Dreamsong wrote:I'm not personally religious but I don't hate on others who are. Also personally, I don't agree with most religious views or religion in general. It seems to have started more fights than solved really anything. The only really positive spin I can see on religion is that it gives people who are potentially suicidal hope or something to cling on to. Otherwise, I don't really see anything good about it. Plus, the Bible the religion{s} I am most familiar with claim to follow say many of the exact opposite things as they claim it to be and practice as a religion. An example would be homosexuality. Many of {a} certain religion{s} believe it to be a sin because the Bible supposedly said so. But I've read the Bible, or at least the first 1/3 of it or so, and in it they have angels asking for men from a town "so that we may have sex with them". Male angels asking for males. . . Yeah. Another thing, speaking of angels -- Angels were originally the people who carried out all of God's 'dirty deeds', like killing others and such, yet today they have halos and wings and are a symbol of innocence, peace, etc. Also, Christmas. The celebration of Jesus's birth. No no no. He specifically asked for people to celebrate his death, not his birth. Also, he wasn't even born in December -- he was born at a time when the shepherds were out sleeping with their flocks at night {or the flocks were at least out, not sure if the shepherds were sleeping with them.... but yeah} which means it had to be mid November at the latest, lest it be too cold to sleep outside/have their flocks out.
Religion confuses me.
* Angels are typically considered to be sexless. They aren't male, but neither are they female, although they're classically represented and spoken of as beautiful, androgynous masculine types. Also, could you quote the verses in which this occurs? I consider myself fairly familiar with Scripture, and I think I'd remember that... You might be thinking of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the
humans demanded that Lot hand over the (masculine-formed, at the time)
angels who had come to visit him. A bit backwards.
* As to the common depiction of angels -- "dirty work" is a bit of a misnomer. Angels were depicted as doing the work of the Lord, which, yes, in the Old Testament involved soldiering and assassination as well as healing and blessing. We think of that now as "dirty work", but at the time, it was considered to be the work of the Lord and therefore righteous and honorable. The view of warfare has changed dramatically in the past century or so, and the Old Testament never claimed to offer an unbiased view of events. Then the Romantic period happened, and it was more fashionable to depict angels as beautiful gentle messengers of love. They retained the nobility and honor, while losing most of the violence (though not all of it: Michael got to stay a warrior, but they became a symbol of God's protection of Their people, rather than a soldier executing God's wrath).
* Homosexuality is never spoken of clearly in the Bible -- the closest it gets is a word Paul mentions that is often translated as "homosexuality", though there's no real evidence that this is what it meant in the original Greek.
* I can't speak for other religions, but there are a wide range of translations of the Bible and an even wider range of interpretations. The Bible self-contradicts frequently; anyone professing to follow the Bible literally in all respects is wrong, because that is quite literally impossible.
* God undergoes character development. Old Testament God and New Testament God are very different. New Testament God and the teachings of Christ are what most moderate-to-liberal Christian groups follow. Old Testament God is what the more intolerant Christian groups tend to follow. Of course these are generalities, and there are plenty of both two whom this doesn't apply.
You have to keep in mind the historical context of Christianity. A lot can happen in two thousand years, both historically and culturally, and in that time Christianity has run the gamut from oppressed minority to dominant oppressors, from acceptance to intolerance to everything in between, from literalism to figuratism to corruption to sincerity to sincere perpetuation of traditions spawned by corruption, and let's not even get started on the linguistic complications... There's a
lot there. Forget sects; no two
congregations of Christianity hold exactly the same beliefs, although they'll all be referred to as and call themselves "Christian". Beliefs tend to be dictated less by the Bible as a whole (which, as I said, is impossible) than by which parts of the Bible and which Biblical values a congregation prefers to emphasize, which is more dependent on the local culture than any sort of overarching ideology. And that's just currently--it gets exponentially more complicated once you start looking at the past.
Of course you're confused, if you're trying to define Christianity as a monolith. It simply can't be done.
(Also, please don't judge all religions based solely on evidence from Christianity.)