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Let's not debate if I was Christian, even as a former Mormon I identify Mormonism as Christianity. Strange, highly-modified, Christianity, but Christianity nonetheless. One of the teachings in Mormonism is that all other churches are bad, or that at that the very best, other churches are "incomplete" - they go as far as calling other churches "abominable" in their scripture.
After I had accomplished all of the steps required to attend their "temple" (those huge castles they build in various large cities, which are different from the more mainstream looking church buildings), I was excited to be enlightened and to learn more about Christ and God and the creation of the Earth. Growing up I had been cautioned against "secret combinations" (Mormonism was founded in an era where people feared underground movements like Masons). In their temple I learned signs and tokens (handshakes and words). They were to be kept secret and only used at the correct time in the temple. They were secret combinations. We then made some promises to God (the church), did some chanting, and I was instructed to present my secret combinations at a curtain. I did so and was then able to sit in a waiting room where I cried because I felt like I had just joined a cult. I asked questions to my church leaders, my friends, my family - but nobody would give me sufficient answers or truly any answers other than "pray about it". It was as if the Emperor had no clothes, and we weren't allowed to talk about it.
After leaving the temple that night, I did an obsessive amount of research and answered my own questions. The answer I came to was that the faith I had been raised in, believed in, and lived the tenets of was a bunch of crap. Well, I had already spent a couple decades learning why all other churches were wrong and I was in the one true church, but then I came to the conclusion that my "one true church" was far and away more easily proven as false than the others, simply due to its more modern age, so it wasn't much of a step to let go of religious Christianity altogether at that point.
I still hold onto some beliefs of Christianity. I don't take them very seriously at this point, but I like them and they don't harm anyone so I have no reason to overthink it. I guess culturally I would identify as Christian still, but in belief I am rather Agnostic. I don't believe I can know the ultimate meaning of life. If I was meant to know, there would be a way to empirically know.
hmm. imaginary friends have no authority, and i note some dichotomy in your current model of belief; meaning it seems you must believe God exists, or their would be no authority conveyed, no matter how distant. So, don't know if that was meant for just then, or also now, but i can relate; Christ was essentially an icon to me from the "church" pov. A picture on a special wall--a shrine-thingy.
Well, i don't think that is a fair comparison, because you did not walk in Abe's shoes, and you do not live in Abe's times. Characterizing this as a "temptation" is also...well, never mind that for now. You are aware that sacrificing your first-born to Molech back then was...pretty much what everyone was doing, right? This is OT, what even God considers "the time of death," and does not represent Christ anyway--well, Isaac does, but the whole characterization is deficient wadr, God is not asking you to sacrifice your children, or hate your family in the sense that is read, none of that.
In reality it is much more likely that Abraham could not have killed isaac if he had tried, and it is misunderstanding the passage imo to suggest that the character of God can be judged by a human based upon this.
I'm speaking past tense. I have zero belief in the bible, which includes its God. I assume the biblical God(character in a book of fiction)expects me to love him more than my children/grandchildren. I could never do this. Loving my family more has nothing to do with enabling. I would kill to save them as apposed to sacrifice them to any God.
I did so and was then able to sit in a waiting room where I cried because I felt like I had just joined a cult.
And yet after all that soul-wrenching trauma and the huge epiphany you had, you still served a mission. You tried to encourage as many people as you could to join that cult. You wore your little missionary badge on your lapel and carried your broken moral compass in your pocket. That's really messed up, you know.
Jesus now is really nothing more to me than an avatar for Christianity. I sometimes think when I see these pulpit pimps with their eyes closed tightly and screaming, "Oh Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Sweet Jesus!" I don't think they have an inkling of whether they're invoking a person or just a name attached to a faceless entity no different than the cross at the top of their steeple.
I think to a large extent to them Jesus has become just a figurehead for the religion they follow who said a couple of familiar phrases that get echoed in Sunday school every now and then. I think if the entertainment and social value of going to church were taken away the churches (what few are still attending) would dry up completely, which is why many churches are spending their budgets now trying to get youth programs into place to lure young people back.
