Common questions or objections:
“One truth fits all is too confining” “Christians believe that you must believe the same as me or else…”,”Christianity divides instead of unifying…Only by allowing everyone to define their own truth is everyone free.Absolute truth is the enemy of freedom.”,” Christianity considers some things immoral and segregates those that practice them.”
Answers:
- Is freedom the ability to define your own purpose your own truth, our own concept of existence and meaning?
- There is a misunderstanding about the meaning of truth.
- Truth is unavoidable.
- Is Truth a means of control? The problem with this assertion is that..this is also a power play.
- To see through everything is the same as not to see, to call everything not-truth (or relative truth) is a lie.
- There is a misunderstanding of what is a community and what is inclusiveness.
- At the core of any community is a set of shared beliefs. Even the belief that everything is valid is a basis for exclusion.
- There is no universally inclusive community, all community has a set of values that unite them and exclude some others.
- If a community does not hold it’s members accountable for adhering to the common values is not a community.
- A better standard to measure a community is how it treats its members and the outsiders.
- Christianity adopts to culture and also transforms culture, but does not make it uniform with other cultures either.
- In Isaiah 60 & Revelation 21-22 The Bible mentions”Every tribe, every tongue, every nation.”, the God of the bible made humans incredibly diverse and includes all of them in his plans for heaven.
- Christianity has taken more culturally diverse forms than any other religion. It does not conform/uniform other cultures.
- Freedom is not simple! If you are not struggling with something in life, you are not really free. Freedom from all constraints means you are not doing anything at all.
- Immanuel Kant said: Enlightenment is to trust one’s own intelligence rather than the authority or tradition. This statement it self should not be trusted then.
- Freedom is not the absence of restrictions, but rather finding the right restrictions.
- Freedom is a a balance, it’s to find what we are capable and have talent for (to achieve success) and what we may want to do but can not.The reality is that you can not do anything or be anything you like… you can be what you were made for.
- Morality is the same, is there not someone out there that (you think) should stop what they are doing? Does that mean they are immoral?
- Love, is the ultimate freedom (if you think about it) is also is very restrictive. We must sacrifice independence for intimacy. Read quote from CS Lewis:
” Love anything and your hear will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation…”
- Does God say “My way or the highway”? No, he adjusted Him self to our circumstances, he showed the ultimate flexibility… the incarnation.God said I will change for you.
- When you love someone it is easy to please the one you love, you do not even wait for them to ask….From the inside, love feels like heaven.