Mujus, there is a difference between condemning those who insist the others must follow dietary restrictions and condemning those who still follow dietary restrictions. Which category did Paul fall into - the former or the later?

Let me clear something up Santa...

If you had bothered to take a quick look through the New Testament of the Bible, you would come to the conclusion that there is a direct contradiction between the teachings of Jesus, and the actions of a vast majority of "Christian" activity both in the past and in present time.

No, being Christian does not give you free access to murder heathens. In fact, Christians are supposed to not condemn anyone, physically, verbally or even mentally. This is why I find the irony of the Roman Catholic Church hilarious during the middle ages. Almost everything they did "in Jesus' name" was in complete contradiction of their own religion. Sadly, this holds true for the most part even today. So yeah, you know plenty about the majority of people who identify themselves as Christians, but unfortunately, you don't know the first thing about Christianity, as the majority of people who identify themselves as Christians are very far from it.

I would like to elaborate on what a real Christian is, but unfortunately that would be a wall of text, and I wouldn't do it justice, so I'm afraid you'll have to read some of the New Testament to interpret it yourself.

ShockTrooper's post, as well as Santa's rant on growing up in a Christian society, reminds me of a passage by Kierkegaard, which is wonderful in its cynicism (from "The Present Moment"):

In the New Testament the Savior of the World, our Lord Jesus Christ, represents the matter in this way: "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

Now, however, just to confine ourselves to Denmark, the way is as broad as a road can possibly be; in fact, the broadest in Denmark, for it is the road we all travel. At the same time it is in all respects a comfortable way, and the gate as wide as it is possible for a gate to be; for certainly a gate cannot be wider than to let all men pass through en masse: therefore, the New Testament is no longer true.

All credit is due to the human race! For thou, oh Savior of the World, thou didst entertain too low an estimate of the human race, so that thou didst not foresee the exalted plan which, in its perfectibility, it may reach by steadily continued endeavor!

To such an extent, then, is the New Testament no longer true: the way is the broadest possible, the gate the widest possible, and we are all Christians. In fact, I may venture still further - I am enthusiastic about it, for you see I am writing a panegyric on the human race - I venture to assert that the average Jew living among us is, to a certain degree, a Christian just as well as we others: to such an extent are we all Christians, and to such an extent is the New Testament no longer true.

(...) it is not improbable that the result will finally be that the domestic animals living in a Christian nation will produce a Christian progeny. The thought almost takes away my breath.

Putin, again not true. It's an attack on the doctrine that people need to follow those restrictions to be reconciled to God. Take a look at Galatians 1 and see if it sounds anti-Jewish:
Greetings from Paul
1 This letter is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group of people or any human authority, but by Jesus Christ himself and by God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead.
2 All the brothers and sisters [fn1] here join me in sending this letter to the churches of Galatia.
3 May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ [fn2] give you grace and peace. 4 Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live. 5 All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.
There Is Only One Good News
6 I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. [fn3] You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News 7 but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.
8 Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. 9 I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed.
10 Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.
Paul’s Message Comes from Christ
11 Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the gospel message I preach is not based on mere human reasoning. 12 I received my message from no human source, and no one taught me. Instead, I received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ. [fn4]
13 You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion—how I violently persecuted God’s church. I did my best to destroy it. 14 I was far ahead of my fellow Jews in my zeal for the traditions of my ancestors.
15 But even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace. Then it pleased him 16 to reveal his Son to me [fn5] so that I would proclaim the Good News about Jesus to the Gentiles.
When this happened, I did not rush out to consult with any human being. [fn6] 17 Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to consult with those who were apostles before I was. Instead, I went away into Arabia, and later I returned to the city of Damascus.
18 Then three years later I went to Jerusalem to get to know Peter, [fn7] and I stayed with him for fifteen days. 19 The only other apostle I met at that time was James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I declare before God that what I am writing to you is not a lie.
21 After that visit I went north into the provinces of Syria and Cilicia. 22 And still the Christians in the churches in Judea didn’t know me personally. 23 All they knew was that people were saying, “The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!” 24 And they praised God because of me.

