Who are you to tell God what He must do to meet your approval? When did God
give you authority over Him? Will God ever do wrong, is He capable of doing
wrong? If the answer is God cannot do wrong, we are left to trust Him to
deal with those that have never heard the Gospel, with the full knowledge
that on Judgment Day we will all say Amen, even those consigned to eternal
suffering will have no complaint against God, they will absolutely know
they deserve their punishment.
The question isn’t who am I, as I have already said that I don’t believe in manmade rules and interpretations, but who are you (or anyone) to tell me what I must do to meet God’s approval? When did God give you authority over me where He is concerned?
I don’t hate organized religion, not at all. Some seem kind of wacky or terribly uninformed, but I’m much too much a live and let live person to get excited about what organized church someone wishes to attend. I just decided about 25 years ago that for me, I was eliminating the middleman. I made this decision after an exhaustive and intense 3 year Bible study period, attending on a week to week basis, every church listed in the Saturday newspaper church roster, taking several philosophy of religion classes and seminars, and having long talks with both pastors and rabbis all coupled with a whole lot of prayer and personal reflection.
I don’t accept that God stopped talking to us when a bunch of 3rd century men decided He’d said enough. My parallel studies of the “God concept” thru the civilizations since the cave men days and the Bible as an historical and archaeological reference also play/played a large part in my personal decision. I made sure my children had a solid religious grounding, but I encouraged them to make their own choices. My son is an active member of the LDS church, my daughter is active in a nondenominational church, my Granddaughter attends a Christian high school and is busy with a fledgling recording career in the Christian music genre using her voice that one reviewer called a “voice of the angels.” It must be because she sure didn’t inherit it from me or her parents. I’ve seen my Aunt and Uncle move from the Episcopalian church to a pentecostal “Bible thumping” church and then disown their own daughter because she converted to catholicism and cut off all communication with my Mother because she converted, at age 70, to LDS after being a self-proclaimed agnostic most of her adult life. Instead of celebrating their return to the arms of the Lord, they cut off two people they supposedly loved and told them they would be going to hell because they didn’t agree with the churches they chose. I think my Aunt was a far more likely candidate for hell because of the hate in her heart, than my Mother who, I’m sure, is very busy organizing committees of angels in heaven.
The only things I’m really sure of, in my heart, is that God is a God of love and forgiveness, not hate that there is power in prayer, especially collective prayer, and that church attendance is no indication of how much a person has been touched by the Spirit or lives in the Lord.
The question isn’t who am I, as I have already said that I don’t believe in manmade rules and interpretations, but who are you (or anyone) to tell me what I must do to meet God’s approval? When did God give you authority over me where He is concerned?
I don’t hate organized religion, not at all. Some seem kind of wacky or terribly uninformed, but I’m much too much a live and let live person to get excited about what organized church someone wishes to attend. I just decided about 25 years ago that for me, I was eliminating the middleman. I made this decision after an exhaustive and intense 3 year Bible study period, attending on a week to week basis, every church listed in the Saturday newspaper church roster, taking several philosophy of religion classes and seminars, and having long talks with both pastors and rabbis all coupled with a whole lot of prayer and personal reflection.
I don’t accept that God stopped talking to us when a bunch of 3rd century men decided He’d said enough. My parallel studies of the “God concept” thru the civilizations since the cave men days and the Bible as an historical and archaeological reference also play/played a large part in my personal decision. I made sure my children had a solid religious grounding, but I encouraged them to make their own choices. My son is an active member of the LDS church, my daughter is active in a nondenominational church, my Granddaughter attends a Christian high school and is busy with a fledgling recording career in the Christian music genre using her voice that one reviewer called a “voice of the angels.” It must be because she sure didn’t inherit it from me or her parents. I’ve seen my Aunt and Uncle move from the Episcopalian church to a pentecostal “Bible thumping” church and then disown their own daughter because she converted to catholicism and cut off all communication with my Mother because she converted, at age 70, to LDS after being a self-proclaimed agnostic most of her adult life. Instead of celebrating their return to the arms of the Lord, they cut off two people they supposedly loved and told them they would be going to hell because they didn’t agree with the churches they chose. I think my Aunt was a far more likely candidate for hell because of the hate in her heart, than my Mother who, I’m sure, is very busy organizing committees of angels in heaven.
The only things I’m really sure of, in my heart, is that God is a God of love and forgiveness, not hate that there is power in prayer, especially collective prayer, and that church attendance is no indication of how much a person has been touched by the Spirit or lives in the Lord.