Assume for me please that what the Bible says in this example is true, that God is Love.  Ignore any possible extention that some crack-pot with an agenda might hang on it, and olny consider that one point.\n\nWould the world be such a bad place if everyone believed this point, and lived as though it were in fact fundamental to salvation?
135601
God is love. Yes. Good point. I'll accept that.
578202
Truth is true whether we understand it or believe it. You said yourself, something is true or it isn't. It can't be both. People are fallible. Nobody has perfect understanding. All we can do is share what we believe to the best we understand it. God communicates through imperfect people, through nature, through the Bible. He will be found if you look for Him. But there is still some mystery to it. It requires faith, not every question has an easy answer
74155
Along with other portions of Genesis, this is why the ultra conservative literal believers are so mistaken. The Bible is the Word of God, written by man and divinely inspired. Is it 100% word for word true? yeah right! The insistance on literal, the world was created in 6 days, belief of every word is just silly. Do you really think God would be so self-limited. A much bigger concept.\n\nI don't believe people have the least clue as to the answer to your question. My analogy for heaven is a movie house. When I get there God is going to roll the film and I'll understand it all then.\n\nAs a Christian, I believe the Bible to be a tool for contemplation and spiritual support. I believe it's historical information presented to glorify God and teach people about a broad, diverse and complex being/force/spirit/whatever. \n\nI believe that when Jesus said no one knows God except through me the meaning was clearly not about his physical person. I believe Jesus goes by Mohammed and Buddha and Krishna and Gaea in other religions.
292718
True. You have a lot more common sense than most "Christians."  I do acknowledge God and sure enough, there are a lot of preachers who teach that their sanctuary is a holy place.  Rubbish!\n\nI am the church.  God lives in me, not in some building.  The body of Christ is composed of people, not religious institutions or pointy-topped architechture.\n\nCongratulations on your insight.  If I relied upon the information that preachers provided, I'd probably be an atheist too.  For example:\n\nHow is a person saved?  Can you be un-saved?  What would cause you to lose your salvation?  If you were to lose your salvation, could you ever be saved again?  Do you have any choice concerning your salvation (i.e., did God choose to love and save some and choose to hate and damn others?) If you are saved, will you speak in tongues?  \n\nPreachers teach pro and con on every aspect of religion listed above.  This is just the basic concept of Christianity and they cannot figure out numero uno - salvation.\n\nThe worst place for anyone to be is in a "church."  If you have any hope of redemption, it resides within your own willingness to seek out, learn and discover truth, apart from all of the religious false teachers.\n\nAbraham's belief was counted unto him as righteousness.\n\nYours is too.\n\nJohnny
273870
Unconditional Love is of God, and can only be given by God.\n\n...But, Yes, I would to be able to Love as God does, instead of this tendency to be human.
373644
I've never heard anyone blame God for anything.\n\nI think the general rule of thumb is that we (the opposition) generally wonder why, if God is all-loving, AND all-powerful, AND all-merciful, AND all-compassionate,etc... does he not step in to STOP (or at least intervene in) the 'destruction and unexplained deaths'. \n\nThere is no answer for that. The whole claim is perposterous!\nI think if anything good did happen - we would jump up and down looking for the 'God' behind it. But so far.... the well has been found to be dry and wanting.
