Can a Christian please answer me this?

Question

Before i start i would like to point out that i am not at all prejudice against christians, i am in fact christened and went to a C of E school when i was 4.

I AM NOT RELIGIOUS, THEREFORE OPEN TO ANY VEIW!

I have been doing alot of research on early britain for my book. I found that when the Roman-Catholic faith was made that there are many, many flaws. There are the Ten Commandments- they say do not steal, yet christianity stole the cross as a religious symbol from the Celts. (before you argue back saying it was the crusifix that jesus died on, I mean that they stole the symbolisim from the celts and the initial idea of using such symbols to represent faith.)
Secondly the festival 'Yule' a pagan/Celtic celebration in late december (i.e modern Xmas) was the date taken and adapted by christians to be made into Christmas.

Another point. Do not Murder. then why were the crusades about. I know they each thought god was on their side and they were doing it for the right of god but surely they knew they were commiting sins?
i find it extremely irritating that the Celts are given absolutely no reconition in this.
I know that MANY people may disagree with this question, but surely if you are religious then you will empathise and see my point.

Answer 1

You fail to understand, that the three Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, ARE violet. Sorry about that. Their entire history, even into today, is violent.



"My god is better than your god, and I will kill you to prove it."



Every single war, except those of recent times, have been over religions. (Now, they are over politics, or during the early Russian Stalin era Khrushchev was appointed , to solve the overpopulation problems of the outer areas in Russia---yup, you got it... murder his own people........ And every single holiday, of Christianity was first a Pagan Holiday. It is not an original religion at all. Even the Jesus myth has parallels in previous religions



It was okay to murder an Infidel.... a Muslim--during the 200 years of the Crusades...... They weren't human, in the eyes of Christians..... besides, they had land, and people in Europe by the thousands and thousands, were landless. Perfect opportunity to not only spread the word of Christianity, but murder, and get land too.



God would be happy.



And so many of them marched, from Germany, England, France, all the way to the Middle East, carrying rakes, hoes, pitchforks and plows.



Your Celtic problem is minuscule compared to what Christianity has done in the way of mass murders from 400-1700 to people all over the planet.... from burning witches in Europe, to the slaughter or enslaving of native populations in Central and South America post Colombian era to extract gold for the Vatican.



By stealing, the ten commandments are not talking about stealing ideas...rather, they are talking about stealing wealth, or property.... i.e., an item which today, would carry jail time, or a fine.



If this topic interests you, read some things from Bart Ehrman, Ph. D., peer reviewed scholar, chair, Dept. of Re. Studies, U of SC, Chapel Hill. His best for what you have asked, is" Lost Christianities".



Read "The Demon Haunted World", by Carl Sagan.



"The Dark Side of Christian History" by Ellen Ellerbe, all of these in paperback, and all used in univ and grad courses in rel. studies.



Three super books. You'll find them interesting. At your library, or cheap in paperback from Amazon.

Answer 2

Ok. Those first two points are kind of ridiculous. The symbol of the cross is not patented. You can't steal a religious symbol. Obviously, that is not at all what the ten commandments are talking about.



The same applies for the yule log and Christmas--Celts still celebrate their holidays. No one can take that from them. It just so happens that Christianity is more popular.



And the church didn't steal that holiday from the Celts, anyway; rather, the Roman government made that transition when Rome legally became a Christian nation. Before that, Christians didn't celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25, and they didn't use the symbol of the cross/crucifix either. Those things were instituted by Rome (a formerly pagan nation).



So, you can bring your grievances to the pagan rulers that preferred to believe in Christ.



Really, you could easily turn this and say that pagans stole the symbol of the cross from the Egyptians, but that wouldn't be the truth. The cross is a basic symbol that many cultures have utilized, and when some one thinks to use it they are not stealing, at all. The cross is not intellectual property.



However, your last point makes much more sense.



The crusades should not have taken place. Christ made it clear that He did not want the church utilizing violence as a means of spreading the Gospel: that was a military action taken by the Rome, not the true church of Christ. But, either way, Christ makes it clear in Scripture that the organized churches would become corrupted, and He knew in advance that the church would go far astray just like National Israel. In fact, this was already happening before the Bible was even completed (just read the first three chapters of Revelation).





But, no, I do not empathize with what you're saying about the Celts. The symbol of the cross in Christianity does not mean what the Celts meant--they symbolize entirely different ideas. And furthermore, the Celts are just as guilty of the same crime against the Egyptians (if that's what you want to call it).



Regardless, the Celts still have their symbol and their own doctrines; no one stole anything from them.

Answer 3

There is a number of issues here.



1. The Catholic church and being full of errors. Agreed.



2. The ten commandments. They are not relevant to true Christianity. The Catholic church makes an issue of them, for theirs is a religion more patterned after the old covenant than the new. The ten are the core of the "old" covenant and Christians are not legally a party to that old covenant.



