Originally posted by Aza:
I'm new here,Hi Aza & welcome to the forum. Please ensure that you have read all the rules & guidelines, etc ~ thanks!
Hope you will enjoy all our discussions. We have all sorts of beliefs & opinions on this board, so some very interesting debates can occur.
I do believe that FAITH is what you percieve it to be.Yes, it is a personal thing.
I have always believed that everyone's faith is valid. I am a Christian, but I don't pretend to be right. I don't know what is right for the world, but I know what is right for me. I respect the religions of others as long that is what they truly believe.That seems very reasonable & fair!
I find it very sad that murder and genocide has and still does occur by belief. But it always has - in every religion.Sad but true.
I strive for what I can do today and what I can teach my children to focus their goals on harmony.If we all respected each other's beliefs and tried for a harmonious world, you never know, we might even get one!
I know that sounds naive, but I hold on to my Dad's philosophy when I asked him about heaven:
"If I live believing in God's kingdom and die finding nothing. I have lived walking in truth and with hope. If I believe in nothing in life, death doesn't matter, I have lived for nothing". I like the first bit ~ I think that I'm an optimist and it sounds very positive to live with truth and hope.
I would take issue, though, with the assumption that to live
walking in truth and with hope one needs to
live believing in God's kingdom and that the alternative is to
have lived for nothing.
I am an agnostic. I find it hard to believe that Jesus was God incarnate. I'm not yet fully convinced that he even existed. I'm not saying that he didn't and he wasn't, just that I consider this unlikely.
I'm not yet convinced of the existence of God, either, and if God does exist, I think that it would be a concept way above anything we could understand and not as described in the Bible.
But I live in truth and hope and optimism. My life is full of joys and positivity.
I'm not trying to be critical ~ just to show another viewpoint ~ and introduce you to the sort of discussions that happen here.
Now to the thread questions, what do you think, Aza?
Can God Be Wrong?
Can God Do Wrong?
As I said, I find it hard to believe that 'God' is as described in the Bible, because the 'God' described there seems to behave very badly quite often.
What do you think?