I remember the tears, as a young boy, of bitter disappointment when I was refused the shiny new toy I wanted, and as it was wrenched out of my hands I knew that my parents were truly evil for denying me the satisfaction of . . .
Well, we can’t assess ourselves by ourselves because we are still so blind and immature compared with what shall be revealed when Christ returns.
Here’s a thought experiment: right now, are you awake? If yes, can you prove it? Of course, I would accept adequate proof, but to prove it to YOURSELF would be more arduous, right?
Do we have a self-centered faith or a God-centered faith? If life revolves around us, we might be asleep and yet not know it.
As for Jesus’ appearance, He did not come in the pomp and opulence of the religious rulers of His day, so that His earthly appearance would draw people to Him – whether or not He was “ugly” is in the eye of the beholder, no?

I had to leave the church so that I could find the true, objective Messiah. There is far too much in-bred anti-semitism to find the creator we call God or Jesus. And that is where it starts. God is a title used by pagans, and Jesus is a Greek word referencing Zeus. That is a bad start, and it get worse. The church was just handed this ancient package of pagan changes and continues to try to make them work. They DON’T. More and more people have this general sense of discomfort, and they don’t know why. They are starting to realize the emperor has no clothes, but they are surrounded by a throng applauding the fashion show. It made me crazy. When I left the church, I wanted to find a de-programmer or take a very, very hot shower for a month.

My advice is to stop starting with the conclusion. Every church takes a new comer, tells them a story and THEN shows them certain scripture to back it up. I am traveling the OTHER way: conclusions based on scripture. I have never had such a thrill in my life. It is soooo amazing to see the depth of scripture missed/misinterpreted by the church (The single best thing I ever did was to honor the Sabbath. Try it. You won’t believe it till you do.)

Write me and I will tell you the REAL story about the prodigal son.

JC Lamont

Re: #36

Ancient near eastern cosmology believed in a relatively flat, disk shaped earth. Israel was part of that culture too. They did not understand the world as a globe like we do.

Isaiah 40:22 fits their understanding very nicely. There’s no reason to resort to 21st century science to explain something that is better explained by the science of Isaiah’s day.

A circle can be flat.

To say that people at the time the books of the bible were written should have known that the earth was not flat is well…you get my point.

“…the idea of a “flat” earth is presented in the Bible…God no where in His Word sought to obviously correct that understanding.”

Isaiah 40:22 — He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth

Bethyada,

I’ll add a comment to the link you posted to your blog in comment #30.

Steve and Greg, though I (and Jason) raised this, I meant it as an aside. Not that I mind discussing the flat earth myth, but it is Michael’s thread not mine.

I have several comments and questions about your comments but I will leave them for the time being. I still hold to comment 30.

(Greg, I would look at a text link but am not interested in audio.)

“Flat-earth Christianity was specifically invented by atheists to try and discredit it.”

Bethyada, Re: #30

Maybe so, maybe no. As Steve Martin mentioned, the idea of a “flat” earth is presented in the Bible, simply because that’s how the people envisioned it back then. They’d go up onto a mountain top, look around, and see a round, disk-shaped earth. That’s all they knew, and God no where in His Word sought to obviously correct that understanding. I think any “scientific” statement in the Bible is best understood by the science of their day, not ours.

The cosmology presented in Genesis is incredibly similar to Egyptian and Babylonian cosmology. Not in its theology, just in its structure. Sometimes we like to think that the Israelites developed their culture and wrote the Bible in a vacuum, that there was no influence or sharing of ideas between others in that same era and geographical location.

I’ve noticed that Christians tend to try and explain this kind of stuff away so we can make the Bible conform to our modern understanding of science. We have this misplaced idea that to be reliable, the Bible needs to match our understanding of everything, or that if there’s some borrowed stuff from Babylon or Egypt that its any less inspired. We sometimes forget that the Bible was written for us, but not to us. God inspired in a manner that would be meaningful to ancient Israelites. He accommodated Himself to them by taking their cosmology and reinterpreting it in light of Himself.

Its really quite fascinating when you read Genesis with this in mind. You come across a whole mass of information and meaning that we moderns tend to overlook because we just don’t think that way anymore.

If you’d like to find out more about this, I’d recommend a lecture by John H. Walton on the subject here: http://www.logos.com/media/lecture/walton.mp3

JC Lamont, Re: #28

I agree completely.

In essentials, unity;
In non-essentials, liberty;
In all things, charity.

Roger E. Olsen, Re: #29

By any chance, are you this Roger E. Olsen?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=roger+olsen&x=0&y=0

Just wondering. But yeah, I certainly think all things theological in nature should be explained by His Word. I think we should do that with the best study, scholarship, conviction, and humility possible, to the best of our limited, fallible abilities.

And there lies the problem: Our fallibility. When you really get down to it, we’re all just really guessing. Not randomly of course. We have some pretty good ideas about the things of God. Some more than others. For example, regarding the essentials you mentioned, and my limited understanding of historical theology, the Church, in the vast majority of her incarnations throughout the ages, has agreed on three things: The sinful state of man, the need for salvation, and the way to that salvation.

We’re still guessing though. We’re pretty certain with our guess, enough to bet our eternal lives on it at least. At the same time, without a personal revelation or undeniable experience of the living God, such as Moses experienced, we have to take it all on faith. It always comes back down to that.

Faith that the Bible is God-inspired. Faith that Christ really was who He said He was. Faith that God even exists! We can’t even prove God’s existence in an undeniable fashion! We can come up with some pretty good reasons why we think He exists, but not enough to do away with faith.

I don’t like ambiguity in theology, but at the same time I can’t ignore it. I can’t ignore that really smart, spiritual and God-fearing men have, throughout church history, held to contradictory theologies on various things that fall outside the absolute essentials I mentioned.

It’s not that I don’t value correct doctrine, or the fight required for it. It’s just that there’s a reason why many things have yet to be settled even after two thousand years. We just don’t have all the information enough to solidly come down on some things with the same certainty we have on the above truths I mentioned.

We do explain God with His Word. But we are limited in our ability to explain those things which God has chosen not to adequately reveal.

That’s my guess at least

Of course there was a time when Christians believed the earth was flat.

That is exactly how the earth is described in Genesis.

Everyone believed the earth to be flat for thousands of years.

So what?

What does that have to do with the price of eggs in Alaska? (a Dadism from my childhood)