Showing posts with label christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christianity. Show all posts

Wednesday 14 January 2015

Europe and much-vaunted bastions of multiculturalism becoming No God Zones

for the Daily Telegraph looking at the situation in Europe about religious groups remarks that Jews are not alone envisioned to be mocked at. or endangered for life In some parts of the world, wearing the label "Christian" also carries a death sentence.
Whether executed for the crime of apostasy in Pakistan, or attacked as "kefirs" (infidels) in Mosul, in northern Iraq, Christians are forced to die for their faith in parts of the Middle East.
We do not have to think Muslims are safe and that they are the ones threatening others. Muslims are not spared the persecution the other Abrahamic religions suffer: in western China and episodically in India, public allegiance to Islam is punishable by death.
In ever-greater swathes of the world, being a believer means embracing martyrdom. "Civilised" countries have failed to defend the persecuted – and in fact have created an atmosphere where the person of faith finds themselves pushed into an intolerable place. The extremists want their blind allegiance or will claim their lives; while the secularists suspect their collusion with hot-head co-religionists
Soon Europe, even London, the much-vaunted bastion of multiculturalism, will become No God Zones, banning any public display of religiosity. ‘For your own good’, the authorities will tell their pious citizens, "you must carry out your ancient rituals in secret. We cannot vouch for your safety otherwise." Believers will have to hide their precious religious symbols, and conceal their rites. Like the early Christians in the catacombs, they will lead lives in the shadow. 
Ultra-orthodox Jewish mother wins right to send children to mainstream school

Read more > Europe is becoming a no God zone
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Tuesday 23 September 2014

Quran can convert to Christianity

That the holy Quran can convert people to Christianity has been said already previously by former Muslims who became Christian. Recently also a former Muslim imam convert to Christianity and believes that God protected him from death threats and torture at the hands of his family members.

Mario Joseph, a former imam who shared the story of his conversion and subsequent persecution with the HM Television program “Changing Tracks,” broadcast by the EUK Mamie Foundation run by the Home of the Mother religious community, got the English-language interview, first posted in April 2014, by now has more than 250,000 views on YouTube.

Mario Joseph got onto this world because his mother rejected doctors’ advice to abort him when she had an infected womb during pregnancy. After his birth she dedicated him to God. Studying the Quran, he noticed that the name of Jesus was mentioned more often than the name of Islam’s prophet Mohammed and that Mary, known in Arabic as Mariam, was the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran. In Islam, Mary is recognized as a perpetual virgin who was conceived without sin.

Mario Joseph decided to accept Jesus, which was not happily received by his parents, who found they had to punish him. He was bound and deprived of food and water for several days and his brother forced him to drink urine as a punishment. The lack of food and water affected him severely, he recalled, adding that after as many as 20 days, his father entered his cell, choked him and threatened him with a knife unless he renounced Jesus.

“I knew my dad well that he would kill me,”
Mario Joseph said.

“When I knew that it was my last moment… I thought, ‘Jesus died, but He came back. If I believe in Jesus and die, I too may get my life’.”

At that point he felt energized, pulled his father’s hand down, and cried out Jesus’ name. His father then fell down and was cut severely by his own knife, causing him to foam at the mouth, Mario Joseph said. When family members took his father to the hospital, they forgot to lock the room.

The young man then ran out and caught a taxi. The driver was a Christian and helped get him food and drink.

“That day, really I understood, my Jesus is alive even now. When I called him for my need, he saved me.”

Mario Joseph found a Catholic retreat center in India, where he could stay and give talks in various languages.

He took the name “Mario,” a male version of Mary in Italian. He also took the name Joseph for Mary’s spouse.

Mario Joseph said he did not expect that he would still be alive 18 years after his conversion. He said people are still trying to kill him, and his parents held a mock funeral ceremony for him to signify that he was an outcast. On the mock grave, they marked as his death date the date of his baptism.

Although he has had no contact with his family members, he prays for them and believes that “God can touch them within a moment.”

Even if they never accept Christianity, he explained,
 “I’m always saying ‘Jesus, please take them to heaven’.”

This imam former Muslim imam may have found Jesus, and found many things in Catholicism where he found himself at ease.

It is strange he came to accept the Trinity and even came to do worship of the human being Mary. For such conversions Muslims are very afraid, but if some of their Muslim brothers and sisters would come to see who Jesus really is, and what the Plan of God is with humanity, they should not be so much afraid.

I do invite Christians and Muslims to come and look at the Quran and Bible verses which are presented to come to understand both writings better and see the similarities and come to see where certain Quran  verses can lead tot and how certain teachers can twist the words of those holy books.

