Saturday 7 November 2009

5 deeply de-Christian doctrines

Interesting meme doing the rounds at the moment and here's my response:
List 5 doctrines that are taught within the Christian church that you believe to be deeply de-Christian.
  1. God calls us to be perfect. God calls us to be holy, which is not the same thing and faithfulness is an expression of our desire to be the people God longs for us to be. (To clarify: I am not contradicting the teaching of Jesus as I believe his call to 'be perfect' is a call to holiness not to pefection as understood by the Greek philosophers.)
  2. Jesus is a good bloke and a good moral example to follow. Jesus is but he is much more than that.
  3. Evangelism and social justice are two sides of the same coin. This suggests you can choose heads or tails; both are non-negotiables of the Christian faith.
  4. The immutability and impassibility of God. The more I read the Bible the more I am convinced that this doctrine owes more to Greek philosophy than the God revealed in the scriptures and ultimately in Jesus. If God is immutable and impassable what was the cross all about?
  5. That there is a hierarchy of sin and sex is near the top. If there is a hierarchy then I’m pretty sure it’s not the one we suggest by our teaching and practice. That is not to say that sex does not matter, but while we are obsessed with it millions of children are dying for want of clean water.
I tag Paul Trathen, Jonathan Evens, Sam Norton, Tim Goodbody and Peter Banks.

2 comments:

Tim Goodbody said...

thanks for the tag. i will get roudn to it in a bit
(kind of swamped right now)

Fr Paul Trathen, Vicar said...

Ah, I've posted this evening!

Bit of a rant, I feel!?!...