Well, this'll piss her off, though it's nothing but the truth

[cyanotok]

not quite sure what you mean about the more you study the bible the close you get to God and the farther you get away from Christianity.... Christianity is all about have a close relationship with God, so how can you grow close to him yet away from Chrisitanity? the two go hand in hand, you can't have one wiht out the other

Comments

[ambersky85]

My response to this may be very disjointed, but where it lacks flow, it blossoms conviction, so bear with me. I don't believe that truth and faith have anything to do with one another. Finding a "true religion" is the same thing as finding a leprechaun and Sasquatch mating in the Congo. It's not gonna happen. Religion is totally illogical, and faith is called just that for a reason. It's the belief in something you cannot prove with the knowledge that you can't prove it. I understand that you aren't trying to disprove the existence of the Christian God, as you call Him, but your approach seems to be a little off target. You, yourself, have said that the Bible was written by man, a fallible creature. You should be questioning the validity of the Bible, not the validity of His existence. It can be argued that "God wouldn't allow such terrible things to be put down in His book if he really cared," but who's to say that He does? Religion is an act of man. God didn't establish it. God didn't establish a church either, no matter

[cyanotok]

I never questioned God's existence. I have an irrational and illogical faith that God does exist. However, I am also stating that I refuse to follow the Christian God because of the laws that He supposedly wrote. I believe that they are contradictory, and I refuse to follow a great many of them because I do not believe them to be right. I do not believe them to be just. Someone else may ask "Then what is justice?" Socrates asked this a few millineia ago. There's a reason that the question still has no one true answer, but I'll touch on that later

[flukemanda]

The Bible makes a whole lot more sense when you are taught the Bible rather than if you just read it. Having a bibical scholar explain it to you in historical context reveals the religious truths that are there. It's less about the storylines of what is happening (ie, occurences in context that seem to go against Christian teachings) than it is about the patterns that emerge about the relationship between God His people. The laws in the Old Testament were collections of laws made by Hebrew Kings back in the day that the editors of the Bible (over many generations) wanted to associate with God to tie the Davidic monarchy to God. It's rather complicated and I couldn't possibly explain it here, but the bottom line was the cycle in which the Israelities sinned against their God by denying Him, so God punished the Israelities ("delivered them to their enemies"). Then the Israelities repented, begged for forgiveness, and God saved them. This happens over and over. The ultimate message that that underlies the apparently harsh Old

[cyanotok]

Read my latest entry. My reply was too large to put here.

-Eric