Enjoy For Free Christian Agnostic Conceptualized By Leslie D. Weatherhead Presented In Multimedia Book

some of the examples may be dated, this is an important work in how to begin to think about the nature of christian theology as a rational human being.
Without this book, I would no longer be calling myself a Christian, This review is from: The Christian Agnostic Abingdon Classics Paperback
I read this book overyears ago when I was a struggling young Christian trying to make sense of other philosophies and beliefs that I was exposed to, even drawn to.
Weatherhead cleared out the cobwebs, let me know that I could wonder about some things, even believe other things, and still be a Christian, still accept the living Jesus in my life.
In fact, reading this book helped make it possible, This was one of the most important books in my life, It's better just to be honest about what you don't know, Ive often contemplated many of the things that Weatherhead writes about in this book, Ive never read a book quite like this, which takes the hard questions of Christianity headon, without shrinking from them or coating them in ambiguity.


This book will be difficult for some to digest, particularly those harboring intense theological indoctrination, Such people will, no doubt, scream heresy and toss this book in the garbage at their first encounter with Weatherheads iconoclasm, However, I would encourage such people to read this book through before formulating their final opinions about it,

I would strongly recommend that any reader stay in prayer intermittently while reading this book, constantly beseeching God for the clarity and peace.
Prayer will help one maintain the perspective that God is God and that all the minute ramblings and postulations that men may perform, no matter how much they may appeal to our reason, merely scratch the surface of fully knowing God.
Read this book with humility and take from it that which enhances your ability to understand and leave anything that frustrates you alone.


This book goes a long way in explaining how Christianity is a way of life and not a mere theological system.
Many should read this book to understand how nothing more is really necessary beyond the simple openness of the Christian love that Jesus demonstrated so dramatically for us.
We need not insist that anyone follow elaborate rules, rites, theologies, doctrines, or creeds, unless it feels right to them, The only real prerequisite is to open oneself to love others unconditionally and to let God into these relationships, The most effective way to a greater knowledge of God is through the experience of unconditional love,

Revelation is progressive, Once we embrace love, the rest will come on its own, Christ admitted those into discipleship who merely agreed to be with him and allowed his disciples to develop their own personal creed from their own experiences.
Thats what the Christian Church should do, But for the Christian Church to invite others into experience means that the Christian Church must be “having” such experiences, Im not talking about the experience of Sunday School or chapel Im talking about experiences of Christian action in the world, so that Christ can be really felt.
It would be much more effective to invite your unbelieving neighbor to minister to the poor, help a sick neighbor, visit prisoners, read to illiterate children, or other actions of love than it ever would be to simply invite them to church.
Let them find the physical church after they first experience the love, Revelation is progressive.

In this book, Dr, Weatherhead suggests that many Christian doctrines and rituals have nothing to do with expressing Christian love, Weatherhead asserts that it is time for the world to dismiss the lies, superstitions, distortions, and mythology with which the joyously simple message of Christ has been overlaid.
Weatherhead contends that unless we can break out of the prison of literal Bible readings, false expressions, ancient creeds, antiquated hymns, and ridiculous expectations of one another, we will continue to repel many from the far more glorious truths inherent in simple expressions of Christian love.


Our five senses give us only a minute amount of knowledge in comparison to all that God knows, Algebra, which appears orderly to me, might well seem disorderly nonsense to an uneducated person, Cutting an unconscious mans body might seem purposeful cruelty to an uneducated savage, but a surgeon views it differently, To bridge this sort of enormous communication gap, Jesus drew wordpictures called parables, Parables help men see the truth in their own hearts, Today we have to recognize that similar communication gaps exist in our society and that bridging these gaps is how we bring new people to Christ.


In the paragraphs below I visit some of the major

concepts that Weatherhead espouses:

The Virgin Birth

Jesus never mentioned the Virgin Birth, neither was it for centuries any part of the missionary message of the church.
Mark never mentioned it, nor Peter, Paul, or John, Matthew goes to great lengths to show that Jesus was descended through Joseph from David, which seems meaningless if Joseph was not his father.
Otherwise, wouldnt it make more sense to trace the lineage of Jesus through Mary Mary was descended from Aaron, not David,

Does one really have to believe in the Virgin Birth to believe in Jesus and to experience the love of Jesus Does Jesus accomplishments have more to do with how he entered the world or what he was and did and said while he was in the world

If Jesus draws me near to God, why do contentious particulars about whether or not Jesus had an earthly human father matter Could the account of the Virgin Birth be a parable to help us all understand that we all have a heavenly father and that every man, to the extent to which he is good, is a revelation of that heavenly father Jesus taught men to call God “father”.
Jesus refers to his brothers, sisters, and mother as those who do Gods will, in contrast to his hereditary lineage,

If we take the Virgin Birth literally to mean birth without sexual intercourse, than we have to ask ourselves if Jesus was wholly human or not.
If Jesus was not fully man, the whole religious significance of God becoming man is brought into question, Perhaps the appropriate symbolism is that of being “born again”, as in being spiritually reborn of God, with the implication that God is father to those who follow his will.
From this perspective, God is father of not only Jesus, but also of all of us that follow him, Being reborn spiritually is to be released from the hereditary nature and purified into the spiritual nature, It is the manner by which we transcend from physical to spiritual beings, Because spiritual rebirth occurs without intercourse it is, so to speak, a “virgin” birth of the spirit,


Who was Jesus

We assume that Jesus was sinless, but we have no way of proving that Jesus was sinless.
In Luke:and Mark:Jesus asks: “Why ye call me good Only God is good, ”

Man, to the extent to which he is good, reveals the nature of God, Jesus was a vessel full of God, Jesus contained as much of God as has been poured into any man and likely lived on a moral level so high that his temptations were more subtle than we have the spiritual sensitivity to even discern as temptation at all.


Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Jesus was God, The Bible says that Jesus was the “Word” of God, it says that God was in Christ, and it says that Jesus was the Son of God but it does not say that Jesus was God.
Jesus prayed to God. Jesus did not encourage people to worship him, he encouraged people to worship God, Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man,

About Miracles

In Matthew:, Jesus said that if one has sufficient faith and does not doubt they can tell a mountain to throw itself into the sea and it will be done.
Jesus clearly worked many miracles but implied that others could learn to do miracles, We should ourselves be seeking how to cure people and other amazing things, But clearly, Jesus was more interested in demonstrating servitude than his miraculous abilities, The most dramatic miracle is that wherever Jesus is sincerely followed, mens lives are changed, period,

What does it mean to believe

Religious truth has no authority until it authenticates itself in the mind of the believer.
Believing is accepting something as true because you see it to be true, not because it is imposed upon you, To be told “I am forgiven by God” does not do anything for one unless they accept readily the truth that God forgives.


If one has only reached religious convictions on the word of another then they, in reality, may have no true convictions.
If ones religion has been incessantly pounded into them as a child, perhaps exploring their doubts will bring them to a more authentic faith.
It is one thing to be told the Bible has authority because it is divinely inspired and quite another to feel ones heart leap out and grasp Biblical truths.
Revelation is progressive and each step along the way entails a personal acceptance of truth, As the author says, “seeing is the work of each soul for itself”,

The reason religion seems bland to many is because they have accepted the authority of the church but never really accepted what Christ stands for.
Christianity is much more than theological doctrines that must be “believed”, Christianity is a way of seeing the world and living in the world, Christ never said you must believe this and that! Instead Christ said, in Luke:, “why do you not of yourselves judge what is right” The author remarks on what this means:

“A statement is not true because it is in the Bible, let alone in the Prayer Book.
It is not true because Paul says so, or the Pope says so, or because John Wesley says so, It has the authority of the truth only when our own individual insight can leap up and recognize it and possess it as our own.
”Leslie Weatherhead

Having faith does not mean accepting intellectual propositions that seem preposterous, When Jesus spoke of Faith, he meant trust, One man Jesus healed by faith did not even know who had healed him and certainly had absolutely no concept of any theology about Jesus! When Jesus told people their faith had healed them he meant their “trustful expectancy” in something that breaks with convention, prejudice, biased upbringing, and peer pressure.


Taking the Bible literally

Did God converse with a snake in Hebrew In Psalm:, does it really say: “Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rocks” Does the Bible say that the flesh of swine is not to be eaten, that usury is wrong, and that wages earned one day are not to be kept back till the next morning Do we today want to follow the rules for a Levitical priest inB.
C. Did God really turn a terrified woman into a pillar of salt, order massacres, and allow his devoted servant Job to be visited with diseases and pain Did a donkey really speak as related inPeter:Were the parables that Jesus told actually factual events or simply related as examples Does it matter whether the parables actually occurred or whether Jesus was simply drawing an analogy Does a story have to be factually true in order to convey an important moral truth Just asking.


Why did Jesus die the way he did

Is there any legitimacy in the ancient Jewish custom of murdering animals for remission of sins Would the God you know in your heart really condone such a slaughter The Psalmists cries in:and:: “Thou hast no pleasure in burnt offerings.
”

Can justice really come from undeserved suffering Is sin a debt that Jesus paid for with his death Did Jesus experience some measure of suffering that in some fantastic ledgeraccount balanced the degree of sin in the world The prodigal son, the woman taken in adultery, and the boy let down through the roof were all forgiven immediately they did not have to await any sacrifice and neither do you when you are forgiven in the here and now.
It is not that Christ had to die to pay someone or some price or to level some scale Christ had to die because thats what it took to get through to us! To get us to see! Thats what it took to make a big enough splash to get our attention, even today.
Thats what it took to introduce a catalyst into the world that would begin progressive change,

