Apr 29, 2011 -- 4:56PM, vivianclare wrote:

What is your support for the existence of this "Christ within yourself"? Where does this concept come from?  How do you know there is such a thing?

I have a logical problem with "progressive Christianity" because it seems to be a lot of people who are simply believing in whatever they invent in their own minds, and this just seems to me to be a lot of wishful thinking. 

Christianity IS about Christ, and in order for that to mean something and opposed to meaning nothing, there has to be some coherent concept of who Christ is. If you don't accept the Bible's account, whose account are you using? 

Here is a link at Unity's site for the search Christ within.

What quickly comes to mind is the scripture where Jesus says the Kingdom of heaven is within.

For more scriptures about Christ within click here.

I consider myself to be a "progressive" Christian, I guess, so I'll venture an attempt here.

In my personal opinion, a Christian is anyone who believes in and follows the person and message of Jesus/Christ, whatever they believe him/that to be.

It's not so much that I reject "the religion of the past", it's that I reject the idea of "traditional" Christianity being what Jesus intended. I believe that people look at the message and the Bible a lot differently today than in the past, and because of that so much of the actual meaning has been neglected. So I prefer to try to get a deeper understanding of the Bible by applying what we can understand through history, archeology, the original languages and traditions, etc.

I reject literalism as a recent occurance in the Christian faith (something that only *really* gained prominence after the Reformation), and recognize that fundamentalism only really goes back as far as the 1920's. So instead of these more recent ways of understanding , I'm more interested in seeing what the Bible actually has to say about Jesus and faith and so forth, by considering the *whole* context. Just because I reject the ideas of literalism and infallibility/absolutism doesn't mean I don't still believe in the value and "truth" of the Bible. I just understand it differently.

I also recognize that there has never been one unified Christianity. From the beginning there have been multiple understandings and interpretations. I prefer to look at those differences, especially the earliest ones, and form my opinions from there, rather than from the "tradition" of "official" Christianity, especially having an understanding of how much of what is considered "orthodox doctrine" was established and enforced.

And then there is the understanding that I can be nothing but a Christian. I have my foundation in Christianity, in the person and message of Jesus, and while I may come to different conclusions than most I can't change that I have a Christian perception and understanding. When I look at other faiths I see them through a Christian point of view. I may not be "orthodox" or "traditional" in the sense that I agree with the mainstream, but I am still a Christian. It's an identity that makes up the largest part of who I am as a person.

I may not qualify to be a Calvinist or a fundamentalist (in truth I identify as a Christian Universalist), but those are *kinds* of Christians, and one can be Christian without being Calvinist or fundamentalist (etc). That doesn't change the common denominator - a belief in Jesus and his message.