Do you beleive in God, the bible or religion?

by Leander 35 Replies latest jw friends

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  City Fan

  Any kind of spirituality I ever had was drummed out of me by 20 years of mind numbing meetings, man made rules and broken promises.
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  dmouse

  Once I did, passionately, then I had a real downer on the whole thing, for similar reasons to you Leander.

  Now I’m not sure.

  I certainly I need more evidence for the existence of a God that cares about us than a funny feeling. Yet I know that evidence is never going to come, so I guess on reflection I don’t believe in God.

  Wish I did though, life and the universe was so much more cosy with God looking after things.

  Unfortunately we don't have a choice about what we believe.
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  mouthy

  I do believe in God- As to the Bible? I believe it is a map- to exist - I must say when I read the OT I am disturbed- but when I read the words in RED ,Jesus supposedly said, I feel contentment-
  I look around at the Things God created- I am in awe- I look around at man/woman creates I am fed up.....
  I feel that My God has given me the strength to go on- even though after losing three children to death & one to the Watchtower- I have felt the big question "WHY GOD"?
  But I feel my relationship with Christ is the comforting "fellowship" I am needing- so I keep close in prayer to Him....
• 

  SPAZnik

  Re: Do you beleive in God, the bible or religion?

  Not particularly.
  at this time.

  SPAZ
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  RR

  I believe in both God and Bible. As far as religion is concerned, Christianity is the truth religion, however man has corrupted it to no end.

  ____________________________________
  "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
• 

  aChristian

  Leander,

  You wrote: Logically it does'nt make sense.

  Just because you do not yet understand something does not mean it does not make sense. Do the principles of Quantum Mechanics makes sense? You will probably admit that they most likely do. But do you fully understand any of them?

  God may have desired things to be just as they now are for some very good reasons. Maybe you have just not yet considered them. You refer to several quite complex issues, Adam and Eve, Satan, good and evil, our free will, etc. You say that because you don't yet understand all of them that the Bible must be in error. Pick up a book explaining nuclear physics. Read it through once or twice. If you don't then understand everything you have read is that proof that its contents "do not make sense"?

  Let's look at some of the issues you have raised from a slightly different angel. First, let's consider the fact that the Bible indicates that God gave us all free will rather than creating a bunch of robots who had to do things His way. Apparently God wanted to give us all the freedom to make our own decisions in life. Why? Because God wanted to have a loving relationship with us, and real love cannot be either forced out of someone or programmed into them. Real love can only come from a person's own free will.

  But in giving us free will, God had no choice but to create a race of people who would all be less righteous than Himself. How so? God cannot act unrighteously. But since His free creations would have both the ability to act unrighteously and often, at least on an experimental basis, the desire to do so, they would all be by their own created nature less righteous than God. And thus, they would all be undeserving of eternal life.

  For God's incredibly high standards said that only those who were as righteous as He was were deserving of the ultimate gift, immortality. Thus, by God's standards, anyone who was less righteous than Himself would have to eventually die. For even though God gives us all the gift of life, He feels only those who are perfectly righteous deserve eternal life.

  So, what was God to do? The Bible tells us that He decided that, since all unrighteousness was deserving of death, and that only perfectly righteous ones are deserving of eternal life, He could pay all of our death penalties for us by sending His perfectly righteous Son to die in the place of each one of us. Just as the Bible tells us that to God each one of us is worth the lives of many sparrows, so the death of His one perfectly righteous Son would be worth more in paying the price for our unrighteousness than all of our own deaths put together.

  So God sent his Son to die in our place and pay the death penalty which we all deserve for our own unrighteousness. He then offered that payment as a gift, along with the gift of immortality which automatically comes with that payment. He then told us that all we have to do is accept that payment as an accomplished reality and then God will consider the penalty for our unrighteousness to have been paid. Of course, someone who really believes this to be true can't help but be affected by God's great love towards them. When a person truly accepts on faith what God has done for them through Jesus Christ's sacrificial death, their life begins to change. The Bible tells us God then gives them His Holy Spirit to help them successfully live their new lives as believers in Jesus Christ. At that time they are truly "born again."

  Some have said that this amounts to God not creating us free at all. They say that, in effect, God is saying, "Do things my way or I will kill you." But He is not. He is saying, "I have already given you a gift, the gift of life. Now I want to give you an even better gift, eternal life. All you have to do is accept it. And to do that, all you have to do is believe in the way I purchased it for you."

  Free will involves not only the ability to do both right and wrong. It also involves the opportunity to do so. If I tell someone, "You are free to choose either vanilla or chocolate ice cream, but all there is no chocolate available," have I really given them a free choice? For us to really have been created as "free" people God must have chosen to permit evil to exist so that we would have the opportunity to choose evil over good, if we chose to do so. To have the ability to choose evil rather than good, evil must exist as an available option.

