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It's okay not to call yourself Christian if you don't want to, as that is mainly a title and a social identity and doesn't speak to the heart. However, there are lots of people who get accused of not having the right beliefs to be Christian, but may self identify as Christian anyway.

I think somebody already answered this, but being this is an interfaith forum clearly there are going to be people on the forum who do not have te belief about Jesus that you state. That does not mean they would not be sympathetic to your other ideas (such as not making people psychologically...

I would love it if you offered something less abstract or more concrete. Otherwise it seems like you are dancing around a point. That could be interpreted as you being bothered by the current (and longstanding) conflation of a certain type of Christian theology with a certain type of politics...

Yes, I ran across the video a few years ago. I like that guy. The ideas are familiar as they are consistent with what my grandfather always said.

Depending on which commentaries, but by and large commentaries of the kind @Thomas is referring to are written by people who studied the bible deeply and have knowledge of the cultural linguistic and historical context that can help you make sense of what is written. You cannot rely on it to be...

Doesn't that create confusion given that the characters do have names?

I don't know the language and can't say if there are errors, but IF your goal is to get better, then continuing could help you with that, but you would probably need to find a scholar of the language who could offer guidance and corrections

Well, that observation is common in Christian history and is pretty much how all new denominations start. My grandfather said it constantly. As a way of pointing out how important were the teachings of Herbert Armstrong.

I think the confusion is coming from the vagueness If you were to be more specific it would help. Can you give a concrete example of which Christians are behaving in which ways - and how it hides which things from - which people - and how does it repel which people from learning which things...

Well, yes and no. Depending on who is trying to accomplish what. If I need to tell someone something, I have to do some work to convey my idea, but I need that person's cooperation to at least some small degree if not a lot. If they are uncomprehending or resistant I need to talk to somebody...

This video is 3:43 long, Michael Heiser, Christian Bible scholar, who goes into some explanation of this. How the Rabbis Tried to Explain Away the Two Powers in Heaven

Well, sort of. The communicator and the recipient. Two way street. The recipient needs to listen, consider, ask questions, respond, etc.

Could AI tell us any more about ultimate reality than human prophets have? If so, how would they do so? I always thought that the universal supernatural reality behind religions was almost unknowable, something people only got glimpses of here and there, through a glass darkly, or heard little...

Oh I miss @Cino! I hope we may see him someday again.

I guess I didn't pose this with a clear question - Does anybody here, of any theological background, have any knowledge about the "Two Powers in Heaven" idea that was apparently within preChristian Judaism? It's possible I should move this thread, I may have inadvertently buried it by placing...

The variation comes at least in part because translating from one language to another is not a simple matter of word to word translation. Languages just do not correspond to one another that way, so translators of ANYTHING, religious material or not, make reasoned judgment calls, some...

Fair enough... still, on those occasions when someone does make a translation with those ideas in mind, their translation is critiqued as biased also - I don't know how many times I've run across scorn online from say evangelicals or Catholics or mainline Protestants, towards any of the...

Hmmm..... I think maybe people cannot see the threads that are posted in the general Abrahamic area...and not under one of the three religions represented... but I put it there because it is pertinent to both Judaism and Christianity.

This is a great story! Elton sounds like he was trippin' in more ways than one. It sounds like Chrissie had it together. Also one of those lost in the pond moments - I had to look up wazzock and creche. (I knew manger scenes were called creches, I assumed it meant something different in this...

Sounds fascinating. Does any form of it still exist? Or is it long gone? (I couldn't find it by searching)