I would say that specific verse you are citing it’s actually specifically calling people to community in the church. The vine is wrapped around the tree, tangled among the branches. If a branch grows to far away from the main tree that’s holding the vine, that’s when the branch is cut off.
I’m curious. Why are you here? If you think it’s all made up nonsense, why did you feel the need to comment on it in an intentionally insulting way?
Did that make you feel bigger?
Certainly the notion of individualizing Christianity is as old as Christianity itself, but I would argue that the contemporary version of it is really pretty recent. Go back 50 years ago and even most US Baptist churches wouldn’t recognize the contemporary version of it.
The concept that we have today really developed in the 80s and 90s.
Sorry, but we aren’t reading the same Bible.
The phrase ain’t in there. And just about every verse that’s interpreted as such is more easily interpreted to be about the community rather than the individual.
Book, chapter and verse?
Did you make a group?
Did you make a group?
Hello, my fellow Episkopol! I’m new here myself too. If you start one up I’ll subscribe!
Scouting America is a nearly completely volunteer organization. Their technology is generally about 20 years behind because it’s all pieced together by volunteers that “kinda done something like this for my company once”.
BOT! FOUND ONE! INTERNET ATTACK!
Please don’t respond to this comment.
Things that didn’t happen.
There is one simple trick to determine if you are talking to a bot. Ask the person you are talking to not to respond to a comment.
“No offense, but I’m going to check to see if you are a bot. Please don’t reply to this comment.”
Current LLMs can’t not respond. They will often write that they are “really insulted that you would say that” and that the test “doesn’t prove anything”, but they can’t not respond.
I’m sure eventually the programmers will hard code in a simple defeat for this test soon enough, but for now it still works well.
The 90s were a wild time in Christian media…
No no…
This is a ancient grape cultivation metaphor. They didn’t have grape farms like we do today, with rows of grapevines strung on wires.
They would grow bushes and let the vines grow up through the branches of the bush. Tthe bushes would hold the vines.
In this metaphor the bush a the church and the branches are the people. (Or individual diocese or parishes depending on the interpretation.) But the bush is the Church. And the vine is Jesus abiding in the bush.
Jesus is the vine. You ain’t Jesus. You gotta be something else in the metaphor.