[ CNN ] Shout-Out to WrongPlanet?

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Maybe, maybe not ...

"Mr. Spock Goes to Church"

Please read the entire article, and see if it seems familiar to you ...

I read that article earlier today. Thankfully, as I belong to a mainline Protestant denomination (Lutheran), I was never made to believe I wasn't in God's grace because I didn't have some sort born again experience or speak in tongues. If anything, my particular church body is pretty reserved and intellectual.

WOW!! !! !

I grew up American Baptist, Independent Fundamental Baptist, and/or Church of Christ.

That rings absolutely and 100% true.

I was always Hellbound and bad. I don't know what would have happened to me if my grandmother hadn't had the experience of being rejected by the Catholic Church, if my other grandmother hadn't left the Church of Christ and become a lapsed Methodist with Jesus's heart for children, if my father hadn't been a Bible-reading Deist.

As it was, I was convinced I was a child of the Devil. I came extremely close to joining a ritual-abuse cult, because I was full of hate and hurt and I figured that was about what I was good for.

Thankfully, God showed up just in time to tell me that I shouldn't do that, that I was in fact wanted and loved even if I couldn't fit in at church.

I'm going to listen to this guy's show. Maybe it will give me some guidance. I'd like to go to church and have a way to talk to Christians, but I've had so many bad experiences that I'm afraid to try.

If you think about it this way I can sum these two commandments even further into one. This commandment is "Obey God." This is the zeroth commandment of the bible.

The whole theme of the bible is how the first man and woman disobeyed God, mankind was disobedient to God throughout the biblical ages and how God could not be around sin which is really disobedience to God. Jesus Christ who is man, son of God and God came down as an intermediary between fallen man and Perfect God.

God has three parts to him: The father, The Son and The holy spirit. The father can't be around sin whatsoever but the son is able to do so. Because of our fallen nature none of us can obey God 100% of the time for 100% of our entire lives. This is where Jesus comes into play.

But the heart of Christianity isn't obedience, but love, trust, and faith. This comes to us through God, and we reciprocate God's love by loving our neighbor - especially the most needy and despised. Obedience follows, but is not the cause of attaining grace by any stretch of the imagination.

I get it.

When I got "saved" it was a transformative time. Things did change for me, but I was always an oddball who never really seemed to "fit in." As I was in a place in life where I understood that men were flawed, and as such, churches could have flaws, I learned to try and distance the fallibility of men from the truth of God.

Still, I've always felt "left behind" by the whole Christian life deal. I can see God's hand in my life. Certainly God has opened doors and made a way for me to be sustained...even profit in some way, but I always feel like I'm missing out on something important.

We are told how God can take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh. I'm still waiting for that to happen. I don't have a boundless reserve of compassion and love for others...even though I don't really "hate" anyone in particular. I'm "indifferent" because I feel nothing.

The problem is that as one person said, the opposite of love isn't hate. When you hate, you still care about someone/something. Indifference is not caring at all.

For the Jew, the temple is supposed to be the center of their spiritual, social and political life. The same should be true with Christians, but when you are not in a position to attend every church function (distance from the church, schedule conflicts, etc.), you don't get enough contact to MAYBE make one or two close associations in the congregation to motivate you to attend all the time.

When I first got saved, I had the person who lead me to the church who I would attend hoping to meet up with him. In time, he moved on...then later died. Nobody really took his place. I went to school and was away for a good time. I moved to another state and had a great relationship with my new pastor and his family because we could connect. I've never had that since. My current pastor is a nice person...everyone in the church is nice, but I'd not really want to spend a lot of time with any of them.

I don't feel a church is supposed to be a social club, but there is that element to the church body, and it does play an important role. No connection = no sense of "community."

How does someone with AS deal with that other than ask God to lead you to a fellowship where you can make more effective connections with others?

Kraichgauer, I do not follow your line of reasoning. Maybe I am wrong in my logical thinking but when I read the bible, listen to all of the stories, and listening to all of sermons my pastor and others have given there is a common idea and theme amongst all of them which makes a zeroth law like The Three Laws of Robotics by Issac Asimov. The things you state like love, trust, and have faith are the things we are supposed to do.

