Christianity

What we believe-2

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Item 1 was talking about how Christianity does not teach that sin is the intended result of free will, or that it is necessary to sin first before choosing good.

“Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” Romans 6:1-2

Most have heard the Christmas story. Jesus was born of a virgin, in a stable, and angels announced it.

It sounds like any other religion with its prophets and visions.

The reason I find The Gospels different is because they are so unpretentious. I’ve read some other gospels, and religious texts, and they are always told in a sort of sanctimonious tone. Making everything sound very holy and above our understanding.

That may seem fitting, certainly the church has done the same thing. But the Gospels themselves don’t do it. When they tell the story they state in it simple language, very matter of factly. Only getting excited when talking about glorifying God.

The whole Bible is full of stories like that. Miraculous stuff happens, and is told like it was the time of day.

Some call the Bible boring because of this. But I want to point out that it’s also very humble.

Which is astounding, since it is said to come directly from God himself.

That doesn’t prove it was true. I know that. But it’s different.

The humility of the Bible is important when considering how vital it is, if it is true.

But I digress.

According to the Bible, Jesus was God, and Jesus was man. There’s debate over what that means. But the best explanation I can give is that God, who made man in the first place. obviously could make his son into a man. HE doesn’t need help. The reason He used Mary was so that Jesus could be born into temptation, but not into sin itself. Which is handed down from the father, according to the word. Though also from the mother.

But God is sinless, so Jesus was able to choose that because He was God’s son.

It sounds crazy, but every religion sounds crazy if you look at it though what is possible to man. (That includes secular ones by the way.) If what you believe doesn’t sound nuts to someone, you don’t really have faith.

And there are those skeptics who will pick apart anything that’s a little outside their comfort zone. I trust that’s not any of you, but I’m sure you’ve met them.

So I don’t think we can discount the biblical story just because it sounds crazy. Even for human beings crazy does not equal impossible. (Did you know people have jumped down Niagara falls with no protection at all, and made it. Maybe it was just one person, but still.)

I think we should ask what makes the story of Jesus different from other faith figures.

I think there are others who were known as  humble. But none quite so shockingly unique. I’ve been reading a book called “Beautiful Outlaw” about how Jesus is a collection of contradictions.

And I’m not one who is swayed bye very book I read about God, I discount plenty if it seems wonky. But this book has a very strong biblical foundation that anyone can appreciate.

I know that fact that Jesus seems to contradict himself can make it hard to buy.

However, when Jesus seems to do something, there is always a reason for it.

I want to address something else I heard on the internet now, the idea that we should not use the bible to shape our views of parenting, or of anything I imagine, because it is old and written from a mindset of thousands of years ago.

I’ll get more into that later, but for now I want to address the Christian belief that the Bible is the very Word of God. I don’t know if the Jews beleive that, or if they believe it about every book in the Old Testament. But Christians believe it about the whole thing.

And if that is so, then there’s no way God’s ideas can be outdated. Think about it.

But also, if that is true, what do we do with the fact that Christians do not follow Old testaments Law? IF it was the word of God, aren’t we hypocrites.

And Jesus said He did not come to remove he law but to establish it.

Jesus also allowed his disciples to break the law by plucking grain on the Sabbath so that they could eat. He also healed on the Sabbath. (Which is not forbidden by the way, but at the time it was condemned by the pharisees.) Sow hat gives? And why do Christian now balk at the passages that strongly condemn sinners to death or other horrendous punishments.

Well, the interesting thing is that until Jesus came, there weren’t a whole lot of peaceful gods in any religion. I’m not sure there were any. All the old mythology I know about had blood thirsty, or temperamental gods. And God has been accused of being the same. Though the prophets tell us that He takes no delight int he death of the wicked.

Jesus changed the fad.

The reason Christians believe that we can have more mercy now, and that we don’t have to eat certain foods and not eat others, and do all these rituals to purify ourselves is because Jesus did it all for us.

Christianity differ from Judaism int hat it start the work from the inside out, instead of the outside in. If you change inside, then outside you will soon follow. But outside first never changed anyone.

Jesus fulfilled the law not in that he enforced every single command, but that he brought us the real why behind them. He showed us that The sacrifices and eating and not eating were all things meant to tide us over, to teach us what holiness is through outward examples, but that it was never meant to actually take us there on it’s own.

God says this in Isiah when he mentions how the people honor him with their lips, and go through the motions of his commands “but their hearts are far from me.”

It is not hypocrisy for Christians to no longer practice some parts of the law, but actually part of what the whole faith is about. Being righteous inside first, not outside.

