Can I say I am a (please enter the religion you wish)?

billys · Last edited by billys on Fri Aug 25, 2006 11:51 pm; edited 1 time in total

Ok, I have a question that may not be really deep and mature I was just thinking about it with a friend of mine, but I would like to share it with you.

Let’s say for an example that someone says I am a Christian of that dogma and stuff.
Ok, when someone makes that really big statement, does he mean that he believes in the entire bible and shares all of the views and opinions his church does?

Well, I live in Greece, where the most popular religion is orthodox Christianity [(99,2%) couple of years ago I saw this statistic]. If someone says I am orthodox Christian over here, does he say at the same time that he is against capital punishment, and euthanasia and that he must have sex after a marriage and that he believes in angels and in heaven, that monks have to live this specific way and that his ideals are these and that this is a sin and this is not, this is right and this is not wrong, this is nice this is not, we have to live this way and not that way?
If this is so then…

Can it be true?
Can 10.000.000 Greeks have the same opinion in life (and its aspects)?

Does religion, maybe, tend to make conformists (we say we are this religion and we rest our heads because the entire ethics book is made for us)?

Can I say I am a (over here please enter the religion you wish) but I believe this is ([example] not a sin), if I can say that then everybody of us create our personal small bible and book of ethics, then does religion exist? if everybody behaves differently. We are different people, and everybody is special and everybody has his small universe inside him, but in the same time all of us are a part of a whole, infinity on both sides in us and out of us!!!!!

The dilemma is that we are different human beings and as Sofoclis (and other colossuses of philosophy in ancient Greece and around the world) believed we have common ground to stand on, but there are so many debates in life that are not same for everybody and by everybody, I mean everybody (if this didn’t exist then there wouldn’t be any arguments in the world!!) , but if that is so then how can we say we (over here please enter the religion you wish) believe this? How can 10.000.000 million Greeks say this? How can billions of Christians say this? All the other religions… (sorry for not mentioning you, I don’t want to be narrow minded but I like to talk about the stuff I have direct contact and am more familiar with.), (And I don’t want to offend anybody, I know the religion topic is really strong.)

atoerzan

Blimey! Actually, I think you've asked a good question - which, in a sense touches on a fundemental issue about religions - and Christianity in particular - although I'm confident that this is an issue in all the major world religions - Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Bhuddism. The Bible says a lot of things about all kinds of stuff but what makes it such a fascinating book is the fact that different people interpret and understand it differently. One key thing to remember is that even the Bible makes clear that different people of the same religion understood some key issues very differently - look at the New Testament Gospels and the differences between the Pharisees and Saducees for instance. Another thing to remember about the Bible is that it is not just a set of rules about what you can and cannot do. It is a book that has as much to say about what it means to be human and relationships than rules about what we can eat or whether it is right to put criminals to death etc.
Even the Greek Orthodox Church split from the Roman Catholic Church about 1,000 years ago over what they believed the Bible said about priests and celibacy and the splits have continued even to this day. The fact is, it is precisely because we are human that makes the Bible as relevant today as it ever was - as I read somewhere recently - it is a 'living' book - that means that it is meant to change and our understanding of it is meant to develop - that isn't to say there aren't some fundemental principles that all Christians can agree with - but there are also many things we should be struggling with and trying to understand in a way that makes it more relevant today. The Bible was put together over thousands of years and written by people with a range of different experiences and agendas - and part of understanding how Christians should learn to live their lives comes from understanding where those writers were coming from.

Soulfire

Merely saying "I am (insert religion)" doesn't necessarily mean you assent to all the beliefs of said religion. The 10,000,000 Greek Orthodox Church members you mentioned don't all agree on the same things... In fact, not everyone from any religion agrees on everything (that sentence was slightly confusing).

This is why we encounter divisions within churches - because we all believe different things.

mgumn

billys

the_mariska

All in all, very interesting topic indeed.

billys