To Anonymous

In response to my post “A Tragic Story” Anonymous asked some questions that are pretty basic to one’s understanding of Jesus and Christianity. S/he asked so many relevant questions that I’ll deal with them in a post of its own.

First, we ALL choose a paradigm that helps us explain what we see around us. It might be atheism, or a religion, or a political system or whatever. The means by which we arrive at this paradigm is similar. From the time that we can understand language we are all bombarded with messages to believe this but not that. Do this but not that. Each of us has to make a decision and then live according to what we’ve chosen. Here is why I did not choose atheism.

http://thesauros-store.blogspot.com/2010/03/why-im-not-atheist.html
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“I'm wondering why you cannot see that the bible was written from an emotional man's perspective?”

Yes, and? Show me something that isn’t written from our perspective, a perspective that’s been influenced by things from both outside and inside of us . . .. Some of what’s been written by “emotional man” will be completely wrong. Some will be a mixture of right and wrong and some will be bang on and deserving of further consideration.

It’s up to you and I to put considerable effort into sorting truth from error. I’ve found that there are perhaps six or seven critical areas of discovery the indicate that Christianity warrants further exploration, the Bible being one of those areas. Just how have a dozen or more authors ranging from Kings to Shepherds, highly educated to very little education, a doctor and a traitor writing over a period of some 1,400 years come together in a cohesive account of One Man? How does an author, who doesn’t understand the implications of what he’s talking about predict that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem? Another author talking about the same person predicts that He’ll die by crucifixion. Yet another author accurately states that what we see is made from what cannot be seen and this centuries before the microscope is invented. Another author describes the earth as a sphere while all those around him believe it’s flat. Another declares the number of stars to be uncountable while observation would suggest otherwise. How do those things happen? The Bible is not an ordinary book.
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“Do you really believe that a god whom created the universe in just six days, after some 4000 years of sacrificing animals to atone for sins, suddenly decided to send his own sperm down to impregnate a virgin girl to have himself murdered to atone for sins???”

Do I really believe what you just said? No.

. While I believe that “everything came from nothing” as the standard cosmological model indicates, and I believe that Creator God was the cause of that Singularity, as to the six days, I don’t know what that means. I also think that science has forced Christians to rethink our understanding of the first chapter of Genesis.

. “Suddenly decide”? It wasn’t a sudden decision at all. This was a plan put in place before the universe was ever brought into existence. As a counsellor by trade, I understand that having people use one partially effective, or even a non effective system of behaviour for a period of time before introducing another very effective behaviour actually makes a lot of sense. It rings true with how “professionals” deal with or handle people.
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“You're just repeating things you've heard other people say,”

Does that make what they’ve said wrong? Because you’ve come to me as Anonymous I’m going to assume that you’re atheist. Sorry if I’m wrong. Regardless, you know yourself that much of what you say is just repeated from those who know more about atheism than you do? Are your beliefs all original thoughts? Of course not.
I have not taken this decision to follow Jesus lightly. After I passed the stage in life where I discounted Christianity out of hand, I filled a whole note book with questions about religions in general and finally Christianity specifically that I wanted / needed answered. And then I set upon a course to learn as much as I could. I see in hindsight that it was this indescribable presence of (what I later came to see as) Jesus, this love from Jesus that got me started on this path. However my decision to turn from the direction that I was heading and go in the direction of Jesus was about ten years in the making. For what it’s worth, it all started one night at a party when the woman sitting on the couch next to me said, “Is life ever a bag of shit!” That happened at a time in my life when I had all the drugs and all the sex and all the money that any young man could want and yet, until that point, until her comment, I’d never questioned the road that I was on. I wish I could thank her.
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“Tell me what would you do, had never heard of jesus? Would you go jump off the nearest cliff? Would you go and create havoc and chaos around the world?”

