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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Rolan7]

I'm five nines sure Orange Wizard was kidding
Seems like an odd name for a denomination, though.  By the power vested in me from skimming a wikipedia page...  It seems like a pretty cool one.
I mean, find me any group with hundreds of thousands of people which doesn't include terrible ones.  "The group of people who aren't terrible" doesn't count.

[Descan]

'The group of people who nearly aren't terrible' excluding the two guys who are terrible.

[Rolan7]

So you
and me

[Descan]

The identities of the two guys rotates every time someone does something bad.

[Rolan7]

A few days ago I discovered dualism and gnosticism, specifically the Cathar heresy.  It sounded pretty great.
Then I went for a lovely road trip and remembered... I literally worship the natural world.  Cathars would call me a Satanist, just like anyone who follows the Old Testament God.  Different aspects of the world, but both are Satan's domain under that doctrine.  So, my excitement wasn't really warranted. 

(To be fair, nature is fucking terrifying.  A massive thunderstorm swept through on my trip.  I stood under an awning with my boss and a coworker and we just watched it for a whole hour, sharing tales of destructive floods.  Years ago I became an animist while cowering in a forest when a thunderstorm caught me bicycling.)

Dualism is still interesting to me though.  I think most modern Christians are mostly there, in that they follow Jesus and essentially reject Old Testament teachings.  That's fair to say, right?  It's different from calling the OT God a different entity (especially Satan) but... how different?

Jesus said "turn the other cheek".  The God of the Old Testament demanded "an eye for an eye", and a long list of harsh punishments for minor crimes.  How does one reconcile these two testaments?  One must be false, and thankfully most Christians choose to reject the troublesome parts of the Old Testament.

But they still officially believe in the whole Bible, and thus grant credibility to the... hrm... the people who follow Old Testament scripture instead of Jesus.  The people Cathars would call Satanists, who preach Biblically-mandated hatred and intolerance.  Who use the Bible to justify slavery and holy war - because the Old Testament *DOES* support those things in the strongest language.

The New Testament isn't perfect either, but given just a little room for interpretation...  The New Testament is good and the Old Testament is, mostly, bad.

[Orange Wizard]

I'm five nines sure Orange Wizard was kidding

Yeah, that was supposed to be a joke but apparently I need to make it more obvious next time.

Anyone have notable experience with how congregations manage that stuff? What sort of balance gets struck between the trust generally needed to be given to the clergy and the fact that, well. A fair number of them are pretty crooked?

I think a lot of people don't really think about it. More of a "that could never possibly happen here" kind of thing.

The Reformed church is pretty democratic - we elect our elders and deacons, and many decisions need the approval of the congregation. As far as I can tell, my church has never really had a problem with corruption (whether it's there or not I couldn't say) and we do trust the elders to do their job properly.
If corruption/fraud/whatever did turn up, I imagine that would be a crime worthy of both legal action and excommunication from the church.

[Frumple]

... I was joking back, then vaguely attempting to contribute an actual question. Dunno who needed your attempt at humor to be better telegraphed, but it wunnit me >_>

[Orange Wizard]

No, I'm pretty sure that just means I'm an idiot.

[Frumple]

*pats shoulder* We're all idiots when our insides are on the outside.

[UXLZ]

But they still officially believe in the whole Bible, and thus grant credibility to the... hrm... the people who follow Old Testament scripture instead of Jesus.  The people Cathars would call Satanists, who preach Biblically-mandated hatred and intolerance.  Who use the Bible to justify slavery and holy war - because the Old Testament *DOES* support those things in the strongest language.

The New Testament isn't perfect either, but given just a little room for interpretation...  The New Testament is good and the Old Testament is, mostly, bad.

To be fair, I've never quite understood how people can simultaneously claim something is the Irrefutable Absolute Word of God,yet only follow it selectively. Almost all factions are guilty of this, too, extremists, and rationals alike (though I guess rationals are less likely to claim the thing as IAWoG in the first place, at least.)
It simply seems absurdly common practice that people will selectively pick and choose parts from their decided religious text to support their own views and provide validation/justification for whatever it is they want to believe and most likely would have believed anyway.

That's just how things appear to be to me, at least.

Regardless, literally everything that happens is by express and implicit permission of God, anyway.

[Orange Wizard]

The selective belief process in Christianity usually has at least some reason behind it. Usually something like "it's actually parable and not a literal account" or "that was only applicable to the Israelites and Christ did away with it".

Yes, there's doublethink and other mental gymnastics, but that's the nature of the beast. Personally I don't see anything inherently wrong with irrational thought as long as you admit that it's irrational (and don't use it to justify anything morally reprehensible).

[Telgin]

Yeah, the general excuse for the troublesome parts of the Old Testament is that "we're under grace now" so that the old laws don't apply.  Curiously, while this means that most protestants don't want you to stone people for breaking those laws, they still think they're bad.  So they just got "downgraded" to sins that send you to Hell rather than require people to kill you.

[Adragis]

-disregard my not understanding the meaning of the words 'new covenant-
I'm pretty sure Jesus explains it himself somewhere in the 'turn the other cheek' speech.

[UXLZ]

Although in the cases where it's for a positive outcome I do still find the mental gymnastics somewhat disingenuous, yes, the main issue I have with it is when people try to use it to justify morally reprehensible actions.

[Arx]

Anyone have notable experience with how congregations manage that stuff? What sort of balance gets struck between the trust generally needed to be given to the clergy and the fact that, well. A fair number of them are pretty crooked?

As someone fairly thoroughly involved with running a Methodist church:

There are a handful of Society Stewards, lay people from the congregation elected at society meetings that include the entire congregation. They are in charge of many things regarding keeping the church running, pertinently including counting and banking the offertory. These days, the majority of tithing and so forth is done over the internet or other forms of EFT, so a certain quantity of middle men get cut out. I'm also pretty sure the churches get audited often enough for it to be something we have to keep in mind.

The counting is always done by two or more people, who supposedly keep each other in line. Mostly, we hope that it's sufficiently unlikely that two or three people would be elected who are low enough to help themselves that two is enough.

My mother is the church's resident minister, and as far as I can tell she actually has very limited exposure to the church's funds. It's difficult to tell how generally true that is though, since my mother dislikes dealing with money. By and large, I think the way making purchases for the church works is that whoever makes the purchase makes it out-of-pocket and provides the receipt to the church (usually in the person of the secretary), who will reimburse them.

Honestly, it is mostly a trust situation. A lot of it is done electronically these days, which helps, and a lot is handled by the congregation, but I'm pretty sure it would be possible for a crook to squeeze money out without too much effort. The only thing is that they'd have to be a mighty dedicated crook to go through four years of training and continue to serve as a minister (not exactly an easy job) in order to skim off an extra R2000 per month (I think that's about all you could take off an average-size church before the disjoint between size and assessment payments became obvious).

If this post doesn't make sense, I apologise. Fairly tired right now.