I am not religious except maybe that I believe we should do unto others. You know, treat people the way we want to be treated. We should not kill people for no good reason. Common since stuff like that. Be a good person and good things will come. I never blog about religion because the topic is too controversial but I really want to now. OK so my oldest said he went to some kind of bible thing yesterday morning at school. He gets to be late for class when he goes. Comes with living in the Bible Belt. Anyway, he comes home and tells me this guy told him that if you worry, it's a sin. The example he gave was like if you worry about your bills or your grades, it's a sin. He said you are supposed to let god take care of those things. Seriously? So I looked it up and sure enough In the book of Matthew Chapter 6 Verses 25-34, It said worrying is a sin.
Matthew Chapter 6
25 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
I agree that life is about more than eating and drinking but really? We are supposed to not worry about how we'll feed ourselves or it's a sin? 2626 Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?
Um, I always thought they flew around and found food for themselves. Now maybe I'm wrong. Maybe God comes down and hand feeds every bird in the world and we just don't know it. 2727 Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?
Sure. You worry that you might have a car accident so you wear your seat belt and it saves your life. Just one example, I can come up with tons. 2828 Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin.
I would consider photosynthesis (a process used by plants and other organisms to convert the light energy captured from the sun into chemical energy that can be used for fuel .) a good deal of work. But then again, When the bible was written, They did not know how plants fed themselves. In my mind a God any God would KNOW and therefore tell Matthew.
2929 But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.
What? Duh! They are flowers humans don't have the same equipment to be clothed like one of them and what do you think Solomon's clothes makers used as dye? Um, flowers and other plants they could grind up to make colors. So technically I guess the flowers helped clothe him so wouldn't Solomon have been clothed like one of them? 3030 If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?
Grass has no clothes. It's Grass.... And if god is saying that we should all be naked then maybe he should do away with all the perverts. Just sayin. 3131 So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’
So I guess we are supposed to sit on our asses and wait for God to feed us while we slowly starve to death. 3232 All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
Seriously? A dig at Pagans. Now we get to the heart of the matter. So Matthew is saying that Pagans are greedy because they seek to take care of themselves. God helps those who help themselves. Something my great great grandmother used to tell me. I don't think she was a pagan. I think she was evangelist.
Fact: Pagan did not originally mean a religious group.
- The more common meaning of classical Latin pāgānus is "civilian, non-militant" (adjective and noun). Christians called themselves mīlitēs, "enrolled soldiers" of Christ, members of his militant church, and applied to non-Christians the term applied by soldiers to all who were "not enrolled in the army".
- The sense "heathen" arose from an interpretation of paganus as denoting a person who was outside a particular group or community, hence "not of the city" or "rural"; cf. Orosius Histories 1. Prol. "ui alieni a civitate dei..pagani vocantur." See C. Mohrmann, Vigiliae Christianae 6 (1952) 9ff.
- —Oxford English Dictionary, (online) 2nd Edition (1989)
- While pagan is attested in English from the 14th century, there is no evidence that the term paganism was in use in English before the 17th century. The OED instances Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776): "The divisions of Christianity suspended the ruin of Paganism." The term was not a neologism, however, aspaganismus was already used by Augustine.[10]Less than twenty years after the last vestiges of Paganism were crushed with great severity by the emperor Theodosius I[11] Rome was seized by Alaric in 410. This led to murmuring that the gods of Paganism had taken greater care of the city than that of the Christian God, inspiring St Augustine to write The City of God, alternative title "De Civitate Dei contra Paganos: The City of God against the Pagans", in which he claimed that whilst the great 'city of Man' had fallen, Christians were ultimately citizens of the 'city of God.'[12]So he made up lies to appease the new Christians after the city was taken and they began to worry they had made the wrong choice in blindly following? That's what it seems like to me.
I call bullshit! Been there done that. Was a good little christian girl (my great great Grandfather founded a church and the first Christian Service Center in the state of Florida) and God did nothing when I was beaten, abused and tortured my entire childhood. I went to bed hungry and so glad that I would get two meals a day at school at least. Is that what he means? Starve when your home but don't worry you wont die from it cause you will get breakfast in the morning? Did he hear the nightly prayers of an avout, faithful eight year old? Did he hear me when I taught Sunday school and praised his name to all the children from the time I was 13 until I was 19. ( Grandfather founded the church) NO. So therefor Bullshit. It took me till I was 24 to stop praying every night. I prayed every freaking night. I raised my brother and sister, I helped others and still do. I feed the homeless because I guess they aren't worthy of GOD feeding them. I can't even pay my mortgage right now and I still bring the homeless food every day. I am a good person. I have met Christians with less love in their heart than I have and my prayers where never good enough for God. 3434 Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.
