A quote to think upon “polygamist author claims polygamy good” when someoine says something is wrong, they are surprisingly, “and i kniw it doesn;t look this way” on love. for example, if i were your freinde and i saw you bleiving garbage, i would show you whwere you are wrong, and why so you belive what it correct, that marriage is between two partners, man and woman “thats what i belive” that is beside the point. tehre could have been better discourse n the aricle, but you need to try and see where we come from, the BASIS for our faith is rooted in the Bible, if it were not for the Bible, Chrsitianity would not exist, we would no know of a loving God, or jesus. SO, the basis for our faith says something completelty contrary to what Bell says, no i think you see why it got such a reaction.

William… thanks for replying… Your response offers a beautiful illustration of my point.

In one line you claim to “not have the indisputable truth”… but the rest of your comment basically says “Believe MY truth… Duplicate MY religious experience… or you’re going to hell. To DISPUTE what I believe is to lie…”

I hate to break it to you, but only 7.5% of the people in this world are Protestant Evangelicals. I refuse to believe that your little tribe of systematic theologians is right and the rest of the world are wrong. Especially since agreeing with you would require me to believe that trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of people prior to our generation are in hell for failing to jump on board with your brand of right-belief.

I’m just asking you to consider that maybe the other 92.5% of us might be on to something. Or that maybe God’s “Way” isn’t so black and white. That’s all.

the verse was matthew 7:13-14

I know, but please let me say 1 last thing God doesn’t wish to destroy his creation, Inever said that,. the thing is though, no one knows when Jesus will come, i i presume, using your theology, that he wont come until those numbers are reversed? maybe he’ll come when protestanism is greater, alright i believe in a god who is in control, And he NEVER wishes harm upon people.

one last analogy, say there is a judge is a court, and his son comes up becasue he has murdered someone, what would happen here, they’ed probably find a new judge right, someone who is impartial. so the Judge judges by the Law, the law is the standard, like on a test, a grading scale, that the teacher creates, there is failing, there is passing, the teacher does not want everyone to fail, but some students do. No bring that back here, We all have failed the test that god requires, God needs us to be without sin, so he sent Jesus to die, and take the punishment for failing the test in our place, like the punishemnt a judge gives for a criminal, does the judge want that person to have life in prison? by no means, but he must keep to the law, lest he not be Just. God kepto the law by placing his son on the cross, which is an incredible act of love, taking the punishment for the sins of every human being, inlcuding you! now that is love more than you or I will ever know. for those that belive jesus DIED for their sins, they will be saved jesus paid the penalty, for tjose that reject the reality of jesus death, they will not they will get what they deserve. it exactly like someone offering to take you place in a punihsment, and you refusing it.
Remeber God does not wish to destroy all he has made, christianity speaks of a new creation. where god will dwell with humanity. but before god rebuilds, he must destroy.

it is a liberating thoelogy, the sad part is is when chrsitians claim it to make them better then anyone lse because God saved “them” that is not the point. the point is that jesus died not to exalt us, but to save us.

The thing that I fail to understand about professing Christians that deny the inerrancy of the bible is why not just “roll their own” completely? Why would one profess a faith they have no faith in? Just call it my-own-ism or my-ianity and stop saying you claim Christ as Lord. How does the Lord exercise his lordship in ones life if they deny his word?

God has never sinned! you know that right, well the ONLY reason we can forgive each other is becasue all have sinned. we say “i mess up too” so i forgive you, we all screw up sometimes God doesn’t that is a major differenc ethat i think we overlook a lot.

we dont like authority on our lives. tis could be not more present then the unrest in the middle east. God is bigger than our denimination he is bigger that anything, BUT God will not disobey himself or theten commandments

You profess a faith that you have no faith in. if you interpreteed the Bibe differently that i would agree, but since you murder it, and burn it, and regard it as trash, then you have no basis for jesus existing. he claimed to be the son of God.

so you are saying, and implying im sure, is that the influences of the times in the Bible made the writers determined what they wrote. ARE YOU kidding? There is one thing im sure you can attest to as well. in Paul’ s time, there was no TV, Interent, Phones, cars, media, influence, tv violence, videogames, texting, the list goes on and on!!! its extremely hard to imagine what life was like back then some 2000 years ago and you say that Paul had more influence.
I’m pretty sure that Paul had the best way of speaking from God. every time he wrote his letter, where was he? prison. prison. he was by himself, in prison all he had was God. he had no Oprah, koolaid producers, he was prayings and writngs
what do we have? countless distractions, media influenes, people who tell use what we want to hear about ourselves, we want to hear we are good, we dont want a saviour, we want to save ourselves.

