China Cat Sunflower said:
As I said on another thread, Christian isn't just a religion, it's also a general ethnicity. There's a whole universe of Christian thought, practice, and culture, and it's evolving and changing all the time. There is a desperate need for a broad dialog between all the factions and those on the fringes, not to codify and standardize, but to learn to listen and share. People are crying out for this everywhere you turn. The solution is not to form a consensus on where to erect a fence, but to tear down the fences and walls.
Perhaps what we could say is that Christianity is not really
one religion, but
many religions in one.
Christianity is a religion that needs to be explored. Nobody figures out all the right reasoning all at once. Nobody gets it right the first time. Even if someone gets it wrong, there is no need to tell them off right away. Let them figure it out. It's nice when we're all encouraged to explore the concepts on our own, and discover our place in the story God is writing.
We're afraid that if one person gets it wrong, and expresses an idea that isn't in line with "Christianity" that person will start spreading that idea. Should we tell that person off for getting it wrong?
I think not. I think when we get the concepts wrong, it's much better for us to figure it out slowly but surely rather than being told we're wrong straight away. If people kept saying to us, "no, you have to do it this way," we would probably end up not understanding anything about Christianity. That's because the particular approach to Christianity that people tell us to follow makes more sense to those people than us. Conforming to someone else's approach to Christianity does not help us understand Christianity better.
It's like copying somebody else's answers in a test.
We all come from different walks of life, and so we have to appreciate the different personalities of individuals that form God's spiritual temple.
Alternative Christianity?
My view is that
all Christians are
alternative Christians, regardless of what kind of Christian you claim to be. Each spiritual journey is itself an alternative. Christianity wasn't meant to be a monolithic faith where everybody wears the same clothes, same uniform, same haircut, same hairstyle, same coloured eyes, same skin colour, etc. Christianity isn't a copy-cat religion.
Christianity is a religion of alternatives. It's the same Christ leading us through different doors. Everyone who wants to find God has to go through a different door and they can't go through somebody else's door. They have to go through their own. A universal Christ, a universal Messiah, universal spiritual leader. Different lives, same leader. Christianity is a religion about a test with answers but you don't copy somebody else's answers. You write your own.
Of course, there's a catch. Christianity doesn't go out of its way to say "all paths lead to God." Instead, it says, "all paths led by Christ lead to God."
There's a trade-off between diversity and conformity. Diversity can lead people astray yet conformity can be just as bad. Conformity is something people can start to idolise. You start getting a group mentality where everyone has to meet a particular standard. People start judging each other on who conforms to the standard. Diversity can dilute the meaning of Christianity into something vague and conformity can distort the whole idea of Christianity by getting people to align to a single concept. Because a lot of people are so prone to thinking that one size shoe fits all sizes the whole notion of Christianity is reduced and simplified to what they are taught.
That kind of reminds me of the story of the Tower of Babel. People thought they had to connect to God using some kind of "Tower" to reach heaven but God wanted something more personal. The Tower of Babel was a "visible structure" that was easy to see. That's why people liked the idea so much.
Conformity is like building a Tower of Babel. Any organised religion can be much like a Tower of Babel where the organisation is exalted as the means of connecting with God when all God wants is a personal relationship with us. Getting everyone to follow the same rules is an idea that appeals to a lot of people.
I believe a lot of religious groups in Christianity accidentally fall for this Tower of Babel idea without knowing it. The "visible structure" is built on like a Tower when we can all connect with God directly.