3. Your understanding of those "commandments" is limited and skewed. The did not deal with theft on the scale you attribute it to. They were about the rights of the king (God) and fellow man in relation to one another.



4. The cross. The ancient Babylonians used a cross / "X" long before the crucifixion of Christ as a means of capital punishment against the enemies of the state, which could be civil or religious. The cross / X became a symbol of death and punishment. The Phoenicians adopted much of the Babylonian culture, including the use of the cross, and the Romans adopted it from them, refining it to where it was seen as the ultimate tool of creating a tortuous death. Christ's resurrection, and the adoption of the cross thereafter was as a reminder of Christ's triumph over death. The Celtic cross had nothing to do with it.



5. Celts and "Yule" is more likely to be an adoption after the Catholic introduction of their brand of Christianity where they attached the pagan belief and practice to the Catholic belief system. In the long term scheme of things, really not important.



6. Murder and the Crusades. It wasn't about murder, but rather how this could be reconciled to Jesus' teaching that one was to have love even for their enemies. The crusades were instigated by the Catholic church; their "jihad" and Europe, being full of unthinking Catholic minions, followed their dictates.



Your "question" though is rather vague and rambling. Anything more specific?



.

Answer 4

" christianity stole the cross as a religious symbol from the Celts"

The Cross is a symbol of Christianity from the very early Church. Tertullian writes in the 2nd century they [the Christians] make the sign of the cross on their foreheads in everything that they do. St.'Paul writes in the bible that he glories in the cross. So the cross has been around as a Christian symbol since Christ was crucified.



It makes no sense to say the cross was copied because Christ was crucified on a cross. So Christians have justification for honoring the Cross. There may be other civilizations that use a cross symbol but that does not justify saying they were copied. The cross is a common symbol.



As far as what you say about Christmas. What you assert is again not a proven fact. In fact to my knowledge Christmas was practiced on Dec 25 since at least the middle of the 3rd century whereas the pagan ceremony was not practiced then until the 4the century. And it was done by pagans in response to Christmas because they were afraid of the Christians.



We just dont know the exact date of Christ's birth. The tradition passed to us from the early Church is Dec 25. Dec 25 is a very possible date for Christ's birth. Sheppherds in the field are found in December in Bethlehem even today. Liturgically, it makes sense to celebrate Christ's birth then because Easter is celebrated on the Passover which occurs in the spring.



About the Crusades.



http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/crusaders-and-historians-42

http://www.ewtn.com/library/CHISTORY/ZCRSADES.HTM



http://www.google.ca/m/url?client=safari&ei=NUzETfCiBKKblweA5vcl&hl=en&oe=UTF-8&q=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DOhARNW4l13g&ved=0CBoQtwIwAA&usg=AFQjCNFmmn0OyuDVmWNm8BaypZLXz4vVXg

Answer 5

Apropos the Celts. Israel, where Christianity started, is in the Middle East, thousands of miles away from the Celts. St Paul, originally a Jew, talks about the significance of the cross to Christians long before Christianity had anything to do with Celts. There is no historical evidence of the Celts using a cross symbol to mean anything remotely like what it means to Christians. So as far as facts go, they do not support the idea that Christians got the Cross symbol from Celts. They didn't need to. It was staring them in the face. Literally.



Yule is not Celtic, It is known from Germanic and, most importantly, Scandinavian/Viking cultures. It was the Vikings who held a Yule feast in the winter, though the actual date used varied from place to place. Christians started commemorating the Birth of Christ on December 25th sometime around 300AD in ROME. This is hundreds of years before they had much contact with, or tried to convert, Vikings or Germanic people. According to the Viking Saga of Haakon the Good, it was the Vikings who moved their feast to December 25th when they became Christian - they took out the pagan bits and u sed the feast instead to honour Christ.



As someone else has said, the Crusades started as a reaction to the Arab invasions of the Easter Byzantine Empire. They did sometimes go off beam, as warring armies invariably do but please remember that Islamic conquests of Europe reached as far as central France, included all of Greece, nearly the whole of Spain and much of Eastern Europe and only stopped at the siege of Vienna in Austria. Get a map of Europe and see what that means in terms of area.



So believe what you like, but do try and make sure it is not contradicted by the historical facts.

Answer 6

See, there's a little problem with what you are to trying to claim we stole:



History.



Christianity did not come to the Celtic regions until the early 700's, but we see the cross as well as the celebration of Christ's birth in December much earlier than this:



In 79 A.D. Pompeii along with Herculaneum was frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and through the careful workings of archaeologists many things have been uncovered in almost mint condition.



One of the things they found was a cross hanging on the wall in Herculaneum was a crucifix in the Casa del Bicentenario, over 600 years before Christianity came anywhere near the Celts.



In the late 3rd (so the 200's) Century, we have Hippolytus stating that "For the first appearance of our Lord in the flesh took place in Bethlehem eight days before the Kalends of January [25 December]'



Again, at least 300 years before Christianity came anywhere near the Celts.



