Send me a PM if you like. And welcome to TOL! As I advise all newcomers, wear a helmet.
Shai Gar - ENTP - Satanist - Theology Debater
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Send me a PM if you like. And welcome to TOL! As I advise all newcomers, wear a helmet.
This site is whatever Knight says it is.....but I suspect you will learn that soon enough.
Actually you may need to hit a certain number of posts to send and receive private messages. I forgot about that. My mistake.
Suffice to say that I made my choice for my own reasons--but annoying my parents (with whom I have a wonderful relationship) was definitely not one of them. And the last thing I am is a teenager, thank goodness.
Those two statements are mutually exclusive.
At least for the most part.
Except a big part of my study at the theological college was christianity, and I was an evangelist as a child so I got to know the history and the theology behind christianity.
I have an excellent relationship with my father as well, though he's off in Afghanistan as a chaplain at the moment. Some of the best fun I have with him is arguing theology. What were the studies or choices that took you to the left handed path?
I studied a number of things relating to satanism, but I didn't really make the choice until I read the satanist bible laughing the whole way through and thought, yup, this is me all right.
Exactly!
Recipe for ending up in hell....
- Be an evangelist as a child
- Go to a seminary and study Christianity
Studying Christianity in college is a bit like allowing communists to teach you everything you want to know about free-market capitalism.
Same here. I think that's fairly common.
And for all of that, you never got to know the PERSON behind Christianity. That is why you fail. You think Christianity is a history, something to be studied. Christianity is a relationship with God and a choice to live that love.
It is a subject worthy of study. If you don't, you're just being willfully ignorant. There's a lot more to it than "Love Jesus" and "the Bible tells me so."
Egbert
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So do I. What do you think it is, a fantasy?
Depends on what "it" you are referring to. If it is the history of Christianity then there is a lot to be studied. A large amount of it can be very disturbing. People do terrible things in the name of God, things God never intended and will not condone. On the other hand, if it refers to the Christian lifestyle then you need to have a relationship with Christ and the life you live will reflect the love shared in that relationship. However, you need know nothing of Christian history to be Christian. The converse holds true as well. You can know everything there is to know about Christian history and not be a Christian.
Please read the next sentence in my post from which you took this.
Egbert
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I did, but that does not explain how you found out God was real in the first place, or how you learned about the doctrines of Christianity. I think the history is pretty important for understanding those things.
I didn't find Christ, God found me and placed me in His sons hands. The history o the Christian church is not important to Christian doctrine. It is frequently full of gross violations of Christian doctrines. The Inquisition leaps to mind. The Bible contains the doctrines that are important to those who love and follow Jesus. When we begin to substitute traditions of history for solid doctrine we get is serious trouble seriously fast.
Egbert
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The Bible has a history itself, which includes plenty of traditions and gross violations.
Is there one set definition of "the Christian lifestyle"? Is the "lifestyle" of a Christian in Sudan the same as one in South Dakota? Who defines this "lifestyle"? The second you can get Christians the world over to agree on this--or anything else, for that matter--please let me know.
If you choose to embrace Christianity while remaining ignorant of its history, I submit you are making a enormously poorly-informed mistake. Frankly that's true of any organization or group. Only a fool would change his or her life while deliberately remaining in the dark of a group's particulars.
Could you back that up with religious quotations? First sources would be best, I am never swayed by personal opinion.
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