One of the things I have probably struggled with the most is the difference between the Old Testament God and the God as described by Jesus. It just seems to me that The OT God is pretty much an egotist, vengeful, and merciless god and the God of Jesus is totally a god of love. How to reconcile that difference is a very difficult thing … Continue reading Doing God’s Will
Given what I post here the title above probably sounds like sacrilege to you. But in many ways being an Evangelical was just easier than taking my spiritual life seriously. I was an Evangelical for twenty-five years so there had to be something that kept me going back. Here are the things that I miss about being an Evangelical: The Conservative Evangelical Church is primarily … Continue reading I Kinda Miss Being An Evangelical
I was fascinated by this modern interpretation of the 10 Commandment when I came across them recently. I must admit that I didn’t really feel that the Old English version found in most Bibles applied to me. It’s kind of like when I read the Bible from cover to cover, I have done that on three occasions, and always found myself struggling through it. The … Continue reading The 21st Century Interpretation of the 10 Commandments.
I’m going to do a philosophical post of my own making for today. I will get back to studying others next week. With this post, I am certainly exercising the creative side. I will try to analyze the mind of a first-century citizen and his writings with my 21st-century views. Up front, I will admit that much of what I speculate is just that, speculation. … Continue reading Miracles And The First Century Mind….
While waiting for my car to be serviced recently I browsed a Barnes & Noble store. I don’t do that often anymore as most of my purchases are now e-books. When I came upon the Bible section it suddenly caught my attention as to the number of books by people who propose to “tell” me about what the Bible says. For those who are unfamiliar with … Continue reading (WS) I’ll Tell You What the Bible Says…
I think I have let it be known that I view the Bible as a history book of the early period of Christianity. As such maybe it needs to be updated from time to time? New chapters need to be written and old ones modified to more accurately reflect information found. The Bible was put together about 400 years after the death of Jesus. It … Continue reading The Bible As A History Book..
This six part Sunday series was about looking at the Bible as a human document. That is, it was written and assembled by humans with different life experiences, viewpoints, and passions. Much of their thoughts and words were believed to come from divine inspiration. Many believed they were writing what God wanted them to write. When I study the Bible I try to understand the reasons why some of … Continue reading My View Of The Bible – Part 6 Closing Thoughts…
This is the fifth post on this series about the Bible. If it is not obvious by now I want you to understand that I put my Christianity on Jesus Christ not on a book about him. I will try to keep this brief as it is really a wrap-up of the past posts. About the Literalists: Panic – In some cases I see almost total panic in … Continue reading My View Of The Bible — Part 5 Summing It Up..
Now that I have told you what I believe about the Bible I will go over a short list of things that are somewhat widely accepted by some twenty-first century Christian denominations but of which I basically disagree. Most of these topic titles are from texts of discussions I have had with Christians. I put them in a special category here because they were so … Continue reading My View Of The Bible –Part 3.. Other Views
This post continues with my fundamental beliefs about the Bible. I have not come to these beliefs on a whim. They are the result of many years of thoughtful prayer and study. I am also not trying to prove anyone wrong. Everyone should come to God in their own way. So let’s get on with the final four areas of my view on the Bible. Some words … Continue reading My View Of The Bible— Part 2 .. What I believe (con’t)
For the next three Sundays I want to bring over some slightly edited posts of things I discovered about the Bible while blogging at RedLetterLiving.net. These posts were from early 2014 but my feelings about the topic really haven’t changed all that much. I have been spending quite a bit of time lately thinking about the Bible and my experiences with it over the last … Continue reading My View Of The Bible ..
Having dipped into theology for a ten year period I learned that some have been studying the Bible for centuries and have a name for almost every concept that it might contain. The ‘flat Bible’ is a new one for me but the concept is one I most adamantly disagree with. Putting every word in the Bible as being of equal importance make absolutely no … Continue reading An Eye For An Eye Makes the Bible Blind
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He created the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the beasts of the land. And then he created man, and it was down hill from there on out…. Forgive me that this is not an exact quote from any bible but for the purpose of this post you get the … Continue reading In The Beginning…. And Then…
I think for too long we’ve made Jesus just one character or episode in the Bible. If we want to see God, we look to Jesus. In Hebrews 1:3, the writer says that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father. So I think that if we could recapture that centrality of Christ in our churches through our teaching, our worship, our way of life, … Continue reading Evolving Faith…
In fact, religion is invariably a tangle of contradictory teachings — in the Bible, the difference between the harshness of Deuteronomy and the warmth of Isaiah or Luke is striking — and it’s always easy to perceive something threatening in another tradition. Yet analysts who have tallied the number of violent or cruel passages in the Quran and the Bible count more than twice as … Continue reading How Well Do You Know Religion?
I am bringing over a series of posts for my Sunday entries from my now inactive blog over at RedLetterLiving. This is the last of a six-part series from about a year ago about the importance of the Bible in my spiritual life. After a ten-year study I finally understand what millions of other have discovered before me…. It’s about Jesus, not the Bible… What About The … Continue reading The History Of Christianity???
I am bringing over a series of posts for my Sunday entries from my now inactive blog over at RedLetterLiving. This is the third of a six-part series from about a year ago about the importance of the Bible in my spiritual life. After a ten-year study I finally understand what millions of other have discovered before me…. It’s about Jesus, not the Bible… How Did The … Continue reading How Did The Bible Get So Filled….
Originally posted on RedLetterLiving:
What About The Bible… ? (Chapter 2) I know that from all the rhetoric about this topic you are expecting the next word in the title to be “Clear” but actually for me it is “Fuzzy”. I don’t know how many times in my life I have heard the phrase “just study the bible for the answer to your problems. When… Continue reading I Read The Bible And Everything Became….
