One day at Choir I mentioned a Bible passage, 2nd Corinthians 2:15 & 16. This passage tells us that Christians smell bad to non-Christians. You can look it up at http://bible.cc/2_corinthians/2-15.htm which will give you the passage in a bunch of different versions of the Bible. Our Choir director mentioned that while he had read the passage he had never really thought about it.
I consider the aroma to be more like what we call a “vibe” these days, but, I also believe that there are some damned people who really do think saved Christians smell bad. I believe this because there are actually posts on the internet discussing how Christians smell bad.
I am currently reading a book that is pretty stupid, but, interesting because it represents the search in the secular world for understanding in the religious world. In fact, this guy presents a lot of the things I originally believed when I first became saved and began seeking understanding. The book is called “Who Really Goes to Hell”. http://www.amazon.com/Who-Really-Goes-Hell-Protestant/dp/0981826601
The basic idea behind the book is that Christ never taught that all humans sin and believing in him was required for going to heaven. This is just something Paul taught and none of the four gospels mention it.
Total crap of course. Christ tells us: Mark 10:18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
So Christ does tell us that none of us are Good. I could go into the Greek here, agathos, which means honorable, good, happy, noble, etc. Taken in the negative we could also say that all of us are the opposite of good. All of us are sinners, as Paul put it.
Of course that does not address the idea that all must accept Christ to go to Heaven. There are a lot of places that Christ tells us that he is that path and no one can get to the father except through him. The best known of course are the passages that are behind Communion. People believe that Communion goes back to the last supper. Not exactly true, it does and it also goes even further back to John 6:53
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Unless we engage in Communion, the accepting of the path which the Mosiach, the Messiah, Christ has laid down we can not live.
This guy wrote an entire book of ridiculous crap that people probably read and accept as well researched, well documented fact. Essentially he did the same thing most of us do, instead of accepting Christ he tried to “figure” it all out. I remember doing that. I look back at all the time I spent studying the Hebrew and Greek, the different versions of the Bible and I have to laugh at myself. I hope someday you can look back and laugh at your self and this guy can look back and laugh at himself.
God tells us that Proverbs 1:29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:
Something that the author of this book and I have in common is the search for knowledge. We love knowledge and we study. God sometimes hides the obvious things from us, from me, from the author of this hilarious book “Who really goes to hell” and from my Choir director. That does not make us fools or hypocrites. It means we are still seeking knowledge and fear of the Lord. It means that some of us want to just accept Christ for who Christ is and accept people for who people are without trying to figure out and understand all the quirks and the angles and the motivations.
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2 comments:
Well-written, John. I always liked that about you: You reason out your arguments with logic and fact, not just blindly, emotionally postulating.
I re-read this recently and decided that accepting people for who they are was a little ambiguous. I added an extra couple of sentences at the end pointing out the issue and removing the ambiguity.
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