Footnotes:
1:2 Greek brothers; also in 1:11.
1:3 Some manuscripts read God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
1:6 Some manuscripts read through loving mercy.
1:12 Or by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
1:16 Or in me.
1:16 Greek with flesh and blood.
1:18 Greek Cephas.

Spyman, you have clarified the question--Thank you! Definitely the former. In fact, Galatians 2 states his point very clearly:

The Apostles Accept Paul
1 Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too. 2 I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. While I was there I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing. 3 And they supported me and did not even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a Gentile. [fn1]
4 Even that question came up only because of some so-called Christians there—false ones, really [fn2] —who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations. 5 But we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you.
6 And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) 7 Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. 8 For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles.
9 In fact, James, Peter, [fn3] and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews. 10 Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.
Paul Confronts Peter
11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. 12 When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. 13 As a result, other Jewish Christians followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
14 When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?
15 “You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles. 16 Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.” [fn4]
17 But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! 18 Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. 19 For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. 20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. [fn5] It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.

Footnotes:
2:3 Greek a Greek.
2:4 Greek some false brothers.
2:9 Greek Cephas; also in 2:11, 14.
2:16 Some translators hold that the quotation extends through verse 14; others through verse 16; and still others through verse 21.
2:20 Some English translations put this sentence in verse 19.
http://www.blueletterbible.org/tools/printerFriendly.cfm?b=Gal&c=2&t=nltp

I know Messianic Jews who don't eat pork, and there's nothing wrong with that. lol. Here's a joke about it that a friend of mine told me:
Question: "Can a Messianic Jew go to heaven if he eats pork?
Answer: "Of course he can. He just gets there faster."

lol

But to try to impose those rules on people runs counter to the message of Christianity.

What else ya got, Putin? :-)

Oh, the highest name comment. A name in Hebrew really represented the essence of the person, and Yeshua means "Ya saves" [Ya being a commonly used short form of the name Yahweh (English approximation), so Yeshua means "God saves"]. One of my favorite chapters in the Bible is Exodus 3, the one with Moses and the burning bush, where God reveals his name, Yahweh, to Moses. Both before and after he tells him his name, he provides contextual information about his loving and watchful care for his people. Check out that part of the chapter:

6 I am the God of your father [fn3] —the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” When Moses heard this, he covered his face because he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the LORD told him, “I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites now live. 9 Look! The cry of the people of Israel has reached me, and I have seen how harshly the Egyptians abuse them. 10 Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses protested to God, “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh? Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?”
12 God answered, “I will be with you. And this is your sign that I am the one who has sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this very mountain.”
13 But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?”
14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. [fn4] Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, [fn5] the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.
This is my eternal name,
my name to remember for all generations.
16 “Now go and call together all the elders of Israel. Tell them, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—has appeared to me. He told me, “I have been watching closely, and I see how the Egyptians are treating you. 17 I have promised to rescue you from your oppression in Egypt. I will lead you to a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites now live.”’
http://www.blueletterbible.org/tools/printerFriendly.cfm?b=Exd&c=3&v=1&t=NLTP

Footnotes:
3:1

Moses’ father-in-law went by two names, Jethro and Reuel.
3:1 Hebrew Horeb, another name for Sinai.
3:6 Greek version reads your fathers.
3:14 Or I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.
3:15 Yahweh is a transliteration of the proper name YHWH that is sometimes rendered “Jehovah”; in this translation it is usually rendered “the LORD” (note the use of small capitals).

Zmaj, you are quoting Kierkegaard out of context. His whole point was against Hegelianism, the predominant belief in Denmark, where (nearly) everyone is born into the state religion, the Lutheran Church. Hegel's viewpoint was that since God knew in advance who was worthy, he arranged to have them born into Christian families in favored places like Denmark, where they were baptized as infants, asked to memorize a few points of religion when they were confirmed at about age 14, and were considered Christians because of that. Kierkegaard's point was that Christianity needs to be worked out on a daily basis, and that we never really know God until we are close enough to another person to see him in that person's eyes. Basically the opposite of the selection you posted, which was obviously sarcasm (as evidenced by the final point, if you hadn't gotten it by then, about animals giving birth to Christian offspring).