My wife ended up in a debate with a seventh day Adventist. He believes that the seventh day is Saturday instead of Sunday. He is evangelizing this. This guy says he was given the vision of this by God. The thing is I do not know if it is true or not but if it is and if he did indeed receive this vision by God then he is supposed to worship on Saturday. If others were not given this vision and instead we were told to worship on Sunday than that is what we are supposed to do. If he was told to do this and evangelize by God then he is doing the right thing by God. If another person was told not to do this and worship on Sunday by God then he would be correct by refusing the other guy's evangelizing and continuing to worship on Sunday. If they are both obeying God then are both right.

The bible frowns upon sorcery and witchcraft but what if you used it to love others and to love and glorify God. For instance, what if you used sorcery and witchcraft to help a neighbor who was impoverished and gave him or her food with your sorcery and witchcraft? After that, what if you state that God did this for this person as love for this person and God deserves all of the Glory? This would produce a logical contradiction of commands by God. In on sense you showed love to your neighbor and showed love and gave glory to God but at the same time you disobeyed. How does one resolve a contradiction like this. By notating which commands and commandments receive higher precedent. Loving God and Loving others take precedent. God commanded that these have the higher precedence than all of the others and Obeying God has higher precedence than both of these. Think of it like the order of operations in math. We have

1. Parentheses-proceed from the inner to the outer.
2. Exponents
3. Multiplication/Division-whichever one of these come first
4. Addition/Subtraction-whichever one of these come first

His commandments, statues, regulations, procedures all have different levels of precedence

Order of Precedence for God's Commandments

0. Obey God
1. Love God
2. Love Others
3. The other commandments, statues, regulations, procedures.


What happened with the Pharisees was they got the order of precedence wrong. Abraham was told to sacrifice his son to God. He was about to sacrifice his own son because he obeyed God and he loved God above his own son Isaac. Number 2 had to be superseded by 0 and 1. This my thinking on it.

If the reasoning I have is faulty and erroneous then I ask you to please show me where I am in error.

Last edited by cubedemon6073 on 21 Oct 2013, 2:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Yeah, but ...

... did you read the entire article?

... do you think there was a shout-out to WrongPlanet?

... have you experienced any of the same issues as the author?

Yeah, but ...

Yes

I have no idea.

Yes, those and more.

Obeying rules isn't the heart of Christianity - Christ's death and resurrection for our salvation is. Paul said it's the spirit of the word, and not the letter that has most meaning. Christ asked the Pharisees if they would actually allow their mule to remain in a pit on the Sabbath simply because of obedience to rules. The legalism of the Pharisees of Christ's time, and the legalism of modern day fundamentalists loses touch with the message of God's love that is first and foremost.
And I wouldn't get bent out of shape about what day the Sabbath falls on, as Paul advices keeping specific days hardly counts, but setting time for God aside is more important.

What do you mean by the spirit of the word? How can one determine what the spirit is without the letter? I do not understand. You're speaking in a way I do not follow.

I'll give you an example. Throughout the Bible, prostitutes are condemned as sinners, and yet Christ always extended the hand of friendship to them rather than shunning them.
The point is, following the rule to the letter fails to make exceptions on matters of love and compassion.

Hmmm, very interesting indeed I don't see it as dichotomous as you do. By your example of what the spirit means I thought the spirt was a part of the letter of the law and they were one and the same. How do you derive it to be dichotomous?

I'm actually going by what Paul said about the letter and spirit of the law.

If what Paul is said about the Spirit is in the law and bible does it not become a part of the letter of the law?

Again, I am really confused by your reasoning because it comes across as similar to a self-referential paradox. It's like you're telling me "this sentence is false" when it is true but it is false. Is it true or is it false? I am very confused by this. How does Paul make this distinction when by logic it can't be made?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pa ... -reference

It's a matter of legalism for the sake of legalism at the expense of living, breathing people.
Then there's the matter of Law and Gospel as two separate things. As Paul said, the law shows us we are not worthy of God's love by virtue of our flawed human nature. Gospel shows us how we are saved apart from obedience to the law, but solely by Christ's sacrifice.