Are there any Jews on this board?

On a more serious note, it seems to me that by referring to their religious practices as "Ritualistic" makes them out to be some sort of cult. Do they drink Kool-Aid and rent out compounds in Texas as well?? It also seems that after having attended several of their "Rituals" you would at least have somewhat of an idea about the specifics of their content, that is if you were paying attention at all. And how do you respect someone after calling them cheap and whiny?? How do you insult someone and then say you respect them?? Why don't we just say that, although Hitler was a little fucked in the head, he wasn't that bad of a guy. After all, he treated the Germans alright. Let's just admit you don't know WTF you're talking about.

 

How can you reply to Sadic in the previous post with & directly afterward say he doesn't know WTF he's talking about? Doesn't make sense.

Ritualism has nothing to do with cults. Rituals are simply regular activities done in pretty much the same way with regularity. Catholic & Jewish & certain Protestant worship services ARE very ritualistic--following the same plan, repeating the same prayers, etc. on a regular basis. More evangelical types of Christian sects tend to "ad-lib" more, are more spontaneous.

Cults tend to be big on recruiting & "saving" souls & use intimidation to keep control of their people. Totally different.

Cheap & whiny are negative terms; but they're based on the aspects on Jewish culture that are visible to Gentiles. Their history has indeed led them to be generally very frugal & shrewd businessmen. And if you watch how Jews are portrayed in the media, & read Jewish authors, it's clear that a certain degree of "whininess" (for lack of a better term) is prevalent in the culture, at least in the US. (I have no idea about other parts of the world). This is all generalization, of course, & not meant to be a strict evaluation of all Jews everywhere. And these are cultural observations that have nothing to do with their religious beliefs & activities.

Just my

 

Well put, AK. Everybody is so hypersensitive these days, as though nobody has any culturally developed strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. The Jews I grew up with will tell you flat out that they want the best deal they can get on whatever they buy and are not afraid to whine to get it. I respect it and them because they know how to work in life and haggling is a great part of my Italian heritage as well. Jews also have an understandable persecution complex because of the Holocaust. I think I would too if my family members were among 6 million people who were killed for nothing more than their heritage, but it wears thin for me sometimes because it's not like they're the ONLY people who have been severely wronged in history. The flip side of that dynamic is that Jews tend to be very merciful and forgiving of the underdog. The like to take up for blacks and other minorities because they can relate to the oppression they've endured.

As for rituals being considered an earmark of "cults", that's a very modern Protestant assertion, and one of the reasons I don't really consider Protestant Christianity to be a religion at all. Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism, "The Big 3" in religions are all heavily into ritual because that's how you actually focus on and connect with God. Protestants don't really want to connect with God because God doesn't always tell you to go get what you think you have coming to you. Sometimes He wants you to suffer. So Protestants have demonized much of the ritual that lays at the heart of their own original faith (even as it existed in it's bastardized state under Luther) so they can be free to haggle over the wording of the Bible and make it say what they want it to and justify them taking what they want in life. Without ritual, Protestantism isn't religion at all. It's just Bible study and fellowship, which isn't worth a lot because there's no method to connect to the source of true faith and inspiration.

 

You are starting to remind me of that Robert Conrad battery commercial from the 70's with this shit.

 

So by your definition of a cult, Christianity would fit perfectly into that category. It recruits people. The Missions of the 16th century did in Latin Amercia, by using intimidation. If those people being conquered did not accept Jesus as their Savior, thereby swearing their allegience to the crown, they were murdered, their land taken and used for Spanish glory. There are still missions accross the world today, although they do not use violence in the way that has been used in the past. Christianity gives the promise of a person in the sky and an afterlife. But, if you don't believe, then you will spend that afterlife not in heaven(a place of everlasting peace), but in hell(a place of eternal fire and pain). Sounds like an intimidation factor to me. Religion always has and always will be a human institution used to manipulate the populace to do whatever is necessary for the betterment and popularity of that religion, including governance, and nothing more. If they had to burn people at the stake or take their land to do it, then so be it.

 

I was also being sarcastic when I with Sadic, since you didn't catch that. Do I have to spell all this shit out for you??

 

I know, it's pretty bad. For better or worse, I'm starting to see it from both an intellectual and spiritual perspective. Luther made a decision to break from the real church out of fear and despair, yet if the changes to the religion had stopped right there at Luther's version, it still would have been extremely close to Catholicism. Most modern Protestantism looks nothing like the early Protestantism, though. People just change it at will for the purposes of expanding their potential market and allowing more things that weren't supposed to be allowed. To do that, you have to take away peoples' ability to hear and feel God's will themselves, so they took that away and used the words of the Bible to manipulate and placate people. It's like a form of brainwashing. The first rule of brainwashing someone is to remove them from their family and familiar surroundings, take away their personal historical perspective so you can replace it with your own version over time. That's what the Protestant church has done to it's people by breaking so far away from their original beliefs.