Come and have a look at the series Quran and Bible verses comparison:

Quran versus older Holy Writings of Divine Creator

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Quran quotes

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Wednesday 20 August 2014

Faith because of the questions

With so much going wrong in this world, and recently so many religious wars, lots of people say the world would be better of without religion and without any god.
Lots of people do have lots of questions. The politicians nor the teachers are providing all the answers. Is it not because we do have so many questions that we do need faith in something or some one? Is it not we need faith when the way ahead seems unclear or intimidating, when answers are hard to find?

Faith is trusting in someone who has the answers we lack. Faith is trusting in what is there but which we can not see, cannot feel, cannot touch. Many things in this world may be hidden but come into light one day. Time revealed a lot of things to humankind. Though still a lot of things we do not know nor do we understand. We believe there might be such and such thing happened in the past or happening in the future. We may believe thta something works this way or an other, but often we do not know exactly how it functions.

In this world we are tested many times, and that is where faith comes in and shall proof its importance.

A lot of things may be not clear for us, but we do believe we can trust what is written in the Holy Scriptures. We do not keep our ears shut nor our eyes closed. We want to see what the blind cannot see. We do believe the Word of the Almighty God is the Word of Truth, explaining everything what we should have to know at the moment. Those things which are not clear for us (yet), shall perhaps clearer at the time when God thinks we shall be ready for it. Until then we shall have to wait.

Those who think the Christian faith is a blind faith are mistaken. When we do not want to see what is really in God's Word, we shall not be able to see it. The Christian faith is not a blind faith but has to be a seeing faith. In His Word we should find God. In our heart we should find His Treasure and in our ears we should hear His Call. In the surroundings and in what happens in the world we can see the Works of God. Those who want to follow the son of the Creator shall be able to feel His love. They shall find all the more reason to trust V more than any human being.

Trusting God we do not need to find all answers to our questions now. We trust Him to such a degree that we do not need or demand all the answers. We trust and obey, even when we do not understand and even when we cannot see the finish line.

> Please do find also to read: It's Not a Blind Faith



Friday 1 August 2014

A rebellious movement founded on a fake?

English: Icon of Jesus Christ
English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There is no doubt that all mainline denominations, but particularly those that embrace a so-called liberal orthodoxy, are in decline.

There are many people who want others to believe that Jesus Christ did not exist and that Christianity is build upon a fake.

It might be strange that those people who wants us to believe jesus from Nazareth (Jeshua from the tribe of David) did not exist are running high with other historical figrures where less writings and information can be found  than the one they scorn.

Many also consider early Christianity as a rebellious underground movement until Roman Emperor Constantine made it his religious practice in A.D. 312. We do agree that Constantine's conversion, based on what he viewed as a victorious sign from God prior to going into battle, and his demand to the preachers of Christ that they would agree with the empire its system of worshipping, made that the movement became more attractive because lots of attitudes could be continued and worship became no different than they knew already from the Roman and Greek worshipping, having now a three-une god to their liberty.

Having Christendom made in an official religion of Rome in A.D. 380 did more for the spread of Christianity than any proselytizing efforts conducted by the Apostle Paul. Though the religion that was subservient to the Roman Empire, beard little resemblance to the radical teachings of Jesus.

The first-century Gospels did not want to give a correct historical day to day overview, but presented those teachings of the man the writers considered to be the Messiah.
 The gospels indicate that Jesus was a historical figure.
Myths and even legends normally involved characters placed centuries in the distant past. People wrote novels, but not novels claiming that a fictitious character actually lived a generation or two before they wrote. Ancient readers would most likely approach the Gospels as biographies, as a majority of scholars today suggest. Biographies of recent figures were not only about real figures, but they typically preserved much information. One can demonstrate this preservation by simply comparing the works of biographers and historians about then-recent figures, say Tacitus and Suetonius writing about Otho.
 writes Professor
Contrary to some circles on the Internet, very few scholars doubt that Jesus existed, preached and led a movement. Scholars' confidence has nothing to do with theology but much to do with historiographic common sense. What movement would make up a recent leader, executed by a Roman governor for treason, and then declare, "We're his followers"? If they wanted to commit suicide, there were simpler ways to do it.
One popular objection is that only Christians wrote anything about Jesus. This objection is neither entirely true nor does it reckon with the nature of ancient sources. It usually comes from people who have not worked much with ancient history. Only a small proportion of information from antiquity survives, yet it is often sufficient.
Those who want to find more about the existence of this cult figure may look further at the new series Why think that (1) … Jesus existed? 



