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While claiming to be "Christians",
Conservatives give lip service to Jesus,
and then quietly replace Jesus' teaching
about Faith expressed in one's works"
with Paul's teaching about
Faith rather than works:
    Pages :   1   2,   [3]   "for Salvation"
[  http://LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/.html ]

{ John 1: 9-14 }:  

" The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept himbut to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.  And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

        For Jesus, Faith or Belief in Him, wasn't an end in itself, it was the means whereby people came to trust the message of salvation that he had to offer.
{ John 1: 29 }  

" The next day (John the Baptist) saw Jesus coming toward him and declared,  "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

{ John 3: 1-3 & 9-21}  

" Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him,  "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God."  Jesus answered him,  "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." . . .  9 Nicodemus said to him,  "How can these things be?"  Jesus answered him,  "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?  "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.  If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?  No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.  And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.  For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.  But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

As the preceding texts show, faith was important to Jesus, but not in isolation from works!  On the one hand, those whose deeds are good recognize Jesus and "come to the light (i.e. believe in him), so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."   And on the other, those who have faith in Jesus, do what he teaches them to do.

{ John 3 : 31-36 }  

"( John the Baptist said of Jesus : )   He must increase, but I must decrease."  (Paul did very much the opposite).  The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things.  The one who comes from heaven is above all.  He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony.  Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true.  He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.  The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands.  whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God's wrath.

{ 1 Pet.1:17 }  

"The Father, who without pariality judges according to each one's work."

Some people claim the problem isn't so much Paul's teaching as the fairly recent Lutheran and evangelical interpretation of that teaching.  But who was James arguing with, if not Paul, when he wrote his very forceful and clear repudiation of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, without works on man's part?

{ James 2: 12-21 & 26}   

"You will be judged on whether or not you are doing what christ wants you to.  So watch what you do and what you think; for there will be no mercy to those who have shown no mercy.  But if you have been merciful, then God's mercy toward you will win out over his judgment against you.  Dear brothers, what's the use of saying that you have faith and are christians if you aren't proving it by helping others?   will that kind of faith save anyone?
     If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, and you say to him,  "Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat hearty," and then don't give him clothes or food, what good does that do?   So you see, it isn't enough just to have faith.  You must also do good to prove that you have it.
      Faith that doesn't show itself by good works is no faith at all  -   it is dead and useless.  But someone may well argue,  "You say the way to God is by faith alone, plus nothing;   well, I say that good works are important too, for without works you can't prove whether you have faith or not; but anyone can see that I have faith by the way I act."   Are there still some among you who hold that "only believing" is enough?   Believing in one God?   Well, remember that the demons believe this too - so strongly that they tremble in terror!   Fool!   When will you ever learn that "believing" is useless without doing what God wants you to?   Faith that does not result in good deeds is not real faith.  Just as the body is dead when there is no spirit in it, so faith is dead if it is not the kind that results in good deeds."

One of the most famous of Paul's admirers - I'm tempted to say "worshippers" - was the great reformer, Martin Luther, whose impact on Protestantism is incalculable.  But Martin Luther made it clear that he would have preferred aNew Testament without the Epistle of James and that the only Gospel that he considered important was John's.  In Wittenberg, 1522 and in Laws, James p.1 he wrote:

"In sum, St. John's Gospel and his first epistle, (all of) St. Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Galatians and Ephesians, and St. Peter's first epistle are the books that show you Christ and teach all that is necessary and salvatory for you to know, even if you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine. . .  “In comparison with these the epistle of St. James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical.”  And Luther concludes:  “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world.  As long as we are here in this world we have to sin.  This life is not a dwelling place of righteousness.  But no sin will separate us from the lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day."  (which Lutheran and Catholic admirers of Paul actually did in the German concentration camps)
        (and by this very same argument, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke "are gospels of straw, (compared to the Gospel of John and to Paul's epistles) for these have nothing of the nature of the gospel about them, and among the books or doctrines that you need "never to see or hear". )

We now know that the author of the Epistle of James was probably the brother of Jesus, who headed the church of Jerusalem and published his epistle about 17 years after Jesus' death.  On the other hand, we don't know who the author of the Gospel of John was, but that this was one of the last books of the bible to be written, some 60 years after Jesus died.
        So Luther favored the scripture authored by those furthest from Jesus over those closest to him.


When Martin Luther feared losing the support of the big political players of his time for his brand new church, the reformer turned his back on the peasants, and with his inflammatory address to the German nobility unleashed wholesale carnage against the peasantry: "choke, stab and kill, and if you die, take comfort, you do the work of God."  And when in 1541 he supervised in person the drowning of a five year old "devil’s child" in the Zwickauer Mulde, a river in Saxony, Luther may really have thought of it as a high point in his lifelong wrestling match with the devil. 
        It is not, as if he didn't know what he was doing. "Yes, their blood is on me, but I put it in the hands of our Lord, who made me do it" (Martin Luther, "Table-Conversations").  Luther believed to have an excuse for rejecting even the remotest responsibility for his own actions, and he explicitly based this attitude on his "faith".  In the preface to his bible translation Martin Luther placed little value on the synoptic gospels, “to know Christ's works and His life's story is not the same thing as to know the gospel, because it does not mean that you know that He conquered sin, death, and the devil.”

