- kafka.:
- The Velvet Heir:
- I'm not sure if this is going to make sense, but I don't ever see God as "interfering," necessarily. I don't think God looks down at us and sees people going awry and thinks, "Darn it, those fanatics are at it again... gotta clean up."
So we could be preaching heresies?- The Velvet Heir:
- Of course, it's important to be able to interpret the Bible correctly. You could ask a pastor for help or get a Bible Dictionary with Greek translations and the whole bit.
How can I be sure that a pastor interprets the Bible correctly?
You seem to think that by society I mean the secular part of our world, on the contrary, I meant the Christian community as I live in an Orthodox country and in a world where Christianity is one of the major religions.- The Velvet Heir:
- If you want to talk more, feel free to PM me!
I see no problem in discussing here.
:shifty
Yes, I think it's entire possible that some churches preach heresies (I'm going to answer all of your questions in a clump, if you don't mind). In my opinion, if it's not backed up by the Bible, it's heresy to preach something as the will of God.
Pray. It seems to be a rather simplistic answer, but I sincerely believe that if you ask God to reveal the truth of his word, He will. So pray for insight and ask God to guide you and to see if what your pastor tells you is the truth.
Ehh, sorry for not being clear on this point- I
do mean the Christian community in addition to the secular community. A lot of Christian tradition has come from secular worldviews... and those secular worldviews have been adjusted and adopted to be "Christian." While not all of those traditions may be necessarily sinful, I don't think you should be feel repressed by non-Biblical standards.
Also, sorry if the PM thing was weird... in another forum I'm a member of, it's common for a discussions to slip off to PMs if the questions get specific. If that's not how it's done here, I suppose I'll stop. I'm perfectly fine with discussing it here! :D
- merance:
- I guess in a way, I believe that they were touched by God, because how can you fake such happiness that they seem to have? However, I grew away from that faith because it never happened to me, no matter how much I prayed.
So that made me wonder whether you can fool yourself into believing it.
What do you guys think?
I think it's possible to fool yourself into believing something, but I don't think that's what my faith is based on. I'm not sure what other Christians think, but it seems like it would be difficult to be a Christian living in a false faith. So much of my relationship with God is based on being true to Him and true to myself. I don't know exactly how long the foolery would work.