Strengthen your faith in the bible Christians.

I think my problem is that I am inherently drawn to Christianity (probably as a result of my early childhood and a handful of drug experiences) as a foundational system, the maintenance of which allows me to direct my feelings and thankfulness towards something. To this day I can't read the Sermon on the Mount without soaking the page in tears, but the problem arises when I look at myself and realize that I'm not really a Christian in any outward, discernible aspect. Because of this, I feel like I want communion with others, but that I don't find it to really be communion, if that makes any sense. It's just really confusing, and because of this confusion I often question if what I am is right, and if I am living in the manner that I should be.

You have correctly identified me as extremely introverted, and that is probably the source of several of my difficulties and ideological confusions. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. I've always admired your knowledge and patient rationality.

So prayer actually led you to Catholicism?

 

Tolkien might argue that all men are drawn towards Christ as an inherent fact of having the Spirit and Christ rule over the world. Lord of the Rings was conceived as a Catholic myth as if written before the Incarnation. It details some Christian truths without being quite so "Jesus is a Lion" as Lewis' Narnia Chronicles.

I want to say that I am a little bit shamed at how Scripture can move you. I am more often moved emotionally by the ancient hymns of the Church such as these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_VjxxONUNE"]Valaam Monastery - Psalm 103 - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf7LKa9w9hM"]Chant for The Dead - INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL Byzantine Orthodox American English Song - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rju5GyVtfnQ"]Rejoice O Bethany - Byzantine Chant for St. Lazarus - Chanted in English - YouTube

I can understand the desire for communion with others, being one who does worship regualrly in a traditional setting. I guess my perspective will always be different because even if I did not desire communion with other believers, I desire Communion with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and therefore attendance at Mass is a must (and also a serious sin to skip as stated before). I would give myself advice I would say go, you do not necessarily need the homily, you do not need the sign of peace, but you need your Lord. But that is also a very Catholic perspective.

No problem. Neo, I too hve always admired your persistent truth seeking. I find it very refreshing after stubborn narrow minded posts from both sides of the God line.

Not in the cheesy "Left Behind" vocal conversation type. When I converse with God I suaully am internally listening to what he says to me through Scripture. I often find that things I have been praying for understanding about comes up in Daily Readings or at Mass itself.

I would call my conversion rpocess Prayerful Research. Reading about what Cahtolics truly believed, reading about the Early Church and the Church Fathers, and studying Early Christianity in a secular setting but with God in my heart is what lead me to Catholicism. Also it was not Roman Catholicism that I was drawn to. I ended up b eing baptised in the Latin Rite because of some misinformation I received from somone I trusted. I desire deeply to return to the sui juris Rite I know I belong in, The Byzantine Ukrainian Catholic Church. It was working in and around these Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches that helped to drive away the Protestant mentalitiy that surrounded me since high-school (my best friends were Lutherans, Alliancers, and otherwise conservative evangelical type Protestants).

 

I can understand you believing this, since you don't realy care what the Bible says anyway but many Bible scholars disagree with your belief that here is no way to know what the original manuscripts of the Old Testament said.

 

You say that Christ was the founder of Christianity was Jesus but who was the first to call Christianity by it's current name? Not Jesus most assuredly. The term Christian was first applyed to Christians in Paul's time not Christ's. Most of your religious beliefs and doctrines actually come from the other 23 books of your New Testement, 13 of which were written by paul. So if there is any true founder of Christianity, it is not Jesus, but Paul.

Seeing as how you were later given reasons for the king james not being entirely accurate I'll not get into this part of the post.

The bible was first translated into English by men who didn't agree with the organised teachings of the church at that time. The first English translation was written by John Wycliffe in the 1380's. If the bible is a the perfect word of God then why are there so many who have never seen eye to eye on it's texts and how they are represented to the people? Wouldn't the true word of God be infallible and as such be unable to incur dissention among it's readers and followers?