91846
Just so you know where I stand. I asked a question of whether or not all the Bible should be taken literally or not. The best answer chosen was a good one.\n\nhttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ales.wK5IftnZfqP3dD5hbHsy6IX?qid=1006012504879\n\nWhen Jesus said regarding the bread and the wine, "this is my body and this is my blood of the New Covenant", He was not speaking literally. When the Bible says that the blood of Jesus washes away sin, we do not go off to mount Calvary and look for spots of blood to wash our sins away. Jesus said, "I am the door, whoever enters by any other way is a theif." The disciples did not turn to Jesus and see a large board with hinges and a knob. Jesus was saying there is a single way to heaven, and He is the Way.\nQuite a bit of the Bible is spoken in allegorical and metaphoic language. Jesus said that He was the Light of the world, the Good Shepherd, Living Water, the Bread of Life, and more. He came as the Lamb of God. He will return as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. All of which is true, but all spoken in a metaphoric language.\n\nWrath, I have not run in to any Christians who believe the Bible is 100% literal. However, there are many areas of the Bible that ARE literal and many are trying to change the statement because it is not politically correct, or they have an agenda or they find it personally offensive.\n\nCase in point:\nRobert Anderson worked for Scotland Yard during the Victorian era. He was the main investigator for finding Jack the Ripper. He took the prophecy in Daniel and was able to calculate the coming of the Messiah to the DAY. This is in the his book "The Coming Prince". He started this project based on taking the prophecy as being literal. He was rewarded for this effort with knighthood from Queen Victoria and became Sir Robert Anderson. However, in this same book, he notes the prophecies about Israel being gathered together and becoming a nation once more. Seeing how this has never happened in history, he dismissed the literal meaning as pure fantasy. In May 14th 1948, this brilliant man was proven wrong. The idea that the Jews would return to the land and make it Israel was so preposterous that this brilliant man equated it to being metaphorical--the literal interpretation was too hard to believe. So we could easily make a mistake by either way.\n__________________________\n\nBTW-This topic reminds me of a very good movie called "Lady Jane". One of the main focuses was the rise of the Protestant movement against the Roman Catholic church--especially in regard to transubstantiation. The Roman Catholics took the sacraments as being literally the body and blood of Christ, while the Protestants kept arguing that it was metaphorical. Check it out sometime!
590181
It's about as true as you too can have partiality from an impartial God, which is a lie since "there is no respect of persons with God", also an oxyMORON with a BAD ending, kinda like Gen 2: 16 -vs- 17 is an oxyMORON with a BAD ending.\n\nTry re-reading the biblical story of Noah, and notice clever Noah did both: "all God commanded" and "all the LORD commanded", and that God and LORD are as "contrary" as 2 and 7; Not to mention "God" never saw both clean and unclean (good and evil), only good. Not to mention "God" is "merciful", not destructive; And merciful to all, not to some only.\n\nTry and get your head around the biblically stated fact such law/grace "things" are an "allegory" in both "covenants": Gal 4, and also a "mystery" to solve in time; so not to be taken literal. \n\nScriptures were written aforetime for our learning: Romans 15:4. But it's NOT plural & contrary "scriptures" that are "inspiried of God"; rather only the singular "script-u-are" of such plural and contrary scriptures that's God inspired: 1Tim 3:16.\n\nAnd consider where doing both all grace and all law got Noah, it got him inducted into the hall of shame of Heb 11, where it flat out notes "these all died" and "received not the promise". For receiving the promise notably comes "after" doing the will of God, which is "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice(slaughter)"; which is given as a go figure (go and learn what it allegorically meaneth) in Mt 9:13; which is to allegory say grace and not law, which is to say truth and not lie.  And the "not" part of what God will and will not have, is notably not then, not now, not ever. For the will of God is the same in both OT & NT: Ps 40:6; Ps 51:16; Hos 6:6; Mt 9:13; Mt 12:7; Heb 10:all. And the end that God declared from the beginning is already written as the end we're to endure unto to be saved(only) by grace(only); since those who mixed rather than comparing spiritual things (law/grace), notably got both saved and destroyed after by their grace and law: Jude 5.\n\nThe "grace" of our Lord Jesus Christ with you all. Amen.
496933
Hello jc. .:)\n\nFor God So Loved the World..That He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, shall not perish, but have Everlasting Life..Amen!!\n\nOur Creator Loved the world He created..He Loved us so much, He had to watch His only Son Jesus die on a cross, while we were yet sinner.. :(\n\nThose that do not trust that Jesus is the Son of God, they will not be with our Lord for eternity, but will perish.. :(\n\nIf we just believe and Trust the Lord our God with all of our hearts, we will have Everlasting Life with Him..for eternity.. :)\n\nIn Jesus Most Precious Name..\nWith Love..In Christ.. :)
570246
It's necessary to look at everything that the Bible says on a matter, and not just a single verse.\n\nFor example, the Bible says that we are saved by faith (Romans 5:1).  Some people jump on that and say that we are saved by faith only.\n\nOthers look at Ephesians 2:5, which says that we are saved by grace, and they want to say that we are saved by grace only.  They say that we don't have faith to be saved; we have faith because we are saved already.\n\n1Peter 3:21 says that we are saved by baptism.\n\nDo these verses contradict each other?  Not at all.  We need to put them together.  We are saved by grace, because God chose, by His grace, to give us a means by which we could be saved.  We are saved by faith when we choose to obey Him by being baptized to wash away our sins (Acts 22:16).\n\nThe Bible harmonizes perfectly (despite the rantings of certain people answering these questions).  It is up to use to read everything that is said on the matter and put it together.
