What is a True Christian?

As I am thinking about an answer to this question, the entire argument becomes clearer in my mind.

What is the difference between a club and a family?

Is a child in a family expected to follow or adhere to the belief of his/her parents or are they just as accepted for being the contrarian...the rebel?

Were the father adopting children, would or should he care what culture they were from? Whether they had been in prison or not? Whether they were honest or not? If they were mentally challenged and had special needs which may require more of his time and money?

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain "
~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.~Proverbs 28:26

I believe that it deserves a moment or two of our discourse. Lets break it down and see if we agree or disagree with what this statement asserts.
A believer by definition believes in the teachings, example, or even character of Jesus Christ. According to DeHann, Coming to Christ makes one a believer. We have discussed the concept of salvation and "being saved" before--IIRC you say that no one can really know until after they die--perhaps not even then.Correct me if I'm wrong but you conclude that a Disciple...a doer of what Christ did...does not even need to be a believer. Your belief is unique and is logical only if Paul was wrong and that the death,burial, and resurrection is not the central message of the Gospel. I believe that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is what has given meaning to the charge and has been the lynchpin of most chapters of the club...not to mention the family. As far as that goes, I believe that there are two bodies of people...two families if you will. One is the Body of Christ. The other one is not willing to be adopted. By that fact alone, the second family is defined.Will you critique DeHanns quote and explain how you understand it to mean?

I have no use for terms like disciple. No, that is not at all correct. My belief is not unique, it may well be a minority view I am sure. But my position has value for those clothed, fed, healed, comforted, educated, protected.The promise of a life after death and of rewards is an easy and attractive sale but does it have value for those not clothed, fed, healed, comforted, educated, protected? That is the position of many of the marketers of Christianity.I do not think it was Jesus position but then Jesus was never a Christian. Sure, it is word salad marketing meant to create a feel good emotion and feeling of superiority. It's a total worthless. meaningless exercise in propagandizing.

One of the primary differences is that a club can revoke your membership; a family can not. Your father is always your father, whether he "disowns" you or not. Clubs and families both have rules. Both may or may not enforce all of the rules strictly. The difference lies in the permanence of the enforcement (see above). A father would take those factors into account. (If they didn't, there wouldn't be a preponderance of "difficult" children waiting to be adopted.) In a club, any of those factors might be grounds for rejecting an application.So, is Christianity a family or a club?

Let's look at the quote you are referring to form 2 Timothy 3.

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16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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Neither God-breathed or inspired is the equivalent of saying that the Bible is inerrant. Yes I know that many people try and use it that way but that isn’t what it says.
All human wisdom is a gift from God. It is all God breathed or inspired. That doesn’t mean that human wisdom is inerrant. We do know that all scripture was written by humans. The question then is did God somehow short circuit human wisdom to come up with an inerrant Bible.
I agree that all scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.
Firstly then, why would Jesus have to correct what had been written. As I have pointed out to you before Jesus refers to passages from the Torah as being written by Moses and then corrects them.
For example here is a quote from John 8.

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3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group
4 and said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?
6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.
8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?
11 No one, sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin.

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The Pharisees are referring back to Leviticus 20 where God commands death for adultery. Note too that they don’t say God told us to stone her, they say that Moses told them. Jesus say that Moses, not God got it wrong.
So let’s break it down by what Paul says how scripture it to be understood and used.
1/ Teaching: We learn that adultery is wrong and we see that as we all sin none of us have earned the right to, metaphorically speaking, cast the first stone.
2/ Rebuking: Jesus is rebuking self-righteousness and the idea of public stoning.
3/ Correcting: Both the Pharisees and the woman are corrected and when we read this can find things in our own life that need correcting.
4/ Training: It is easy to see that Jesus is saying that the legalistic hard hearted attitude of the Pharisees was in need of training to soften their hearts and from that I suggest that Jesus wants us to train ourselves and others to have softer more understanding hearts.
I agree that God breathes life into the scriptures. He speaks to us through the Scriptures. The scriptures are a huge part of the Christian faith but if we start to believe that the man Moses, or for that matter any other Biblical author wrote specifically as directed by God then we have to conclude that death by public stoning is ok and that Jesus got it wrong.
In the end we have to come to a conclusion on whether we understand the nature of God and His desires for our life through Jesus or an inerrant Bible. Is it the Bible that perfectly embodies the eternal Word or wisdom of God or is it Jesus? It can’t be both.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

