Hello all. I have alot of questions and thought this would be a good place to come for answers. About 5 years ago I was a terrible sinner before I asked God to come into my life. I wanted to become a better person and somewhat acclomplished that. Since then I have unfortunately fallen away from the church. Not to the extent that I was living before but not the way I want to live either. Recently my life has hit the fast track to falling apart because of my past sins. I realize that I can't handle all of this without Jesus in my life. I have asked him for forgiveness and to once again come into my heart. I know that I can acclomplish nothing without him. I feel like I don't deserve his love because I haven't been living my life with his direction. I am on the verge of losing my job and my family. I'm sorry for this long post so I will get right to the questions. Is it wrong to turn back to the lord when I am in trouble in my life? I want to start reading the bible but never have really understood it really well. I guess I need a redneck version,(complete with camo cover)! Where do I start? at the beginning or would anybody have any recomendations??? Thank you so much for listening to me and I appreciate any help you all may be able to give. God bless you all.
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Where do I start? at the beginning or would anybody have any recomendations??? Thank you so much for listening to me and I appreciate any help you all may be able to give. God bless you all.
Very simple brother, Humble yourself onto HIM, get on knees, bow your head, confess your sins to HIM and ask HIM toforgive you.
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Jesus said, "he who stands firm to the end will be saved" Mark 13:13.
Live Life in such a way that those who do not know Christ will come to know Him because they know you
What I would suggest is that you forthrightly confront the problems you are having at work and with your family and attempt to remedy them. If you have wronged your employer or members of your family, it is their forgiveness you should be asking for. You might be surprised at what you can accomplish through your own efforts.
Nothing like plain old fashioned brutal honesty and humility toward the Lord, and any others you have wronged. You are seeking Him, not church or trying to live right or any self help, self efforts. If you need to know where to start--you start right where you are, hiding nothing, holding nothing back.
What I would suggest is that you forthrightly confront the problems you are having at work and with your family and attempt to remedy them. If you have wronged your employer or members of your family, it is their forgiveness you should be asking for. You might be surprised at what you can accomplish through your own efforts.
Caldoc
If there is no God, and then , consequently, no basis for a standard to live by--how do you know or does anybody know that they even need forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? How do you define forgiveness and how do you define wrong? After all--it's just the survival of the fittest, and I don't recall ever seeing a dog apologizing for ripping another dog's hide! Own efforts? Where did the capacity to do anything come from--even your next breath? You have to piggy back on what God gave you just to come to even that conclusion. Fortunately, the truth is that He helps those who can't help themselves--God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.He needs to own his wrong alright, but I think he isn't confused as to why it is wrong, and that he needs to also confront his Creator for crossing His boundaries that He set to protect his employer, his family and anyone else that might have been wronged.
God cannot possibly know Right from Wrong
It is usually assumed that God must know right from wrong, because he is immortal and omnipotent. However, I would argue that such power and immortality mean that God cannot possibly know right from wrong.
God would have no concept of dealing with equals, since he is unique, omnipotent, and unchallenged. Human morality, on the other hand, is entirely about dealing with others as equals. It's about concepts such as mercy and reciprocity and fairness, the need for which an omnipotent God would not understand because he has no direct knowledge of weakness or suffering or fear. If we were to return to the "heavenly father" analogy, ask yourself what kind of father a man would be if he had never gone through childhood himself.
Such a father would be incapable of understanding his children, and he would be a terrible father (perhaps even as bad as the Old Testament God). If you were to continue with this heretical line of thought, then the only way for the father to understand his children would be to experience childhood. It would therefore follow that Jesus was the agent through which God sought to experience humanity. Jesus was born and raised as a human being. He absorbed the moral teachings of neighbouring human societies of the time, and then incorporated them into a new understanding of humanity and morality that God could never have discerned on his own. Jesus understood what God could not, because he knew what it meant to be weak, and mortal. In other words, he knew what it meant to walk a mile in another man's shoes.
But that wasn't enough; he also had to know the depths of evil. He had to find out first-hand about the pain of torture so that he could comprehend suffering, which an unfeeling God had mercilessly inflicted upon countless previous generations. And on the cross, he finally understood fear of death, which was yet another concept that would have been utterly alien to an immortal God. It would have been the ultimate test, and the ultimate learning experience. And when Jesus cried out on the cross that God had "forsaken" him, he would have been hoping that perhaps he wouldn't have to see this through to its bitter end. But that wasn't to be the case. He had to understand mortality and death, so he could understand first-hand what God had inflicted upon humanity. And when he finally died, he became a proxy agent for God's repentance, in atonement not for humanity's sins against God, but for God's sins against humanity. If you interpret his story this way, then it becomes obvious that we didn't have to learn morality from God; God had to learn morality from us!
Of course, that is only an alternate possible interpretation of the Jesus myth, and your mileage may vary. However, the alternative is simply not reconcilable with the historical facts. Every single one of Jesus' teachings was echoed in other cultures around the world at the time (or long before). If he had to bring this knowledge to us, then how can this be explained? Moreover, how can the improved morality of the New Testament be explained if it had no source other than the exact same God who was supposedly all-knowing and morally perfect since the dawn of time?
Even if you accept that the stories of the Bible actually happened, the doctrine of the heavenly origins of morality makes no sense whatsoever. God had no basis for morality other than his desire for self-aggrandizement, which is a truly horrendous basis for a system of morality. He lacked equals or weaknesses and he could not experience death, so he could not comprehend the human condition, nor could he determine what would lead to a truly just and humane society. He even demonstrated this lack of comprehension on numerous occasions, when the behaviour of humans so confused him that he flew into a homicidal or even genocidal rage out of sheer frustration at their failure to mindlessly obey him. Even if you accept the existence of God and the validity of Biblical stories regarding his actions, it is quite easy to see that far from giving us morality, God needed us to teach him morality.
Manuman, your constant assertions that humans are not capable of human behavior without the threat of divine punishment are growing tiresome.I decided to again call upon MichaelWong's inputfor what I think is a far more compelling argument concerning this issue.
16For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. 17Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. 18For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.King James
Finding forgiveness
