religion on the rant..

for anyone who enjoys a taste of saturday morning darkness on the ticket, this is what i wrote to gordo during some of his religion discussions the other saturday morning - and his response..

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I read the whole thing!

On 1/22/05 12:09 PM, "David Neill" wrote:
g k- as i'm listening to my favorite radio show this morning, i felt compelled to write a couple of things..

never truly understanding whether you're discussing a subject from a personal viewpoint or from the other side of it, i figured it would be worth a second of bandwidth to discuss Christianity..

i understand you're the son of a baptist minister and i'm sure you understand the basis of Christianity -that all salvation is through the son of God and the price he paid on the cross..however, it never hurts to revisit that discussion.

all mankind falls short of the glory of God. this goes all the way back to the garden of eden. once sin was introduced, there was a chasm between man and God. how do you reconcile sin with a just and perfect God ?? you cannot, unless God provides a path to forgiveness. God did that in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. a perfect man had to die to reconcile the gap between mortal, sinful man and a perfect and just God.

i think this is why most people have a sense of dislike and fear of the Bible being the inerrant inspired word of God. if so, it creates a dilemma for the intelligent human. 'i'm too smart to buy in to this whole deity thing.. ' pretty common these days..

a point you just made was that there are really good people who are not believers and really bad people who are.. and that is right. the unfortunate thing is that those really good people, by denying the path to their salvation, will fall short of heaven. those really bad people, through their faith in Jesus, will find it.. even if it is by hair on their chinny chin chin... (did i just say that ?) There are no works that can get you to heaven. There is only one way and that is through the grace of God and the blood of his son Jesus Christ.

just like the bible, we can argue whether this is fair and right in your mind.. however, if you are a Christian, you understand there is only one path to heaven- Christ.

if you look at the bible, there is nothing that has been proven inaccurate in that book. from babylon to ninevah, to the passover - things that were argued as myth have been proven right every time..

if you look at the sermon on the mount, the book of daniel.. look at what was talked about way back then concerning the dispersion and regathering of the Jews. more fantasy, said to not be taken as prophetic truth, but as an allegory to the church or to another time. . we're watching the regathering of the Jews to their homeland before our eyes. this is the match to the fig tree parable from Jesus. Israel is the prophetic timeclock for God. As the Jews are his chosen people, all of his revelations to man come through the Jews.

the Bible can be used justify just about anything based on the 'interpretation' of the words in it. i think that is where the view that the bible is the paper to see the 'invisible man' is a wrong assumption. if you don't take the Bible as the inspired word of God and you start making your own interpretations of the events, it can be twisted any way you want it. if you take a common sense view of the Bible at face value, you get the message.

concerning the gay issue you're discussing - we all fall short of the glory of God. that is why we have the blood of Jesus to forgive our sins. Christians should take a stand against sin in all facets in life.. we all fall short of our responsibilities in this area. not just gays or any other specified group i do feel that Christians can take an exclusive path to spreading the gospel.. being judgmental. it's a difficult path in some instances. human nature is to want to be better than the next guy.. we should instead all understand that we all fall short of the glory of God and worry less about how we size up against our neighbor. Jesus' last words before ascending to heaven said to love your neighbor as yourself and to trust in him (Jesus) as your path to the Father. i think that a lot of Christians can do a better job of the first. that being said, accepting sinful behavior isn't something that can be reconciled.

the difference in your example between divorce and being gay is that there is actual scriptural basis for a divorce. i think a better argument would be pre-marital sex v gay sex. there is no difference. divorce happens once or twice or in liz taylors case, a bunch of times.. but it's not a daily act of defiance or sin. premarital and homosexual sex is. it's living in defiance. we all make mistakes, we all work to be better people, but we'll never get it right.. but we can never stop trying.

i think it's an exciting time to be alive - all of these things unfolding before our eyes.. Israel, the reunification of europe, the United States making strong moral stands on issues. it's exciting !!

hope you have a great weekend !
take care,

-d