Separate and appart from that, Within that secularist group, I had this to say. Please warn me if I said anything heretical
I was planning to write about marriage, but this issue came up while I was talking to Gavin Robinson. There’s been a tantamount of Misinformation and that’s lead to the break down of quite a
few things. Personally, I blame the protestant reformation. The heretics took one book and made it into something it’s not. This lead to much disunity in the Christian community, leading to all
sorts of bad stuff including twisted views of God. My Goal here is to bring understanding, So I’ll try my best to clear up a few things.
As a book, the bible doesn’t teach; it cannot teach; PEOPLE teach. The bible is NOT a scientific treatise, or is it an exhaustive list of christian doctrine. It was written to tell us Who God is, what he created and why, and what he expects from us. Basically, a starting point in getting to know him. It’s a rather complex book that would take years & years of study to truly get what the writers were saying, that it would be much easier to use the other simpler literature that was written over the last 1300 years. It’s is not the Be all or End all of christianity, just one part of a 3 legged stool the church uses to teach its people.
But if not the bible, where does Christian Doctrine come from? All christian Doctrine (read the first principles) were taught by Jesus. The apostles (his 1st students) then began developing on those first principles as their understanding grew, and so on and so on with their students and students’ students. The doctrines do not change, we just grow more in understanding. Thus, when a new modern day issue come up that wasn’t addressed, the bishops go back to 1st principles to address it, if they care to that is. The primary goal of the church(as an accident of us being devoted to God) is to develop in you a conscience using these first principles. Once your formed in this, and are still willing to learn, you can decide for your self almost anything, provided you don’t violate those first principles. That’s right, you are free to disagree with the church(Bishops and Priests disagree with each other all time, even with the pope), because that’s how conversations work! We learn from each other from our differing view points. All that’s important is that all parties respect those 1st principles, and if necessary submit their pride and will to them out of obedience. What I mean is, think of gravity. You and I may discuss ways to circumvent gravity. I may say we can use a form of Thrust, while you may propose a way to nullify the effect all together. We may disagree with our ideas, but we both agree that we are both subject to the force of gravity.
Devotion to God aside, at the end of the day, you use your own conscience to aid you in making your own choices, wether or not they are for the better or worse for yourself or mankind. We’re not drones. To say further, we Devote ourselves to God not because he demands us to, or because it is the right thing to do. We do because we chose to love him, and why we love him depends on the
person and their own relationship with him.
Hope this helps.
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