said to me recently that you don't have to be a Christian to be a good person. Well, of course, I I totally agree. In fact, I get rather angry with fellow Christians when they assert that Muslims or Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, and even other Christians who belong to a different denomination from the one they belong to are all destined for eternal torment in the f in the fires of hell. I mean, come on. But on the night before he was put to death, Jesus' final message to his disciples was that his intention was that his followers should be recognized by the love they showed to one another. And their behavior in the immediate aftermath of his death shows that they interpreted that statement to include non-believers as well as themselves. It was what set them apart from other sects. It was what led to their early and spectacular success. But in many so-called Christian societies, that love has been replaced by a contemptuous self-righteousness which absolutely stinks. Well that puts the first part of the rant behind me, so I'm now on to the second. But by any standard, Jesus' message was out of the ordinary. And it also met with a lot of opposition. And that's how revolutionary visions are always met. Think of the suffragette movement. That was met by a lot of opposition. And it was the same, of course, with suggestions that slavery should be abolished. The level to which a new idea meets opposition is often a measure of how different it is from anything that's ever been around before. And that was certainly the case with the things Jesus had to say. He said things that required a whole new mindset just to take in how important they were. Jesus' message was not just outside the box. It seemed to reject the idea that a box existed in the first place. And when a Charles Darwin or an Albert Einstein comes along with ideas that challenge the whole way in which we see the world, we revere the ways in which we came to see the world so differently from our previous perceptions. We do not say things like well you can accept the way evolution works without ever knowing anything about Darwin. Well yes, you could, but why would you want to? Why would you not want to credit Darwin or Einstein or Hubble or anyone who makes a significant advance to our scientific understanding or someone who makes a significant advance to our understanding of spiritual development? And yet that seems to be a lot of what we're being encouraged to accept. As long as you're good, doesn't matter that you haven't the faintest idea that most of our best thoughts on morality can be traced back to something Jesus said. Best to keep that a secret Best to suggest that Jesus might never have existed. You ever get the feeling that something is being deliberately kept from you? One more example, and then rant two is over. Have you noticed how many tribute bands there are these days? Tribute bands to the Beatles, ABBA, Queen, Dire Straits, the Rolling Stones, I mean how many examples new once But notice the key word here tribute. None of these groups pretends they are the Beatles, or ABBA or Queen. None of them claims to be better than the bands they're emulating. None of them claims to be performing any numbers that didn't originate with the Beatles, or Abba or Queen. In fact, by paying tribute to them, they are giving honest credit to the original group to whom they are paying tribute. So next time you hear it said by some militant atheist that you can be good without being a Christian, remember he's probably just a Jesus tribute. Join me again next Friday.