So is there reality to the contention that Jesus suffering on the cross removed all of the sin The trouble is that sins are not taken away! My sin and every mans sin remains in the world, working still their evil in us and in the lives of others whom we have hurt.
Such sin is diminished only when we forgive those who have hurt us bear the transgression and accept forgiveness from those we have hurt and from God.
And even if our sin doesnt appear to hurt another, but is simply a sin against what God stands for, then God bears the transgression! God bears the transgression for all our sins.
This is what Christ demonstrated to us, how to bear transgressions and therefore how to also accept forgiveness! It is through forgiveness that sin is eliminated from the world.
The Kingdom is of God is predicated upon men forgiving one another, God forgiving men, and the beautiful utopia resulting therefrom,

Christ forgave those who wronged him even as they were wronging him, The suffering Christ bore is the most radical example of nonviolent forgiveness of assailants ever witnessed, This business of “turning the other cheek” was and still is a truly radical concept, It is the concept that permeates and sustains Jesus teaching, The purposeful restraint of backlash and retribution allows the assailant or sinner to understand immediately that they are forgiven, Just as the Prodigal son, we may return repentant into joyous fellowship, It is a concept so profound that it convicts the spiritual disciple to similarly hold steadfast to the truth, even in the face of his own death.


Jesus death is permanently etched into the consciousness of humanity, Jesus was willing to die for what he stood for, to refuse to lie, to refuse to conceal that he was a Son of God, to refuse to participate in the violence of selfdefense.
Jesus said: “No man taketh my life from me, I lay it down of myself, ” It was not something that overcame him, it was something he purposefully did in order to carry Gods message into time, as an acted parable.
The message is to go on loving and refusing evil and violence even in the face of it, without reprisal or answering violence, until men see what sin is and turn from it with loathing.


Through his death, Jesus also illustrated for us the spiritual rebirth that we now know that we can achieve, Like Jesus, we must grow our spiritual self to the point that when we sacrifice our physical body we may live on in the spirit.
The only exit from the physical world is death, but unquestionably Jesus survived death and proved his survival to his followers many times.
In first Corinthians:it says that on one occasion he appeared topeople at once, How else can we account for eleven men in hiding, terribly disappointed and disillusioned, suddenly becoming missionaries within six or seven weeks of his death and preaching his resurrection and eventually suffering themselves as martyrs, laying down their lives for the truth His disciples had a spiritual experience of him after his death and we have a spiritual experience of him today.
He is unmistakably alive in spirit, Speaking of the disciples continuation of his spirit, Weatherhead writes:

“They went out through the known world, preaching, teaching, healing, inspiring, and, in spite of opposition, hostility and persecution, they won men and women everywhere to the new way.
Nothing could stop them, not even the might of Imperial Rome, and is there in literature a more thrilling story than the story of that radiant Christian witness, of that infectious Christian living, of that unquenchable enthusiasm It is depressing to find so rarely that exuberant living in the modern church.
” Leslie Weatherhead

So what it is that squelches exuberance in the church today Perhaps it is not so squelched as some may first deduce.
Weatherhead cites an eloquent Monia Furlong about this as follows:

“Within the strange, sprawling, quarreling mass of the churches, within their stifling narrowness, their ignorance, their insensitivity, their stupidity, their fear of the senses and of truth, I perceive another Church, one which really is Christ at work in the world.
To this Church men seem to be admitted as much by a baptism of the heart as of the body, and they know more of intellectual charity, of vulnerability, of love, of joy, of peace, than most of the rest of us.
They have learned to live with few defenses and so conquered the isolation that torments many, They do not judge, especially morally their own relationships make it possible for others to grow, It does not matter what their circumstances are, what their physical and mental limitations are, They really are free men, the prisoners who have been released and who in turn can release others, ” Monia Furlong

The ability to alter the body with the mind

It is widely accepted that the ability to heal is very much a mental process.
This has been demonstrated through the use of placebos, faith healings, and other means, Dr. Weatherhead cites the example that it has been factually proven that one can burn the flesh of a hypnotized person and raise a blister by simply telling the patient that ones finger or fountain pen is a redhot iron.
Weatherhead suggests that such mental powers may have been the way in which Christ disposed of his physical body, accomplished miracles, and materialized at will after his death.
This is exemplary of the subordination of the physical body to the mental spirit, such that the physical body is nothing less than a mere tool manifested by the spirit for its use when it needs it.


What matters most is that Jesus personality has clearly survived physical death and is still recognizably active in the world.
After appearing physically to the senses of his followers, Jesus was eager to make them experience him independent of their senses, in the spirit.
Jesus wanted his followers to know him as always present, even when they could not see, hear or touch him, Jesus is actually nearer to mankind by being spirittospirit with us, Jesus said: “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed, ” Jesus said in John:: “Abide in Me and I in you”, The power of the spirit is not a mere enhancement of mans own facilities it is a supernatural endowment, The secret of the power is to be possessed by the spirit of God, It is a power that was demonstrated by Christ,

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