Thursday 19 June 2014

Vision blurred by cumulative burden of divisions

"Our vision is often blurred by the cumulative burden of our divisions and our will is not always free of that human ambition which can accompany even our desire to preach the Gospel as the Lord commanded."
said pope Francis I when he recently met the Archbishop of Canterbury in Rome for the second time since they were installed as leaders of their churches last year.

You may wonder if it are ecumenical talks the pope would like to see more, having the denominations growing closer to each other or like I would prefer it to see having the different denominations respecting each other for their own choices and teachings, loving them as being part of the Body of Christ and sharing with them the brotherly love Jesus preached.

Naturally the Roman Catholic Church may not expect the followers of Christ who prefer to the same God of Jesus, the God of Abraham, to "celebrate the Eucharist together and the Eucharist ... like the ‘burning bush’ in which the Trinity humbly dwells and communicates itself". He may think
"this is why the Church has placed the feast of the Body of the Lord after that of the Trinity.”
there are enough real Christians who only want to worship One True God, the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, of Whom no pictures or graven images may be made and certainly may not be bowded down for or prayed in front off.
For the Holy Father the Divine love of the Trinity is the “origin and goal of the universe and of every creature.”
But according to the Torah we do find in the Bereshit (the Genesis) that Jehovah God is the Divine Creator of everything. He alone is the Holy One Who is eternal, having no beginning and no end, no birth and no death.



As long as the pope considers the Trinity acting as a model of the Church where Christians are called to love with the perfect, sacrificial love of Jesus, it would be difficult to get trinitarian Christians to accept that there are also non-trinitarian Christians and also other believers in God who shall be able to be saved by the grace of God and be able to enter the Kingdom of God.

As long as the Catholic Church and several protestant churches keep up that distorted vision of the Trinity as sole possibility for people to come under God, Jews, non-trinitarian Christians and Muslims will find it difficutl to find honesty in the trials of that Church which says it is for unity and for peace between the monotheistic religions and other people living in this world.

Pope Francis also spoke emphatically of the impossibility of hatred for a Christian.
“It is a contradiction to think of Christians who hate. It’s a contradiction!”
Though I can assure you the letters (and other things), I and my church, often get in our mailbox because we are Christians not believing in the Holy Trinity, does not show much of that love.

The pope his saying:
“distinctive of Christianity, as Jesus has told us: ‘By this they will know that you are my disciples: if you love one another.’”
is often forgotten by his flock, though we must say most controversy and hate is brought to us by different protestant denominations.

Lots of Christians should come to open their eyes to see their is much variety in Christendom and that in those different denominations there are certain belief-points which may be far from each other. Unity should be felt under the choice made "Accepting Jesus as the Messiah". The way how to follow him as a master teacher is too different to bring them fast under one 'tag'.

"True love is boundless, but knows its limits in order to meet others, and respect others' freedom. " (Pope Francis I)

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Tuesday 3 June 2014

Message of Pope Francis I for the 48th World Communications Day

Communication at the Service of an Authentic Culture of Encounter

[Sunday, 1 June 2014]
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today we are living in a world which is growing ever “smaller” and where, as a result, it would seem to be easier for all of us to be neighbours. Developments in travel and communications technology are bringing us closer together and making us more connected, even as globalization makes us increasingly interdependent. Nonetheless, divisions, which are sometimes quite deep, continue to exist within our human family. On the global level we see a scandalous gap between the opulence of the wealthy and the utter destitution of the poor. Often we need only walk the streets of a city to see the contrast between people living on the street and the brilliant lights of the store windows. We have become so accustomed to these things that they no longer unsettle us. Our world suffers from many forms of exclusion, marginalization and poverty, to say nothing of conflicts born of a combination of economic, political, ideological, and, sadly, even religious motives.
In a world like this, media can help us to feel closer to one another, creating a sense of the unity of the human family which can in turn inspire solidarity and serious efforts to ensure a more dignified life for all. Good communication helps us to grow closer, to know one another better, and ultimately, to grow in unity. The walls which divide us can be broken down only if we are prepared to listen and learn from one another. We need to resolve our differences through forms of dialogue which help us grow in understanding and mutual respect. A culture of encounter demands that we be ready not only to give, but also to receive. Media can help us greatly in this, especially nowadays, when the networks of human communication have made unprecedented advances. The internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. This is something truly good, a gift from God.
This is not to say that certain problems do not exist. The speed with which information is communicated exceeds our capacity for reflection and judgement, and this does not make for more balanced and proper forms of self-expression. The variety of opinions being aired can be seen as helpful, but it also enables people to barricade themselves behind sources of information which only confirm their own wishes and ideas, or political and economic interests. The world of communications can help us either to expand our knowledge or to lose our bearings. The desire for digital connectivity can have the effect of isolating us from our neighbours, from those closest to us. We should not overlook the fact that those who for whatever reason lack access to social media run the risk of being left behind.
While these drawbacks are real, they do not justify rejecting social media; rather, they remind us that communication is ultimately a human rather than technological achievement. What is it, then, that helps us, in the digital environment, to grow in humanity and mutual understanding? We need, for example, to recover a certain sense of deliberateness and calm. This calls for time and the ability to be silent and to listen. We need also to be patient if we want to understand those who are different from us. People only express themselves fully when they are not merely tolerated, but know that they are truly accepted. If we are genuinely attentive in listening to others, we will learn to look at the world with different eyes and come to appreciate the richness of human experience as manifested in different cultures and traditions. We will also learn to appreciate more fully the important values inspired by Christianity, such as the vision of the human person, the nature of marriage and the family, the proper distinction between the religious and political spheres, the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, and many others.
La parabola del Buon Samaritano Messina Chiesa...
La parabola del Buon Samaritano Messina Chiesa della Medaglia Miracolosa Casa di Ospitalità Collereale (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
How, then, can communication be at the service of an authentic culture of encounter? What does it mean for us, as disciples of the Lord, to encounter others in the light of the Gospel? In spite of our own limitations and sinfulness, how do we draw truly close to one another? These questions are summed up in what a scribe – a communicator – once asked Jesus: “And who is my neighbour?” (Lk 10:29). This question can help us to see communication in terms of “neighbourliness”. We might paraphrase the question in this way: How can we be “neighbourly” in our use of the communications media and in the new environment created by digital technology? I find an answer in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is also a parable about communication. Those who communicate, in effect, become neighbours. The Good Samaritan not only draws nearer to the man he finds half dead on the side of the road; he takes responsibility for him. Jesus shifts our understanding: it is not just about seeing the other as someone like myself, but of the ability to make myself like the other. Communication is really about realizing that we are all human beings, children of God. I like seeing this power of communication as “neighbourliness”.
Whenever communication is primarily aimed at promoting consumption or manipulating others, we are dealing with a form of violent aggression like that suffered by the man in the parable, who was beaten by robbers and left abandoned on the road. The Levite and the priest do not regard him as a neighbour, but as a stranger to be kept at a distance. In those days, it was rules of ritual purity which conditioned their response. Nowadays there is a danger that certain media so condition our responses that we fail to see our real neighbour.
It is not enough to be passersby on the digital highways, simply “connected”; connections need to grow into true encounters. We cannot live apart, closed in on ourselves. We need to love and to be loved. We need tenderness. Media strategies do not ensure beauty, goodness and truth in communication. The world of media also has to be concerned with humanity, it too is called to show tenderness. The digital world can be an environment rich in humanity; a network not of wires but of people. The impartiality of media is merely an appearance; only those who go out of themselves in their communication can become a true point of reference for others. Personal engagement is the basis of the trustworthiness of a communicator. Christian witness, thanks to the internet, can thereby reach the peripheries of human existence.
As I have frequently observed, if a choice has to be made between a bruised Church which goes out to the streets and a Church suffering from self-absorption, I certainly prefer the first. Those “streets” are the world where people live and where they can be reached, both effectively and affectively. The digital highway is one of them, a street teeming with people who are often hurting, men and women looking for salvation or hope. By means of the internet, the Christian message can reach “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Keeping the doors of our churches open also means keeping them open in the digital environment so that people, whatever their situation in life, can enter, and so that the Gospel can go out to reach everyone. We are called to show that the Church is the home of all. Are we capable of communicating the image of such a Church? Communication is a means of expressing the missionary vocation of the entire Church; today the social networks are one way to experience this call to discover the beauty of faith, the beauty of encountering Christ. In the area of communications too, we need a Church capable of bringing warmth and of stirring hearts.
Effective Christian witness is not about bombarding people with religious messages, but about our willingness to be available to others “by patiently and respectfully engaging their questions and their doubts as they advance in their search for the truth and the meaning of human existence” (BENEDICT XVI, Message for the 47th World Communications Day, 2013). We need but recall the story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus. We have to be able to dialogue with the men and women of today, to understand their expectations, doubts and hopes, and to bring them the Gospel, Jesus Christ himself, God incarnate, who died and rose to free us from sin and death. We are challenged to be people of depth, attentive to what is happening around us and spiritually alert. To dialogue means to believe that the “other” has something worthwhile to say, and to entertain his or her point of view and perspective. Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the claim that they alone are valid or absolute.
May the image of the Good Samaritan who tended to the wounds of the injured man by pouring oil and wine over them be our inspiration. Let our communication be a balm which relieves pain and a fine wine which gladdens hearts. May the light we bring to others not be the result of cosmetics or special effects, but rather of our being loving and merciful “neighbours” to those wounded and left on the side of the road. Let us boldly become citizens of the digital world. The Church needs to be concerned for, and present in, the world of communication, in order to dialogue with people today and to help them encounter Christ. She needs to be a Church at the side of others, capable of accompanying everyone along the way. The revolution taking place in communications media and in information technologies represents a great and thrilling challenge; may we respond to that challenge with fresh energy and imagination as we seek to share with others the beauty of God.
From the Vatican, 24 January 2014, the Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales.
FRANCIS
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Friday 25 April 2014

