Lately i've been struggling with the issue of defined "sin". Obviously, there are points in the Bible where God clearly denounces some things multiple times, and deviation from those is considered sin (i.e. 10 commandments). However, the rest of the Bible's messages sometimes intertwine and even at times contradict themselves, and a lot of the things considered "sins" by the Church today are very gray areas, not clearly defined in the Bible.
Can you truly depend on your intuition and the brain and soul God gave you, in addition to cues from the Holy Spirit on these gray areas?
What if this area remains gray for years, despite your best efforts to sort it through and prayers for guidance?
What if you finally form an opinion and it turns out to be wrong?
What if you disagree with certain views of the Church as a whole, because what they preach doesn't make sense to you?
How do we decipher which "laws" in the Bible we are supposed to take literally and which we can realize were put in place for a culture and time very far from where we are now? How do we deal with contradictions between the old and new testaments?
Your thoughts...
1 comment:
I was talking to my mom today about meditating/praying. Telling her that Guy wants me to take an hour today and just meditate, without too much thought. And that he does that every night. Listening. And she said, "Well, you still need to read the Bible, because that is the only way God talks to us." To which I responded, "Yeah..." But I wanted to say, "I don't believe that! God talks to us all the time. We don't listen at all. Ever. But if we do listen we can hear Him. And besides, why do we hold so highly the Bible anyways? I mean I know all the so-called "right" answers - but realistically it is some stuff written down how many years ago? written how many years after the events even actually happened? and this is just the stuff that survived over the years, until the Catholic church canonized it! What about the stuff that didn't get canonized? And I'm not just talking about the Catholic Bible... Who's to say that stuff isn't important? And yet we don't get a chance to see any of it. Wouldn't it just make more sense that God is intelligent enough to have figured out more than just one way to communicate with us?"
Okay, I'm done. :-)
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