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Originally Posted by godofthunder9010
You're not so terribly unusual as you might think. I'm a member of an organized religion and I'm bolding the items that I completely agree with you about. Some of it is my own personal opinion, some of it is accepted by everyone at my church.
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I'm glad to hear that.
For years, I was going against everything the churches taught me. I'm glad to see that things have changed in 40 years.
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Originally Posted by godofthunder9010
As to whether all humanity descends from Adam and Eve, I'm leaning towards not believing that one anymore but I'm still trying to sort it out.
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When I was 7, I went to Sunday School and they taught me that God planted a tree on a hill with different colored roads leading down from the tree and God gathered all the people under the tree. God said pick a road, and when the people did, they turned that color. And, that's were the races came from. I was 7 and not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I knew that wasn't right. I went home and asked my dad. Dad got his Bible and told me to read creation carefully. When I was done, he asked me what I had read and what it had said and what was wrong with what I had read. On the sixth "day" (that was one of things wrong with the story), God
created male and female, created He them. Then Creation was over. Done. No more.
Then sometime after Creation, God
formed a man from the dust of the earth and called his name Adam. Right after Creation ends, there should have been a new paragraph separating Adam and Eve from creation. Since our Bible only follows one family, Adam and Eve and their descendants, and since the Bible is the genealogy of Jesus and since Jesus was a Jew, his ancestors had to be Jews (Hebrews), too. Then there was how Cain went into the land of Nod and knew his wife when Adam and Eve only had two children. Later, Seth came along, who is the ancestor of Jesus and then the Bible says Adam and Eve had sons and daughters.
Good luck in sorting it out. Don't give up.
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Originally Posted by godofthunder9010
I have absolutely no clue whether or not Ham was black. I'm not sure why it actually matters.
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That may have been a Southern thing. I heard someone else mention it in a post.
The Bible says that Ham was the "dark one". When Ham saw his father, Noah, passed out drunk and naked, Ham had his brothers walk backwards in to the tent and cover Noah with a cloth. This seems to be a very good thing to me. He was compassionate and concerned for his father as well as his two brothers. I don't know whether "nakedness" was a physical state or perhaps it meant "sin". Whether it means physical nakedness or whether it means sin, I tend to think that the point was Ham didn't want Noah to be humiliated by his sons seeing his sin and that the brothers did not need to see how human their father was.
Anyway, Southern churches taught that Ham was black - as in African. Probably because there weren't that many people in the South but Blacks and Whites.
God said that Ham and his descendants would be servants of man. Of course, it does not say what kind of servants. Perhaps God meant they would be doctors and nurses (whatever the equivalent was back then) or teachers or keepers of the moral conscience or whatever.
During the late 50s and early 60s, Southern church was all bent out of shape over the Civil Rights movement (good Christians that they were
). So they taught that Blacks were supposed to be domestics and 2nd class citizens because the Bible said so - id. est. Ham was black and God said Ham and his progeny would be servants. (sheesh)
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Originally Posted by godofthunder9010
I do believe in communion aka the sacrament of the Lord's supper, but I think I get where you're coming from on that. Eating some bread and drinking some wine are not in and of themselves meaningful. It only becomes meaningful when there is real spiritual intent behind it. God knows that us humans often need physical objects and ceremonies to focus better spiritually -- and therein lies the only true value of communion. If I eat and drink with no spiritual intent then all I've done is eat some bread and drink some wine and I might as well have saved time by doing it all at home. I agree with you about confession, though I think this too has it's uses. Sometimes, we need to talk about the bad things we've done, especially when they make a huge ugly mess. A minister or pastor can be a listening ear when a listening ear is needed, and that's a very valuable thing. He or she doesn't have the ability to forgive us for sins. That is 100% God's purview.
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Yes, I totally agree with this. I think you are very right. I think my problem with this came out of the church (Methodist) I was attending at the time. They only made a half-hearted attempt with the saltine cracker pieces and the grape juice. (You do know that Jesus didn't drink wine. They kept all that grape juice fresh for months without refrigeration. .
Yep. That's what they taught us. [sorry, I just can't help myself
])
Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010
Your belief set isn't really all that unusual, though traditional Christians can get very amped up about much of it. Seems to me that you're a person who uses their head and comes to their own conclusions and that's a very good thing IMHO.
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Thank you. I really do appreciate it. It's not just the traditional Christians! Most Christians get very amped. I'm going against everything they were taught.
I revere the Holy Book, but we have to realize what it is and how much its been through. The message is there, but the black words on white paper leave a lot to be desired. There are so many mistakes, mis-translations, editing, and too many human hands have fondled it - some, perhaps, for personal gain. I think if we look for the message, the stories will work themselves out.
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