we dont like being punished for what we did wrong, this is evident in your theology, as you dont think there is punishment for doing something bad.
‘why do you live for jesus, you dont have to answer, but its not becasue he is you Lord, You are now His Lord, youve comlpletelyy ruled out the possiblity that God can do anything he wants, becasue we hindered him from producing truth in the Bible.

SAying God didnt inspire the bible to give us truth puts the cart before the horse, creation over creator! dont you see my point???!! the holy spirit is a part of the trinity, 3 and 1 at the same time. FOR God all things are possible. he can and did insipre the writers if the Bible to say truth saying he couldn’t is ridiculous, for youve just commanded God to be something he not: a finite human being, which he is not, God is so much bigger tha we could ever imagine. infinite God can do anything, and hew has done so, and your mysteries you speak of are myths.
again the bible claims to be true, in many verses, even jesus says it is

remember finite fits inside infinite, bit infinite cannot fit into finite
we can’t fit God into our perception of love
is it not loving to warn againt what is to come??

You sound like this verse again, so similar:
2 timothy 4:3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry

what we want to hear is not always what we NEED to hear.

God would sentences us to life is prison. that prison being hell but I said, before, THE DEVIL is the punishment, God hands us over to the devil. he handed jesus over instead, so tha those who believe would be saved.

God did not give us the Bible to tell us that “its wrong” are you kidding me, give me one verse that says “everything in this book is wrong”.
first question did God give us the Bible.-
Well of you cliam the name of chrsit he DID. it either all wring or all correct??

I am curoius though why other books of today dont get this criticism, how about this upcoming book? HUH, the one with all the arguing. BY your standards, Bell’s book is complete garbage, because he is influenced by trials he has, and influences. (im pretty sure paul had less influence tha rob bell has today in his upbringing)
The only reason people like it is because they agree with it. see the contradiction?
We say things in the bible are written and influence by their surroundings, by there are MORE surrounding influences today then ever before, and books today are values as high as the BIBLE? why? because Jesus says ” Beware of false prohpets, the come to you in SHEEP’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves” satan appears to us as an angel of light. like a candy bar with poison.

For im sure you know this statement: Man looks on the OUTWARD appearance, but the Lord looks at the Heart.
meaning: Man cares what you do, God Cares WHY YOU DO IT

Jesus Loves me this I KNOW, for the BIBLE tells me so.
-out of the mouths of babes
why do we believe in jesus, becasue the bible says so.

as for those who cannot understand becasue of psycological reasons:
For God all things are possible miracles happen

“Relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is a mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.” -Lesslie Newbigin, on the distinction between openness (which is good) and religious relativism”

another great quote:

Postmodernism tells us there’s no such thing as truth; no such thing as meaning; no such thing as certainty. I remember lecturing at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in this country. I was minutes away from beginning my lecture, and my host was driving me past a new building called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts. He said, “This is America’s first postmodern building.” I was startled for a moment and I said, “What is a postmodern building?” He said, “Well, the architect said that he designed this building with no design in mind. When the architect was asked, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘If life itself is capricious, why should our buildings have any design and any meaning?’ So he has pillars that have no purpose. He has stairways that go nowhere. He has a senseless building built and somebody has paid for it.” I said, “So his argument was that if life has no purpose and design, why should the building have any design?” He said, “That is correct.” I said, “Did he do the same with the foundation?” All of a sudden there was silence. You see, you and I can fool with the infrastructure as much as we would like, but we dare not fool with the foundation because it will call our bluff in a hurry.
-Ravi Zacharias

Foundations Matter: what is yours?