But, let me also say, that just because there are similarities does not mean it must have been stolen from another religion.



Look at the Aztecs compared to the Jews.



Both had temples

Both had sacrifices

Both had holy days

Both had prophets

Both had holy objects

Both had holy books



And yet...they never met. So just because there are similarities does not mean therefore that it must have been stolen from someone else.



As to the Crusades. Yes, it states "Do Not Murder", but we also see in the Bible that there is something called Holy Wars. To murder is to take an innocent life and it does certainly happen in wars, but killing someone in defense (even out of defense for someone else) is not seen as murder. The Crusades were sent as a response to the Jews being killed, prosecuted, tortured, raped and pillaged by the Muslims and they asked the Catholic Church for help. So we responded.



But it is also a fact that not everyone who joined the Crusade were Christians. Many, many, many of them were in it for nothing but the money and the glory.



Do you have a problem with soldiers going over and killing the Nazis who were horribly killing others? Do you have problem with officers killing a person who was armed and threatening or already had killed others?



Yes, I do believe some took it too far, but the Crusades were wars to free a country that was being oppressed by the Muslims. Just as WWII was a war to free a country and a people that was being oppressed by the Nazis.

Answer 7

Have you ever consider the celts stole the cross first. However the cross itself, in the since of wood is only sacred for one reason as a reminder of Christ death. However some worship the cross and I suspect those are the one's that stole it. So what you have to consider is those that worship the cross and not Jesus Christians of course not. Emblems can be reproduced, faith in God is something that has to grow in the heart.

Answer 8

Catholics are not Christians. They are hypocrites and don't understand their religion they claim.



Stole the cross - common, that is a pretty dumb argument. They used a symbol. Stealing is when you take (from someone else) what is not yours. The Celts still have their cross, so nothing was stolen.



Only Christians in Western countries celebrate Christmas by ripping of the Christmas tree and basically turning Christs birth in to a pagan holiday (and it is wrong that they do so). Christians in China, Africa, etc do not celebrate Christmas like western countries do.



Crusades were conducted by the Catholics. Total hypocrites. They weren't even real Christians, but really just took up the Christian name while they were conquering as much land as possible (land they would have tried to conquer even if they weren't Christian, just like every civilisation from the beginning of time has tried to do).

Answer 9

+ The Cross +



The first century Christians having witnessed the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ (on a cross) should not be accused of stealing the symbol from a culture thousands of miles away with which they had no communication.





+ Christmas +



Christmas (the Mass of Christ) is (and always has been) the Eucharistic celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, God the Son.



The angel said to them,



"Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger."



And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:



"Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests."



(Luke 2:10-14)



Christmas is in no way a pagan holiday. It was not "stolen" from the Pagans.



No one knows the exact day when Jesus was born. If a date close to the winter solstice was chosen for Christmas to make conversion of pagans to Christianity easier then what is the harm of that? One could probably find a pagan holiday close to any date on the calendar.





+ The Crusades +



With few exceptions, all Christians throughout history have never considered self defense, a just and defensive war, and lawful capital punishment as murder. However many Christians including Catholics believe most modern governments no longer need to use capital punishment to protect society from criminals.



Muslim armies had conquered much of northern Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Spain, which had been some of the most heavily Christian areas in the world.



Thousands, and possibly millions, of Christians died during this drive to eventually bring the entire world under Islam.



The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II to check the advance of the Muslims and regain control of the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.



If this defensive war was not fought then we would probably all be Muslim today.



I am sure that some atrocities were committed by individuals of both sides during this war but by most people's judgment this was a just and defensive war.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade



With love in Christ.

Answer 10

Just because you were Christened doesn't make you a Christian. You may have done it because of your parents or for other reasons. All I can say to you is let she who is without sin cast the first stone. You are not open minded at all.

Answer 11

The RCC had/has nothing whatsoever to do with the God of the bible, so what they do or did is irrelevant. They are the pagan religion spoken of as babylon, flee Babylon (Rev. 18:4). All those SUNday type pagan palaces (calling themselves christians) are likewise. She is the one spoken of in Rev. 17:5 and her daughters are those so called SUNday churches that follow her. They NEVER did protest!!!



In regards to the cross, you are simply incorrect. The cross was/is a pagan (occult) symbol that existed 1400 years before Calvary.

Answer 12

If you're so open-minded, why is it so difficult for you to admit to the possibility you might be wrong?

Answer 13

i don´t know what they teach you in school but !?



Crucifixion is an ancient method of execution.



and you cannot compare celtic with christianity. it does not make any sense.



regards

J

Answer 14

You are 100% correct in what you say and any religion clinging to such ideas, or practices, is not really christian.

Answer 15

You are more than correct! I agree 100%

Christianity is a big heaping bowl of hypocrisy!

You don't even have half of it up there!

Answer 16

Alot of questions....go here: www.gotquestion.com



God loves you.....god bless