Tangentially to that, one of my ancestors was a Danish Lutheran priest who went to Norway in 1575 to become the first (Lutheran) bishop of Stavanger Cathedral.

Pastor, I guess, not priest.

Lol Mujus... You stupid patronizing fuck. No more serious discussion with you.

"I understand that Jesus might want to test his flock by making them martyrs every once in a while, but why would he allow them to massacre innocents in his name?"

I don't understand the question....Jesus "allows"...well, it's called free will...unless you believe that God should just control people like automatons...in which case their worhsip is rather meaningless and the whole system of worship falls apart,God gets pissed off and wipes out the universe. You GOTTA let the Christians act like atheists in order for their worship to be meaningful in those few and far between moments when they actually pray or do something "Godly"...

Krellin, very astute, and how funny to stick it to the atheists by saying Christians act like them--up until the point where you reverted to slandering Christians by sticking in the words "few and far between moments when they actually pray...." Face it--You're just a bigot. :-)

Uhhh....Mujus, I did not "slander" Christians. It is an observation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Bible (1 Thessalonians 5:17) tells us to "pray without ceasing". Find me a *single* Christian that comes close to this Godly standard and I will take back my statement. Your lack of knowledge of the Bible does not make my statement slanderous. You know...the Bible says if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can say to this mountain move and it will move....uhhhhh....that's not much faith, and I haven't seen anyone levitate a pencil, let alone move a mountain...so God openly admits we are all a bunch of suck-ass failures when it comes to faith and prayer.

I am by far NOT a bigot....I live in reality, my friend. I understand Christianity quite well, and fairly well versed in my Bible, and very well versed in Christian hypocrisy.

Pots, kettles and black seem to come to mind ....

I'm getting it now, i'm catching on to what all this bible stuff is about, Mujus has nobody else to talk about and tell them how much he knows about the subject. Fair enough, well done Mujus, you're very clever, everybody respects your energy if not your beliefs, you're very good :-)

Pray without ceasing--- I know a lot of Christians who go through their day "checking in" with God all through the day. Or what do you think "pray without ceasing" means? And as for moving mountains or levitating pencils, do you think Jesus was talking about physical mountains, or something more spiritual? Because I've seen miracles in human relationships, etc.

I remember when Mujus said he'd mute anybody that said any word that he considered a curseword. I'm pretty fucking surprised that Krellin wasn't a part of that mass muting, if it even occurred.

@Sacred - it's because I'm so charming, despite thinking that this site is full of cock-sucking douchebags!

@mujus -- sigh....I think when Jesus says I can move a mountain with a *smidgen* of faith I think He means it. But nobody has enough faith to belief that God will grant them that power. Funny thing, Mujus....there was this guy....uh...Mas...no...Moe...MOSES...yeah, see, with a little bit of faith he *parted the seas*. So you tell me what Jesus meant, big guy?

As for pray without ceasing, it means that in every moment of your life you have God firstand foremost in your thoughts. It goes along with the scripture that says you should examine *every* thought and test it against God's standard...I'm *sure* you know of what I speak.

If you want to quibble and make excuses for why you can't meet God's standards, that's on your *hypocritical* head. As for me, I'm man enough to just admit I'm pretty much a miserable failure. But you keep on deluding yourself, Mujus...I'm sure Jesus will be impressed with your excuse-making...

As for "miracles in human relationships"....uh....<cough cough...BULLSHIT...cough...>

What the fuck is a "miracle in a relationship"? and can you give me an example of one of these in the Bible, please...where some "miracle" healed a relationship between two (non-God) people?

He means "getting laid," krellin. That's a miracle for him.

lol I thought that was a Festivus miracle...

Actually, it is oftentimes simply a beer-goggle/alcohol miracle...

Krellin, that's a mute.

*YESSSS!!* Success. NOW I can lambaste him with impunity...