1080 spinna....dont confuse God with religion. Much religion has been twisted and made up and used by men to control other men, serve their own selfish purposes. I am often ashamed to call myself a Christian because of all the evil that has been done in the name of God. BUT DONT BLAME GOD FOR THAT! Don't steryotype!
All that does not change the reality of God's existance any more than than a drunk running around in the street yelling that the world is flat makes it fact!
i go to church every sunday. but i dont understand how you say your so free by following god. your not making your own choices your doing what god said to do. you have a free agency to make your own choices but your not making your own choices your making gods.
Astomp..lets say your really in love with this hot skiier girl..and she wants ya to take her to a movie. Does she force ya to go? Does she have to make rules saying you gotta hang out with me minimum one night a week for a minumum of 4 hours? Naw! you WANT to go with her!
True belief in God is not a set of rules....thats religion set up by humans, and most of it is dead wrong!!
If you come to an understanding of God and what He is, realize that your life has meaning, purpose, then you want to follow Him, do soemtnign useful with your life..your stillmakign your own choices, you just make decisions iwtha different viewpoint.
'have fun destroying cultures older than the fucking white race has existed. '
Alpentalik..I don't deny that much wrong has been done in the name of God, but that comment is bigoted and innaccurate.
Buddy, I just came back from a medical mission to Haiti, a country that was not founded on Christian principles but on greed and murder. Trust me, they have done a pretty good job of destroying their own culture without the 'whitemans' help..although the US has caused untold problems by interfering politically.
But I saw first hand doctors there treating hundreds of sick kids a day for next to no pay becuse they felt God wanted them to. Ask any kid in Haiti if he felt the missionaries were 'destroying their culture'. He'd set you straight in a real big hurry.
I spent 8 hours holed up in the Port-au-Prince airport waiting to be evacuated listening to the riots goin on outside, gunshots, etc...lotsa time to think about why I was born in luxury in North America and so many kids were born in destite povery,in Haiti where the average age at death is 42 years old.
Alpentalik, before you criticize, I must ask you..what have YOU done to make the world a better place?????
I ask all of you to realize that we are all imperfect, thats why God sent Jesus to die for us, and some of us choose to admit our faults and accept God's grace. As much as he'll grow us we will still fall short, I fall short everyday and he forgives me because I have a personal relationship with him and I desire to repent for my what I do wrong. That is all there is to it.
Prins, I, not having been spoon fed a religion since birth, find it hard to accept 1 religion for I find flaws in most of them. Mostly hipocracy. And then organization. I get tired of being told I'm going to go to hell if I don't become a follower. I've been told that by christian chuches, catholic, pentacostal, wesleyen, baptist.... I've been to allof there services and been told the same thing. It seems that if I were a good kid left just after birth to live in the woods and have no contact people that know of god or christ, I'd still go to hell for not loving God and Christ. Hard for me to be bullied into a belief. Yet I still forgive those who try. One question. When is being a good person enough?
Alpentalik, open your mind for a second and realize how ignorant you are sounding....read my posts! And man, life isnt just about feeling 'fulfilled'...peole are starving to death all over the world..Isnt there a part of you that wants to thingof soemone other than yourself for 30 seconds and try to make a difference?????
As I stated before, I disagree with organized religion, because most of it has been invented my men. But that doesnt change the facts! And I'm not on here as a Bible pusher, simply standing up for what I belive in when ignorant people make innacurate generalizations.
People, religion is man's interpretation of God, so of course religion is flawed. But the fact that we screw up does not change the Reality of God or change the facts of life.
And to answer DaV..no one is ever perfect, so no one is ever able to claim that they have never sinned. Everyone has doen at least one wrong thing in their lives...therefore no one can claim to be a truly 'good person'
