As the Catholic Church states:

“Give me a child until the age of six and they are MINE Forever!”

The facts the reason NEARLY EVERY religious person IS religous in the First place, the reason they believe in the God (or gods) they do is SIMPLY becasue those who raised them carefully PROGRAMMED THEM to believe in the religion and the god they do.

The Odds are about 100 percent while YOU are still programmed, you have neither a clue you were ever programmed or that You Still Are!

There are no gods, no angels, no devils, no ghosts and no afterlife. Quit listening to the conmen whose only interest is picking your pocket.

If what you are offering is your beliefs then you have nothing to offer here. You have led a life believing those who have a vested interest in keeping you believing. It is time that you thought for yourself.

At least it appears that you recognise that the bible is not the word of any god

To be a Christian does not necessarily mean to be unaware of the discrepancies in the Bible or uncritical of past tradition. In fact, the wide range of diversity in the Bible could well be interpreted as intentional by its many, many generations of editors, all redacting, reinterpreting, and even rewriting for their specific communities.

so why do you believe?

The key question with any version of religion is simply “But is it true?”

The issue I’ve always had with more liberal version of Christianity is that I usually don’t have the slightest idea what “it” even is. I can see there are lots of things conservative evangelicals believe that you don’t believe, but I have no idea what you actually believe.

But for me, progressive christianity could never be more than a brief stopping point. Once I started really critically looking at the claims of religion, there was no going back, or staying with a touchy-feely “nice” version that only believed in the good parts and left out all the rest. Nope, the whole faith thing went out the window. Once I saw the “man behind the curtain”, I just wasn’t going to believe in the “great and powerful Oz” anymore.

As a self-identifying Christian (though of course that definition is as diverse as the people that claim it) I would like to offer some other thoughts to your discernment process. I hope you are just as aware of and will not easily dismiss the progressive, even radical, Christianity of which I consider myself a part. To be a Christian does not necessarily mean to be unaware of the discrepancies in the Bible or uncritical of past tradition. In fact, the wide range of diversity in the Bible could well be interpreted as intentional by its many, many generations of editors, all redacting, reinterpreting, and even rewriting for their specific communities. I personally strongly believe that in light of this the Bible should continue to grow and change. (I advocate the loosening or even opening of the canon to include earlier works that were excluded, like the Gnostic gospels, as well as the addition of newer created works relevant to our current day needs.)

But I’m going off on a tangent. If you are interested in learning more about more progressive views of Christianity highly concerned with and conscious of the needs of our society and culture, I’d love to talk. If you are interested in starting off with some reading in this vein, I would suggest Harnack and Machen. They are by no means the most progressive. (They were writing at the beginning of the last century.) However, they address some of the concerns you seem to have above in terms of the “clashing” between Biblical study and logic. Perhaps you’ve already read them. If so, then I would be interested to know if you have read any liberation theology. Or maybe a-theology? (Or my personal favorite, feminist and womanist theology.) There’s so much we could discuss!!! Hope to hear back!

- A Union Seminarian

Fair enough – it could have been a lot worse.

>I hadn’t noticed we’d posted at the same time, there, paleale.

Simultaneous posts! It’s a festivus miracle!

You and every one of us, Glenn. I take some reassurance that my projected God was fairly loving.

Sad indeed. Looking back, I remember specific instances where I “heard” what I wanted to hear, or what I thought I should hear. I was in a circle of Christians that took the idea of “hearing from God” very seriously, and even taught classes on how to do it. The still small voice in my mind was my own, bent to resemble what I thought a still small voice should sound like.