dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (05/02/91)
james@jack.sns.com (James Hwang) writes: > ... > My father once said to me that Jesus is good and he want to believe > in him, because he makes people good or can save people. Then I told > him you can not worship our ancestor after you believe in Jesus. > Then he said this Jesus is a dirty God and we should destroy it > and he also said how can people can live without their root(ancestors). > > I give you this example to show how people can destroy a God, if > they believe this God is a bad God. This is a interesting observation. Would any of the true Christians here explain this: can we worship, pray and idolize our ancesters and the same time be a christian? For example, pray to Jesus and Confucious (or one of the ancesters of our specific root) for help at the same time when we have a problem? I don't see why we can't. dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
tblake@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Thomas Blake) (05/05/91)
In article <May.2.04.33.30.1991.2313@athos.rutgers.edu> dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: > james@jack.sns.com (James Hwang) writes: >> ... >> My father once said to me that Jesus is good and he want to believe >> in him, because he makes people good or can save people. Then I told >> him you can not worship our ancestor after you believe in Jesus. >> Then he said this Jesus is a dirty God and we should destroy it >> and he also said how can people can live without their root(ancestors). >> >> I give you this example to show how people can destroy a God, if >> they believe this God is a bad God. > > This is a interesting observation. Would any of the true Christians > here explain this: can we worship, pray and idolize our ancesters and > the same time be a christian? For example, pray to Jesus and Confucious > (or one of the ancesters of our specific root) for help at the same time > when we have a problem? I don't see why we can't. I may or may not be a "true Christian" that would depend upon who you ask. God and Jesus both have made it clear that we are to honor our parents. We as Christians often honor those who have gone before, and look to them as examples. *Some* Christians may even take this a step further, (I.E. asking saints in prayer to intercede on their behalf). God also makes quite plain from the beginning that he is a "jealous God", and will not tolerate his people holding any other God above him. I don't believe it would be bad for you to admire Confucious, or his teachings, or his wisdom. Many Christians would be made uncomfortable by your praying to him. Putting Jesus and Confucious on the same level would make still more uncomfortable. While Christians feel that Jesus was a great teacher, we also feel that he was much more than just a teacher. I guess it kinda comes down to this. If you call yourself a Christian, this would suggest that you worship "Christ" (hence the name). Holding both Christ and Confucious at the same level rather seems to conflict there. If you held them both at the same level, you might call yourself a Christian-Confucian, or simply a religious person, or something else. If you would like to call yourself a Christian, I won't argue with you, but stand fore-warned that many "Christians" will take great exception. Tom Blake SUNY-Binghamton
lshaw@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (logan shaw) (05/05/91)
In article <May.2.04.33.30.1991.2313@athos.rutgers.edu> dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: > This is a interesting observation. Would any of the true Christians > here explain this: can we worship, pray and idolize our ancesters and > the same time be a christian? For example, pray to Jesus and Confucious > (or one of the ancesters of our specific root) for help at the same time > when we have a problem? I don't see why we can't. [ I guess by answering this, I'm claiming to be a 'true Christian'. I certainly try... ] Well, if you believe in Jesus, chances are you also believe where Jesus came from - that is, you also believe in Yahweh (Jehovah, the Father). If you believe in the Father, then you probably also believe it when He says: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me." (Exodus 20:1-2) And, also in Ephesians 4:4-5 it says "There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling. one Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all." If you really want to worship Yahweh, you can't be worshipping anybody else. God is above all others. (Note: I'm _not_ saying that you can't respect you ancestors.) Later, Logan -- // # "He said that He had your number; you cut the telephone line. \X/ # You said you needed a reason; He said 'there ain't much time.' Logan # You kept trying to avoid it; He kept knocking on the door. Shaw # In a flash it was over; you were a prisoner of war." -Rez Band [Those who are familiar with the Protestant/Catholic discussions will understand that a lot hangs on what you mean by praying to ancestors. I'm afraid that I don't know enough about the traditions that venerate ancestors to know exactly what they mean by doing so. Of course making requests of any kind to people who are dead is a controversial practice, as our past discussions have made clear. If someone is coming from a tradition where ancestors are venerated in a manner not consistent with Christianity, this raises special problems. Many Christians would probably recommend special care in this case, simply to prevent falling into non-Christian practices out of habit. As many of you probably recognize, issues of this kind have often resulted in great controversy in the mission field. The Jesuits are particularly known for trying to maintain as much continuity as possible with past, non-Christian practices, whereas Protestant missionaries tended to emphasize the need to make a clear break. There are dangers to both practices. When taken too far, the first can leave populations that are only nominally Christian, but continue practices that are incompatible with Christianity. The other can lead to "cultural imperialism", that requires converts to reject all of their culture and traditions, and become imitation Americans or Europeans. --clh]
shallenb@news.colorado.edu (Nualle) (05/05/91)
No, I think once Jesus called himself "the way, the truth, and the life" and proclaimed that the only way to the Father was through him, he cut off any need for other religions. If you believe Jesus spoke truly, Tao, Confucius, and any ancestors become, at the least, redundant -- and at worst, harmful and distracting. -Nualle (shallenb@spot.colorado.edu)
conan@purina.berkeley.edu (David Cruz-Uribe) (05/05/91)
In article <May.2.04.33.30.1991.2313@athos.rutgers.edu> dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: > > james@jack.sns.com (James Hwang) writes: >> ... >> My father once said to me that Jesus is good and he want to believe >> in him, because he makes people good or can save people. Then I told >> him you can not worship our ancestor after you believe in Jesus. >> Then he said this Jesus is a dirty God and we should destroy it >> and he also said how can people can live without their root(ancestors). >> >> I give you this example to show how people can destroy a God, if >> they believe this God is a bad God. > > This is a interesting observation. Would any of the true Christians > here explain this: can we worship, pray and idolize our ancesters and > the same time be a christian? For example, pray to Jesus and Confucious > (or one of the ancesters of our specific root) for help at the same time > when we have a problem? I don't see why we can't. > This is an old and controversial question--I believe that the first time it came up was during the first Jesuit missions to China. (Or at least this is a famous example--are there earlier ones?) Tentatively, I would give a guarded "Yes" to this question, provided that you make a _very important_ distinction between the prayers you offer to Jesus and those offered to Confucious, etc. In traditional Catholic theology, "latria" (~roughly praise and adoration) is offered to God alone, while "dulia" (~very roughly honor) is offered to the saints. Thus, if you were convinced that Confucious, etc. were worthy of this (lesser) honor, then private devotions of this nature _might_ be okay. I have heard Catholics at times address prayers to dead relatives--no less a personage than St. Therese of Lisieux mentions this in her autobiography. There appears to be a danger of abuse here which is even greater than in the Catholic cult of the saints, but that could be due to my unfamiliarity with the practice of ancestor worship. I hope someone else will comment on this issue, since my views are far from fixed. Finally, I should note that since I have an itch for authority that only Rome can scratch (:-)) I would limit public devotions of this kind to those recognized by the (Roman Catholic) Church as worthy of such. (An underinclusive process, but better safe than sorry.) Yours in Christ, David Cruz-Uribe, SFO
kriz@skat.usc.edu (Dennis Kriz) (05/07/91)
In article <May.2.04.33.30.1991.2313@athos.rutgers.edu> dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: > > james@jack.sns.com (James Hwang) writes: >> ... >> My father once said to me that Jesus is good and he want to believe >> in him, because he makes people good or can save people. Then I told >> him you can not worship our ancestor after you believe in Jesus. >> Then he said this Jesus is a dirty God and we should destroy it >> and he also said how can people can live without their root(ancestors). >> >> I give you this example to show how people can destroy a God, if >> they believe this God is a bad God. > > This is a interesting observation. Would any of the true Christians > here explain this: can we worship, pray and idolize our ancesters and > the same time be a christian? For example, pray to Jesus and Confucious > (or one of the ancesters of our specific root) for help at the same time > when we have a problem? I don't see why we can't. > > dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu > Like the moderator mentioned in a later note ... a lot depends on what exactly is meant by "praying to ancestors" It is indeed one of the 10 Commandments that Moses brought down from Mt Sinai to "honor one's mother and father" Chinese/asian culture may take this further than the west, but that still could be fine. Where it would become a problem is in the question does one believe that one's ancestors have become gods. If the answer to that is yes, then the practice (to that extent) would have to be rejected by pretty much all Christians, because Christians believe in only one God. Our ancestors, in Christian thinking, like us were human. Indeed we will become ancestors to our descendants. And so ancestors, in