        John the Baptist's message was to repent of past sins, to be cleansed through baptism, and to perform good works instead of evil ones in the future:
{ Luke 3: 7 -18 }  
        John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him,  "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  bear fruits worthy of repentance.  Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor';  for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.  Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."  And the crowds asked him,  "what then should we do?"
        In reply he said to them,  "whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."  Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him,  "Teacher, what should we do?"  He said to them,  "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."  Soldiers also asked him,  "And we, what should we do?"  He said to them,  "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."  As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,  John answered all of them by saying,  "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  his winnowing fork is in his hand, (to separate those destined for reward from those destined for punishment) to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."  So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people." (also recorded in Matthew 3: 9-12 & Mark)
        John's Book of Revelation puts these words in the mouth of the Judge of mankind :
{ Rev. 2:19 - 29 }  
        "19 "I know your works - your love, faith, service, and patient endurance.  I know that your last works are greater than the first. . .  And all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve."  29 Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

        According to the Book of Revelation there can be no doubt that God judges people on the basis of their works:
{ Rev. 20: 11 - 12 }  
        "Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them.  And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.  Also another book was opened, the book of life.  And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books."

 

The idea of salvation by faith alone, with grace on god's part replacing works on man's part, may appear to make Jesus more deserving of praise, love, admiration and appreciation.  But Jesus Christ didn't teach it; and for good reason.  (It was either Martin Luther or John Calvin who deliberately "improved" Paul's words "the just shall live by faith" by adding the word "alone." )  This theory makes Christ out to be like the pilot of the air plane to heaven.  All you have to do is "believe", i.e. trust him, and climb aboard, and he will do the rest.  You might as well go to sleep and "leave the flying to Jesus"; because you are saved the minute you "believe", and you are guaranteed a seat not just for the trip but for an eternity in heaven as well.  According to this theory, Jesus has paid for your ticket with his own blood.  Although Jesus is the only man who has ever lived a blameless life, God has allowed this one sinless person to suffer the punishment for everybody else's sins.
        If you believe that teaching, then you are putting your faith in Paul, not in christ.  What Christ taught was that salvation is very demanding, and that - far from carrying your cross for you - Jesus requires that you pick up your own cross daily and follow him.  Believing in him is not an end in itself, it's simply the step that puts one on the right road, the road of obedience to Christ, which leads to eternal life.
        Do you know why there were so few Christian voices raised in opposition to Hitler, not just during the Holocaust, but in the many years leading up to it?   Lutheran pastor and scholar Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought long and hard about the failure of the Christian community in Germany and then wrote the powerful book The Cost of Discipleship.  His rare understanding of the teaching of Christ moved him to raise a lonely voice against the attrocities being perpetrated in a supposedly Christian nation and, like Christ, he was put to death for doing so.
        His insights may explain why many things go wrong in supposedly Christian communities and individuals:
        "Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves . . .  the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship . . .
        Costly grace is the grace which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock . . .  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life." ( See the whole web page I dedicate to Bonhoeffer's "Cost of Discipleship" at www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/about/cheapgrace.html.)
        Is it merely a coincidence that the region of America where Fundamentalism reigns supreme, the region called "the Bible belt", is the region that for hundreds of years practiced and even blessed the slavery of dark skinned human beings from Africa by light skinned "Christian"human beings from Europe?  Or is it connected with their feeling that "works don't matter"?  If God doesn't save on the basis of good works, then can he condemn on the basis of bad works?


Those who have held with Paul’s view that it is faith and not works that lead to salvation have found it necessary to denigrate the value of Jesus’ teaching. They claim that since Jesus’ teachings about moral action are impossible for anyone (other than Jesus) to comply with perfectly, that His teachings are nothing more than an example meant to show us how imperfect we all are and how salvation for such imperfect beings is impossible except through the saving grace of faith.
        An example of this can be found in the following quotations from the German Lutheran theologian, Carl Stange :

"Fellowship with God is not achieved through ethical performance. From an ethical standpoint, it is a derogation of the idea of the good to seek its realization by imitating Jesus. The teaching about the ideal.... only serves to make plain the reprehensibility of the human condition... The meaning of the moral demand is not that it gives us the power for the good but rather that it shows us our impotence for the good."

(Bauman, Clarence, The Sermon on the Mount, The Modern Quest for its Meaning, p.177.)

