Whatwebelieve - Christ Enlight

The Dead Tradition 1. Original Sin meant that everyone was born with the "stain of original sin" caused by Adam's disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Baptism removes that stain, but we are constantly engaged in a struggle against the consequences of original sin. Ultimately, it is Adam's disobedience that leads to our sin and death.		The Christ Enlight Vision 1. All people are born totally good and pure with Original Blessing, not original sin. As beloved children of God we posses "Christ Nature", the image of God within us. We reject original sin as St. Augustine's disingenuous attempt to justify his own history of sexual promiscuity. Baptism is a rite of initiation into a community which promises to love and support the person throughout their lives. When we sin it is because we have lost sight of our Christ nature and fail to act in accord with it.
2. Much of the historic Church has concentrated on indentifying and eliminating sin in ourselves and others. If "sinners" won't repent, then the Church has excommunicated them, shunned them, separated them from fellowship in the hopes that by excluding them they will see the error that the Church has identified in them. While this treatment has been seen at times as harsh, it has been necessary to do this to try to save these people from burning in hell for eternity. 3. The Law, also known as the Jewish Law, is a list of over 600 rules that the Rabbis developed from the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers. Among the requirements of the Law are circumcision for males; avoiding eating shellfish, pork, and rabbit; stoning disobedient children until they are dead; men having as many wives as they could afford but women having only one husband; and women being ritually unclean during and after their periods until they bathe in a ritual bath.		2. We note that Jesus specifically told us not to judge one another and that if we do, we shall receive the same treatment. We also notice that, in the original language, Jesus never once used the word hell. In Christ Enlight, there is inclusion, not exclusion; acceptance, not rejection. We all sin. Our job is to help one another recover a clear view of our Christ Nature. That's impossible to do as we are kicking each other our the door! 3. Jesus said that the Great Commandment was to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul; and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He said on these two things hang all of the Law and the Prophets. That means that, for Christians, our law is to love God and neighbor, and the rest of the Old Testament Law is accomplished for us when we do these two things. Therefore, the Law has been fulfilled in Christ. We can eat pork, women are clean at all times, and so on. Those who appeal to the Old Testament Law to justify exclusion on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, or any other reason reject Jesus because they reject his law of love. Our Christ Nature is only visible when we live by this law of love and reject legalism and the sin associated with it. The Christ Enlight program is based exclusively on the love of Christ.
4. Dead Traditionalism holds that when the Bible and science conflict, science is always wrong; that science is the enemy of faith; and that illness is caused by sin and/or lack of faith.		4. The entire Bible was written in a pre-scientific era. The earth was presumed to be flat (Psalm 75:3) and supported by four pillars and God lived just beyond the clouds. Christ Enlight holds that when science informs us that our biblical understanding of our world is incorrect we must re-examine our beliefs. We believe that science is a gift of God and a way in which God reveals Godself. We reject such notions as "creation science" as a thinly veiled attempt to defend an errant system of biblical interpretation (biblical literalism). We believe that only truth is consistent with love.
5. Institutional Christianity holds that we worship because God needs our praise. It also believes that we must be in Church every Sunday except in case of grave illness and on other days defined by our denomination as "holy days of obligation." (Sometimes other language is used for these days, but the meaning is the same.) We become acceptable to God through our obedience and worship. Cynical voices would say this attitude developed so that the institutional Church could guarantee herself a captive audience - if one needs to worship in a house of worship to be acceptable to God then the Church can guarantee herself a handsome collection each week - and a bonus on "holy days of obligation"!		5. At Christ Enlight, we believe that we should worship because we need to, not because God needs us to satisfy a divine ego run wild. God doesn't need our praises because God doesn't need anything. If God needed anything then God wouldn't be God. We exercise extreme caution when we hear what sounds like someone projecting human ego needs onto God. We recognize that sometimes life's obligations make it more important to tend to other things in our lives than worship - for example, our children may on occasion keep us from worship. That isn't a problem in God's eyes, it's good stewardship! All this being said, we do believe that we need community and we do need to tend to our spiritual selves on a regular basis - which is how we define worship.