407079
What you say is absolutely true, but we have to be careful in understanding it the right way.\n\nSome people think that it means that if you accept the plastic Jesus of Protestant fundamentalism you are in, and if you reject Him you are out.\n\n\nOne is saved if he or she has the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity in the soul at death.\n\nThis is a participation, by the soul, of the supernatural life of God, merited by Jesus' Life, Passion, and Resurrection (it is assumed that spirits, ghosts, angels, demons, and human souls are supernatural beings. They are not. God is the only supernatural being, and He shares His supernatural nature with us as a free gift if we are open to that).\n\n\nNow this life of God, or sanctifying grace, is an infinitely transcendent reality beyond all that we can understand or feel in this life (so union with God cannot be gauged by emotional gushing).\n\nIt is reached through a process of analogy, in loving the reflections of God, in the good, the true, and the beautiful, wherever they exist (against selfishness). This brings us to a love of God directly, for His own sake, which is divine charity in the soul.\n\nParticularly, we have to love neighbor - willing his or her good unselfishly. For as the Apostle John verifies, if we don't have that, we do not love God (1 John 4:20).\n\n\n\n\n\n---
299234
It is obvious to me that the evil in the world does not come from following the teachings in the Bible, but come from ignoring those teachings.  If people loved one another, treated one another as they would like to be be treated, were kind and helpful and did not take advantage of one another, the world would be a wonderful place.  That is the Bible teaching.  Where the people live the commandments of God there is peace and harmony.  This is the God I believe in, love, and will follow.  Satan is the one who spreads dissent, hate, discord, war, and suffering.  Satan wants you to not believe in the Bible.  There is no doubt in my mind who the good guy is, and who is the evil one.
640309
Nah. The single rule to be good to others isn't specific enough because one person might consider something to be good while another doesn't, such as abortion. Even if everyone had the same understanding of what is good and what isn't, it still makes more sense to assume god doesn't exist.
20041
You know, YOU take the Bible more literally than we ""Bible-thumpers"" do! You here, not us, seem to be claiming that every single verse in the Bible MUST be taken literally, and we believe that, yes, there really are verses that are meant only to be taken as allegory. Did Gd actually ""walk"" in the Garden of Eden? YOU seem to say that this, too, must be taken literally, and not us!\n\nSo, it is possible, FOR US, to ""Believe in"" the Bible without taking Every Single verse literally, although you seem to say this verse must be taken literally for us to believe in it....
290515
Yes, we are always suppose to love people.That is JESUS law. But we DONT HAVE TO AGREE with what they do. GOD said it was an abomination to him . So if we be with the world and agree with them and dont tell them they are wrong then we are wrong.
166321
This is one of the realizations that I came upon after studying what I believe, and not what I was taught to believe. I'm 18 years old, and I have (as of a year ago) quit the Roman Catholic religion. I no longer believe in any religion because religion is just a set of beliefs that have changed over time. Throughout the thousands of years that man has existed, can someone actually say that every sin has not been committed? By this, I mean that if every sin has been committed, then the bible has been changed (because that is a sin). For every letter of the bible that is changed, one month of a person's portion of food will be taken away from them in heaven (food being the Tree of Life's fruit). It is absurd to follow a belief system that is outdated, sexist, prejudiced, close-minded, and just plain fallible. The Bible was "inspired" by God, not written. And since then, there have been many changes/compromises. I am thankful to say that I worship God without a religion to restrain me. Ethics, morals, and faith are my guiding stars. I can only hope that more people realize what I have realized.
520238
The verses you quoted are just one of many contridictions the Bible contains.  The most blatant one is the one that claims the Bible is the literal word of God.  If so, the Bible could not say anything which could even be the least bit ambiguous.  This of course accepts the premise that God is perfect.  Either God is imperfect, or the Bible is not God's\n literal word.