Not even a disastrous civil war was able to move the hard hearts of so-called "Bible belt Christians" to stop persecuting their former slaves.  They simply invented new ways to oppress their former victims, through the enthusiastic public practices of segregation and the only slightly less public practices of the lynch-mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, where all kinds of "respectable" gentlemen and even "clergy" hid beneath white sheets to kill, maim and terrify black people.
        See what passes for "Christian" theology in communities and denominations that have their roots in "the Bible belt", otherwise known as "Dixie", or "the Confederate States of America" : JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/about/christianconservatism.html.
        Is it merely a coincidence that when the Democratic Party turned its back on its former racism, many Bible Belt "Christians" - who had hated the Republican Party so long because it represented "the party of Lincoln" - hastened to switch their allegiance to that party as soon as it had turned itself inside out, and lapped up the racist attitudes which the Democratic Party had vomited?
        Is it merely a coincidence that the "Christian Conservatives" of "the Bible belt" now oppose Affirmative Action and promote school vouchers - which will restore well-financed private (and segregated) "Christian" schools for their own white children, while leaving minorities in increasingly neglected "public" schools?
        Is it merely a coincidence that the states where Conservatives are strongest are the ones with the most minorities in prison,the most minorities being put to death, the most incidences of prison brutality, and the most instances of minorities often being deprived of their right to vote for life, (despite Jesus' warning that when we neglect those in prison, it is him whom we are hurting)?


There's some evidence that Paul himself wouldn't agree with the view that seems to be expressed in many excerpts of Paul that play down the importance of "works" and which are constantly quoted by Fundamentalists.  Here's is what he wrote, for example in

{ Romans 2: 3 - 13 }  

"Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?  Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience?  Do you not realize that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?   But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.  For he will repay according to each one's deeds:  to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;  while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.
        There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.  For God shows no partiality.  All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.  For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified.  When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves.  They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all."

2 Corinthians 5:10 

"All of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil."


There are a lot more problems with Paul's teaching than just the matter of faith vs. works.  While Jesus of Nazareth preached and modelled by his behavior love, understanding, respect for all kinds of people, much - though not all - of Paul's teaching is very different, as you can read in his own words at http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/PaulvsAll.html.

 

According to Paul, the world has
G O D   to thank for its worst Dictators !


If you believe that everything Paul wrote was inspired by God, then you cannot escape the conclusion that the worst dicatators come from God, and "good Christians" must cooperate fully and willingly with these divine appointees  ! See the actual wording of his Epistle to the Romans, ch.13: verses 1-7, where Paul takes great pains to make it crystal clear that he means exactly what he says on this matter ( and "interpreters" who try explain away what he says have to plainly contradict him in the process, or quote other parts of the Bible which do so).

 

        *1 Scholarly Reflections on Paul vs. Jesus :

In Albert Schweitzer's view,
        " Where possible Paul all avoids quoting the teaching of Jesus, in fact even mentioning it.  If we had to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and had taught his disciples the 'Our Father."  Even where they are especially relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord."

Bishop John S. Spong (Episcopal Bishop of Newark)
"Paul's words are not the Words of God.  They are the words of Paul - a vast difference."
(Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 104, Harper San Francisco, 1991)

According to Will Durant (Historian of Philosophy),
        "Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants (traces) can be found of the words of Christ.  Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ."

Or as Thomas Jefferson himself put it,
        " Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."
(from a letter addressed to W. Short and published in
The Great Thoughts, by George Seldes, Ballantine Books, N.Y., 1985, p. 208)

According to the brilliant astronomer Carl Sagan,
        " My longtime view of Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly immiscible parts - the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul.  Thomas Jefferson attempted to excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament."

Hyam Maccoby (Talmudic Scholar)
        "As we have seen, the purposes of the book of Acts is to minimize the conflict between Paul and the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, James and Peter.  Peter and Paul, in later Christian tradition, became twin saints, brothers in faith, and the idea that they were historically bitter opponents standing for irreconcilable religious standpoints would have been repudiated with horror.  The work of the author of Acts was well done; he rescued Christianity from the imputation of being the individual creation of Paul, and instead gave it a respectable pedigree, as a doctrine with the authority of the so-called Jerusalem Church, conceived as continuous in spirit with the Pauline Gentile Church of Rome.  Yet, for all his efforts, the truth of the matter is not hard to recover, if we examine the New Testament evidence with an eye to tell-tale inconsistencies and confusions, rather than with the determination to gloss over and harmonize all difficulties in the interests of an orthodox interpretation."
(The Mythmaker, p. 139, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1986)



        In order to make room for his own unique teaching, in which GRACE trumps everything, Paul claims that "the Jews" were all wrong for making to big a deal of "the law".   Now I have problems with this tactic of Paul's on several grounds. Keep in mind that although Paul's epistles appear in our bible AFTER the Gospels, they were written BEFORE the Gospels.  So 1) Did these "Jews" with whom Paul disagree include Jesus?  2) Jesus never criticized Judaism as a whole, but only a few "right-wing" fundamentalist types who abused the Judaic faith (which he made it clear was His faith).  3) Jesus criticized these abuses of the faith for promoting their own "traditions" instead of "the law". ( R. D.)
        Here's an interesting take on the famous verse:  { John 3:16 }  

"For God so loved the world that
He "sacrificed" Himself,
to Himself,
to appease Himself,
and now is just beside Himself
with the idea of torturing,
for all eternity,
those who don't believe this story."

[author unknown]

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