Xar wrote:
You also need to consider the fact that even gospels written a few decades after Jesus's death wouldn't necessarily be free of political corrections, placed there to suit the agenda of the writers and the fledgling group of followers; it is entirely possible that there is no true, factual, 100% (or even just 90%) accurate description of Jesus's life and works. Add to that translation errors and additional tampering with the gospels and the Bible throughout the centuries, and it's entirely possible that whole sections of them might have been heavily changed or completely removed (this would be, of course, more extensive in the Old Testament than the New Testament, due to the greater age of the former). And this applies also to the Church's tenets. Take, for example, the concepts of Limbo and of Purgatory, both of which were not in the original Christian teachings and were added afterwards. Limbo was recently declared untrue, but for centuries people believed that unbaptized children would not be admitted into Heaven, but rather left to an eternity in Limbo.
This leads in turn to the age-old question of sinning: not "why do people sin", but rather "why are some things considered to be sins" and "why, if God is infinitely merciful, are people punished for sins"? Is it possible that some sins were artificially called such by the early Church, in attempts to sway the population? There are theories, for example, that the "sin of suicide" was actually added in medieval times to prevent peasants and commoners from killing themselves rather than dedicating their lives to toiling for their earthly lord.
Truth be told, there are of course difficult ethical questions in everyday life (consider abortion, for example - is it right to kill an unborn baby, or to force an unwilling woman to carry it to term so it can live?). And organized churches of every kind offer their own viewpoints on these topics (sometimes organized like orders, sometimes not). But ultimately, it is up to us to judge, and I can't reconcile the concept of an infinitely merciful and good God with eternal damnation. If even human, "flawed" parents would forgive their children anything (and we see examples of these in the news, when someone is arrested for murder and his/her parents still support him/her and love him/her unconditionally), then how could an infinitely good and merciful divine Father sentence his children to eternal suffering, no matter what the crime?
For that matter, what about regret? Why would regretting your sins while alive (and asking for forgiveness) grant you absolution (or at least respite from Hell) and regretting them after death, when facing God, not be enough? One could say "because once you're dead and facing God, your regret would be self-serving, a cheap way for you to escape the fires of Hell you now would know exist"; but surely, there might be people who died in accidents and such, who didn't have time to regret their sins, even though they might have done that if they had had a little more time. Are there special provisions? Where does one draw the line?
It all depends on the perception one has of the divine, of course. In medieval time, God as Father was not a widespread concept; God as Judge was. Therefore, it was unheard of to even propose that God would forgive your sins: if you sinned, God would send you to Hell for all eternity. Similarly, then, what I wrote above and what I'm going to write below would make no sense to some who have different concepts of what the divine is.
In truth (and here I'm offering my belief only) I find another concept easier and more believable - not just "more logical", but also better at avoiding the pitfalls of contradiction, rather than having God judge you for your sins, and cast you into the pit of Hell if you're unworthy of salvation. I find it far more believable to think that it is not God who sentences you to suffering, but yourself: not because of sins in this earthly life, but because you refuse to accept forgiveness. Forgiveness, after all, is a tricky thing: in order to accept it, you must admit (even just to yourself) you have done something to be forgiven for, and that the forgiving party judges wrong too. Follow me here - if you truly believe you've done nothing wrong (as it is the case with some murderers, for example, who after years are still secure in their belief they had every right to murder their victim), would you stand by and accept forgiveness offered to you by someone else? Or would you rather refuse to admit you ever had anything to forgive in the first place, and draw away from the person who - just by offering you forgiveness - is, in a way, "judging" your actions?
But if the forgiving party is God, wouldn't drawing away from God be a sort of Hell? To willingly keep yourself away from God, alone, because you believe you've done nothing wrong in your life?
And if, like many religions claim, God is omnipresent, wouldn't your denial be even more torturous, simply because you try to draw away from a presence which, no matter how hard you try, you cannot exclude? A constant presence reminding you it offers forgiveness for actions you believe you had every right to perform? For all eternity?
Isn't that Hell - a Hell you freely chose? And couldn't you end that torment at any time, just by admitting to yourself you've done something wrong and accept God's forgiveness? And wouldn't that be purgatory, of a sort?
Allright, I definitely strayed from the beginning of the post; but this is just to explain that in truth, a relationship with the divine is a personal thing, and it is - in my opinion - far more important for everyone to find his or her own way to relate with the divine, than simply accepting an institution's teachings without ever once questioning any part of them. Again, as a parent, what would you rather have - a child who blindingly obeys everything he's told by his brother on your behalf, or a child who thinks about what he is told, and tries to find his own way to relate to you without passing through his brother?
