Thanks for the added view, Griff.
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Originally Posted by Griff
You have to remember that you come from an exclusive tradition, while a major part of Christian teaching is that God's love isn't exclusive.
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I'm not sure what you mean by this. Yes, I do come from an exclusive tradition, but that exclusivity hardly entitles me to exclusive love from God. As was mentioned in the original post's quoted article, Judaism believes that everyone is loved by God, but the Jews have a special responsibility to him.
I understand completely about conversion, and I never thought of Christianity as a "black hole". My aim here wasn't to point a finger at Christianity and say "EVIL!! EEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL!!!," you know, like grandpa Simpson said about the talking Krusty doll in the third Halloween special. I know they truly feel like they are doing a justice by showing people the "light". Hey I would feel that way too. But the point of bringing up the conversion thing was to be able to say whether or not the belief is that everyone else is "going to hell," since conversion is usually referred to as being "saved." Now I understand what you say about there being variation, but still, my only issue with that is that I've ALWAYS heard this as being the viewpoint for priests. Christianity is unlike Judaism in that it's portrayed much more publicly in the media, like movies, TV shows, cartoons, etc., and anywhere I've ever seen the issue arise (as I mentioned, even just talking to random Christian individuals I happened to get into such conversations with), the stance on others is always the same.
I may be making unfounded assumptions based only on what I can observe. That is definitely a possibility. But still, I think the message is very overwhelming. If this isn't a commonly-held belief among Christians, then they should probably be doing a better job of making their real message public, getting offended when they see their religion being represented by extremists, and speaking out more.