Your discussion time!
Before I head out to lovely Maui (woo hoo!), I just wanted to leave this blog entry for all of you. If you'd like, you can comment on a blog in the past and just leave a note here saying, "Yo, I wrote something on the blog about 'Is the Bible Myth'. Tell me what you all think."
Or you can also discuss here some of the other issues we haven't discussed yet, such as reasons you give others for believing, what works, what doesn't, etc. Or you can talk about what other religions believe like Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhism, etc. Berry's offered to be "devil's advocate", so watch out for him! :0 j/k haha.
OK, I'll check in while I can. I have a volunteer moderator, so .... no funny stuff! {:P}
posted by Heather R. at 7/21/2006 12:56:00 AM
11 Comments:
lol
i've had a few things in mind.
heres a good one...
On wednesday, we talked about sacrificing for God and stepped a little into the bounds about folowing the carreer choice that God has set out for us.
I think we should talk about the different ways that we can use a carreer to demonstrate Gods love.
If you think about it, its not always goign to be easy.
missionaries get to spread Gods love everyday and demonstrate it. its obvious that they are Godly people. Same with artists. Artists can draw crosses and all sorts of pictures about peopel helping other people.
what about peopel with carreer paths like journalism? in the newspapers you can't always write about God. you have to follow lead 'stories' of that week. how would you work for God in a carreer path such as that? or a tattoo artist. even things such as the trash men that come a few days a week.
its something to think about at least.
7/21/2006 2:17 PM
another idea for discussion?
unfaithful followers of christ. You know... the people who say they are christian becasue they go to church, when they have no REAL relationship with God.
How is one to deal with a person such as that???
if you point out the obvious.... that they could stand to strengthen their relationship with God... then they get offended.
I know that some people liek this should always be invited to outside church functions, liek mission trips adn camps and other activities...
thats one of few ways that they can learn about God and develop a TRUE relationship with him.
however, it gets rather difficult to sit there with them when your convinced that they won't build a relationship with God.
it's almost a taboo subject.
7/21/2006 9:42 PM
I just had to poke in here. Aloha! :) This is sooo cool! I'm so glad that you all are keeping the conversations going. I'm just wondering where Kyle and Berry went... and dude, where's Sam?
Anyway, the whole thing about careers and Christianity is a great topic IMHO. I've been reading this book with my Tues night small group and this was one of the topics.
It got me thinking about when I was teaching, how could I *be* a Christian teacher (instead of being a "teacher who happens to be Christian"). One thing we could do with all of our future professions is see how we could use our professions to in a sense "teach" others about the truths of Christ.
I'd like to comment on WB's scenario regarding journalism. A journalist normally looks for things like "scandals" and finding out the "dirty" stuff. If I were a journalist and got in a conversation with someone about world events, I might start off the conversation by saying something like, "You know, I don't think the world was originally intended to have all this corruption going on. What do you think?"
Gee... this is a long post. Sorry!
7/23/2006 2:27 PM
One other thing... if nobody comments right away to your post, remember there are lots of reasons people can't comment right away or don't comment. They may have nothing to add (so that means your comment was really good and they agreed), they may have a really busy day (what's that? j/k), or they may have missed it, etc.
So if you pose a question, and nobody replies... reply to your own question! I do-I reply to mine. :)
Also search other blog entries here and comment on them. The more commenting that goes on, the more discussion... but remember, it all starts with you! (and you... and you... and you :) )
So all this being said, I just want us all to enjoy this blog. I used to take it personally on other discussion boards when nobody responded to me on posts I made, but I realized that life-events can get in the way. :)
Ok.. now I'm going to the beach... that's MY life-event right now :)
7/23/2006 2:36 PM
well theres plenty of reasons God gave us free will.
God can control anything, and everything. but he chooses not too, giving us free will. imagine if we didn't have that, and God CHOSE to control everything?
if that were the case, then everyone would be perfect. starting with, God wouldn't ahve allowed eve to be tempted and eat the forbidden fruit.
if everyone was perfect, everyone would be accepted into heaven, and its my own perosnal opinion that God would have gotten bored a LONG time ago with having so many 'perfect' people.
if he controlled everything, then there would be no point to our lives whatsoever.
even in heaven we have a point.
liek i sia,d this is my own personal opinion of things.^.^
7/23/2006 11:06 PM
Wow, this is so cool! I just have to say again that I'm soooo happy to see all of you on here!
About free will, here's one thing that I think... it seems that God would give us free will because He wants creatures to have the freedom to love Him or reject Him. I agree with Jessica: if love is forced, what kind of love is that? However, to give us that free choice, He had to allow us to freely choose against Him, and that means allowing the possibility for evil to enter the world (because as far as I understand goodness vs. evil, evil is basically where good ought to be there but it's absent, so God has to allow the possibility for there to be actions separate from Him.) Well gotta go. Someone's waiting for this computer.
Kyle, your post is great (A bit long, but really good and thought-provoking :) ) and I'd like to add a bit to that, but can't right now. I have a time limit when someone waits for a computer. Darn.
