Goodbye YouTube, Progress in Faith

Well YouTube was quite an experience.  I made several friends, some of whom I have carried over to a facebook page, where they have become a fellowship group.  That group has actually grown, and is mostly like minded people when it comes to religion.  I am surprised how many actually share doctrines with me.  That has been encouraging.  And I have been able to mostly work through my doubts, even as I have come to realize that the bible isn't God's inspired Word.  I have been reading a few of Bart Ehrman's books, and he has confirmed for me that there are too many contradictions and inaccuracies for the bible to be God's Word.  Besides, it even being accessible is really only a recent phenomenon history wise.  So I am back to God is within us.  In religious terms, God's Word is within us.  We have the spirit of truth, if we are willing to accept what truth teaches us. 

Many of the new friends are some form of universalist.  One of the doctrines I was unable to go along with in Christianity is the idea that you had to believe in Jesus (in fact certain things about) to be saved.  I knew I was 'saved' even when I was going through my doubts about Jesus and God for that matter.  Now that I have decided to believe again, I will also feel free to dictate just what about Him it is I do believe.  I can't understand for instance, this dogmatic Trinity doctrine that people get so upset about when you point out that the only scripture to back it up was added in by church scribes who realized there wasn't any scriptural support for it.  The freedom and salvation that Jesus brought us He brought to all men, even those in other belief systems like Muslims or satanists or whoever.  So I am at home with universalist thinking.  I don't know if everyone will be, if there is some judgment in the future for the dead I am sure that God will treat them as he did Thomas.  Personally I think our judgment is past, we just need to work through it and do something with it.  Easier said then done when your head is so polluted with religious dogma. 

This sounds like heresy if you're a fundamentalist, but you should feel free to dictate what you believe.  You should not have to submit something so important to your very being to some preacher or group.  But the YT experience has shown me how passionately people will defend their doctrines, even though everything they've learned about them they've trusted other people to define.  YT has also shown me that there are a lot of deceitful people out there parading around as Christians, who in fact are just playing some trolling game.  I think some of them could actually be dangerous, hence my exit from the YT community.  It is an anonymous group for the most part, and now I know why.  If anyone noticed a post on this blog from a couple weeks ago, I posted a universalist argument.  Now I think that the person I thought it was isn't real, but I can't be sure.  If not, he stole the paper to send me and gain my confidence, scarfing my email address along with it.  I believe my last conversation with him was under a pseudoname, another channel alias that he uses.  Hence the deleted post.  Not knowing if others were real or not is a drag when you start to like them, and I find myself wondering if they aren't actually another person who I liked but who got upset with me for some unknown reason (thought I was a part of some cult he was against?).  Anyway, YT as it turns out has at least as many trolls as not.  I even argued nightly for like six months with a fundie that in the end I'm not sure he's not just a gamer.  I don't understand wasting that much of your life but it's games I guess. 

There are some people out there on YT doing legitimate searches and posts.  I have hopefully protected them from the dangerous ones I had after me.  I 'unfriended' as many as I thought could get caught up in their stupid game as soon as I realized how organized it was.  Maybe I should go back in and troll the trolls.  Ha how stupid.  Be nice to do a little payback, but I'm not into vengeance enough to put that kind of effort into it.  So I'm back to the old fashioned way of communicating, blogs and facebook lol.  (I hate that little term...lol...gotta come up with something different).  And no personal info on the facebook it seems, as I am unsure if some of those friends even aren't involved in that one group of trolls, and this way I can freely accept the friend requests.  Theology discussions on fb.  I need a life, apparently.

Anyway I am glad to put my agnostic days behind me.  I still can't say 'yes' or 'no' there is or isn't life after death, but I can say I think there is.  I don't base it on the Bible, but I do base most of what I believe about it on the Bible.  I can only say that I believe I have met God, He has revealed a part of Himself to me, my understanding of Him is waaayyy different than it used to be.  He may be all-powerful, but it's not the side He has revealed to me.  He may have the ability to, for instance, make me financially secure.  But He's not concerned with financial security.  Why should He be?  He has promised me truth, it's all I need to be happy.