Yes, well, I was trying to avoid confronting the underlying issue of faith and science as it was not the prime concern. This thread is more about finding a home and sanctuary from extremists than defining the place of evolution in faith. There is enough of that elsewhere.
Christianity is very good at being dogmatic over which ever flavour of Christianity is being followed. The point here is to find a place to fit in with rather than be forced to conform to something that makes them uncomfortable. Switching from one dogma to another will not accomplish this.
It’s tough though when it is more or less coming from the pulpit and is a constant drumbeat. I would never be able to stay in a church that insisted on teaching “tithing” or the imminent pre-tribulation rapture nonsense.
Not to say that these sorts of churches don’t have their uses. But it’s definitely possible to outgrow them and move on in your own journey as the Spirit leads you.
I was just pointing out that luckily for Christians being born 60 years from now, evolution probably won’t be that big of an issue if it’s even an issue at all. I’m sure new things will arise, but I think science will be less of an issue than philosophical outlooks in the future. Or social practices. It will be more about different outlooks on life and less so about accepting basic science.
The church I go to has almost completely different views than me.
About 10% accepts evolution.
About 10% adheres to conditional immortality.
About 40% are preterist.
About 1% affirms the LGB community.
About 10% believes that fictional stories played a major role in the bigke.
About 5% believes that the Bible is not inerrant.
About 20% hold to liberal and progressive views.
About 30% thinks that horror films and celebrating Halloween is ok and not satanic.
But when it comes to how one is saved we are about 99% in agreement with each other. When it comes to cessationism it’s about 99%. When it comes to the belief that’s it’s ok to believe what I believe and it’s not an automatic one way trip to hell it’s about 95%.
@jbabraham88 You mentioned culture war. It’s often on my mind, too. While I was eating lunch I noticed the Culture Care newsletter in my email inbox. This won’t solve your problem, but maybe will be an encouragement. Makoto Fujimura is an artist, who is a Christian, and who has been thinking about, writing about and resisting culture war with his concept of culture care. I find much of his work restorative and reviving. You can find the most recent newsletter here, if you are interested. ANd you can find a great deal of admiration for him in Liam’s wonderful thread:
In my church there are three meme bees holding to three views.
Universalism.
Conditional Immortality.
Eternal Conscious Torment.
Some believe that hell is still a place that exists.
Some believes that hell has ceased.
Some believes he’ll never existed.
The only ones that believes that hades has been cast into the lake of fire already are preterist who believes it’s just symbolism. Pure symbolism.
I’m my church that’s just me and one other guy.
I don’t think anything in revelation is literal. I think it’s all symbolic. Some of the symbolism plays into the Roman Empire. Some of the symbolism plays into this revolving door of good and bad times.
I don’t think heaven or hell is a literal place. I think hell is the state of being dead and heaven is a state of belong alive. I have no idea if we are alive spiritually after we die physically. I also don’t care. It’s just not
Important to me. I don’t care if Jesus literally resurrected physically, or if he was given eternal life through the word which is always being proclaimed or if there was some sort of actual ghostly state that exists outside of this dimension.
The spiritual and supernatural aspects of Christianity is meaningless to me.
A friend shared this wonderful quote from Samuel Rutherford. I’m not sure how it would fit into your view of heaven and hell.
“O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without thee, it would be a hell; and if I could be in hell, and have thee still, it would be a heaven to me, for thou art all the heaven I want.”
There are plenty of non evangelical believers in North Texas. I attend a very “God is Love” centered church in McKinney. Perhaps it is time to seek another local congregation rather than continue to be stressed by the evangelical doctrine. Any doctrine that spends an inordinate amount of time espousing what they are against rather than sharing Gods love with others might not be right for you.
because i tire of the whinging that TEists come out with…“oh those new age corrupt YECers, they are turning us away from God”.
There is only one way people get turned away from God…because of unbelief. That is a philosophical reason, not scientific. Science has nothing to do with it.
Here is a quote from a reference that one of the moderators of this forum posted on another thread…and its absolutely correct…
“The fact we can deal with is the testimony. This issue is as brutally simple as it is brutally circumscribed: since we have no films or photographs to analyze for authenticity with the latest cutting-edge technology, all we have is the fact that thousands of testimonies exist in which human beings swore they saw another human”
What is not understood here is that the philosophical position of TEism stresses that Genesis must be allegorical. Any bible writer who makes reference to it is also wrong or confused.
That denies a few things:
That Christs genealogy is accurate (thus questioning his entire existence as God)
Destroys the idea that Christ died physically on the cross as atonement for sin (romans 6:23 the wages of sin is death)
destroys the need for Christ to even die physically for sin…the warning God gave to Adam was merely spiritual
there goes salvation out the window…christs physcial death was completely useless. (oh as is the physical Second coming…thats not happeneing)
no you ignored the philosophyical dilemma that this entire topic must face… that was what i put to you…you then changed the focus to something that suited your comfort level
addressing a critical religious issue of Christs physical death on the cross as atonement for sin…as Adam was warned about in the garden of Eden!
I will have to come back to this…ive got to go out but this is an important philosophical dilemma that Christians all face and must deal with.
← that was facetious: I love both.