7/25/2006 10:00 PM
i love all these posts.^.^
they are, like heather rhoda said, very thought provoking. I think it's almost funny how so many things can contradict themselves so much....
what of other religions, though? i've never been one to venture too far into apologetics, its not something i easily understand, but i know that other religions (jahovas witnesses) are also very contradicting in their ways.
and heres a situation for you.
I've had missionaries... the ones that ride around on their bikes dressed up all in their white shirts and black pants... come around to my house before and say what they needed to say. knowing that their religion is a bunch of bunk, i ever politely say that i have a church that i'm faithful to, and they leave it at that.
however, i've gotten people that knock on the door to tell me about their church, and, one man in particular, will not go away.
this one man was tryign to preach to me about God. i told him i knew of such things already and that i went to my church. he kept talking. i told him about how i'm very active in my churhc, i love god, i'm a very christian girl and that i was not, under any circumstances, goign to be changing my religion or my church.
and you know what he did?
he accused me that i didn't love God truly, i only thought i did, and that being so young i don't take things like God seriously and was accusing me of doing everything wrong.
it made me a little more than a little angry that he would claim his christianity or whatever religion he was) and yet was so quick to judge others, and act all high and mighty like he was above me, and to not accept the fact that i love God.
i have more appreciation for those who come to my door and will leave nicely knowing that i am christina and saved. they care more about my being a believer in God (under any religion) than in going to their church.
how is one to deal with the people who are so compleltey arrogant about what they do, when they don't even know what they're doing? they're in it more to say that they're in it, they're not real, adn they give people who actually are believers a bad rep.
7/26/2006 5:26 PM
WB, by any chance was that guy from Jehovah's Witnesses ("JW") or Watchtower? Did he give you a magazine called Awake or Watchtower?
It sounds like someone who is a JW. One interesting thing he did was this: instead of addressing the issue at hand (discussing religion and God), he attacked you personally. Yeah, you were darned right to be angry. I would be too.
One thing I probably would do in that situation is to "call his bluff"; that is, to ask him bluntly, "Are we discussing God and religion or are we discussing me? Because if you want to throw around ad hominems (that means "attacking the person"), the door's right over there." And since he mentioned that you were "so young", I may have mentioned something like, "And it's really interesting how a person who should be more mature than me feels like they have to attack me instead of having a thoughtful discussion." Sometimes using fancy words such as "ad hominem" can get a person to stop playing the "one-up" game and be more willing to have a fair discussion... but sometimes it doesn't work either.
WB (and everyone), I know how it is when people look down on us because we're younger than them. I talked with two JW's who also tried using age as a lever to get more "power" in the conversation. Don't let that divert the topic you're discussing. I've met people who are older (and younger) and don't know as much as they think they do, and I've met younger people (and older) who have some very profound insights. Learn to recognize ad hominems (attacks on the person), then the person won't be able to rattle you as easily. Usually people will start using ad hominems when they have nothing better to say; they've used up all of their good cards.
I used the words "ad hominem" a lot here to help you memorize those words. They may be useful some day. lol
7/29/2006 10:00 PM
I also agree with Jessica. Jesus said, "Don't cast your pearls in front of swine." If there are people who are not interested in hearing what you have to say, but who would rather "steam-roll" over you, don't waste your time discussing Christianity with someone who has a closed ear. I think we have basically two options: 1) Tell them they can give their speech for a couple of minutes (consider it "information-gathering" time. The more you understand another person's beliefs, the more effective witness you can be to that particular religion), then just tell them you don't think their beliefs are correct (or that they're "poo", lol), then politely tell them you have to go (if polite doesn't work, be more forceful with a smile). -or- 2) Don't let them give a speech at all. lol
But I agree with GF. There's a good saying I've heard a lot, "They don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care." From what I've seen, people are won to Christ much more quickly and more often by actions than by words.
7/29/2006 10:54 PM
i think all those ideas are great too.
ON any most case, i can let them know that i am a very strong believer in God and that i have a church (that i have no intent of leaving) i'll give them a smile, say goodbye and shut the door.
but in this case not only were they attacking me personally,i tried repeatedly bieng ncie to them n tryign to leave, and then my parents were getting aggrivated because they were still in bed and didn't want some guy talking to me and they kept telling me to just shut the door.
(i don't blame them, the guy was kinda creepy)
for future reference, thouhg, i will start using more of your ideas. they are very cool... and that quote is very true.
^.^
~§~ Heather ~§~
7/30/2006 12:34 AM
Yeah, I think you may be right about the 90% of the time thing, GG. What's sad to me is that when I bring up significant issues (or at least *I* think they're significant), all the missionaries or JW's stop coming back. Like with the most recent JW's, I brought up Romans 10:8-13 and explained what was written in the Greek and how it shows that Jesus is the same God of the Old Testament, and they didn't have any rebuttal (meaning "opposing response") and didn't want to meet anymore. Perhaps I'll write an entry about this Romans passage a bit later and any of you can use it for any future JW's or Mormons in the future if you'd like.
8/09/2006 9:38 PM
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