Best as I can tell Christianity is on its last legs and will in a few decades be just the fringe religion it started off as. When people say "Jesus" most will say, "Yeah, he was supposed to be the son of God or something, wasn't he?"
Let's not debate if I was Christian, even as a former Mormon I identify Mormonism as Christianity. Strange, highly-modified, Christianity, but Christianity nonetheless. One of the teachings in Mormonism is that all other churches are bad, or that at that the very best, other churches are "incomplete" - they go as far as calling other churches "abominable" in their scripture.
After I had accomplished all of the steps required to attend their "temple" (those huge castles they build in various large cities, which are different from the more mainstream looking church buildings), I was excited to be enlightened and to learn more about Christ and God and the creation of the Earth. Growing up I had been cautioned against "secret combinations" (Mormonism was founded in an era where people feared underground movements like Masons). In their temple I learned signs and tokens (handshakes and words). They were to be kept secret and only used at the correct time in the temple. They were secret combinations. We then made some promises to God (the church), did some chanting, and I was instructed to present my secret combinations at a curtain. I did so and was then able to sit in a waiting room where I cried because I felt like I had just joined a cult. I asked questions to my church leaders, my friends, my family - but nobody would give me sufficient answers or truly any answers other than "pray about it". It was as if the Emperor had no clothes, and we weren't allowed to talk about it.
After leaving the temple that night, I did an obsessive amount of research and answered my own questions. The answer I came to was that the faith I had been raised in, believed in, and lived the tenets of was a bunch of crap. Well, I had already spent a couple decades learning why all other churches were wrong and I was in the one true church, but then I came to the conclusion that my "one true church" was far and away more easily proven as false than the others, simply due to its more modern age, so it wasn't much of a step to let go of religious Christianity altogether at that point.
I still hold onto some beliefs of Christianity. I don't take them very seriously at this point, but I like them and they don't harm anyone so I have no reason to overthink it. I guess culturally I would identify as Christian still, but in belief I am rather Agnostic. I don't believe I can know the ultimate meaning of life. If I was meant to know, there would be a way to empirically know.
Powerful witness! I am saddened that there seems to be so much angst over beliefs ABOUT Jesus and God in religions and the desire to be members of the only true religion. What a waste of spiritual energy!! It is all human vanity and hubris. They are tales told by idiots, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
ya, ok, now if you can just invent an explanation for how Christianity flourished despite open season on them in the first place, you'll be all set. quack. Pretty accurate observation of the nearness of Christ to religion, though.
Ahhh, you are a breath of fresh air, Miss Hepburn.
I was reading another post on another thread and the poster used the phrase, "Jesus has a 'hypostatic' union with God the Father" and I thought to myself, "What in the frack is a hypostatic union?? And why do I need to know 10,000 such mumbo-jumbo theological terms to understand Christianity???
That's another reason why I walked away from Christianity. You have to be a cockamamie genius to begin to comprehend it.
Christus Victorious salvation, ransom salvation, satisfaction atonement, penal substitution theory of atonement......YAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
well, you didn't get any of the from the Bible, did you?
And you and Miss Hepburn might contemplate why blood is needed from a pov other than your own, even as a mental exercise or whatever.
well, you didn't get any of the from the Bible, did you?
And you and Miss Hepburn might contemplate why blood is needed from a pov other than your own, even as a mental exercise or whatever.
The only gods that need blood to appease their wrath are the ones found in jungles that are worshiped by Stone Age tribes who sacrifice their children to these gods---remarkably, like the Hebrews of 4000 years ago, speaking of the devil.
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I am saddened that there seems to be so much angst over beliefs ABOUT Jesus and God in religions and the desire to be members of the only true religion. What a waste of spiritual energy!! It is all human vanity and hubris. They are tales told by idiots, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
And why do I need to know 10,000 such mumbo-jumbo theological terms to understand Christianity??? 
