Choosing a faith

I like to think of the trinity as God the father who gave us free will, which of course includes the opportunity to choose good or evil, Jesus who lived out and taught about God's goodness and desires for our lives and the Holy Spirit that influences our lives to choose to choose and live out the good. More than adequate reason to accept the whole thing.

Merely paralleling what AZPaul3 wrote. BTW are you saying that your method of not thinking is preferable.

Of course. I have thought a great deal about what I believe. I'm sure AZPaul3 has done the same, and just possibly maybe you have too..

I don't see it as being ludicrous or that it doesn't involve thinking. We both made statements that are factually true, When we say we believe something, it is just
something that we have considered and have come to a conclusion that can't be proven.
We have simply come to different conclusions which constitutes our beliefs.

Ya, It is a pretty weak way of saying I believe.
​ Of course, which is what I get for paralleling AZPaul3.

It slays me C2 that you will spend all this time arguing against evolutionary theory but you don't even try to explain the genocidal deity in parts of the OT with Jeus saying to love our enemies in a society being brutally ruled by the Romans.The Genesis accounts are a true mythology. They aren't a scientific account of creation. We should understand the accounts as telling us that we are the result of a creative intelligence, that has given us a knowledge of good and evil who wants us to choose goodness and made us stewards or guardian's of the planet and the life on it I suggest that you start out with Jesus's instructions to love your neighbour and your enemy and go from that there, and quit rying to turn the Bible into something it isn't.

We are talking about a Christian FAITH. It is BELIEF. If I could prove it we would have it as knowledge, not faith and belief.For the sake of argument let's say you could disprove evolutionary theory. Once you had done that how would you prove that the two Genesis accounts, which don't agree with each other anyway, are factual?Do you worship a god who commits and commands genocide as in the cases of the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Amalekites and the Canaanites? If you do, how do you square that with the teachings of Jesus including His command to love your enemy. You seem to keep avoiding that question.You can worship an inerrant Bible or you can choose Jesus. You can't do both.

I guess that first I have to understand what it is that you see as being the point of giving heart assent. Since the time of the reformation, and the more so since the age of enlightenment, Christianity has been largely sold with the purpose of being on the right side of God in the next life.There were various circumstantial reasons for that happening but it was largely because of the the human tendency to be self interested. Christ's message was a Kingdom message, a Kingdom which consisted of those who chose to spread the His message of love, peace justice etc. to the world as a response of the Holy Spirit's call on their lives. Christ's call on our lives is a call to a vocation, that is for the benefit of all of creation in the here and now.If you are asking the question in regards to what happens to us in the next life I suggest that the best source for that is CS Lewis. I'm sure that you're familiar with the Narnia stories but here is a quote from "The Last Battle" with Aslan as the Christ figure and Tash as the figure of evil. Emeth was a soldier in Tash's army and after passing into the next life Emeth encounters Aslan.

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“Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome.”

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“But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false.”

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“Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.”

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The point is that "God's Still Small Voice" or His "Holy Spirit" is there for the entire world to accept or reject. Christ's call is a this world call and as Paul says, we are not to judge, but we are called to worry about this life and let God's perfect justice deal with the next. It is our hearts that are judged - not our theology. That is the Biblical message.

