Over the years I have tried to define my faith and perspective many ways , none seem complete when I compare myself to others .
At one time I was an agnostic with theistic tendency.
At one time I called myself a Zen jesusian toaist because of the offensive (percieved)behaviours of some of my fellow christians .
I bit on the bait of intelligent design at one time , until research into it left me highly doubtful.
At one time I called myself non denominational because I am a heretic to my family’s traditional definitions of Pentecostal.
After about 8 yrs of digging and testing and correcting , searching myself ( by far the hardest ) ,
I came to the conclusion , that I don’t really fit anywhere , and that in itself was somewhat painful .
In the end , I decided it was up to me to find my own definition .
I am a Pentecostal apostolic theistic evolutionist , and that is the short version .
I am a Protestant Christian who tends to believe in Intelligent Design and Progressive Creationism. There are two kinds of Progressive Creationists that I know of. There are those like Hugh Ross that only accept microevolution in biology and in the rest of the paradigm accept the Big Bang and other things that go on in the cosmos. They believe that God took a very active role in creation. Then there is Progressive Creation with Common Descent. It is nearly Theistic Evolution. What differences exist between them, I am not sure. I would say I am more like Hugh Ross. Do I have anything against Conservative Theistic Evolutionists? The answer to that question would be no. God bless. I must admit that there are many differences between the world one million years ago and today.
Despite the bad press the name gets, I prefer to call myself a Christian. I don’t like to identify as a particular kind of Christian, taking my cues from 1 Cor 1:10-17. I’m not trying to be coy. Jesus prayed for us to be one so that the world would know that the Father sent him, so unity was pretty important to him.
Also, in an increasingly secular culture, I feel that more unites us as Christians — even among fairly diverse brothers and sisters in Christ (Catholic, Orthodox, Pentecostal, neo-Reformed, Anabaptist, Episcopal, Methodist, and so on) — than separates us, particularly if we put Jesus as King and his teachings at the center of our faith.
Lately it seems that the biggest thing trying to divide the church, in America at least, is the non-Christian labels “conservative” and “progressive” or “liberal.” Although I sometimes slip into using these terms to modify the noun “Christian,” I think this is actually a sad case of the World colonizing the Church, and imho we should resist that as often as possible. Christ is not divided.
I’m also a fairly private person, and when I’m with other Christians, I tend to feel that the authors I read are not particularly any of their business, unless they show themselves to be relatively safe, in which case I might divulge some of these things. Until such time, my goal is to worship with them, listen, serve with whatever gifts God has given me, love and edify — i.e., obey as many of those “one another” commands as I’m able (which is never nearly as many as I should). As the ad slogan goes, “the rest is just details.”
Thank you for your answer , I like it too .
Although If I were more precise , I would add to mine , theistic abiogenesist,theistic big bangist , etc etc …
But 2 or 3 paragraphs seems a little heavy handed …lol
Christian first (“Jesus is Lord!”) and Lutheran, second. I believe that the unaltered Augsburg Confession agrees with the scriptures, scriptures and New Testament canon properly understood.
Christian. (orthodox with a small “o” ) When C.S. Lewis was asked what he believes, he said that it was in the Book of Common Prayer. That about sums it up!
I must say , I am thrilled to see the variation of faiths on this site all attempting to share thoughts and perspectives , and with a general feel of civility.
Absolutely wonderful.
Tanakh follower/Second Temple Jew. I only follow the Tanakh, I have no time for the Mishnah/Talmud/Chaggadah etc. Maybe I’m not Jewish since I reject about 2 millennia worth of Jewish theology. I’m not ethnically Jewish either. Evolutionary Creationist. Monolatrist, not monotheist. I believe God let other, lesser gods have dominion over nations other than Israel (Deut 32:8-9), though they later became lax in their duties and were punished (Psalm 82:1-6). I also believe God has a divine regent, the Son of Man, ruling over the earth, whom I believe is probably Enoch or Elijah, not the Messiah, since they were humans taken into heaven. Possibly open to Quasi-Trinitarian views, since the spirit of God is grammatically female in Genesis 1:2, whilst God in verse 1 is grammatically male. The alternative is that God is both genders (though I find it hard to give gender to a spirit being), or that the spirit (Lady Wisdom?) is a separate entity, all are good possibilities.
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