that light could not be God. Intercessionary prayer, on the otherhand, to Mary, to the Angels and Saints is common to all the older Churches (Catholic/Orthodox). Indeed, praying *on behalf* of relatives who have passed away is common in those Christian faiths. Intercessionary prayer considered from peripheral (unnecessary) to outright heretical by most Protestants. In Catholic/Orthodox thinking it's actually an act of humility ... Christ is deemed so high that praying to someone "closer to earth" is deemed more appropriate. ********************* Each time Christianity has been brought to a new frontier, the question of "what is necessary" for members of the newly encountered culture to become Christian comes up. Compromises were always made. The Greeks didn't have to follow the old Jewish dietary laws. The Germanic peoples were able to keep their (Christmas) trees. The Slavs got their own alphabet (Cyrillic) and liturgical language (Old Church Slavonic) so that they wouldn't have to become "Germans" in order to become Christians, and so on. Each time there were people screaming that the new Christians were going to be only "nominal" ones. But alas. Personally, I think one of the greatest tragedies in the story of the spread of Christianity occured when Rome basically put the breaks on the Jesuits in Japan (Nagasaki) ... about the 1600s. The issue was Shinto ... emperor worship ... Clearly Christians are not supposed to *worship* a human emperor. But considering that the early Christians suffered similarly under pagan Roman rule, the Vatican *could* have been far more sympathetic. Indeed Christians celebrate Christmas on the day that they do, because it used to be the pagan Roman feast day for their god Jupiter. Christians had to be seen celebrating *something* on that day, or else they would become even clearer targets of persecution. So why not celebrate Christ's birth? It seems frustrating that a similar compromise was deemed impossible (or too difficult to think of) at the time when Shinto became an obstacle to the faith in Japan. But Rome afraid of anything that touched the fringes of normalcy (thanks to the Reformation) got *very* conservative then, and even forced the Jesuits to dress like Westerners ... in a culture as zenophobic as Japan was already. They became sitting ducks... their converts became sitting ducks. The Japanese emperor got wind of what was happening, and got pissed. He *crucified* many of the early Christian converts and shut the country to all westerners for some 200-300 years. Thank you Rome. The final irony came when Truman in deference to Japanese culture (Kyoto) ordered the a-bombing of Nagasaki instead. Nagasaki the long suffering Japanese cradle of Christianity (though apparently the priesthood had died out in Nagasaki during the 300 years of isolation remarkably there remained Japanese who remained loyal (if unbaptized) to Christ and the Church ... until Japan "reopened" to the West in late 1800s) ... was martyred once more at the whim of a disinterested or perhaps uninformed Westerner. But then Truman bombed Hiroshima on the Catholic feast of the Transfiguration (Aug 6) ... A Catholic nun who witnessed *that* in Hiroshima, quickly understood a significance of that "We now have a choice between Transfiguration and Disfiguration." That's a story in itself ... I guess the moral of the story is ... if you are not Western and want to become Christian, the door *is* open though often in spite of Westerners. dennis kriz@skat.usc.edu [I hate to say this, but your posting is likely to confirm what some Protestants have been claiming all along, namely that praying to saints tends to *replace* praying to God. The sentence at issue is >In Catholic/Orthodox thinking it's actually an act of humility ... >Christ is deemed so high that praying to someone "closer to earth" is >deemed more appropriate. What our Catholic contributors have normally said is that there's nothing wrong with praying to saints -- it's just like asking yourq friend to pray for you. But ultimately this has to be an invitation to join you in prayer to God. If you come to feel that you can't pray yourself, but can only ask others to, I think many of us (including some Catholics, I suspect) are going to feel there's something wrong with your relationship to God. On the other hand, I don't want to read too much into one sentence. You may well not mean anything unacceptable by it. --clh]
smithjh@argus.CS.ORST.EDU (Jeremy Smith) (05/08/91)
In article <May.2.04.33.30.1991.2313@athos.rutgers.edu> dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: > > This is a interesting observation. Would any of the true Christians > here explain this: can we worship, pray and idolize our ancesters and > the same time be a christian? For example, pray to Jesus and Confucious > (or one of the ancesters of our specific root) for help at the same time > when we have a problem? I don't see why we can't. > Sure, you *can* do anything you want. However, if you want God to respond you must "..keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight." I John 3:22. Praying to Confucious, Mary, Paul of Tarsus, Buddah, or anybody beside Jesus the Christ cannot elicit divine response. Indeed "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ" I Timothy 2:5. Praying to anyone beside Jesus Christ is at best a waste of time. I would be concerned about demonic worship in all other cases.