How can you completly disregard the fact that most of the early converts to the Christian movement were pagans? These holidays and all of their implications were transmuted to your faith to make these new converts feel more of a connection to the man and "religion of Jesus" as you so put it.
Even the concept of the trinity, which is nowhere actually mentioned in the bible, is a pagan concept originally known by such forms as the mother, maiden, and crone. Check out this site for more info and if you wish there are several others. http://mikeblume.com/pagantr.htm Even the ritual of communion comes from pagan rituals that were around long before Jesus. Strange isn't it that your perfect God given religion would have taken so much from other religons, especially those that it condemns as Satan worshippers. Maybe just maybe this is because it's not an original belief? Or as I believe, all gods even yours stem from a universal energy that ties all things together and makes all things from nothing as well as making all things nothing again in the end.

It is far to late to stop Christianity, and for that matter it is far to late to kill the ideas which it has been expousing for the last 2000 years. The real reason that I say such things as I do is to help those of you who are Christian to understand that yours is not the only one out there, and not even close to the most correct, which is a laughable thought in and of it's self. If there is a God there are multiple ways to him and we don't need Jesus to reach the divine.

 

I see Paul as the founder of Christian doctrine, but I see Constantine as the founder of the modern Christian movement, after all it was under his direction that the bible you as a religion follow was put together. As to my other claims check out this site http://www.entheology.org/pocm/pagan_origins_miracles.html

 

Nope.

Nicea did not produce the Bible Canon, Constatine did not ask for a canon, Constatine did not make Christianity the state religion and Constatine did not "direct" the canon of Scripture!

Eusebius, in making Bibles for Constatine, produced a NT canon consisting of recognised, disputed, spurius,a nd heretical books. Canon was not formally defined until the 16th Century. An unofficial yet universal canon was found from roughly the late 4th to 5th Century onward.

 

Well, I would like to jump in here and go back a moment to what y'all were discussing about being solitary (is what it amounts to) and living/being a Christian.
For different reasons, I haven't gone to a church in a long time. I have nothing against going to church, and feel I will before I pass the great divide...in the meantime, I honestly and truly don't feel that my going to church or not will greatly affect where I end up. However, that being said...

I miss the fellowship, before I got to know too much about people. Before I got "real grown" and experienced/saw one too many times what a so-called Christian may and will do to you, to your life given a chance. That is the key, I know...each person is individual...and just because a person SAYS anything doesn't mean jack...it's in their fruits. Right? Anyway...

Before I began to study my bible and have my own "interpretation", so to say and I didn't always realize that in many churches you all have to think and interpret things all the same. Still tho...
I honestly and truly miss that feeling of being with people of like mind and heart.

And as I type this, I realize I hope I will be led to the place, the church I should go to...in the meantime, I try to live the best life I can, as Jesus would have me to do. Be kind and laugh more than I cry. or something.
I'm surely not perfect, but I do consider my actions...which is more than I can say for many of the ppl that call themselves Christians around here. (where I have a membership) (and Lord have mercy - I do NOT mean HF

I didn't mean to get off on a rant; but, to say that I find it hard to be anything but be alone (for the most part) and maintain my beliefs, if that makes sense. Maybe I need to find a church where I don't know anybody, huh? j/k

 

While you know we have disagreed on on many things, I would like you to know, I have always enjoyed your personal expressions of how you live your faith. It always reminds me that faith is not just a intellectual exercise but a way of life and I thank you for that.

The Scriptures point out that being a Christian is never to be solitary .
(Hebrews 10:24-25) And let us consider one another to incite to love and fine works, not forsaking the gathering of ourselves together, as some have the custom, but encouraging one another, and all the more so as YOU behold the day drawing near.

Of course we must always remind ourselves that other Christians are imperfect, just as we are not perfect and can sometimes, unknowingly, be a stumbling block to others.

We also need to remember that that the Scripture gives a reason for gathering ourselves together and that is to encourage one another and incite to love and fine works.

Other Christians should be doing that but our job in the congregation isn't to make sure they are doing their job. Our job is to make sure we are doing our job and are encouraging one another and inciting others to love and fine works.

 

Disagree with what? That we don't have the original manuscripts? That's not a matter of opinion. It's fact. If there are "many scholars" who disagree, let them produce them. Where have they been hiding them? And can you name any of these "scholars"? One will do.

 

You only say this because because of you misunderstand faith, many teach blind faith or credulity but that is not what the Bible teaches.

Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld. (Hebrews 11:1)

Faith is based on facts that lead you to believe, unlike evolution which is just a house cards, that falls apart with the slightest probing.

