When I doubted the authority of those who told me the old, old story I doubted the authority of the old, old story.   It dawned on me they didn't know anything I didn't know, and I didn't know anything.  Still don't know anything.

I don’t know what happens after death but I know the same thing happens to all of us. That I do know in what I just said I don’t know or even have a clue about but I know that. 🤔 as she talked the whole time about how things people  didn’t make sense  and then we get this 🤨

The deeper you get into a religion, the further you get from the creator.

As an African-American we have a long-standing history of the Christian faith  ( Also  of course Islamic and indigenous tribal religions in Africa) my grandfather was a deacon in the church on my  on my father's side of the family.
On my mother's side of the family they were devout Southern Baptist (significant number of people today in my family still are) meaning that they went to church virtually every single day and also my grandmother used to invite the Reverend for Sunday dinners almost religiously (no pun intended) even though my mother on on my mother's side of the family was not Church going herself she never forced me to go to the church and I remained essentially an agnostic.
That made me a Target towards other members of my family who believed in the fire and brimstone type of so-called Christianity and that  unfortunate aspect a being a Target towards them create a huge wedge issue between me and members of my own family that we no longer speak or communicate with each other.
However I am not an atheist (technically) but I do not attend church and I do not condemn those who do but I essentially have learned at use my own path to believe and higher positive power that exists in the universe❤❤❤🙏🙏🙏.
I have divorced myself from them and their so-called brand of" predatory Christianity"(Old testament type of stuff)  where are you attempt to force people into your beliefs instead of people making up their own minds in an intellectual and spiritual sort of way.

Little season makes the most sense to after years of struggling

My family tells me constantly that I will be punished. My response is you only still believe because of fear not love.

The level of Judgementalism promoted inside the Denominations of Christianity is why I started to question.

We change our minds all the time

Wish I could talk to these people. Because I have a pretty strong feeling I know something they missed.

*upon listening further, I can safely say what this woman believed was not Christianity but was a works based cult. And I'm a Oneness pentecostal. Yeah, let that sink in.

I heard Derek talked about full preterism but never understood what it was, even though I graduated from a seminary and kept studying and thanking curses here and there .
You guys are right there are some basic questions that never cross our minds because we are conditioned not to think outside the box .

Everyone is responsible for his own research. Yet having a bad theology to start with and then proving yourself that it was a bad theology thus everything is a lie and everyone else is wrong too…hmmm - a case of confirmation bias?

Derek you should do one with Christians who became Muslim. There are so many of them. And the best thing is that many of them
were not coerced or preached or evangelised.

Thanks for the very thought provoking discussion.
Interesting.

Just learning that the Torah itself is not a monolith, that it is a patchwork of myths and texts, and that it was finalized relatively late, all add to the idea that it was an evolving expression of one culture's journey to understand the divine and to create a national identity. New Testament authors were very good at cherry picking what they needed for their narrative, and Jesus evolves into an increasingly divine character over time, becoming God himself eventually through the doctrine of the Trinity, another very late arrival.

I love many individual stories and narratives from the Tanakh, and I have some favorite characters, but I also think about the proto-literary cultures. They didn't have Harry Potter. They didn't have fiction for fun, at least not as a genre. Reading was an elitist skill. Hebrew לקרוא (to read) is actually to call out. Reading was a public and performative art. The idea of documenting history and critically reviewing facts and logic was not yet discovered. Humans, like today, were very superstitious and lived by the mythologies they inherited.

And yet, for those of us who believe in God, DESPITE what major religious traditions say about such a being, finding the divine and creating a shared identity and shared values and presuppositions and responsibilities is a tremendously difficult task. Going it alone is pretty easy. Creating community is hard. Mythology helps tremendously in building a shared identity and creating communal cooperation.

Salvation in the NT comes through believing that Jesus was sacrificed on the cross and His resurrection.

Спасибо

What ever you say women, I believe in the son of God Jesus. You might say to me you are  dam or fool,but I rather be fool and believe in God and die as you say we all do , but we will find out after. You still have time to pry and ask for his forgiveness.

I'll tell you a little story how powerful awareness & presence is. I live next to a diagnosed Violently Insane pathological lair who has attacked a 93 yr old Lady and other elderly residents & he uses weapons. The Victorian government are putting Lunatics back into the community & its to save MONEY. They are not charging these people unless they seriously hurt or kill someone & its reported on. He ran up to me & said he was going to kill me. I put my hands behind my back & he hit me as hard as he could with a heavy metal rod. It bent to the shape of my head but l had no cut, no blood just a distant buzz somewhere behind me. I knew the blow was coming & put my mind in the sky in Presence. That is the power of Presence Awareness. I'm 66 this yr & with Wisdom, age lve always known something is missing & like most didn't know what or why I was having this feeling. Its the child in us when we were connected to everything, sat, walked & looked in awareness. Little ones sit with ease and when looking at a book that tuck their chins down, when walking they waddle ♥️😂 because they are using their hips. If we did these things we wouldn't have the issues with our backs and necks. We are all Devine and are little units of this IMMUTABLE PERFECT POWER &there is NO SIN. We are lost in Thought so we are not responsible even a Hitler or Trump are lost in Thought & are FORGIVEN. A PERFECT GOD? CAN NOT MAKE IMPERFECTION OF THAT GOD? CAN NOT BE PERFECT. WE ARE ALL CHRISTOS'S & BUDDHA'S BUT THEY DID THE DEEP WORK WITHIN AS CAN WE. EVERYTHING HERE IS IMPERMANENT SO THEREFORE A ILLUSION DO YOU UNDERSTAND? ITS A PLAY OF EXPERIENCES FOR EXPERIENCE SAKE. WE ARE BORN A CHRIST OR BUDDHA BUT DUALITY TAKES AWARENESS FROM US USING THIS BODIES SENSATIONS & THOUGHTS. COME HOME TO THE PRESENT MOMENT WHEN STUCK. KEEP COMING BACK TO PRESENCE NOT ALL DAY JUST WHEN THINKING UNCONTROLLABLY. THATS IT & THE MORE YOUR MINDFUL THE LESS YOU GET STUCK. l journal on YouTube as l get myself back to the Present when I do, not preaching just dropping thoughts ♥️♥️♥️👍🦘💙

There’s a lot of things that I agree with you on here, and I have a similar background, so I know exactly the direction you’re coming from.
Hope is an extremely powerful motivator for people to live life to its fullest.
If you strip away all of the biblical teaching about creation, and the purpose of man to glorify his creator, it creates a different problem.
Why should I above my neighbor, and what exactly is the definition of anyways? If the Bible isn’t written for me, and there are no answers to life‘s fundamental questions, then we have to start addressing things like assisted euthanasia, or even genocide for the greater good. How can society establish reasonable guidelines for what is accepted as moral?
I’m not fully willing to abandon Christianity until I can find some kind of solid ground that creates a moral compass for humanity.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

My life is quite trying and taxing. I am 65 years old and have no dwelling place