Well, in my pre Christian days I did create a fair bit of chaos and havoc. I came very, very close to killing a man. I’ve jumped out of aeroplanes but never off a cliff. Like I just said, I was living a comfortable life. I had pretty much everything this world has to offer. I didn’t become a Christian until I was thirty years old so, you know, I had a family and a career and all that stuff. Like you and most of the other people in the world I was living just fine without Jesus. There’s no doubt that it can be done. The only thing that was missing in my life was the most important thing. There was this “something other” going on in the background that couldn’t be denied. Once I found out what it is (Jesus)there was no way that I was going to settle for a third rate life when I can have the best life possible.
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“How did you hear about the bible and jesus...answer through other 'people' that they too were indoctrinated by their parents or relatives.”

I wonder if you aren’t making an error, again, in believing that each person has to reinvent the wheel for what they believe to be true. Christianity came out of a culture, came from a people that had NEVER heard of Jesus (the greatest growth in Christianity today is in traditionally non Christian areas of the world) and in fact wanted most desperately to reject Him as Lord and Saviour. Of course we hear about this or that belief system from other people and each of us has to then make a decision as to whether what we’re hearing makes sense. IF you are an atheist and if you marry and atheist, are you’re children going to have to choose something other than atheism for their beliefs to be laudable, acceptable, genuine? You think you’ll raise them without any prejudice but that’s a crock. You will raise them with the belief that all religion is a farce. The mere fact that you won’t teach them that Christianity is true is teaching them that it’s false or of no worth whatsoever. Are they allowed to agree with you or do they have to go down another path for their beliefs to be valid?
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“The bible is nothing more than a book of stories and beliefs that were handed down through many generations of beliefs and superstitions put together by people, not from some ignorant god that wants people to worship him.....duh”

Don’t you think it’s pretty arrogant to believe that you are more intelligent than people who lived several thousand years ago? Of course they didn’t have the technical knowledge that we have now, but a lack of information is not a lack of intelligence.
Mary knew that it was not possible for her to get pregnant when she hadn’t had sex with anyone.
People knew that diseases don’t disappear on command.
People knew that paraplegics don’t get up and walk because someone tells them to.
People certainly knew that dead people don’t rise from the dead.
Jesus was accused of performing magic BECAUSE people knew these things were not humanly possible.
Yet there are, I think, very good reasons for believing things like the resurrection did happen and the only explanation is that Jesus was exactly who He said He is.
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“What kind of god wants worship....answer, a man made god wants and expects worship, not a real god of any kind would want, expect, desire any kind of worship only a man made weak god would want worship.”

Seen from our corrupt and perverted mind-set, a demand for worship is nauseating, disgusting.

Seen from our Creator’s perspective, it only makes sense that we would look to Him for what we need. Seen from the perspective of those of us in a forgiven and healed relationship with our Creator, we’ve found that “Man fully alive” only happens in a worshipful relationship with our Creator.

http://thesauros-store.blogspot.com/2010/08/man-fully-alive.html

We were originally created in the image of God, possessing portions and degrees of His attributes and His characteristics. We lived in a state of perpetual worship, glorifying God and set to enjoy Him forever. That image was marred when sin entered the world. Each and every step that we as individuals take back toward that image makes us one step more fully alive, not in theory but in reality. Worshipping my Creator is not an onerous task; it’s a gift, an honour, a privilege.

If you are a parent, you know that you aren’t weak because you want your children to come to you for nurturing and growth.

You have what your children need.

God has what we need. It would be wrong and evil for Him to withhold that information from us.

I guess our perspectives are vastly different but I don’t see Jesus as weak at all!
Because your Creator and mine loves us, because only He has the resources that we need, He says, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." Matthew 11:28-30.

As far as “man-made” goes, if you think about all the religions of the world, there is one HUGE area that sets Christianity apart from what I agree ARE man made religions. That thing is grace.

Every religion BUT Christianity is based upon a person “working” h/her way to god, looking for ways to appease or to find acceptance of their deity.

Christianity is a religion that reveals God coming to us because there is nothing that we can do to repair the damage that we caused.

Only His love,
Only His grace,
Only His mercy,
Only His forgiveness.

On Christianity, nothing but what Creator God has done for us and nothing of what we have done, or can do for Him provides for our salvation.

The concept of salvation by grace goes completely against what our pride and our arrogance wants to believe. Our brain simply does not work that way. There is not a human on earth that would or even could invent that kind of God or religion.