Saturday, January 30, 2010

Lists of objectionable beliefs

Yet another post inspired by Glenn Peoples blog after he has a little rant about being judged a liberal by other evangelicals because some of his views might be considered outside the "conservative" box.  In the post he presents a list of beliefs/claims.

  1. The Bible is the word of God.
  2. We do not have immortal souls.
  3. Abortion is immoral.
  4. God raised Jesus from the dead.
  5. The liberal claims made about early Christianity by the likes of the Jesus seminar and Bart Ehrman are ridiculous.
  6. All people have a duty to obey God’s law.
  7. Inerrancy is a false view of Scripture.
  8. If God does not exist, then there are no moral facts.
  9. The state should not sanction same-sex marriage.
  10. There is no such thing as eternal torment in hell.
  11. The four Gospels are a reliable history of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
2, 7, and 10 are presumably the ones which alienate him from the mainstream of conservative evangelicalism, while the rest alienate him from mainstream liberal secularism.  It is an interesting list, I am sure it is meant to be representative rather than definitive and I certainly wouldn't cover the same list of issues if I was to write my list of reasons why I don't fit in well with the standard Christian fundamentalist/liberal secularist divide.  I am not going to make my own list but i will do my own version of his, just so Glenn doesn't feel too alone. :-)

  1. The Bible is the word of God. Amen
  2. We do not have immortal souls.  Of course not, i'm made of mud and God's breath!
  3. Abortion is immoral always tragic, usually unecessary and its frequency is evidence of our morally bankrupt society.
  4. God raised Jesus from the dead. Amen
  5. The liberal claims made about early Christianity by the likes of the Jesus seminar and Bart Ehrman are ridiculous. Huzzah!
  6. All people have a duty to obey God’s law. and all people fail to do so (except one)
  7. Inerrancy is a false meaningless view of Scripture.
  8. If God does not exist, then there are no moral facts morality is merely a social construction
  9. The secular state should not sanction same-sex marriage if the state believes homosexual relationships to be valid building blocks of society that it wants to encourage
  10. There is no such thing as eternal torment in hell.  of course not, what do you think "destruction" means! ;-)
  11. The four Gospels are a reliable history of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Amen
Now, I quite like the fact that in almost any group of people i can come up with some surprises and I hate being fitted into boxes so I celebrate the fact that even with such a short list I have probably given everyone reading that list pause for thought if not a little offence?

Let me know what you think :-)

1 comment:

  1. good post JonRob (and Glenn) :)

    see ya 'round Carey in a month :)

    ReplyDelete

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