jclark@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (John Clark) (05/08/91)
In article <May.2.04.33.30.1991.2313@athos.rutgers.edu> dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
+
+ This is a interesting observation. Would any of the true Christians
+ here explain this: can we worship, pray and idolize our ancesters and
+ the same time be a christian? For example, pray to Jesus and Confucious
Or what about saints. Who gave earthly beings the 'power' to say who
is where in whatever after life, and having determined that a saint
is somewhere have any ability to be intercessors for those left in
this life.
--
John Clark
jclark@ucsd.eduoracle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Brian T. Coughlin) (05/11/91)
Re: James Hwang In article <May.2.04.33.30.1991.2313@athos.rutgers.edu>, dhsy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: > Would any of the true Christians here explain this: can we worship, > pray and idolize our ancesters and the same time be a christian? For > example, pray to Jesus and Confucious (or one of the ancesters of our > specific root) for help at the same time when we have a problem? I > don't see why we can't. Hello! (I couldn't make out your name; sorry!) An answer to your question would depend on several things. For instance, I'm not sure if your definitions of "worship" and "idolize" are the same as the typical Christian usage of the terms. Christians take "worship" to mean total, uninhibited surrender, devotion, and adoration of the One Being who is worthy of that supreme trust: God. In this sense, then, it would be idolatry (a rather serious sin, in the Christian tradition) to worship anything except God... in that it would be a misapplication of that supreme trust. It's almost a contradiction in terms to say, "I worship something which is not God," to a Christian. To worship something, in Christian tradition, is to make that something into one's supreme focus of devotion: in other words, one's "god". As far as praying to Confucious and to one's ancestors, it depends on the denomination of Christianity that one is considering. For example, Catholicism allows prayer to the deceased, and even encourages it, provided that a CLEAR distinction is made between prayer and worship. Prayer to a deceased person, to a Catholic, is like talking to a friend: no worship is involved. Even to the extent of praying to Saints for aid: Catholics believe that the Saints can intercede for the living, and petition God to do what the pray-er asks; this is viewed as being QUITE different from "praying" directly TO the Saint, hoping that the saint can somehow grant one's prayer by him/herself. Reverence to the memory of the departed person is certainly allowed and encouraged, but worship is not. On another perspective, some fundamentalist protestant Christians condemn the practice of praying to deceased friends, Saints, and such. Again, it depends on the denomination and on the particular group being dealt with. (I'll let others speak to those other points, as I'm not terribly familiar with them.) One thing to keep in mind, when talking about prayer to Jesus: with few exceptions, Christians believe that Jesus is God. Therefore, prayer to Jesus is literally prayer to God. To a Christian, prayer to Confucious is quite a different matter, as Christians do not acknowledge Confucious as being God. So in that sense (in answer to your last question), it would be permissible to pray to Confucious and to Jesus, provided that the prayer to Jesus was quite different (and more worshipful) than the prayer to Confucious. In the eyes of Christianity, Confucious (provided that he's in Heaven; I like to think so) has no power to grant petitions; only God can do that. If one keeps this in mind, there are no real problems with prayer to Confucious. (Mind you, I'm speaking from a Catholic perspective; some would disagree.) I hope this helps in some way! Take care! Sincerely, Brian Coughlin oracle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) (05/14/91)
I would like to point out that even if praying to Confucsious was not a sin, (I believe I have very good reason for saying it is,) it would be a sin for someone who thought it might be a sin to pray to COnfucious, or any ancestor. Paul says in the last verse of Romans 14, that whatever is not of faith is sin. If one thinks something he is doing may be sin, and does it anyway, he is willing to sin against God, therefore, is sinning against God. It is a sin to commit an act, thinking it may be a sin against God. I don't think anyone can pray to COnfucious, and be sure that it is not a sin (if he has any knowledge of the Bible, or idolatry.) Link Hudson