http://www.cafepress.com/inclusiveecusa
is where you can get this message on a variety of shirts, mugs, and even tote bags. Perhaps you could buy one for your bishop. Or even your favorite liberal.
Posted on 10/04/2005 4:50:39 PM PDT by sionnsar
I was recently asked a question, by someone who had read this blog, about the previous post, the one with the Episcopal Church T-shirt, He asked, "What did you mean by posting that?"
Primarily, black humour, I suppose. A friend shared the link to the site with me and I thought it was humourous in a dark and ironic sense, so I posted it here. But I have been thinking about it some more.
I have recently been rereading G. K. Chesterton's, The Everlasting Man. In it he describes Christianity as refusing to be but one religion among many.
"Yet exactly such a pantheon had been set up two thousand years before by the shores of the Mediterranean; and Christians were invited to set up the image of Jesus side by side with the image of Jupiter, of Mithras, of Osiris, of Atys, and of Ammon. It was the refusal of the Christians that was the turning-point of history. If the Christians had accepted they and the whole world would have certainly, in a grotesque but exact metaphor, gone to pot. They would all have been boiled down to one lukewarm liquid in that great pot of cosmopolitan corruption in which all other myths and mysteries were already melting. It was an awful and appalling escape. Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realise that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions."He maintains that if the Church had not done so, the world would have died.Jesus says things like, "Strive to enter by the narrow door." "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me." He has some very exclusive things to say. "Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." Hell is inclusive, heaven is not.
"No matter what our view of salvation is, the fact that we want to convert believers of other faiths is insulting to them and to their religion." (TLC, Aug 29th, pg. 12)
And this from a retired priest of the Episcopal Church! He goes on to say that we should immediately cease and desist from this "insulting practice." We are in danger of becoming indistinguishable from the rest of the world. Chesterton thought that to be the way of death. I agree with him.
Hell will take anybody. Christianity, while open to all, demands something more of each of us. Jesus says, "Repent, and believe."
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. The fastidiousness of the early church on this point is shown by the issue in, I think First Corinthians, whether it was even proper to buy meat that came from animals that were sacrificed to pagan gods.
Matthew 5:11
Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
I don't understand your analogy.
The JW's are extreme in their hatred of all other branches of Christianity. In their eyes, they are no different from Satanists.
It depends whether proselytizing is done in a spirit of arrogance or a spirit of love. THAT is the difference.
The core of the JW religion is a cruel and murderous god who will soon kill most people at Armageddon.
Once the proselityzer is told where to go and what to do on his/her/its way there - and at the destination - the only spirit left is the persistent arrogance. Loosing attack dogs on such is extremely appropriate, in my opinion.
Compare Jesus at the well with the Samaritan slut with JW's or Scientolgists.
The difference is the Holy Spirit. The difference is loving compassion vs looking for marks.
There is one intercessor between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
How about "Go ye therefore into the whole world..."? Did we repeal that somewhere along the line?
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