Dear Bishop Tutu: Please be careful to preach what's right, not what feels good. How can you say you serve God if you say the opposite of what He is saying? Am i now going to follow God's teachings or yours? Preaching about God means saying something in favor of something else; instead of saying that everything is right and good and we're all going to heaven anyway. What's the point of Jesus coming to earth if we're all already going to heaven? What's the point of Jesus suffering and dying for sins not His own if we don't need Him anyway? You are supposed to know better, sir.
Desmond Tutu's Recipe for Peace
(A Beliefnet interview with Bishop Desmond Tutu)
Is your book relevant to non-Christians or people with no religious faith?
I believe so very much. Because love is universal. I mean, you don't have to believe in God to know that loving is better than hating. We are trying to remind them that all of us are fundamentally good. The aberration is the bad person. God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God. No faith contains the whole truth about God. And certainly Christians don't have a corner on God. All of us belong to God. Even the nonbeliever is precious to God. And one simply tries to remind them that they are made for transcendence. They are made for goodness.
What do you mean when you say that “God only has us”? Isn’t God all-powerful?
I mean that God works through us and through history to bring about God’s dream. God actually needs us. We are God’s partners. When there is someone who is hungry, God wants to perform the miracle of feeding that person, but it won’t any longer be through manna falling from heaven. Normally, God can do nothing until we provide God with the means, the bread and the fish, to feed the hungry. In so many ways, God uses each of us to realize God’s dream.
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Point by point [teci]
We are trying to remind them that all of us are fundamentally good. The aberration is the bad person.
--- Romans 3:23: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian!
--- behold this is my son, in whom i am well pleased. listen to him (baptism and transfiguration)
All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God. No faith contains the whole truth about God.--- Deut. 27:28. The hidden things belong to the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this Torah.
--- see http://www.jacksonsnyder.com/arc/Midrash/55.htm :) written by a rabbi :)
And certainly Christians don't have a corner on God. All of us belong to God.
--- to those who call on His name/ believe, He gave the right to become children of God....
--- unless you make your heart like a little child you cannot enter heaven
--- it is easier for camel through needle than for rich to enter kingdom of God!
--- not everyone who calls me Lord Lord but only those who obey my words...--- Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. No other way to the Father except through Him.
Even the nonbeliever is precious to God. And one simply tries to remind them that they are made for transcendence. They are made for goodness.
--- all will wake, some to eternal (heaven), others to eternal punishment
--- i long to hold you like a mother hen her children, but you were not willing. impending doom!
--- i have prepared a feast, but they ignored it (made excuses etc)
--- beware when the bridegroom comes to the banquet, those who are not ready will be left outside
--- it is God's will that all be saved; but how? only one way, through Jesus. so God loves ALL (sends rain on just and unjust) but not all will be able to enter heaven (up to that person if he will put faith in Christ first).
God actually needs us.--- I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior. I have revealed and saved and proclaimed — I, and not some foreign god among you. You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "that I am God.”- Isaiah 43:11-12
--- is not God's arm too short to save...?
--- amazing, are we more important/essential/significant than God Himself.
Normally, God can do nothing until we provide God with the means, the bread and the fish, to feed the hungry.
--- just say the word and my servant will be healed.
--- if you do not do anything, relief and deliverance will come from another place, and who knows but that you have come to position for such a time as this?
--- if you quiet them, the stones will shout.
--- in Jesus' miracles, He uses everyday ordinary people and objects pero does that mean He needs them? are these materials special after all? no! it is God who works in them to make them special and worthy; and definitely God does NOT need them because they are special. didn't He make everything in the first place?
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arg. this is so blasphemous, coming from an international religious Christian leader of all people. i don't want to sound so high-and-mighty (although i'm sure i already do!) but please, we are supposed to preach God's Word! Where is it Bishop Tutu? (You have said many wonderful things about God's all-encompassing love, truths which come from God Himself, but please, "Speak the truth in love." A real loving parent will not let his child run loose in the kitchen (unlimited chocolate!), on the streets (parties forever!), or let her say whatever she wants and not be sanctioned for it. God is loving, but God is also just.
i was so tempted to judge you completely by what you were saying, but i have no right, and that is wrong as well. sir, we mean well but that does not necessarily mean we do well. fortunately we have JESUS who saves us from ourselves and enables us to spend eternity with Him still. sir, Jesus and only Jesus. (it wasn't my idea, it took a long time for me to agree, and i learned this the hard way. this is not *my* gospel.)
please sir, we have to be careful of what we are saying. what's the point of being bishop if there's nothing special or different about the truths that you profess? you will have to give an account of the people you led astray, accidentally or knowingly. more importantly, you are dishonoring God Himself and what He went through.
God still loves you. God loves you before you were born, God loves you as you were saying these things and writing this book, God loves you whether or not you admit your faults. But that does not mean that it's not wrong.
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