Paul

I liked marks post. I have the same sense of wonderment as to how the deeds of the "religious" sync with the faith and doctrines of the texts they study. I think that a christian should be a pacifist, communist, a frankly a very nice person who wouldn't be prone to judging.

The golden rule is easily broken in religious mind states, as follows.

Bob is a Christian or Druj, muslim whatever.
Bob thinks that if he was a child molester then he would be fine with people stoning him to death with his own severed hand bones.

Because that is how he would have people treat him if he was a child molester then it's ok for him to treat child molesters this way.

It's basic social law theory, and law is not about justice. It's about punishment in society. Religions are mostly about laws, hence they emphasize punishment, threats, judging and coerscion. Much like legal systems.

I don't think Jeshua would be very happy to see what has come of his deeds. His deeds were motivated by his faith, his need to act, but his view of the failures of the social structures around him made him I think a bit afraid of building an institution, so Paul started it off instead, without necessarilly paying much attention to the faith or deeds of Jeshua. Paul had his own faith and his own deeds to be done, early christianity was a tool of dissent against the jewish order at that time and the roman one. To a lesser extant it was also a populist action against the greek elitist academic religions/philosophies of the time. Hence the advice to worship and pray on your own(ie you don't need to be bitches of the jewish temple structure), and it's opposit. The public gathering of people without leaders to follow that important command steve mentions, love god, so that you can love each other.

I was really trying to avoid writing this because I could talk forever about this and since it's about what it's about and we are who we are not much will come of it I'm afraid. Thats why I'm not a preacher. So I'll end here. One last thing though.

If you are a Christian and you read this. You should maybe check out a few things.
1. Cs Lewis. Mere Christianity.
2. The History of the Early Church by Frend. It's awesome, and big...yeah.
3. Martin Bubers I and Thou
4. Jesus and Yahweh, the Divine names.
5. The Five books of Moses. It's the Pentauch translated from the Hebrew to english by rabbis. It's nice to see their take on how all this was begun.
6. The Gnostic Gospels. Nag Hammadi library, whatever you want to call it. Wow sometimes the losing side of a debate on religious canon can be quite informative.
7. The Jefferson Bible. It has a lot of names and yeah it was written by that jefferson. He was as Christian as any of the founding fathers and a heterdox one at that...yeah.
8. something else because if you read these things it will destroy your view of christianity and if you are lucky will build one in it's place you can't even explain to your friends.

Ps Christians didn't invent murder. They might not even be it's biggest supporters. They are however the most suprising actors in the industry.

BTW the Koran sucks, really, really bad. They must have had nothing as a religion working for the common people for that piece of shit to have gone so hog wild.

one more ps...nah. I'm gonna smoke, and check on my beer. my 5th batch.