Posted by pancho from pool0032.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.32) on Saturday, November 30, 2002 at 8:19AM :
In Reply to: Interesting result........Thanks Wilfred posted by Tiglath from 028.a.012.mel.iprimus.net.au (210.50.248.28) on Saturday, November 30, 2002 at 0:59AM :
You can't be a Christian without believing in Christ...and you can't be an Assyrian without believing in Ashur...as you can't be a Muslim without believing in Allah. If you want to say they are all faces of the same god, then why should Assyrians switch to a Jewish incarnation...what was wrong with our own?
Being Christian is buying into a whole ethos, a system of particular beliefs. It isn't just a name...otherwise why go on so about how we died to keep that name when we've done nothing to maintain the name of Ashur?
It isn't just another religion, "big deal, you are still Assyrian". The Assyrian identity wasn't just contained in a name...you had to BELIEVE as an Assyrian as well.
You can't have it both ways...either it meant nothing to become Christian...was no big deal...which is not the way we talk and feel about it. Or it was a very big deal...bigger than maintaining loyalty to Ashur and what that stood for. Since we fought like hell and suffered and died for the one belief, and let the other slip away...we can hardly claim it doesn't matter...doesn't matter if we turn our backs on what makes the followers of any religion loyal to their very essential being.
No one expects anyone to build a temple to Ashur and start chanting...that isn't the way we would show devotion today.
Not one of the respondants believes in Ashur. They can be Assyrian anyway...but only as a fluke...based on a vague and unverifiable claim. If Christians said they didn't believe in Christ...would they be Christian? If Jews responded to such a survey with not one of them believing in Yahweh, would they be Jewish? In the full meaning of the word and not merely as an accident of birth?
If you claim you are somehting...you have to live the part...we act like Christians...we don't act like Assyrians.
-- pancho
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