From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!rah Newsgroups: net.religion Title: Re: Jeremiah"s prophecy Article-I.D.: npoiv.1926 Posted: Tue Feb 8 13:46:43 1983 Received: Fri Feb 11 03:07:22 1983 References: presby.175 A few general philosophical points and a comment about Christian acts of mayhem and carnage. As should be obvious from our own experiences, calling something a given title does not make it that. I.e. I have seen many systems called "user friendly", of which very few really seemed to fit up to any reasonable definition of "user-friendliness." According to Christian teachings, one must have a personal conversion to Christianity, one cannot be born a Christian. (For political reasons, various churches have in the past few hundred years, asserted that they could "claim" infants for themselves in anticipation of that conversion) Thus, merely being born in a "Christian" country or family does not make one a "Christian." Further, merely claiming to have had a conversion without following the teachings of Jesus is not truly Christian. Remember that "Christianity" became a state religion of Europe, and was that way for a long time, even though a minority of the citizens would really be Christians according to the definition above. It is not surprising that many acts were committed by people invoking "Christianity", after all that was the only name they could invoke other than "infidel." Having said that, I readily admit that there are still a number of people who will pass the stricter definition of "Christian" who committed atrocities of which I am ashamed. However, I think the atrocities committed by the second, more restrictive group are far fewer than those imposed under Communism or some of the other modern rulers. Rich Hammond