 

I think you're the only one who's really trying to define exactly what a cult is. To me, it's irrelevant. If someone wants to call the Catholic church a cult, sure, why not. After all, we eat the body and drink the blood of Christ and do lots of other weird things. Sounds kind of "cultey" to me. I'm not against cults, just the stupid ones that think they're going to ride on comets tails and whatnot.

 

In it's ultimate form, I would probably agree with you. The whole point of modern Protestantism is to eliminate as much ceremony, ritual, decor, and tradition as possible, and those components are largely what make up 'religion', as many Protestants see it.

Fixed.

I would say that's true of a very large number of Christians across the board. I don't think Protestants have that particular market cornered by any means.

Some certainly are guilty of that, but to accuse all Protestants of that is cynical, and even a little resentful, IMHO. I have not embraced the Catholic Church, nor have I embraced its closest Protestant cousins, the Episcopal, Methodist, and Lutheran churches (and I've attended all three), specifically because I found the rituals to be distracting, rather than helping me focus.

Now one thing I will give the Catholic church is its inherent unity. Aside from a possible argument for Opus Dei, you just don't see bishops and the like challenging the Vatican, or even other dioces (sp?). At least not that ever sees public light, anyway.

Obviously this is not the case with Protestantism. There are almost as many differing Biblical opinions and applications as there are individual churches, denominations notwithstanding. IMHO, that can be a good thing and a bad thing. Clearly the inconsistency is bad, not only for the congregations but also for the clergy. But I've always been a proponent of good, healthy and respectful debate as a mechanism to bring the 'cream to the top', so to speak. It's not perfect, but I've come to understand that nothing that depends upon people to run it will be.

That's a little absolute, don't you think? To make such a claim is to tell someone like me that I have never once connected with God, and I would argue vehemently against that notion.

 

Right, but we're talking about the purpose, structure, and policies of the church, not the individuals. The purpose of praying the rosary and ritualized prayer and practices is specifically so that you'll focus on the process, not the product, and thus hear God and not yourself or worse. If you're Catholic and you're tired of hearing about God's will over your own, you better stop going to church, because that's one of the main focuses of every mass. That's one of the reasons we kneel. Heck, that's why Jews wear the Yamaka.

All there is to focus on in a given ritual is the ritual itself. How can the ritual distract you from the ritual? If you're trying to focus on something other than the ritual during the ritual, you're doing it wrong and not trusting properly. Things happen when they happen, not when you want them to. You don't look for something or ask for something to happen and "get it". You let it work in God's time. Anything else is like trying to cut a piece of wood with a power saw without plugging it in.

By intentionally disconnecting from it's roots, all Protestant churches are adrift with nothing to guide them but men and their own desires, some of which may be noble, some not, but none truly directed by God because they intentionally cut their only known, inspired and contiguous connection to Him. Everything was handed down from Christ to St Peter and onward. When such is the case, it's much easier to tell what and who is "deviating" from that which started with Christ, and the inertia of generations can correct the errors of men within the church. That's why there have been many bad times where Popes and other people in the Catholic church have been corrupt, but those cases don't turn into long term policy and eventually get weeded out. The only thing Protestants agree on is that Christ is the savior and that they're NOT the Catholic church. When they deviate from the original teachings, it's considered a good thing because they're even less like the Catholic church. The problem is, the whole thing is based on who they're not, not who they are and have been since Christ, and they can't and won't look at their original church to right the ship when it goes off course.

I definitely didn't mean to suggest you've never connected to God in any way and I'm sorry if I presented it that way. I think you've asked God into your life and have felt him, but there's nothing in the structure of Protestant religion that has helped or enabled you to do that. I'd argue that in encouraging you to pray in your own words and pretend to be talking directly with God when doing so, Protestantism has at times driven a greater wedge between you and God than would otherwise exist. How else would you explain what happened when you prayed specifically about your wife's condition? However, I'm sure you've also prayed simply for God to be in your life, and even though that's not a ritualized, Catholic style prayer, I believe that works because it's not rooted in fear or willfulness. However, Protestantism doesn't make that distinction for you or explain the difference. Like I said, it's all hit and miss because there's no structure and no history to refer to. When a person happens to be in a good state of mind, they're praying to God, when they're not, they're praying to demons, but the Protestant church doesn't take responsibility for helping you to be in the right state of mind every time you pray.