RE: Love that is True Is Perfect
I do not feel that many people understand how to be a christian. Every demon in hell believes that there a God, and they all know that eternity is a fact, however they are still selfish. The small child does not want to share anything because it thinks that he/she is the center of the universe. So when people do not want to follow the rules as stated in the Bible we need to ask why.
Matthew 22:36-39
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Through deductive reasoning we can understand that if the Bible can be sumed up by saying 'Love GOD, and Love mankind' we can see that any violation against the Bible is a violation that is against LOVE.
As a Bible believing Christian that is why I see (true) Christianity as being anti-selfishness (because a person can not demonstrate Love and remain selfish) A person can pin the label of christian on themselves and do all kinds of things (the crusades can be an example) Actually you have dug up a subject that is very important for people to know. '(True) Christians have a heart change, the world does not understand that. Other religions can just wear a pin that says I am this or I am that. I think that is why people do not understand what I mean when I say that 'radical islam and non-radical islam' does not exist. I once lived and worked with a group of muslims from the country of Turkey, I soon found out that they were muslims because they were born into a muslim culture. But I knew more about the quran (muslim holy book) than they did. And I found out that only muslims that follow there religion are radical.
So this country is filled with christians (at least they wear the pin that says that they are christians, but I do not feel that the majority of thoes 'christians' try to follow the Bible, but according to the Bible (true) Christianity is anti-selfish or demonstrates Love.
Many supporters of the nazi party followed Hitler out of fear, but people would 'jump in front of a bus' for JESUS. Some people were physicaly safe but then they stuck there necks out for JESUS. You are correct in saying that both JESUS and Hitler had followers that died, however many people tried to move beyond Hitlers reach while many Christians could have avoided physical death but they were so convinced that they died for the cause.
Of course that is not the only reason that Christianity is diffrent from everything else, but it is one way.
Everything you do is selfish.
This is a neurological fact.
Your brain is biologically determined to attempt to reach the highest state of happiness for yourself(which is selfish).
And for some reason(probably because you are scared from the fact that humans evolved from one-celled organisms) it makes you happy to believe in god and follow everything that is written in an old book.
If you would redefine selfishness as doing something which hurts your environment to make you happy(which is probably what you meant by that in the first place), I would agree with you.
And where would you get that from? Just because a few muslims started their own crusade doesn't mean they are all bad. The quran has similar issues as the bible and will also be misunderstood by those who want to misunderstand it.
By the way:
Although you seems to think that you are a good christian, I can prove to you that you aren't, because you don't value god's creation the earth and try to help humanity destroy it.
Actually Hitler and Jesus are much more alike then you think.
Hitler tried to get rid of most religious thoughts in his country.
That created a huge spiritual hole in the society which he then filled by making praising himself and his ideology the new culture.
So a lot of people had kind of a spiritual bond to him(and voted for him).
Many of his kind of brainwashed followers then were willing to die for him and his ideology.
Sure it's not exactly the same as Jesus, but Hitler and Jesus both (ab-)used the same mechanisms of the human brain.
Jesus did as far as I can tell mostly positive things with his power(like telling the people to follow certain good rules).
I personally think that christianity is not really different from other religions.
Buddhism for example tells you to help others so you will be helped if you were to get in a similar situation, which also leads to a positive behaviour towards the rest of society.
The only great difference there is is that you were taught to believe in christianity and probably got raised with the bible and didn't learn to be skeptical towards what your parents told you.