I know, that is my whole point, i agree there are reasons that we dont have to support the bible as inerrant, but i ask, what do you have faith in? and how do you know that the God you think about really is God/ That is what i am trying to say her whie. What you are saying is radical “deconstruction” saying that you dont hae to belive is Jesus to be saved. the question is, Which jesus” the one of the Bible, or the one we create in our minds? you see there is a difference in belivei ins something tangible amd beliveing in somethings that we want to belive in. and NO you are right, you dont have to affirm calvinism/arminianism to to be a better christian, but what my exact point is, is that Which jesus do you belive in, the One who has been made known by the writers of the NT and OT? IF there is no foundational support for what we belive, its somethings we create, it needs to be measured by something.

forgivie me for using scripture again, but this is an important. When Jesus was tempted by the devil, he said “I’ll Give you all the kingdoms of this world, if you will bow down and worship me” tht is relativism at the heart,right there, The devil is saying: Rules don’t matter, just bow before ME, and i’ll let you have all this good stuff” And what does Jesus say? “He says, Away from me satan! for it is WRITTEN you shall worship the Lord your GOD and him ONLY shall you serve,” the devil is saying “it does not matter what the rules are, as long as you get good stuff” see what i mean? weRE SUPPOSED TO serve THe God. not A god that appears to us as an angel of light. it looks good, i admit, to be able determine what you want for yourself, but that is not what God wants, he want us to follow HIM. that is the absolute measurement, and then everything we do is measure by that.

all of this is because of human nature of teh desire to not submigt to a higher authority. its why there is so much unrest in tyhe middle east again, not only becasue the dictators are corrupt, because they have absolute power, but the people want freedom, to be able to choose what they want for themselves. But Christians aren’t call to do thath, we are called to serve the God of creation.

“It may be the devil, it may be the Lord, but youve gotta serve somebody”

when we serve ourselves, we serve the devil, when we follow God, we please him.

You are missing my whole point! Love does not equal no correction! If I want to correct someone’s teaching, it is out of LOVE, trying to show them where they are wrong. Ifthey are ignorant of it, tha is theor decision.

Don’t you see, if you saw someone following a cult that says “murder is ok” or the Ku Klux Klan, you would want them out of it, wouldn’t you? GOD wants us to follow Him. God does not hate people, Were did you get that from? God corrects us when we are incorrect through teaching in the Bible. There is a major distiction bewtween identifying error, and pretending to be God and judging the person’s heart and where they are in their walk with God. People can be preaching false stuff and not realize it. You’ve warped the definition of hate. Hate does not equal disagree, Just becasue I submit to a HIGHER POWER, does not mean I hate people who don’t, I want to show people the way, its out of love. Tey can decide for theselves whether to believe it.

We always twist correction into an insult, intead of an act of love.

What if I’m right, ever ask yourself that??

some of my comments can and already have been interpreted as hate, I understand that. Maybe i should have been more clear:

God does not hate what he created. He hates what his people HAVE DONE
he commands us to follow, the LORD, make him Lord of you life. no be Lord over him. He is disappointed when we follow falsehoods. “No other Gods before me?”

Just as a parents are disappointed when you disobey them, right? by you definition we should not be disciplined. It matters how we act/teach. We aren’t God’s parent, he is our FATHER. a difference, here the father in heaven has never “screwed up ” or “made a mistake” that is why we forgive each other here on earth. God needed to send his son to take the penalty that sin requires becasue he is perfect. “SIN requires a penalty not GOD”. If your sin has not been paid for, it is still a part of you.
We killed Jesus, our sin held him there.
You know you’ve created God in you own image when you say these words to yourself “God can’t do that” becasue “I wouldn’t do that”
We are not God. Period.
We know what God would Have us know.
The Bible.
God has shown us what is right and wrong in the Bible. and the consquences of it. we dont need other authors to “interpret” false ideas out if clear words.

Remember, the ideas are wrong, that does not equal judging. Words have MEANING. we have a dictionary. We need to realize correction is not motivated by being “right”, but out of love, not forcing my beliefs on you, but TELLING, people the truth. It is up to you to accept/reject it.

Please dont assume hate is involved here, its not. I dont think i’m better because i’m right, THose two phrases are intertwined so much today, right does not equal better, where did we get this idea that being right makes us better than anyone??
It doesn’t. we just don’t like to be taught about anything that we don’t agree with.

So jeff, I have No idea what you mean by “God hates people”, but its not a part of Christianity. God hates SIN, and that is drastically different from what you think.

God hates what we’ve done, Its not a parts of who we are In Christ Jesus. Its been paid for.