What on EARTH do you think you are saying? Do you actually think Paul would have called anything other than scripture itself "God breathed" or "inspired" -- which means breathed by the Holy Spirit? The same Paul who calls human wisdom "foolishness with God" (1 Cor 1:20, 3:19)? Human beings may be capable of some wonderful things even in our fallen condition, but nothing that Paul or any other writer of scripture would call "God breathed." If it's God-breathed it is authored by God Himself and therefore inerrant. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Interesting that you pick out that to quote and respond to, while ignoring the fact that Jesus tells us that it was Moses not God that wrote that verse in the OT and that Moses got it wrong.I was simply pointing out that as life is a gift from God then it follows that so is wisdom.

No you weren't, you were denying the inerrancy of scripture. Which you were also doing when making it seem like Moses' could have said anything as if under his own power rather than God's inspiration.

A bit of a nitpick here, but statements like these do not claim that Moses wrote the Torah. The quoted statement just says that the Torah, which is not written in first person anyway, contains Moses words.I must emphasize that I am nitpicking, because your main point is well argued. However inerrant Bible worshipers have a number of techniques for defending innerancy despite statements like this one. One doctrine is to talk about dispensations. 'Moses was right for his time, but we are in a different dispensation after Jesus'.

I do agree that I don't believe that we are to understand the scriptures the same way you do. You choose an inerrant Scripture over what Jesus says and I choose Jesus over an inerrant Scripture. It is either Jesus or an inerrant Scripture. Take your pick. The two positions are not congruent.I explained in that earlier post how I contend is the way that God speaks to us through the Scriptures.

OK, but the quote I used was that "Moses COMMANDED us to stone such women". If you go back to Leviticus 20 where that command comes from you can see that Chapter 20 starts off with, "Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying... and then follows on with along list of punishments which includes death for adultery.Another example is from Numbers 15.

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32 While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp. 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.

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Here we can see that it is very clear that the writer is saying that the public stoning by the community is commanded by the Lord through Moses. When Jesus refers back to the Torah as in the adultery case He doesn't say that God commanded it, He says that Moses commanded it. The problems with that though are huge. If we are to believe that, then we are left with a God of situational ethics. If our understanding of the nature of God follows along that line then who is to say that we aren't back in the same situation now with people of other faiths. All of Jesus' teaching about love your enemy is simply boiled down to that we should love our enemy as long as they are nice to us. Jesus didn't take that attitude with the Romans.Edited by AdminPhat, : fixed quote

As I asked Phat: Do you actually think Paul was talking about his own writings? The epistles that he hadn't even written yet?

No, in the context of 2 Tim 3, Paul was talking about the Scriptures that Timothy had been taught, i.e. the Old Testament.But according to 2 Peter, Paul's writings were also considered by the early church to be Scripture:

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His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16, NIV)

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Edited by kbertsche, : Added 2 Pet quote

Of course not. Paul was not simply a man selling something. Paul was, in my belief, a man on a mission who believed that much of what he spoke at his meetings was inspired not by his own imagination or motive but by the living God Himself. Of course we had no reporter on the scene, camera and mic in hand...so we must use other ways to judge Pauls integrity and mental stability.

Right. I agree with you. I am only disputing your statement that the verse shows that Moses wrote the Torah. I am not disputing that Moses made the statements or commands that Jesus attributed to him. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.