You are correct. My point really should have been worded that not believing the stories in the bible is an argument of sorts not to believe. That the stories are unbeleivable to someone could lead them to not believe in God in other words.
Yes, and I think this is quite valid.
That said, your rebuttal is accurate. I also am finding this feedback quite interesting. You refer to me as a non-beleiver, but I do believe in God and Jesus, but have trouble with literal interpretations of the bible. So stories to me that don't seem plausible or don't make sense make me question more than to re-affirm.
Yes. I referred to you as a non-believer because I assumed you thought of yourself as such. I also did not wish to allow you to be confused with me in the minds of so many small-minded readers in these forums. But since we began these discussions I have sensed that it was possible that God allowed them to occur to cause you to enter into Israel. I can’t say this for certain. If you are content to call yourself a believer, I would enjoy considering you to be one.
It is a journey, for some a long journey. There was a time when I believed God, believed Jesus, accepted the Scriptures, though I could not understand them, but was too embarrassed to associate myself with Christians and call myself a believer.
Now, I just don’t care. We believers, as ridiculous and stupid as we are, are the Chosen of God. We are like sheep, stupid, prone to wander and do the craziest things, but God loves us nevertheless and has promised us life through the Good Shepherd. I count it a great privilege to be linked to true believers everywhere. I simply no longer need the respect and false sophistication of the heathen, all of whom live in a false reality and within perishing bodies to prove it.
As for the bible stories, many of them do not make sense to me either. God Himself doesn't make sense to me-- not completely. But I tell you the God-in-heaven truth: God has placed within me His Spirit. I am now directly wired into Him and can sense both His pleasure and displeasure in everything I do. I am able to divide right from wrong almost immediately, to see through the façade of heathen “greys” to see the thing clearly and with efficiency.
It has made me bolder, more confident in my decisions, whether in the market or elsewise. I act only to bring Him glory, however it may appear here to others. So, if I call wrongly and lose, I do not sweat it in the least. God obviously didn't want the money. LOL. If I call correctly, He wishes to do something, to build something, to feed someone, to help someone in distress, to send some worthy kid to college, to comfort someone. I have fear of nothing – nothing at all.
This God is awesome I tell you – and frighteningly subtle, sitting before us so that we might see Him and not recognize Him unless we are willing to lose ourselves and our own quest for significance. Give that up, and you see Him clearly and He will heap blessing upon you that you never would expect. Well. I am rambling. But it is because I am filled with praise for this God I have been sharing.
When I tried reading the bible on my own, one of the reasons I stopped was it was actually leading me towards not believing instead of the other way around.
I completely understand. I experienced exactly the same thing before the truth was made known to me. The problem I had was that I lived in the illusion that I, of my own, had influence, purpose and value in the world. So when I encountered the Biblical stories, I judged them from the perspective of my own sense of morality, influence and value.
God, from nothing but mercy, showed me that this world is all perishing, that every single human now here will be nothing but dirt in a few short years and that this is their ultimate value in the universe. When I saw this clearly, I abandoned myself to reach out to anything that had greater value.
I didn’t even know of the work of Christ and all that stuff, though I had read about it a gazillion times. But I had read with the aim to destroy the faith of others, to embarrass believers with their ignorance. When I finally returned to the Scriptures, the Ultimate Value in them emerged before me as clearly as the noonday sun. My reality had clearly changed. I was not the same guy as I had been.
So, you know, when folks make fun of us. I am not in the least offended. I am not sad for them either. I am convinced that they are not at that moment people of the Chosen, and that if God will not save them they will be condemned to the infinite degree of condemnation. I cannot change it. I can only do what I am doing now.
It is quite interesting to have the stories explained by someone with a deep understanding of them. You are helping me to see that the stories could have happened more literally than I believed, while God could still be seen as a loving God.
The love of God is larger than what most humans think is “reality.” But God is Holy and is filling all realities with Himself, leaving no room for that which is not holy. What looks to some as meaness is in truth merely God's loving Himself. When we claim He is "mean," we are in fact judging with our own inferior concept of morality. Reality belongs to God. He fills it with what He wishes. We are in no position to judge Him at all. |
