According to Paul, Once God has accepted you, sin no longer has a hold on
you. There is no more sin in your life. Feel free to smoke that cigarette.
You'll still run the risk of getting cancer, but God isn't going to condemn
you to hell for it. Whatever that struggle is in your life, in the churches
system you'll constantly be repenting and starting over in your relationship
with God. It gets so depressing you can get suicidal and give up. When you
are being told how you should live your life, and your life doesn't stack up,
it becomes a spiral heading down into hell. Add to that a breakdown in a
relationship with someone you love, and your days become one miserable
stretch.
We think of ourselves as a Christian nation. But the reality is that only a
portion of the Christians truly seek a relationship with God. Most people
are content to be sheep, to be led down a path they think God wants for
them (because their leaders told them and that's where they put their
trust.) Just praying to God to meet needs isn't really a relationship.
When you have a relationship with someone, you learn about them,
you learn their character, you get to know them.
People who say they know God, but really everything they know about
God is what they've been taught, only know about God. Don't trust me
to tell you about God, as He'll reveal Himself to you without my help.
Preachers and priests go to school to learn about God, supposedly.
Really what they are learning is theology and pschology. Doctrines
have been passed down through generations upon generations
dating back waaay before the time of Jesus. It didn't change with
the New Testament and the advent of the Catholic or even Christian
church. Politics has influenced decision making in the church, and
always will. Well, maybe someday we will see "the knowledge of
the Lord cover the earth as the sands on the seashore." That's
another discussion.
To have a relationship with God, you must be perfect. There can
be no sin in God's presence. So by the teaching of the law, when
you think a bad thought, you need to repent of that before God
will accept you again. Our guilt bears witness, we don't feel we
deserve to be loved unconditionally. But that is how God loves
us. Even Paul struggled with this, and the early apostles. They
were brought up in a system of law, and they couldn't grasp how
God would just set us free like this. In his letters, Paul qualified
how our lives would be with: "...if the Spirit of God lives in you."
Which is true, if you don't really establish that relationship for
yourself, than the Spirit of God wouldn't live in you. As I said,
only a percentage of people actually seek that out for themselves.
The rest are followers who let other people seek it out for them.
And that is what you are doing if you are letting a preacher or
a priest tell you how to run your life. I'm not saying you don't
belong to Him if you're in the church (I'm sure God's people
really do reside there too) just that your trust is in men.
There really are no rules beyond love. I've tithed and not tithed,
it's made no difference on my financial status. I don't generally
swear or call people idiots, but it happens. Instead of being
seperated, I might get a nudge, when He knows I'ld be receptive
to it. At some point, you get a realization that our purpose in
this life is more about the people around us than it is ourselves.
You don't need to go looking for good works, but opportunities
to do the right thing and help your brother out will present
themselves from time to time. There's no requirement to do
anything. You don't have to give the homeless meals, but if
you do there are rewards that go way beyond money. God's
rewards are treasures that are not material in nature.
More later.
YOU can learn directly from God.
If you're religion is confusing to you, there's a reason. Get a red letter Bible, and read the words of Jesus to the priests and preachers of His day. Then understand this: There's no difference between them and the priests and preachers of our day. Why would there be? Just as there was in His day, there are some with good intent, but even they are learning from a corrupted system. Want the truth? Throw out everything you've learned from them, pick up the Bible, and read it for yourself. Not by chapter and verse as you were taught. Particularly in the New Testament, read the way they were written, as letters. And unless you're well versed in Old English, get a modern translation. One you can read and understand. Stick to the New Testament at first, so as not to be overwhelmed. And know this, it isn't the word of God the way you were taught. It's the word of God as understood by those who wrote it. Try to understand it from the point of view of those it was written to...we were taught to read it as if it was written to us!
The problem with that is, those the New Testament was written to were going through the transition from one Covenant to another. They were awaiting an event in their time. To learn about that event, one needs to consult historians, such as Josephus and his account of it in "Wars of the Jews."
The problem with that is, those the New Testament was written to were going through the transition from one Covenant to another. They were awaiting an event in their time. To learn about that event, one needs to consult historians, such as Josephus and his account of it in "Wars of the Jews."
Questioning the established theologies. The church teaches the law, just as it did when Jesus railed against it in His day. A discussion on the freedoms He gave us, and why true followers might want to operate on the outside. The truth is out there, but where?
Friday, May 22, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment