The Bible was written by men, and it was various men's interpretations of life and morality. Keep that in mind when you claim to be anti-religious yet spiritually sound. I've found that most churches will claim to be against organized religion yet will exhibit the exact same characteristics of a major organized religion.
Thanx Midnight for pointing out the strength and weakness of Christianity..
(Sorry this is so long, but Midnight brought up such an important point!!!)
Yes the Bible was written BY men, but inspired by God.. No other book has been written with so many chapters (66 chapters) by so many authors (40 authors) across so many years (1500 years) yet the whole book tells one story. With Hundreds and hundreds of specific prophesies foretold and came to pass with amazing accuracy..
But now to the main point.. "
claim to be anti-religious yet spiritually sound"
This statement brings in the reason why Christianity is NOT just another religion, just like all the others..
I believe I am "spiritually sound", but I have nothing to do with that.. Whether I'm religious, Anti-religious, Mother Theresa, or just a Jack-Ass, as a Christian the "soundness" has nothing to do with Me or What I've done.. ANYTHING that I have tried to do well and for the GOOD, It is ALL like filthy rags to God.. The "soundness" of my (and our) Spiritual position has EVERYTHING to do with what GOD has done.. HE has reached over a gulf that no man can ever cross and made a way to bring about a relationship between faulty people and a perfect God and Creator...
We are like slaves, with a terrible master,then we are offered freedom from our circumstances, that cost us nothing but our self pride, but cost God a Great price! Because he "purchased" us and brought us from a place of filth and selfishness and brought us into His own house and then treats us just like we were one of his own children and loves us and cares for us as if we had never lived our prior horrible existence.. That IS our "Spiritual Soundness"..
IF NOT Christianity, what are your choices??
1) Every other religion.. Every other religion in one way or another depends on you somehow "earning" your way to God..
IF you do SOMETHING enough,
and/or IF you are SINCERE enough,
and/or IF you are ENLIGHTENED enough,
and/or, and/or, and/or... So you have to be smart enough, dedicated enough, SOMETHING enough, to EARN your way to God..
The issue with this is that there is a great gulf between ALL of us.. A gulf that we could never cross. A gulf that is caused by our own selfishness and pride. A gulf that ONLY GOD could reach across and LOVE us right where we are (In that Slavery position talked about above), but also LOVE US too much to leave us there.
The Downside to this choice is a type of slavery.. It's the Carrot on a stick problem. You never seem to be quite enough, you have never done quite enough, and face it.. most of us are too damn lazy to really make the standard, even if there was a chance to make this work..
2) Nothing / Evolution / Cosmic Accident - You're Born, You live, You die.. That's it.. There is no real meaning to you or your life.. Whatever impacts you have on others will quickly fade away as they to move on to their meaningless destiny..
The Downside to this is there is no meaning.. You might as well go rob a few banks and cheat as many people as you can, so you can have the greatest experience of self indulgence you can have, because in the end that's all there is.. IF the people you cheated and killed so you could have a great ride in life, it won't really matter anyway, because there fate is just like yours.. They just didn't wind up with as good of an experience as you did.. But it doesn't matter.. You're dead, and that's it..
So there you have it.. Midnight made the point.. "Spiritual soundness", that's what it's all about..
We are all going to be jack-asses to some degree.. Our selfishness will always outweigh all the good that we do..
Churches are going to remain full of religious, self-righteous, hypocrites, because there are people there.. But it's the best we got.. Faulty people trying to grasp the great LOVE of God that would be willing to let His own son, step down from Deity, to become part of His own creation, and to die a horrible death so that the Great price could be paid to build a bridge across a gulf that could not be built any other way.
In the process, God knows what it's like to really be human.. To Love, and to anguish, to laugh and to cry. To celebrate life and love and understand what it is to be cheated, betrayed and have those you love die and be taken away from you... What compassion God can now have for us, as the great creator of all things has stepped down into his creation and experienced what it's like to be one of us..
You don't have to be Einstein or Mother Theresa to make the goal line.. The simplest of minds can easily understand and make the decision to be free and the greater the mind, the harder it is because of self pride to make it to the goal.. Only God could set up a system that those who have every excuse for not making it (simple minds) can make it in and those that have NO excuse (Great thinkers) are the ones that stumble the most.. Ahhhh God is a Great God and Loves us SO much!!!
Ephesians 2:1-9 Verse 9 is What indicates that our Spiritual Soundness does not depend on What we have earned, but what was offered and accepted by us..
Thanx Midnight!!
leasantry:
