Good or Bad
In the beginning Adam and Eve broke the only law God decreed. For many, their disobedience, crime, sin tainted their entire progeny, meaning all humans. Despite that, the prevailing opinion of most ancient and Christian thinkers for centuries regarded man as basically “good”.
Religions, however, thrived on providing humans with eternal life despite their intrinsic contamination. For centuries the Roman Catholic Church and various forms of the Orthodox Church assuaged their members of the fear of eternal damnation by an elaborate array of rituals and rites. Performance of their obligatory sacraments and rituals, accompanied by sincere contrition could absolve all transgressions.
The various Protestant denominations and sects that Luther inspired after the second decade of the sixteenth century had in common a belief and practice based on the Bible. Both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox approaches to Christianity paid little attention to the Bible, but emphasized the role of Popes, saints and Church Councils. In their wisdom, they did not make the Bible available to uneducated, untrained laymen because they anticipated that uninformed perusal of the Bible might lead to bizarre practices based upon isolated snippets of Biblical text. Extremism in some elements of the Reformation proved the concerns well founded.
Most of the Protestant denominations and sects rejected any sacraments Jesus did not perform. Most adopted either Luther’s conclusion that salvation comes through ‘faith alone”. By this he meant faith that Christ’s death for the sins of man atoned for all who believed in the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice. Calvinists, generally, embraced a more stern belief that emphasized the blight of sin from the time of the Garden of Eden. Calvin’s emphasis upon the Bible for Christian theology and the practice of the early Christian congregation for church practice concluded that no one could earn salvation. God’s grace, as an unearned gift, was the only means to salvation.
Jewish belief varies, but generally does not emphasize an acknowledgement of eternal life. Jews are simply obligated to live in conformity with God’s law and atone for their transgressions on earth.
Islamic belief basically avoids any validity of original sin by recognizing that God forgave Adam and Eve, therefore, each person and each soul begins life unblemished. God will judge them upon Judgment Day by their Book of Life, in short, according to how well they kept the law of God as revealed in the Quran and followed the dictates of God’s Messenger, Muhammad.
The contemporary evolving religion of Political Correctness does not address the basic nature of man. It tends to disregard or disdain whatever preceded it. It chooses its saints, willy nilly, to suit its purposes. Individuals, groups and institutions are venerated or condemned existentially in a cascading stream of regulations, laws and public opprobrium. Its practitioners will inform us whether we are good or bad and thereby merit their earthly acceptance or virulent condemnation.
In the beginning Adam and Eve broke the only law God decreed. For many, their disobedience, crime, sin tainted their entire progeny, meaning all humans. Despite that, the prevailing opinion of most ancient and Christian thinkers for centuries regarded man as basically “good”.
Religions, however, thrived on providing humans with eternal life despite their intrinsic contamination. For centuries the Roman Catholic Church and various forms of the Orthodox Church assuaged their members of the fear of eternal damnation by an elaborate array of rituals and rites. Performance of their obligatory sacraments and rituals, accompanied by sincere contrition could absolve all transgressions.
The various Protestant denominations and sects that Luther inspired after the second decade of the sixteenth century had in common a belief and practice based on the Bible. Both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox approaches to Christianity paid little attention to the Bible, but emphasized the role of Popes, saints and Church Councils. In their wisdom, they did not make the Bible available to uneducated, untrained laymen because they anticipated that uninformed perusal of the Bible might lead to bizarre practices based upon isolated snippets of Biblical text. Extremism in some elements of the Reformation proved the concerns well founded.
Most of the Protestant denominations and sects rejected any sacraments Jesus did not perform. Most adopted either Luther’s conclusion that salvation comes through ‘faith alone”. By this he meant faith that Christ’s death for the sins of man atoned for all who believed in the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice. Calvinists, generally, embraced a more stern belief that emphasized the blight of sin from the time of the Garden of Eden. Calvin’s emphasis upon the Bible for Christian theology and the practice of the early Christian congregation for church practice concluded that no one could earn salvation. God’s grace, as an unearned gift, was the only means to salvation.
Jewish belief varies, but generally does not emphasize an acknowledgement of eternal life. Jews are simply obligated to live in conformity with God’s law and atone for their transgressions on earth.
Islamic belief basically avoids any validity of original sin by recognizing that God forgave Adam and Eve, therefore, each person and each soul begins life unblemished. God will judge them upon Judgment Day by their Book of Life, in short, according to how well they kept the law of God as revealed in the Quran and followed the dictates of God’s Messenger, Muhammad.
The contemporary evolving religion of Political Correctness does not address the basic nature of man. It tends to disregard or disdain whatever preceded it. It chooses its saints, willy nilly, to suit its purposes. Individuals, groups and institutions are venerated or condemned existentially in a cascading stream of regulations, laws and public opprobrium. Its practitioners will inform us whether we are good or bad and thereby merit their earthly acceptance or virulent condemnation.
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