So, because I can't currently pay my Mortgage I should just sit on my ass and wait for god to do it? Does Wells Fargo know about this? Cause they don't seem to care. And before anyone says anything about you have to work, in Verse 28, it says: Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin.
This is why I can't follow religion any more. To many inconsistencies It seems like someone picked through all the old histories and translated only what would suit their purposes.
And I have questions about the Ten Commandments.
They escape egypt and go into the desert. Moses goes to the mountain ... spends 40 days/nights having a heart to heart with god. God gives him the tablets. While moses is up there talking to god. The children of israel get restless. ( Probably because he was gone for over a month!) They take up a collection and melt it down into a golden idol.
A Stiff-Necked People (Exodus 32:7, 9)
Up on the mountain, God tells Moses what is going on with the people.
"Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt…. They are a stiff-necked people." (Exodus 32:7, 9)
Stiff-necked" is a reference to a mule or ox which would resist the lead rope and refuse to let its master lead it. Instead it would stiffen its neck against the reins. Wow. That does not sound like free will to me.
Moses comes down the mountain. See's them worshiping the golden cowgod. Throws a hissy fit of biblical proportions ... throws the sacred tablets ... THAT GOD ... THE GOD ... just gave him on the ground and breaks them.
Then despite that GOD, lol ... THE GOD ... just told him, "Thou shall not kill" ... He orders the children of israel to start killing each other. Which they are gullible enough to do. Supposedly slaying over 3,000 people.
Exodus 32
"27 Then he said to them, 'This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: "Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor."'
28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died."
I am not a witch but this part has always confused me. Where it says "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
Deuteronomy 18:10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft,
Deuteronomy 18:11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.
1 Samuel 28:3 Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in his own town of Ramah. Saul had expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land.
Jeremiah 27:9 So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your interpreters of dreams, your mediums or your sorcerers who tell you, 'You will not serve the king of Babylon.'
Leviticus 20:6 "'I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.
I thought magic was not real? Sounds like it was to me. He had to keep saying it over and over? Four books in the Bible mention this. It sounds like he really didn't want to compete for power over us with anyone else.
Commandment 2: The Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Bam! Right there he said he is a jealous God. He admitted it. He does not like to compete for power. Sounds a bit like Fidel Castro to me. Not only that, He said: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Am I crazy or did God just admit that he is not the only god? I know I'm way into Greek mythology but Above in Heaven, Below the earth, in the water. I know of three Greek gods that are supposed to rule those three domains. I have never said I don't believe in God, Just that he's a spoiled brat.
And the whole killing a witch thing: Commandment 6: The Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill.
Pretty cut and dry right?
Leviticus 20:27 "'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.'"
Wait. What? Did he just tell us to kill people? I thought we were not supposed to do that? Inconsistent!
And I know I'm getting off the Worrying topic but I had to discuss some of the stupid things out there.
Commandment 10: The Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
One, That's just stupid. You see your neighbor has a great boat and you want it, you are going to work harder to get it. MOTIVATION PEOPLE! And then they mention a Manservant and maidservant. Did they have those when Moses was alive? I mean, I know they had slaves and such so should it not be thou shalt not covet thy neighbors slave? There is a difference Maidservants and man servants got paid. They got paid crap but the got paid. Slaves are not paid.
I understand that tons of you are very religious and can explain away these things but I cannot. If you tell us one thing and then turn around and tell us another thing, how are we supposed to know which is actually correct. I think The Bible Writers really needed an editor to re read and make sure there were no contradictions About a year ago I found my childhood bible in storage at my mom's house. I left it there. Don't need it. But I did flip through it. I noticed there were several verses highlighted and then see PG so and so Verse so and so. When I looked, I saw that even at eight, I was picking out inconsistencies So I guess according to what Christians believe even thought I was devout, The fact that I questioned meant that God would not help. Well let me tell you this. By the time I started doing this, I'd been though things most women only have nightmares about. So even at eight, I'd had plenty of years when I did not question where God could have shown some compassion and answered the prayers of a child who so desperately believed that God would set her free. He never did help me. I continued to be devout until I was 24. I remember the last thing I said to him. "Thanks for nothing, Asshole." I feel better now. I know that life sucks and there is no one to save you but yourself. I get that many of you will no agree and may be temped to leave nasty comments. Remember what your God has commanded:
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