“In Christ there is no Condemnation” apart from Christ, there is. It is a sad reality.

Reality is just that, REAL.

I Wholeheartedly agree,
my comment on “one thing i fail to understand” at the beginning. But do agree that some people who commented on the article about rob bell’s book would do well to remember this verse,

1 peter 3:14-17
“But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.”

I agree with you, I know that I could be wrong, faith is important But what is a little weird for me, and I m pretty sure you too, is when we take words taht have definitions, and twist them to mean what they want, once heard a person say this: “eternal” in this sense means “just for an age”. ???? That is what bothers me, taking defintion that mean eternal, which literally means “forever” and making them say what we want them to say., so that we dont have a punishement for the bad things we do.

I do completely agree that there are parts of scripture that can be based on interpretation such as “faith” and “grace” the definitions of those words can have many different meanings,

Words like “eternal” and “salvation”, however, have meaning. What we disagree upon is “how” we are saved, not that God saves, We should not be disagreeing about what we are saved “from” or, more importantly, If we are being saved from something at all.

Bell says we are saved from God, and bases his whole arguement upon that statement, The fact is that statement is not a part of the Bible, God is not saving us from God, he is saving us from what we deserve. God made the rules, we broke them. Just becasue God made the rules does not make it his fault that we are punished! The fact is we don’t want to follow the rules, ( and by breaking the rules, we have sinned) so we try and eliminate the punishment, Eternal death is what we are saved from. We send ourselves there. Calvin/Arminians just disagree on “how” we are saved from that. Not the “reason” for salvation. Which is becasue God loves us and wants to save us from eternal death, if we will follow him, not our own desires.

I would like to apologize for that “rant” that I posted a while back.
I went a little overboard.

I go by this verse a lot;
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.

I think its interesting how we can take criticism from our earthy fathers, but we can’t be corrected by our Heavenly Father, who shows us the way through the clear words of scripture in the Bible.

But be careful, just because we are supposed to criticize our faith does not mean we should criticize the foundations of it. The foundations of the Christian faith are not to be tampered with, just like you can’t tamper with the foundation of a house, or it will crumble to the ground

Christian:

I am basing my declaration of univocality (I think I just made that word up) on the fact that I cannot think of any Biblical passage that denies an existence of Hell. There are some passages in the Tanakh (the Christian Old Testament) that would suggest that all of the afterlife is akin to Hell, but there is not one that suggests that the entire afterlife is happy, to my knowledge. If I am mistaken, I would gladly be corrected. I am always happy to be corrected. Or rather, I dislike it at the time (I think that’s fairly normal), but in the long run, I appreciate it.

Christian,

that is a fair interpretation. I definitely agree with you that modern Christianity has been too heavily influenced by Dante and Milton. I also think that modern Christianity relies far too heavily on Plato, but that’s another discussion for another time.

One could far more easily make an argument for annihilation than for a Hell akin to the Inferno – passages such as “from dust you came, to dust you will return” in Genesis or “in Sheol there is no remembrance of you” in the Psalms come to mind. And I’m making an interpretive move with the Psalm, since one has to determine what is meant by “no remembrance” in the grave.

But on the other hand, there are those passages which speak of “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

All in all, I think the best I can say is that this is something to struggle with. I certainly don’t like the concept of Hell as a place of eternal torment, and annihilation doesn’t really seem any better, but I’m not willing to say that something is untrue just because I dislike it.

Just weanted to probably say goodbye, as I don’t think Ill convince you otherwise of what you belive mught be on the wrong path, I want to be clear in what I am saying, and If you want a clarification of what I mean, or aren’t getting it, please comment back.

Illl leave you with a verse from the Bible that tells us the importance of interpretatin, and why it matters what words mean:

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position.

Hello again, I cam across a video that I thought you guys should see,

Please watch all of it, these guys are right:

Someone replied to a comment saying “the bible is the basis of our faith” and I would have to say in my humble- not- a- theology- major- by- any- means its kind of like the chicken or the egg “dilemna”. Yes, its true Jesus is the basis of our faith no if ands or buts about it, however the bible is, was and will always be Gods Word, a living, breathing love letter to His children. I can see how both commentor to the 1s post could think that way and think the person was practicing idolatry, but I think it was just a matter of miscommunication. Just my 0.02. xoxo