I can get a little more into that later that’s all for now–Natasha.

What we believe-1

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I’m starting right in with a new mini series of posts. This time around, my topic is the semantics of Christianity.

The reason I wanted to do this is not purely to convert anyone, it’s actually because I keep seeing people on the internet describe what Christianity, only they don’t describe it. They think I believe something totally different.

This is getting on my nerves, so in order to feel better,  I’m gong to explain what I believe and why.

(A quick warning, Christians don’t agree on everything, I’ll try to stick to the basics, but there’s always going to be some debate between sects. Most of it is over minor stuff so I hope no one will start an argument in the comment section over it. Thanks.)

Okay, topic number one: What is Christianity?

Better yet, why does it claim to be different from every other religion?

The skeptic will always doubt that there really is any difference, and might not care what the difference is because it still involves God.

But as far as theists are concerned the difference is important.

All religions, (even the godless ones) try to answer life’s fundamental questions about our identity, purpose, and who is in charge over everything. Christianity is no different here. But Christianity goes a step further. It not only answers all this, but it answers the question of why these things are the way they are.

We are made in God’s image. The reason is, God wanted to make independent beings who could love Him of their own free will. (That’s the semantics part.) Because, love is a choice.

Now the mistaken internet person I was watching yesterday made an error after this point. I won’t tell you who it was, though I doubt any of you watch her. (It would be uncanny if you all knew the same people as me.)

What she said was that we can’t attain heaven, until we’ve been given free will. Being born into it makes it boring. And that Christianity shows this by having man first choose to leave paradise, and then to regain it by sacrificing his life, thereby earning it.

I could see how, if you view Christianity as just another myth, you might think that Adam and Christ are both meant to represent mankind. Therefore making the whole thing a metaphor for how we have to earn our stripes, as it were.

But the real thing we believe is that we earned the stripes, and Christ took the beating for us.

It is true that Adam and Christ both represent Man. As do all of use individually at some point in our lives. We all constantly reenact Adam’s choice to sin, and hopefully we reenact Christ’s choice to put ourselves aside, sometimes.

But the Bible never claims that this is a metaphor. It’s quite literal. Christ was able to pay the price for Adam’s sin, and all Adam’s children (us and also himself) because he never sinned. Because he was also God in the flesh. (More on that later.)

The idea that man needed free will in order to sin so that heaven could be a choice is flat out ludicrous.

It seems to make sense in this world, where the idea of never sinning seems impossible.

But that’s because we’v lived here all our lives and never seen an example of anyone who doesn’t sin, except for a young baby.

But that’s what Adam was, compared to us. A baby in terms of sin. As indeed, Christian are admonished to be by the Bible. (1 Corinthians 14:20)

It doesn’t mean however, that sin will make you grow up. We all know immature people who do things that are wrong and won’t listen to reason, they aren’t more grown up than us. They are less.

The reason sin is associated with adulthood is because the older we get, the more of it we know about. Which is a tragedy, not an asset. I wish there was no sin to know about, but because there is, I have no choice but to deal with that fact.

But how is it good for me? The idea that sin is good for man, in that in enables him to choose heaven, is against everything the Bible teaches.

Whether you disagree or not is irrelevant to the topic, since I am merely laying out what the Bible actually says. (Not saying as of now that you have to accept it.)

This is just what’s actually in there. Sin brought death (see Romans.) Man brought sin into the world. Sin leads to death, which leads to hell, unless it is redeemed through Christ.

Hell is not good. Also, God cannot live with what is not good. So, if sin was the key to getting into heaven, how would that work?

I think the real idea this YouTuber had was that sin enables you to truly become good. But that’s also not true.

Goodness is linked to purity. The Bible says God desires a pure heart. Pure means not mixed. A heart that’s mixed with sin is not pure.

And pure goodness is preferable to partial goodness.

Romans also says no one in righteous, no not one.

So, it doesn’t matter if we choose good in the end. We aren’t righteous because we choose to do good, since we’ve all chosen evil before.

Jesus himself taught that if you break one of the commandments, you break all of them.

What this means is, only one sin is enough. Sins aren’t cancelled out by good deeds. Not in Christianity anyway. It is because to sin is to cast yourself infinitely away from God.

The idea is to be without any sin, ever, that was how man was created.

If we were all good, we wouldn’t be bored. It’s only because we sin that it becomes pleasurable to us. I think we all know this deep down, if we look back to when we were kids and still felt guilty over thing we take for granted now.

That’s all for this post, till next time–Natasha.