And in answer to snakelegs, No I do not think he intended to found a religion. He was not a religious person and he had some pretty frank things to say to those who were... called them vipers and things.
mg: oops -- no offense!
Offense?! No way. I think you're right on.
interesting take. as you know, i take a rather dim view of religion
That's one of the things we have in common. Yes, I am a pastor, but among the things that can get my blood boiling: When someone claims to be "a member of the Christian religion". Usually people make such comments without thinking about what they are saying, and don't really mean anything wrong by it. But I agree with Caroline that Jesus did not come to found a religion.
Churches are organized forms of the Christian faith, and churches have members. But Christianity doesn't have members it isn't even a religion in the sense of a community organized around a particular set of rituals. The ritualization of the Christian faith has turned it into a religion, I can live with that, but when one focuses on the Christian religion with its manmade rituals over the Christian faith and Christ's principles for reconciling the person with God and connecting the individual with others in the world, then one isn't practicing the Christian faith, but the Christian religion and they are two different things.
Another statement that can get to me: When someone says that they are a (fill in the blank), but don't practice. How can you claim to be what you aren't? How can you claim to be something which you deny the essence of by the very way you live your life? This is true regardless of the religion one is talking about. Of what value is religion, any religion, when someone is very religious, but misses the whole point of the religion? When people merely keep religious rituals for their own sake, without any connection to the transforming power of God? Religion that does not awaken one to the spirit of God moving in one's life seems like a total corruption of life, filtering out the heart of one's faith and leaving one with nothing more than a spiritually dead and empty shell. I would rather a person have no religion than to have such a one that leaves the person spiritually dead. Jesus said to "beware of the yeast of the pharisees", and I think such behavior is exactly what he was referring to whether it be the empty rituals of ceremonial Jewish handwashing, the pompous prayers found in many religions done more for show to men than connection to God, or participating in Christian rituals that are to connect one to God but not living a life that gives evidence of that connection.
i don't understand what this means:
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit." (John 3:5)
I rather like what Caroline said:
I think it means you not only have to be born of the water (amniotic fluid, physical birth) but you also have to have a birth of the spirit or an awakening to the truth.
I agree with Caroline's explanation above.
But the reason I mentioned it to Grace Seeker, was that it is a 'religious ritual' (if you like) practised in Christianity: the baptism.
I know that there are many within Christendom that see this as a statement about baptism. I am not among them. I think that it is a simple reference two different types of birth as Caroline pointed out. Those that see it as baptism by water as a requirement for new life in Christ based on this passage are doing exactly what I discussed above that I hate about religion. They are turning sacraments that are to be signs of God's grace and making them into rituals that people are required to jump through to get to God. Doing so effectively puts power in the hands of a few priests and turns Christianity from being about faith in Jesus to a religion of codified rituals. The true sadness is that once people see it as jumping through a set of required hopes, be it baptism or whatever else is created, then they often tend to behave as if all one has to do is those things and one is then "In". Say a few "magic" words, do a couple of ritualized acts, and you can go on and live your life the way you want, without regard to God. That isn't living a life reconciled to God. That is just as fallen of a lifestyle as before. That's why I don't have much regard for religion. We need to put our faith in God, not religion. And that even includes the Christian religion.
However, what I think that Jesus did was show the disciples that he could provide a way to reconcile people back to God. And this became the message that Peter and the others began to share at Pentecost. I think that it is because Paul was still a religious Jew that he opposed it when he first encountered this new message. It was only after he had an awakening to the truth of the message that he became its strongest supporter and helped to spread it more than anyone else before or sense to the broadest audience possible. But in doing so, Paul was just carrying out the commissioning that Jesus himself gave to all of his disciples to go to all nations and to continue to make new disciples of Christ everyone, no longer just among the Jews. Anyone who thinks that just because Jesus' personal ministry was confined to ministering among the Jews that his message was also to be so restricted, obviously has yet to understand Matthew 28:19-20 or even Luke 19:10. The disciples were ordered by Jesus himself, "you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
7-8)