 

Perhaps you would do well to actually read what is posted, it would save you from looking foolish.

 

Thank you, OWB...tyvm.
And that is beautiful scripture (which I need to be reminded of). Strangely enough, here at HF has become where I am able to give voice to my beliefs, express my love of/for God.

 

Have they done it? How would they go about it? How would they decide which copy(ies) are reliable? If "scholars" made a similar claim about being able to describe human society in 30,000 B.C., you'd brush them off without a second thought.

So is the Beast's true number 666 or 616? Did Matthew 24:36 say "nor the son"? Did Jesus tell his disciples they could handle poisonous snakes and not be harmed? When Jesus healed the leper, was Jesus "angry" or "compassionate"? Some of the discrepancies have already been corrected by the discovery of earlier manuscripts, and it's possible that someday that process will lead to definitive versions of the originals. But at the moment we aren't there. It also seems to me that the differences are not crucial to my understanding of the New Testament, and there are remarkably few of them that are of much substance. I brought this up in response to the claims of our "King James Only" advocate. It's clear that when the King James version was put together in the seventeenth century, the later discoveries weren't available. Since you brought up "scholars", let me quote one, Daniel Wallace, Ph.D., Th.M.Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, and a very conservative Bible-believing Christian, who says:...I know of no bona fide theologian who has ever said that God has preserved the text exactly as the original. The only people I know that clain that are Textus Receptus people--King James Only type folks--and we know that they're a little bit weird. So we probably don't give them much credibility." There seem to be no substitutes for faith, judgment, critical awareness, and Spirit guidance when we try to determine what the Bible is saying. Scritpure is not just words. Dale Martin, Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University, "The Necessity of a Theology of Scripture" Stewart, ed., The Reliability of the New Testament.

 

I've always enjoyed that scripture myself, it tells us alot about who we should be as Christians.

 

Much better, your last post was all about having the original manuscripts and I don't know where that came from. Yes, it would be much easier to point to the original manuscripts and say see this is what it says but to be perfectly honest, how many would still say, how can you be sure those are the original manuscripts?

In fact having thousands of copies that basically say the same thing, is better proof of what the Bible says than one "original manuscript" that can be called into question.

That's easy, since humans didn't exist in 30,000 B.C.E., they can simply say that human society didn't exist.

Does it really matter? Are you really holding your breath till these questions are answered so you can base your faith on them?

Yes, these seeming discrepancies have already been corrected by the discovery of earlier manuscripts but seeming discrepancies only affect the faith of those who want their faith affected by it.

Yes and that is a very good point for not putting all your faith in a obviously flawed translation like the KJV or any translation for that matter but even in the KJV the truth can be found and our faith can be strengthened by studying it.

I am not familiar with Daniel Wallace but what you have quoted is very sensible. In fact the statement, Scripture is not just words, pretty much describes why I believe the Bible is infallible or inerrant.

 

I thought the Bible said what it meant plainly and should not require "studying".

 

Well I never in all my born days.

PS It does but stupid people like me have to keep studying it just to remember what we forgot.

 

^ Yeah and LOL .

 

Hey Neodude, you aren't alone. I am extremely introverted so I end up congregating with Christians online. If I do it in person, my social anxieties get the best of me and I'm out of there like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. God probably wants us to do it in person but I think God know's what we are experiencing.

I worry that I'm not being such a good Christian because of me being a recluse, but then I remember that no one is perfect and each of us has something that is below the mark. I think that by you talking about this with other Christians makes it so that you are experiencing what God wants us all to experience.

I think there are more ways to incite others to good things other than physically being there. Paul himself went off alone for periods of time then later wrote letters that encouraged the early church.

 

That ^ is just beautiful, Def. And about the recluse part - that is exactly how I feel. And even tho' I can be easily moved to tears by a beautiful old hymn, I would also hate for others to see me that way...yet, I know I shouldn't care.

I am that person who will let others go when they just have an item or 2 and I got a half a buggy full. But I feel (almost) embarassed when someone wants to know where I go to church. So, I answer instead "I'm a member of..." (mercy) I know I say that so that there is no question as to if I have beliefs, what they are, etc.

I don't know...I'm shutting up; but, I do love that post.