As you may recall from my religion post (all the way back on week one), I struggled a lot with Christianity and how it related to the Bible. Basically, I decided that if the holy book of Christianity was the Bible, then I was going to follow everything in it to the best of my ability. The problem lay in the fact that I couldn't believe what the Bible told me to. I couldn't believe that Jesus was the only way to get to heaven. I believed (and still believe in) a lot of the moral teachings Jesus preached about loving your neighbor and not casting the first stone and removing planks from your own eye before the sawdust from your brother's (Jesus was a cool dude), but I couldn't just take the Bible at face value, even taking into account what may be metaphor. Because of this, I looked at various religions and eventually decided my answer was "none of the above."
That about sums up my last post on religion (it was very, very long, so if you haven't read it, I'm trying to make it so you don't have to). Of course, this seems to be fundamentally based on the idea that being a Christian requires believing everything in the Bible, and that's significantly because that is what I believe. This week's topic is traditionalism versus modernism in religion and I have to say I fall squarely into the traditionalism category. I believe if that something as important as a religion, something that wants to be the center of your life and values and judgments, is malleable, can change with interpretation and from person to person, then what does it mean? It's a very closed-minded view of things, I understand, but just...what's the point of having a holy book with teachings and beliefs if they aren't meant to be followed and...believed? Obviously, we can't know what God thinks about the Internet and that's something that would have to be interpreted, but as far as things that are explicitly in the Bible...I don't see how you can not believe it and then call yourself a Christian.
I just don't understand how the word has any value if it isn't consistent. I don't mind people that have views that differ from the Bible and still call themselves Christians but I just don't actually...I don't know. I can't consider you as such unless you are evangelizing the hell out of me, and if you are, then I probably won't want to talk to you.
I guess I just believe that if your religion is something you think is personal and between you and God, then that's fine. If you want to call that relationship Christianity, then I expect you to have certain beliefs that, frankly, most people don't have. If you think the only way to get to heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ, then you, as a Christian, should be perpetually terrified about all of the people in your life that are going to hell. I don't know anyone that can live life that way. I know I couldn't.
This post ended up being full of things that came off very offensively. Please understand that I do respect and love most of the people in my life that identify as Christian. I just have very strong opinions on religion that I don't like speaking about because I don't like offending people. I also know that this week's topic was on religion in general, but my perspective is limited mostly by my experiences with Christianity. In general, I believe that if you subscribe to a religion, then you have all of the beliefs that that religion entails. I don't believe in reinterpreting things to fit with today's moral values, because if the religion doesn't fit with today's moral values then maybe that's a problem with the religion. I don't believe you should have to fumble around awkwardly ignoring parts of your holy text just to make you feel comfortable like I did.
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