cinepro wrote:Fence Sitter wrote:Though I believe none of the items you list I am still part of the church. As I pointed out above, in that when membership numbers are announced I am part of those numbers. Even the church considers me a member.
Obviously it would be impossible to police the private thoughts of the people on the rolls without a massive inquisition beyond even the wildest dreams of the harshest authoritarian.
Since the Church has no way of discerning the inner thoughts of everyone, it's not very practical to ask what the limits might be on those thoughts. There aren't any limits. It's much more useful to actually talk about the kinds of beliefs that are relevant to being a member of a Church (such as publicly shared beliefs).
Time out.
We are not discussing what some authority in the church might use as a standard for belief, we are talking about what constitutes being "part of the church". You gave a list which defined certain beliefs as necessary to be so considered and I pointed out that even though I did not believe in those items I was still considered part of the church by the church itself. I absolutely believe that is pertinent to the conversation, especially when responding to some blowhard like LLoyd who believes he gets to define what constitutes being a member for everyone else.
Well Scotty guess what, I don't believe in any of that nonsense and the church still counts me as a member. So discussions about being part of the church cannot be limited to belief standards .
We are probably are mostly in agreement here Cinepro, but I don't like those holier than thou members who on the one hand will self righteously claim they know what defines being a member while simultaneously blindly accepting world wide membership numbers announced yearly by the church. If the Maddog LLoyd types of the world want to acknowledge that there really are only about 3-5 million actual members, then your distinction is valid.