  I believe God wanted everyone who would at some point choose to live their lives righteously, and who He would later give the ability to do so perfectly (God will one day give Christians not just immortality but also incorruptibility), to have a first hand knowledge and understanding of why God's ways are best. God did not want even those who would freely choose to do things "His way" to not personally understand why "His way" is the best way. Only by creating the human race in such a way that all of us would be sure to gain a personal "knowledge of good and evil," (i.e., creating a "sinful" human race that could never fully obey him) could God be certain that all of us would acquire such "knowledge." For only by making sure that every human being would personally experience the negative results of unrighteous living could God be sure that all who would sooner or later choose to live righteous lives would fully appreciate why doing things "God's way" is the best thing for us.

  I believe "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" in Eden, which God told Adam and Eve not to eat from but from which he knew they would eat (being "forbidden fruit" and all), was meant to illustrate the situation we are now discussing. To understand the meaning of "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" we have to understand that before Adam and Eve ever ate from that tree they already had a knowledge of "good." For Adam and Eve knew God and "God is good." Adam had not only talked with God himself, but he and his wife had both walked with God in the Garden of Eden. (Gen. 3:8) So, since Adam and Eve already had a knowledge of good, their eating from "the tree of the knowledge of good AND evil" represented their also gaining a knowledge of evil. The accent should be placed on the word "and." As in "the knowledge of good AND evil."

  I believe that the knowledge of evil, that Genesis refers to in the story of Adam and Eve, refers to "knowing" something "in the biblical sense." This kind of "knowledge" refers to a very close and "intimate knowledge." Such as in the Bible's statement that Joseph did not "know" Mary until after she had given birth to Jesus. (Matt. 1:25)

  That being the case, Adam and Eve had an intimate knowledge of good before they disobeyed God. For they personally knew God and they knew by experience all the good things being obedient to Him brought them. But until they disobeyed God they did not really "know" evil. For they had no intimate knowledge of evil. For such a "knowledge" would include having experienced the harmful effects of evil, a knowledge which Adam and Eve only acquired after they disobeyed God.

  There are a lot of things in the Bible that are hard to understand. The fact of the matter is, Jesus Himself sometimes deliberately taught in a way that was hard to understand. The Bible tells us that He did so in order to give those who were looking for a reason to reject Him the opportunity to do so. I hope you don't make that mistake with the Bible and the God who inspired it.

  Mike
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  DakotaRed

  I believe in God, be He a spirit type being or a supreme alien being.

  I believe in teh Bible, insofar as it has been properly translated, which gives a big problem since I don't think we have true translation in existence today.

  But religion? I have no use for religion, regardless of which one. To me, religion is manmade and has been misused to do much harm to our fellow men.
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  Valis

  Pick up a book explaining nuclear physics. Read it through once or twice. If you don't then understand everything you have read is that proof that its contents "do not make sense"?

  The critical thinker wouldn't even consider it aC, like I should have to tell you this. A worthy student of any topic builds on a foundation of facts, research, much thought, AND most importantly the test of time...something akin to scholarship. Perhaps your post is for those who have never read the bible, but you might consider the experience of some, especially here, are like an ongoing example of the scientific method. You claim that the bible is in some instances hard to understand and rightly so. Who made up that rule? If its the truth then it should be self evident and not obscure or cryptic. Those parts of the bible that are, usually pertain to prophesy, which continuously get refuted by the ongoing scientific method I mentioned before. Change dates, twist words, have blind faith, reread and reanalyze the bible 20,000 times...all of those things are the real signs of the times.....the blissful ignorance of real truths.

  Sincerely,

  District Overbeer
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  simwitness

  I also agree with what Amazing said, and it applies to me as well.
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  Silverleaf

  Do you believe in God, the Bible or religion... good question.

  I was never sure if I believed in God - and was often sure he didn't believe in me. It wasn't until I read the Bible that I realized the God everyone was talking about could not possibly warrant anyone's worship or devotion if he truly was responsible for the atrocities described therein, and it wasn't until I began studying Wicca that I sat down to read the Bible.

  After years of searching and always feeling a void, I can say now that I believe in the Goddess - I never felt anyone was listening to my prayers until I directed them to Her. I do not believe in the Bible - it is so full of contradictions and vile examples of God's "love" that it cannot possibly be divinely inspired. I do not and have never believed in religion and never will - I've seen too many examples of how religion is used as an excuse for people to abuse one another. Spirituality is what's important and the only divine wisdom we need is what is written in the world right in front of us, we don't need a book, a translator, a mediator or a magazine to have a relationship with the divine.

  Silverleaf