Skip to main content

This is why I'm a universalist and a unitarian

Comments

Andrew Bethune said…
I laughed out loud when listening to this (at work, with headphones on - to the bemusement of my colleagues). However, it's not really funny at all. It truly represents what many many evangelical Christinans seem to be saying, and chimes with what my mum said to me after church one day when I was about 12 : 'You do want to go to heaven when you die, dear, don't you?'. ( My mum was a nice lady and quite kindly at heart, but that little bit of our family's theology has stuck in my mind).

Today at the university where I work the Christian Union were giving out invitations to a series of lunchtime talks.

Here are the topics:
(1) Was Muhammad wrong about Jesus?
(2) The Bible: accurate history or absurd hopes?
(3) Atheists: free thinking or foolish?
(4) How can a loving God send people to Hell?
(5) Where was God in the Holocaust?

Only 4 and 5 are open-ended questions. No 4 is about the same thing as your clip. I will go to their talks ( there is a free lunch) and will be interested to know whether God is loving and doesn't send to Hell, is loving and does send to Hell, isn't loving and sends to hell, isn't loving and doesn't send to Hell - or none of the above.
4:38 pm
Andrew Bethune said…
I listened to today's talk "How can a loving God send people to Hell?" and it was none of the above. The speaker came up with a new level of theological horror that I hadn't thought of before - God loves us and hates us at the same time ( he said). He will send us to Hell (absolute poverty, agonising pain, angry presence of God, eternal continuation of suffering)unless we believe in Jesus in a certain way. Asked by a member of the audience why Jesus being dead for approximately 3 days (Good Friday to Easter) balanced against the idea of the rest of us languishing in Hell we were told that Jesus's blood is more precious to God than ours. I don't think I've ever heard such a load of unpleasant stuff before.

For me, I see God more as a loving friend or a parent. If I make a mistake, he forgives me because he loves me. Makes me more than ever glad I am a Unitarian and Universalist. End of story.
3:54 pm
Stephen Lingwood said…
I have been known to argue from scripture with hellites on this, but I find it a bit intellectually dishonest as I don't recognise scripture as an infallible authorative rulebook. But perhaps it is worth making space for other possible biblical ideas.
10:41 am
Andrew Bethune said…
Well, I think that was one of this guy's problems. He had a very very very fixed idea of what the Bible was for ( and only his interpretation was right - "I'm sure you'll agree" was frequent mantra. I am glad to say that both the CofE and Muslim chaplains were very worried about this series of talks.

Unfortunately guys like this can't see that there are other ways of understanding the Bible's meaning and value (nor the value of other holy writings).
10:37 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The dumbest thing about American Unitarian Univeralism

I'm glad Peacebang started blogging about this cos I was about to, and now it's like I'm joining in with a conversation rather than doing a big rant and having a go at Americans (though that is always fun ;-)). Why the hell do American (or is it just in New England??) UU churches take, like a quarter of the year off? In the summer they close. They CLOSE!! A church, closing. It's so bloody weird and wrong. Where does it come from? Why? Why? Why? Why do people need church less in the summer? Where are people supposed to go? Where is the Divine supposed to go? My church in Boston didn't close exactly, but moved to the smaller upstairs chapel, but the minister still had all that time off. Now I've spent most of my life around teachers and priests, both jobs where people think people don't put many hours in, when in fact they put in loads ('you only work Sunday mornings/9 to 3.25'). Teachers work hard and need their long holidays. Ministers work hard, a...
4 comments
Read more

Is humanism theologically tolerant?

OK, well this might be controversial, but I feel the need to say it. Is humanist tolerant? Please note I'm not asking about humanism within society. Clearly humanism certainly believes in tolerance within society and I'm forever glad they are often the only people in the media calling for a separation of church and state. No, what I'm talking about is descriptions of Unitarianism like this and adverts like this , discussed at Peacebang here , which say that humanism is one option, Christianity is another, God is one option among many. The trouble is, humanism, by definition is theologically opposed to theism. This is very different from the relationship between Christianity and Buddhism. These two traditions may be vastly different, but Buddhism, by definition , is not opposed to Christianity, and Christianity, by definition , is not opposed to Buddhism. But humanism is consciously defined in opposition to Christianity and theism. So to say that humanism and theism can bot...
14 comments
Read more

Swords into Ploughshares

  "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4 Palestine Action are doing just this: beating swords into ploughshares i.e. putting weapons out of use. In doing so they are fulfilling this biblical mandate. They are expressing God's peace as expressed in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition. God desires that our swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, that we should unlearn war. That the government wants to make this action illegal has to be confronted in the strongest terms. To rush to condemn attacks on weapons but not attacks on children is perverse. To call attacks on weapons terrorism but not attacks on children is perverse. When government comes to such an extreme position - legislating that peace is war, that weapons need more protection than children - then they have fundamentally gone wrong. This is the definitio...
Post a Comment
Read more