There are a few assumptions made here that I would like to address. (That said, I'll say that you made some excellent points, too!!)
I think it can be equally said that gospels written a few decades after Jesus's death wouldn't necessarily have political corrections, placed there to suit the agenda of the writers and the fledgling group of followers; it is entirely possible that there is a true, factual, 100% (or even just 90%) accurate description of Jesus's life and works.
Your point about translation errors is quite valid and requires a deeper answer. But to everything else that follows in your experience of Christianity, especially on the concepts of Limbo and Purgatory, seem to be based on the understanding of the Roman Catholic Church as THE one Christian Church that existed before the reformation and seems to leave out the Great Schism of 1054 and what happened to the other 4 Church centers (of which Rome was only one - the others were Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople and Alexandria); in short, you don't seem to know about the Orthodox Church, which never got into all of the things like Purgatory and Limbo and the other issues that led Martin Luther to revolt against Rome.
Is it possible that the Roman Church, which declared one Bishop as supreme ruler (the Pope) and broke off from the other Churches, was the one that went wrong and guilty of everything that you describe? If so, then those objections would not apply to the Orthodox Church, and you'd have to rethink your arguments.
Your question on sin, I think, can be reduced to "Is sin a real phenomenon or is it just something made up by guys in robes to control us?" This is a serious question. My answer to it is that if you understand sin as selfishness, which places the desires of self above the good of others, then most certainly there is such a thing, in which case your feelings about the word might merely be conditioned emotional reaction. Every time a driver cuts me off in traffic I see evidence of sin. (But oh, my goodness, how much harder it is to see it in myself...)
A good way to understand the Christian teachings on suicide is to compare it to martyrdom and identify the fundamental differences between them. Let us admit that suicide cannot be a solution for humanity at large. Otherwise we all might as well kill ourselves.
When you say "It is up to us to judge", in a very real sense you are right. Unfortunately, as I said above, the fact of death remains, and none of us make it much past 100 years of experience and most far less - meaning that we live 20, 40, or 60 years, live and learn, then die, and the next generation repeats the process. Civilizations rise, then they fall. So we have to judge, yet hardly have the experience to be able to competently judge on questions of enormous complexity. Protestant Christianity stays with the self, identifying the Bible as authority. Yet it can be seen how many cacaphonious interpretations result from everyone relying exclusively on the self to interpret Scripture. Well and good. The Roman Catholic Church claims authority to interpret Scripture, and yet has resulted in the things you describe. Yet the Orthodox Church remains - and without a supreme leader like the Pope has managed to maintain a remarkable unity of dogma over 2 millenia. The initial Christian teaching was VERY simple. Dogma arose for the purpose of combatting heresies that arose within the Church (and for the first 1,000 years of its existence, there was only one Church).
The concept of a God who punishes people for their sins and sends them to hell is alien to Orthodox Christianity. Sin is something we do to ourselves, and it is our own self-destruction (by our own choice) from which we need to be saved, both physical and spiritual. So congratulations!!! You are thinking like Orthodox Christians do!!! 
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doesn't draw the line. God draws the line. In Orthodox thinking, we can't judge whether another person will be saved or not. We don't know what is in others' hearts, how they lived their lives...
The problem with relativism is when 'paths to God' clash. We can't assert that all are valid when some flatly contradict others. This always brings us back to a need for absolute Truth somewhere, and you're back to questions of right and wrong, true or false. Not everything can be merely shades of grey. I would say that your analogy works better with father rather than brother. That said, the child who is preferable is a child who thinks, but recognizes that the father is far older, has far more experience and loves the child, and further, is a fountain of truth that can be learned from, and we learn when we listen, not when we speak. He says snow will soon fall, and like in a fairy tale, it soon does! He says that it's dangerous to play in the street, and later you see a dead cat and discover that it's true. Of course we should think, but identifying and recognizing authority gives us a lot more opportunity for development than simply learning from ourselves and our own experience. Could you imagine a person becoming a Nasa rocket scientist without ever studying science from some kind of institution or text, relying on only his own personal experiments?
Just trying to get across that Christianity might have a rational basis, and that there may be explanations for the things you object to in it.
Whew! Responding to these posts is a lot of work!
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