Hi c2 Fair enough, but the point is in knowing what the rules are. How about Jesus saying that all the laws and the prophets hang on loving God and neighbour rather than taking some ancient texts, written by a variety of people all with their own agendas.You try and justify it by pointing out that the cultures in question had some pretty evil habits. Let's look at that then in the light of Jesus and what we know otherwise.Sure the Canaanites worshipped other gods and had some rather despicable aspects to their culture, That has always been true and remains so today. The Romans at the time of Jesus were just as bad and Jesus taught His followers to do exactly the opposite and to love their enemies.Another aspect that gets ignored is that the Israelites were to be the people that God loved. God as shown in Jesus is a loving father. Would a loving father order his child to go out and slaughter others, including infants, and tell him to show no mercy. We know quite a bit about PTSD and what that does to the hearts of individuals and by extent to the societyAlso we have accounts of Yahweh slaughtering large numbers of people on His own as as in Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as the in the case of the flood. Why wouldn't Yahweh just do it on His own rather than involving the the people called to bring His message of love and peace to the world?Jesus was considered an enemy by the Temple authorities. When they failed to have Him stoned to death, they found Him guilty of blaspheme and took Him to the Romans to have Him executed in order to deflect the blame from themselves due to Jesus's popularity with the common folk. Would they have written that God commanded it? I suggest that most likely they would have if they could have given the chance.Let's set the genocidal; accounts aside. This is from Numbers 15.
" Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation; and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. -"Which is more serious? This poor schmuck picking up firewood or the woman caught in adultery. Jesus told them to release the woman and said that that the one without sin should cast the first stone. Do you think that Jesus would have had the fellow picking up firewood stoned to death? Also is a loving god going to call to have His beloved people all get together and cruelly stone their neighbour to death?

Hi Phat
It is kinda here in the Bible. Paul says in Ephesians 2:19. You and I have been adopted into God's family and have become God's children (Romans 8:16). God's family becomes visible on earth through his church.

Well firstly the Bible isn't simply a book, but is a collection of ancient texts written by an unknown number of authors over numerous centuries and in different circumstances.Personally I understand the Bible as a narrative outlining the progressive understanding of God by the Jewish people with the narrative come to a climax in Jesus.Yes we are to question people's actions as we all do. But that is not the same thing a pre-judging God, and particularly about deciding what happens to specific individuals or groups of individuals in the next life.

The problem C2 is that you have a very different belief of how we should understand the Bible. John Chap 1 tells us that the Word became flesh. He didn't say that the Word became a book, or more accurately a collection of books.Yes, the Biblical authors were inspired to record their stories, understandings and
histories. You want to read it as if it was essentially dictated by God. Doing that essentially makes a false idol out of the Bible. As humans we don't like grey areas and we want things to be black and white. A massive problem in doing that is that we can find a verse in the Bible to find support for pretty much anything we want.When we read the Bible as if Yahweh is commanding genocide then it seems reasonable that we in the west should get busy and nuke other nations that have practices that we disagree with.I suggest that we should understand the Bible, as a series of books written over time by humans with their own personalities and agendas to form a narrative of the progressive understanding of the nature of God. The climax of the narrative of course is found in the man Jesus. They were inspired to write their stories in the same way that Beethoven was inspired to write his music. When we read the Bible that way, it allows God to speak to our hearts through what these ancients have written.You prioritize an inerrant reading of the Scriptures over the life and teachings of Jesus. It's Biblianity as opposed to Christianity.

Sure. Read Matthew 5 and the opening to the "Sermon on the Mount". Just count the times when Jesus say that "you have heard it said but I tell you this" or some equivalent.
Jesus says that we are to love our enemies but the OT has Yahweh commanding genocide, as well as the command to love others.Jesus discounts the sabbath laws saying that "the Sabbath made for man, not man for the sabbath. Yahweh commands public stoning to death for the poor scmuck picking up firewood on the sabbath.Jesus tells us that "all the law and the prophets" hang on the command to love God and neighbour with Matthew bringing the the two ideas int one. In Matthew 25 we have the story of the sheep and the goats with the sheep being the ones that followed the command to love and with Jesus telling them that they served the least of them they were doing it for Him.Like I said, you are making a false idol out of the Bible. It becomes your focus of worship which is a doctrine that was born out of a response to enlightenment. Christianity is about serving the God whose nature was perfectly lived out in the person of Jesus.

I have no problem with any of those 4. However you break #2 all the time by making a false idol out of the Bible and discounting Yahweh who we can understand as being perfectly embodied by Jesus. No problem with the last six either. However as you agreed Jesus says that sabbath was meant for us to give us rest. It is not meant to be treated legalistically. If you needed firewood to keep your family warm on a cold sabbath day would you go pick some up? You seem to believe that if you were to do that God would want you cruelly executed by your neighbours....and that's not weird.

It isn't hard to understand, it is the following it that's tricky.Matthew 7 vs 12

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So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

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