I'm not really asking for information, though, I am asking for people's thoughts & reactions to this issue.

I'm not looking for answers, so much as wishing that people asked themselves more questions.

For example:
Why should Christianity encompass more than one religion?
There was only one Jesus. He only had one set of beliefs.

What if a Christian is baptised, but does not actually have faith in Jesus?

'just human' ~ I know what you mean; I say something similar, quite often, but 'just' human?
Actually we are quite miraculous, I think. And christians believe that we are in the image of God, so ...

We are"just human" ..I meant in the context that we are not perfect ( maybe miraculous) but we make mistakes ect.ect. and that's prob. why Christianity has more than one religion even though there is one Jesus and one set of beliefs.

In my faith -personally again- no one has ever told me not to question my beliefs, they encourage questions, it helps you think and grow and some things in the bible like the scriptures themselves leave tons of unanswered questions and are very hard to believe. Questioning your beliefs doesn't make your Faith weaker or lesser than it again makes us human.

See - what you say makes more sense and is much more pleasant to contemplate - but the reality of it is that Christianity is not the above. This much I am sure of, and I have queried Christians many times about this - You've got to accept Jesus as your Savior - or you don't get in to the heaven club. No matter how good and kind hearted.
As one church near me displayed on their street sign:
Good - God = 0

this is what my experience has been too. More of the righteous bashing everyone else, and less of the "love of jesus" they proclaim out of the other side of their mouths.

I once asked Meir Kahane, a rabbi and leader of the Jewish Defense League what he thought about "Jewish-Christians" or the people who still followed the Jewish laws and customs but accepted Jesus as messiah and worshipped him "as well."

to which he replied, " there are no Jewish-Christians. You're either Jewish or you're Christian."

Wise words from the Rabbi. You either believe that jesus is God, or you don't. You can't have it both ways. You either follow Jesus or you reject Jesus.

And you can't pick and choose which teachings to follow. You either believe it's the Bible, Word of God Inerrant and Infallible, warts and all, or accept that the Bible is a nice book written by superstitious tribal people with some guidelines for a better life, with the fear of a deity thrown in to keep the masses at bay.

you can't have it both ways.

"See - what you say makes more sense and is much more pleasant to contemplate - but the reality of it is that Christianity is not the above. This much I am sure of, and I have queried Christians many times about this - You've got to accept Jesus as your Savior - or you don't get in to the heaven club. No matter how good and kind hearted.
As one church near me displayed on their street sign:
Good - God = 0 "


Are u sure kids didn't switch the words good and God around..just kidding.

Well I still partially disagree that "the reality of it is that Christianity is not the above." part. Of course there are many Christians, all different religions who think others wise. in my lifetime ther will never be agreement on this subject that I firmly believe!!:)
But I am a Christian and I think that way and so do many other people I know ,so what we don't count into reality?

I've come across people who call themselves 'Christians' who would like to put all non-believers in the gas chambers. Which kind of misses the whole message of Christianity.

The thing is, there's often a difference between official Church doctrine and what people actually believe. But as far as Catholicism is concerned, the attitude of the Church is that you either accept the official doctrine in all points, or you are a heretic / sinner / strayed sheep. There's little tolerance for individual opinions.

Which is one reason why I left the Catholic Church.

Sorry I am RC and i am not excpected to do that "be a sheep", ie) follow unquestioningly. This just gets more complicate here Joe cos' the churches each have a pastor and they again are people with differing views , life experiences and backgrounds, yet trying to teach 1 concept. Some are more strict then others. We can have opinions , often you can here an after mass heated dicussion with the priest and a churchgoer over his sermon. How can they tell you you can't have a opinion.

As for the gas chamber people well they missed page 2 to 150 in the Bible or something lol. I can't really take that without a smirk. it's so un Christian like.

well i'm agnostic - so i already have broken a few of the 10 commandments with that statement right there.
I also have no reason to believe that Jesus is/was our Savior.


I do try to live my life by a moral code and an ethical code. But I don't walk around praising Jesus for sacrificing himself for my sin - So i pretty much strike out with Christianity altogether.

According to Christianity, you have to accept Christ to sit next to God .. or something like that. I don't see any way around that .. otherwise it's not Christianity. It can be universalism or unitarianism or some other feel good religion. But it ain't Christianity. Which is why the more informed I get, the less I have anything good to say about the Christianity concept in the least. I used to think Christianity was about being nice - but that is not true. Christianity is about accepting Jesus and nothing more in my mind. There are lots of nice people who lead moral lives who are not Christian. I just call them nice people. But they are not going to a Christian heaven, that's for sure.

And, once more, we are back to ~ what is Christianity?

I come from a Roman Catholic family and have lots of RC friends. Most ~ or many, anyway ~ haven't read the Bible.

Catholicism seems to be very much a religion on its own. Catholicism has its rules and regulations and it hasn't been that long since all masses were in Latin ~ so that the ordinary folk did not question and could not look into anything for themselves. It goes back to priests interceding, and the purchase of indulgences.

Catholicism also has a history of learning. It's not surprising that there are people knowledgeable enough to have interesting discussions, but I am surprised that there are many who wish to. I haven't met too many open-minded RC priests.

I know Catholics who reject the idea that only Catholics go to Heaven, but they tend to be the ones who have had other strong influences in their lives, as well as the RC Church.

Well, yes, that's certainly what I have always been told ~ by Christians and non-Christians alike. If that isn't Christianity, then what is???

Here is one long thread, where we discussed something similar before:

Do all Christians believe that only Christianity leads to Salvation?

http://www.wineintro.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=135256&page=0&fpart=1


However, if you do consider yourself to be a Christian, yet you don't accept that people who believe something different are automatically damned, does that really mean that you are not a Christian?