To be fair, I think a lot of practing people don't have much more understanding of the history of Christianity than the mainstream press. As one of my preachers said, there's not much wrong with this--Jesus used to tell his parables on three (again, three!) levels, and sometimes told them three times: one for the masses, one for those who wanted to dig a little deeper, and a third for the apostles. My pastor said that it was valid to be any one of those people, to be anywhere in your relationship with Christ. That was something I hadn't thought about before, and I think it was a good step in stopping me from looking down my nose at folks who didn't want to be as academic about religion as they did. They were probably looking down their noses right back at me!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-07-09 02:09 am (UTC)To be fair, I think a lot of practing people don't have much more understanding of the history of Christianity than the mainstream press. As one of my preachers said, there's not much wrong with this--Jesus used to tell his parables on three (again, three!) levels, and sometimes told them three times: one for the masses, one for those who wanted to dig a little deeper, and a third for the apostles. My pastor said that it was valid to be any one of those people, to be anywhere in your relationship with Christ. That was something I hadn't thought about before, and I think it was a good step in stopping me from looking down my nose at folks who didn't want to be as academic about religion as they did. They were probably looking down their noses right back at me!