gotigrz's Christianity topic, part 2 Options

[gotigrz]

Someone i think badman or merica actually asked ed in person and he admitted being a christian. im pretty sure his is a little more of an open faith (i remember a recent interview where he stated that praying doesnt do much good in the world) I know he thinks the bible is the best source of morality and guide for mankind but im not clear if he believes in the divinity of jesus or that he was born of a virgin etc...

well, if ed said that he was a Christian, then he does believe in the virgin birth, the dying on the cross, and the resurrection 3 days later. that is the criteria of being a Christian. nobody says, .. "yeah, i'm a Christian, but that whole virgin birth thing is just crazy."

when ed said that about prayer not doing much good (i heard the interview)... he was referring to prayer that he thinks isn't really "prayer". he was saying that when you are truly in prayer with God that you are like one with Him, and that most people just close their eyes and ask for something. and, that THAT isn't doing much good cause that's what most people do and look at the world around us. PRAYER... aka... truly talking to God is VERY powerful.

[Pokey]

And if there is one God, and you believe that Jesus was God (one in the same) then why would God care if you are a Christian and you direct your religious experience through his personified figure of Jesus or directly to God without the side-car. If a Jew has a direct relationship with God, and a Christian has a relationship with Jesus and prays to Jesus, who the Christian believes is the same God as the Jew's God, then why would anyone care whether the Jew accepts the Jesus aspect of God. Why would God care which process is used by a person to establish a relationship with the same God? It all goes to the same God right? Doesn't the same hold true for other non-Christians? Why would God care how you get there if it all leads to the same place?

Never thought of it like that ... really good point.

It also brings up problems that religion causes in the world as far as holy wars and such go .. not so much in the sense of something as epic as the crusades or anything. But when you have different sects of the same religion .. catholic and protestant for example. I know there are other factors at work in these situations too .. but esentially they believe in the same God with little variations in how they go about their belief ... yet this can cause some major problems amoungst which violence and death. Fair enough you can use the "free will" argument when you have people wanting to follow a completely different religion and God to the Christian one. But if you view this as children fighting..

When 2 different religions are involved .. lets say Christianity and Muslim .. it's akin to 2 children fighting over "my Dad is better than your Dad" ... Dad being God (or Zman in my case). Ok i can see the argument for God/Dad to go "listen son, he can believe whatever he wants, he has free will" ... But when it is 2 Christian sects fighting, it could be viewed as 2 children .. brothers, fighting over who loves the Dad more. Surely Dad/God would step in and stop that out of love? It doesn't have to do with free will because neither is choosing to believe in different God or no God at all..

This is probably terribley worded at 4am .. but .. hey hang on I said I was done here. I am!

This post has been edited by Pokey: Mar 26 2010, 2:23 pm