Christianity to be enshrined

In a letter to The Telegraph, eight leading thinkers including Prof Roger Scruton, the philosopher and writer, insist that the moderate brand of Christianity “enshrined” in the British constitution actively protects those of other faiths and none.
The letter was published as Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, who is himself an atheist, said it was “flamingly obvious” that Britain is founded on Christian values.

in the course of a 90 second talk had used the words "Britain's Christian traditions". It was enough to get him excluded by a particular member of the BBC's thought police. One wonders if the Prime Minister, David Cameron will be allowed to say his latest remarks on the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Many object to the British Prime Minister his characterisation of Britain as a “Christian country” and the negative consequences for politics and society that this engenders.

"In his call for more evangelism, Mr Cameron is exclusively tying himself to one faith group, inevitably to the exclusion of others," opined Elizabeth O'Casey, Policy and Research Office at the National Secular Society. She also warned the British people that we are moving away from the concept of all of us being "rights-bearing citizens first and foremost, with democratic autonomy and equality, regardless of which faith they happen to have, or not have".

At a social level, Britain has been shaped like many other European countries for the better by many pre-Christian, non-Christian, and post-Christian forces. They are a plural society with citizens with a range of perspectives. To call it religious is taking the religious element out of proportion. I do know many call Belgium also a Catholic country, but if you would question the citicens about their beliefs, wou would get a total different opinion. They mix Catholic and Christian as if it is the same, because they do not know the diffenrence and most of them do not know what Catholicisim enhales.

Most citicens donot want to recognise they have gone far away form religion and certainly far away for m the reall Christian and Jewish values.

The inhabitants of the West European countries should come to realize that they are a largely non-religious society.

I would agree with more than 55 signatories:
Constantly to claim otherwise fosters alienation and division in our society. Although it is right to recognise the contribution made by many Christians to social action, it is wrong to try to exceptionalise their contribution when it is equalled by British people of different beliefs. This needlessly fuels enervating sectarian debates that are by and large absent from the lives of most British people, who do not want religions or religious identities to be actively prioritised by their elected government.
Gavin Littaur reacts also:
David Cameron should be more careful when pontificating about Christianity, given that he does not speak for those (such as myself, a Jew), who are not necessarily of his faith and beliefs.
The Prime Minister’s urging of Britons to be “more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there” is particularly unfortunate. It is at best tactless and at worst an exemplification of the zealous proselytising of extremists.
The commentator finds the letter against David Cameron just the latest expression of an infantile multi-culturalism that has done terrible damage to social cohesion precisely because it is too weak to create any substantial bonds of identity.
The Church of England is the established church and the Queen is the head of it for reasons which are deeply bound up with the country's political, religious and cultural inheritance.
Neither does the fact that most people don't nowadays go to church on a Sunday mean that Christian values and symbols do not play a vital role in national life. Whenever there's a national tragedy -- the death of Diana for example -- watch how quickly Christianity moves back into centre stage.
says The commentator.

As in Belgium the Catholic church may be the main church, the Church of England is the established church in England, but that does not mean that most British citizens would adhere to that church or believe in the God of that church.
It is not because when we go from place to place, where we may find everywhere in any town or village across the country a local church, that we may find religious people coming to that church aor that it is functional or not. It tells more about the past than about the present. In most countries those village churches are most of the time empty buildings.

More than anything else the church buildings may define the local landscape and the visual community of which we are all a part, but that does not tell us that they and we are from the same religious community, nor believing in the same things.


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