Yesterday a friend of mine posted on Facebook a blog post by a "Christian" group. Said it really spoke to her. It was about Genesis being a poem and a bunch of other scary nonsense. I replied that this group is into stuff that is not Biblical, and this is scary stuff. My former pastor's wife comments, "Your salvation isn't based on a literal 6 day creation or millions of years. Is Jesus your Saviour? Christians get in a twist about too many things. That's my vote." (I am not making this up). Sorry, but I'm going to call it what it is. That's why I left that church. They don't want to point fingers or hurt anyone's feelings.
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"That's why I left that church. They don't want to point fingers or hurt anyone's feelings."
Rapture Ready in a nutshell; they can't abide the thought of not being able to smugly point fingers at those damn inferior heretics.
I can sort of understand believing that good works don't get you into heaven. I mean who wants to be nice, right? You'd have to mix with non Christians and all sorts of icky people, which totally wasn't what Jesus did.
But the idea that you have to believe very specific things, or else you're damned? Isn't it you guys who say the problem of evil is waved away by God wanting us to have free will?
"For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."
- Romans 10:13 (KJV)
According to Paul (the true founder of Christianity), the pastor's wife is right and you are wrong.
"Your salvation isn't based on a literal 6 day creation or millions of years. Is Jesus your Saviour? Christians get in a twist about too many things. That's my vote."
That's what I call the "smart way to be dumb".
If one is going to go down the intellectually misled path of being a religous person, then at least with the redeeming quality of thinking about what one is doing and not just following the lemmings off the cliff.
My former pastor's wife comments, "Your salvation isn't based on a literal 6 day creation or millions of years. Is Jesus your Saviour? Christians get in a twist about too many things. That's my vote."
Sounds like a much more reasonable Christian than Lil' Mr/Mrs Rapture Ready here.
I don't really understand why one's salvation would be based upon whether or not you believe the Earth was made in 6 days. It's a bit like your salvation being dependent on whether you believe that Caesar crossed the bloody Rubicon.* It seems odd that salvation is based on believing in a particular truth claim any way. For one you can't force yourself to believe something that you just don't. You can try and be as open minded as possible but that's as far as it goes.
* Except for the bit where there's evidence for Caesar's bit. But you know what i mean.
@Often Partisan: I think the reason they think a YEC viewpoint is necessary is that NOT cohering to that means that the believer in question doesn't really trust God unquestioningly. Non-YEC isn't so much the malady as a symptom of the real malady, trusting oneself over the Holy Spirit's influence. "Let go and let God" &c.
So let me get this straight...in your version of Christianity, God can forgive pride, and selfishness, and adultery, and lying, and theft, and murder. He could forgive the people who were torturing him to death, and he could choose one of his greatest opponents, who had killed dozens of his followers, to be one of his greatest evangelists. But read Genesis as anything but strictly factual history (which, in terms of narrative flow, it doesn't really resemble) and that is just too much for God to take?
I think you and I have different perspectives on salvation....
Man, don't you hate it when Christians realize the Bible wasn't meant to be taken literally, instead of being modern-day Pharisees?
Good job not letting any intelligent thought through, Wishing4. For your next trick, I assume you'll prove that acting like Christ instructs - instead of like a self-righteous douche-canoe - is for evil liberals.
@checkmate
Okay, fine. Prove it. Prove it that the pastor's wife is wrong. Prove that her beliefs deserve to be dismissed out of hand. If not then you're being just as smug and superior as Wishing4 over here, only you annoy me more because you're an atheist like me, so I have to put up with agreeing with you on one or two things.
Your friend and that pastor's wife seem like nice people with a somewhat rational view on religion. Why would you WANT to point fingers and hurt other people's feelings? Sure, you can't always avoid it, but you shouldn't go out of your way to actively cause others' feelings to be hurt.
"I replied that this group is into stuff that is not Biblical..."
Says the person who posts on a forum dedicated to a doctrine that only arose in the last two centuries and doesn't have a basis in the Bible.
They don't want to point fingers or hurt anyone's feelings.
If fundies didn't do those things, they wouldn't be able to feel superior to anyone at all! What would Jesus say then!
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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