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I am a Christian and I think I will be a Christian for a very very long time.
I went to a private religious school when I was younger and I decided spiritual awareness is a personal journey, your relationship with God is your relationship with God. It has nothing to do with anyone else. As a Christian, I strongly believe in the concept of Separation of Church and State. Live and let live.
All these said, the bible is not written by God is actually a christian discovery, allow me to explain.
In the times of the enlightenment after the european wars on religion, the theologists got a new look on the bible. What they have concluded is that the bible is written by a lot of people in different times in different circumstances. This people describe god, life, history, philosophy under the assumption that there is one god. They do this in the view of their experience and the circumstances they lived in. So some parts of the bible are mythic, violent and for today's people often not too understandable.
There are actually two main themes of the bible: in the hebrew bible: radical monotheism as discovered in the babylonian captivity, and in the New Testament the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and explanation why God acted not powerfully in a way, that people expect that God should do.
I certainly am not speaking for all Christians, but I think one (Christian or not) should read the Bible contextually, keep in mind who the author of any given passage or book was, who he was writing for
whether the author was writing symbolically or concretely, whether it was meant to be a poem or a song, what was going on in the culture at the time, etc.
Is this an encouraging trend? We are moving more and more away from the desert religions of the Middle East?
I grew up in the Methodist church and Presby church. Neither taught that the bible was the LITERAL word of God. We know that the bible was written by men; some taught that it was God speaking through the writers; some teach that it is the writing of different men, in different times, describing God and Jesus.
I never attended a church that preached literal interpretation of the bible.
But I grew up in a county in southern Alabama (all southern baptist) that most certainly believed in a strict literal interpretation. I was a serious outcast and my neighbors told me all the time that I was going to literal hell where I would burn in literal fire.
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Originally Posted by tinytrump
Religion has gotten political... Not expecting for it to be wishy washy now?!!
Because the pseudo-religious evangelicals are a driving political force now. They still believe in magic, as proven by their support for someone for whom becoming a real president would be a latter-day miracle.
If the christian bible is the word of a god, that god is one of 5,000 currently fighting for superiority.
Choose wisely, grasshopper.
Why would you call them "pseudo-religious"? Do you know what "pseudo" means?
As far as talking snakes I would presume that was Obama in a previous life.
There was an experiment our fourth grade teacher did that has stuck with me my entire life. She whispered a word to a student. Each student had to whisper it to the next and could only do it once. By the time it got to the end of the class it was not the same word and had changed 3 or 4 times. These stories may have been passed down for centuries before they were written down and have gone through multiple interpretations. They will have changed dramatically in that time. This doesn't change the fact it's based on some the earliest written histories we have and many of them will be based on real events.
Other people at that time are said to have normal life expectancies. So why did Noah live 900 years? And what about that dude that lived 3 days inside a fish? The talking snake is also a very fishy story.
If what you say is true, that it is just some hearsay passed on from generation to generation, how can we take any of this seriously i 2017? Do you think it is a coincidence that religious leaders prefer to keep people financially insecure and fearful. The more financially insecure a population is, the more religious they become=more power to the religious leaders over the masses.
Inspiration can come from many things. Being in love, a beautiful song, a painting. Hard to believe God would want to inspire man, when the bible says we're full of sin.
If what you say is true, that it is just some hearsay passed on from generation to generation, how can we take any of this seriously i 2017?
I wouldn't suggest you take anything written in the Bible at face value as true, I merely pointing out that many of these things are based on fact. As I already noted being retold and interpreted through many centuries has certainly changed the original story.
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Do you think it is a coincidence that religious leaders prefer to keep people financially insecure and fearful. The more financially insecure a population is, the more religious they become=more power to the religious leaders over the masses.
What I think is that people can have good intentions and bad intentions, religion is no different.
I believe the One who created the heavens and the earth is quite capable of keeping the Holy Bible in it's acceptable to Him form. I don't know why anyone would doubt that?
The role of religion, especially the influence of biblical literalists on government and society, is controversial.
Exactly
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