Hello atheistforum

[Abracadabra]

You are free to worship and follow Christ the way you are called to.

So are you're saying that if I don't believe that Jesus died to pay for my sins,
and I reject the whole notion of the "Sacrificial Lamb" thing, that this is ok?

May I ask who gave you the authority to change those rules prey tell?
I personally think you have just made a highly devious and underhanded statement.
You say, "You are free to worship and follow Christ the way you are called to."
But by the mere use of the word "Christ" instead of "Jesus" you are automatically demanding the following:

1. They must believe in the God of Abraham and the fable of original sin.
2. They must believe in the prophecies of a promised messiah.
3. They must believe that the entire Old Testament is infallible truth and the word of God.
4. They must believe that Jesus was born of a virgin
5. They must believe that God spoke to a crowd from a cloud (after all if the bible contains lies why believe any of it?)
6. They must believe in Satan who tested and tempted Jesus
7. They must believe that evil spirits possess people and that Jesus can cast them out.
8. They must believe that Mary Magdalene was carrying around a load of seven evil spirits before she met Jesus.
9. They must believe that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb of God who died to pay for their sins.
10. They must believe that the only way to salvation is by condoning his crucifixion on their behalf.
11. They must believe that to not believe in Jesus is justification for eternal damnation (because John says so in these fables)
12. They must believe that only few people make it to heaven and the vast majority of souls are sent to eternal punishment (because Jesus say so in these fables)

Holy shit. This is already a dozen things that a person must believe just in order to believe that Jesus was "The Christ".
And truly this list could be made virtually as long as the entire biblical cannon because in truth you really need to believe all of it.
I'm mean if you're going to believe any of it at all you may as well believe all of it.

You say, "You are free to worship and follow Christ the way you are called to."

I say baloney. The mere fact that you use the term "Christ" reveals your treachery.

Tell people that they are free to follow the teachings of Jesus, and don't even demand that they are required to "worship" him, and you make make some progress.

But to proclaims that they must "worship" him as the "Christ" is already placing restrictions on "Freedom".

Are they "free" to believe that Jesus had nothing to do with the God of Abraham?
Are they "free" to believe that he has nothing to do with any idea of a 'sacrificial lamb of God"

If not, then basically what "Freedom" are you talking about?

There is no FREEDOM in Christianity Brotherlylove.

Freedom and the Christian God are totally incompatible concepts.

There is no freedom with the Christian God. You either swallow the dogma hook-line-and-sinker, or you don't.

There is no "middle path" in Christianity. It's all or nothing.

If you want the freedom of a "middle path" you should look into Buddhism.

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I'm not sure why any Christian would quote Leviticus on that, because homosexuality is described as sin in the New Testament.

They usually quote Leviticus, but where in the New Testament does it actually condemn homosexuality?

It's probably somewhere in the writings by Paul. Paul was extremely nasty about dredging up crap from the Old Testament and shoving it down the throat of Jesus.

And of course Christians worship the words of Paul as if they came directly from Jesus. In fact, a lot of stuff that they claim came from Jesus actually came from Paul.

I'm absolutely certain that Jesus himself never addressed homosexuality directly. But that doesn't mean that it isn't in the New Testament somewhere. There are a lot of references to the Old Testament within the New Testament so it could easily be referred to in that kind of indirect way.