One Foot in Christianity, One Foot in Agnosticism – In a Faith Crisis
November 2016. (There is a moderate amount of swear words in the post below)
Some of the points in the post, in brief (the long explanation is below):
- I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior before I was ten years old
- I have read the entire Bible.
- I spent many years reading books ABOUT the Bible (e.g., books about its formation and history)
- I spent years reading Christian apologetic literature
– so do NOT tell me that I “do not understand Christianity” or that I was “never a REAL Christian to start with”
- I currently have doubts about the Christian faith and/or aspects of the Bible
- I have not rejected Jesus Christ Himself
(he’s pretty much Christianity’s only good feature or selling point, as far as I can see at this point)
- I am not an atheist
- I am not a Charismatic
- I am not a “Word of Faither”
- I was brought up under conservative, Southern Baptist and evangelical teachings and churches
- Even though conservative Christians claim to believe in the Bible, they
- cannot agree on what the Bible means or how to apply it – this is a huge problem as I see it in the faith
- they diminish the role of the Holy Spirit or deny Him and that He can work for Christians today, because they are “hyper sola scriptura” and have reduced the Trinity to “Father, Son, and Holy Bible,” (this is also problematic),
they usually do this because they are hyper-cessationist and paranoid or hateful of Charismatic teachings or practices
- they teach that most to all of the biblical promises are not for Christians today but are only for the Jews of 5,000 years ago, there-by teaching that the Bible is NOT relevant for people today (this is also problematic)
- If you are a Christian, do not act like a smug dick about any of this and immediately disregard any points I have to make about God, the Bible, or other topics, because in your view, I am a “Non-Christian who was ‘never’ really saved” -not to mention, that is not even true.
I was in fact “truly” saved, and I am / was, a “real” Christian.
- No, I don’t want to enumerate a detailed list of reasons why I have doubts about God, the Bible, or the faith.If I were to provide such a list or explanation, your average Christian would only want to debate each and every point to argue me back into fully believing. (A witnessing tip to Christians: doing that sort of thing is NOT an effective way of “winning back a lost sheep to Jesus.”)
DETAILED EXPLANATION
I find that people who are both Christian and Non-Christian (and several other categories of people I bump into on Twitter and other sites) get frustrated when they cannot easily box me in.
People seem to be more comfortable with labels, but I’m not sure what label I would give myself these days.
I have briefly tried to explain my current religious beliefs on my Twitter bio, and I explain them a little more on my blog’s “About” page and have mentioned them in a post or two over the course of the last few years I’ve been blogging here.
Here is my background:
I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior prior to turning the age of ten.
That means: I believed that Jesus took my sins upon himself, he was without sin, he paid the price for my sins, and was raised from the dead three days after having been crucified – and if I believe in all that, if I put “saving faith in” Jesus (as opposed to mere intellectual assent), my sins have been forgiven by God, and I go to heaven when I die.
I read the entire Bible through when I was 18 years old, and afterwards, I read a lot of the Bible in the years after. Prior to that age, I had read portions of the Bible when younger.
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