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In general, Unitarians are nice people trying to be nice. But nice isn't enough. The Bible teaches that you can't have love without truth (1 Corinthians 13:6).

In general, Unitarians are nice people trying to be nice. But nice isn't enough. The Bible teaches that you can't have love without truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love without truth isn't really love at all. To take one particular, teaching people to be agnostic about who God is or even whether He exists isn't really loving in the long run, no matter how nice the intentions are. And there's some real danger of self delusion in editing the Bible. If we are the ultimate judges of what parts of the Bible count, we become the ultimate judges of Truth. In contrast, it's consistent to trust the scriptures and the God of the scriptures. But if you take that objective source of Truth away, what keeps us honest about who God is? When there is no objective source of Truth, people create a false god in our own image. One that's cold and harsh. Or one that thinks love involves money and power. Or one that only hugs and never rights wrongs. Anyway, I've never heard a good answer from a Unitarian about how they know what parts of the Bible are good. It generally boils down to their own feelings and experience. Typically phrased like, "I can't see how God could...." As if anything we don't understand is automatically false. Anyway, Unitarians are generally nice people, but the ones who are Christian are heavily editing the commandments of Jesus from the Bible. They're very close to practicing another faith. It makes about as much sense to me as a Christian attending a mosque or synagogue.

maxerickson 10y ago
I think GP was maybe more curious about how you would evaluate their agnostic church than about how you would evaluate their beliefs.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  I find the forms of church to be fairly meaningless on their own. It might as well be a weekly TED Talk and Sing-A-Long series by another name. Maybe it's enjoyable, but I can't really see it being transformative. To me, the worship services have become the least meaningful part of church life. Higher quality music (even worship music) and sermons can easily be found elsewhere. The accountability and shared search for applied Truth is where the meaning is. I don't see how UU churches provide either well. In other words, a church needs to be able to fire a pastor for heresy without being hypocritical. Otherwise, the word 'church' has started to become a synonym for the word 'nonprofit' or 'club' or 'fraternity'.

maxerickson 10y ago

I think GP was maybe more curious about how you would evaluate their agnostic church than about how you would evaluate their beliefs.

humanrebar 10y ago
I find the forms of church to be fairly meaningless on their own. It might as well be a weekly TED Talk and Sing-A-Long series by another name. Maybe it's enjoyable, but I can't really see it being transformative. To me, the worship services have become the least meaningful part of church life. Higher quality music (even worship music) and sermons can easily be found elsewhere. The accountability and shared search for applied Truth is where the meaning is. I don't see how UU churches provide either well. In other words, a church needs to be able to fire a pastor for heresy without being hypocritical. Otherwise, the word 'church' has started to become a synonym for the word 'nonprofit' or 'club' or 'fraternity'.