Originally posted on RedLetterLiving:
What About The Bible… ? (Chapter 1) I have been spending quite a bit of time lately thinking about the Bible and my experiences with it over the last decade or so. Around 2003 I decided to take up a serious study of theology and in particularly those around the words of Jesus. I naively thought I could get some clear… Continue reading The Thing Is…..
I am pulling up another past post form Red Letter Living that I wrote almost three years ago. At that time in my spiritual journey I was trying to decide where church doctrine and its creeds belonged in my faith. Needless to say this book by Harvey Cox did a lot to show me a different path on this topic and many others. When I came … Continue reading The Decrees of Constantine…
How have we gotten the message of Jesus so damned wrong? One way I believe we might’ve taken a wrong turn or two in following the Way of Jesus is by not heeding his own teachings and example. In the article, Mohler quotes passages from the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis 9) and even dabbles a bit into the writings of Paul (Romans 13). But he curiously … Continue reading Christians Denying Christ!!!
It is terrible to think what the churches do to men. But if one imagines oneself in the position of the men who constitute the Church, we see they could not act differently. The churches are placed in a dilemma: the Sermon on the Mount or the Nicene Creed–the one excludes the other. If a man sincerely believes in the Sermon on the Mount, the … Continue reading Tolstoy & Christianity…
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” – John 1:1, ESV The Bible is not the “Word of God.” It is inspired by the Holy Spirit. It contains words of God. It even talks about the Word of God… but it is still not THE Word of God. The Word of God is actually Jesus … Continue reading Mislabeling the Word of God – Red Letter Christians
Lets continue on with some more quotes from the book by Tony Jones entitled The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier “I’m humble,” an emergent might tell you, “because I don’t know what I’m wrong about today. I’ll speak with confidence, and I’ll speak with passion, but I won’t speak with certainty.” Being humble/uncertain in any area of theology is very intimidating to some within … Continue reading Humble Emergents vs. Absolutists….
This is a continuation of our study of Thomas Jefferson to discount the belief that he intended the United States to be a Christian nation. He started out and spent much of his life as a deist. That is he believed in the presence of God in the world but did not proclaim it as a Christian presence. Later in life after he was president … Continue reading Jefferson And The Gospels….
The primary reason there are 39,000+ Christian denominations is that each are trying to maintain “purity” of beliefs. Here is how that logic usually plays out: ” If we allow differences of opinions among us then we will soon reach a slippery slope where we will slide into heresy. For that reason we must be on the constant watch to exclude anyone among us who … Continue reading Institutional Purity…..
I read the Bible on a regular basis. The words of Jesus, which to me is what the Bible is really all about, inspire me to love my fellow-man and to love my God. Many stories in the Bible even though they might just be stories, parables, or even myths are inspiring in the lessons they teach. I delight in the sheer narrative power they … Continue reading Taking Back the Bible….
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the atomic age — as in being able to remake ourselves. — Gandhi
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. — 1 Corinthians 13
Looking back on my life Gandhi’s quote above inspires me with its wisdom and the second quote from the Bible mirrors the same message. Being able to see the circumstances and the facts and then making changes is where the greatness lies.
This seems to be a very tough message in today’s world where gridlock and stubborn instance of being right is the norm. There are just too many in the world who are consumed by their current worldviews and are totally unwilling to even consider that they just might not have all the answers. Continue reading “Remaking Ourselves….”
I started out my Spiritual journey as a Catholic because that is what my parents were. I came to find out that they were only tepid Catholic as they really didn’t go to church themselves very often but more often just dropped us off and then went home. Upon entering high school I went about twenty years moving between an inactive Christian and an agnostic … Continue reading Shouldn’t you read Paul in light of Jesus, instead of reading Jesus in light of Paul?”
1 Timothy 2:11-12 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. I have always been troubled by these verses from Paul. I just don’t believe that God intended, especially for all eternity, that women to be quiet and not have any authority over men. … Continue reading Women Be Quiet!!!
A man in the country does his own thinking, but you get him into town and he soon will be thinking second-handed. – May 1, 1926 Will Rogers Second hand thinking seems so prevalent today especially in our nation’s capital. Each political persuasion has their own set of key words that must be spoken during any discussion of their ideology. Most of these words come from … Continue reading Second-Hand Thinking…..
It greatly saddens me to see the degree of religious malevolence in the world today. I am particularly saddened by the Christian variety; Jesus taught us otherwise. I need to go no further than my Facebook page to see a proliferation of it!. The Christian Bible, like most other religious documents teach us to love one another; to take care of each other. So to see those … Continue reading Religious Malevolence…
According to most Biblical historians the Book of James is one of the earliest letters/epistles written. It is believed to have been written by the brother of Jesus in the year 45AD or so. James was one of several brothers of Christ, probably the oldest. At first he did not believe in Jesus and even challenged him and misunderstood his mission. Later he became very … Continue reading Book of James….
Why didn’t God write a book or maybe I should say scroll? Of course many of you Christians will mention the Bible. Many Muslims will point to the Koran. Many Jews will say the Koran. But I guess I have a different understanding of those documents. Yes, they have God’s fingerprints on them but they were not written by God himself. There is one religious … Continue reading Why Didn't God Write a Book?…..
In a previous post I asked the question “why didn’t God write a book?”. One possible answer to that question came from a Quaker friend. He said that if God had written a book then man would have a relationship with a book and not with God. God want us to come to him not to a book about him. But that did not end … Continue reading If God Were To Write a Book….
Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/19/6677671-is-the-bible-full-of-forgeries Just a short note to refer you to the article above. It is about the Bible and how it was written. For those who think the Bible is 100% from God this article will probably be somewhat disturbing. The article reports that through the ages many believe that most of the books of the Bible were probably not actually written by those whose … Continue reading About the Bible
RJ's Corner 