following the bible and follow your heart instead, there are certain wrongs like abortion is murder, murder is wrong stealing is wrong, doing anything to hurt somebody else is wrong so why not follow your heart, instead of a book that well its not a good example of human nature. if there was a god would he not judge you on your real intentions not just what you were instructed to do by a book that has been bent to the desires of what man wanted you to read. (when I say man I mean mankind). when you raise kids you have to let them go and make decisions for themselves, you don't give them an instruction book on life and make them read it. the children will go of and be guided by there hearts need and want to be a good person. the ten commandments? is that not just common sense rules. im interested to know what you think about that.

This world is simply a test, that is why its so f***d up.God gave us free will & taught us right from wrong, good from bad ect & its upto you as an individual whicj way you follow it.
Then there are those that don't follow any religion to to suit their lifestyles

I'm gonna be burned at the stake as a heretic but I'm in complete agreement with this.

IN the Bible there are passages that warn against worshipping idols. The Book has taken on that status for lots of folks, imo.

It also has a passage somewhere or other that warns 'woe unto him who presumes to know the mind of God.'

No one mentions that, though. Religion is a business.

The fact that we all die & go to another place is another point that this life is temporary.
Heaven & Hell is the real deal & eternal. The soul never dies

It's been made into a business but sly preachers

i dont see much difference...
it's kind of like saying if you were God, and everyone here are your kids, adopted or otherwise...
you made everything material to provide for their needs...

...they couldn't regulate themselves, because each have their own way of doing things...they asked that you should give them rules to follow...

you give them a set of rules with details on what to do so that there won't be pandemonium again...

...that didn't work because they made loopholes in the rules you set for the entire household...

you send your real only child to help these people understand what your true intentions are...

...they go off misinterpreting his intentions and accusing him of various crimes and killing him...

you reveal that your child's life and death is the way for other people to come to know you and have real peace...

...they go off looking for someone else to acknowledge as their parent because your child's death is not good enough for them to believe your intentions ...

...they go off saying they are better than you because they can "replicate" everything you did...

...they go off using your child's life and death in order to make others believe in themselves rather than you...

...they go off and misconstrue your words and actions by picking and choosing and putting their own meaning into it...

should we expect special treatment from Him? have we sacrificed ourselves to the extent of what Christ has done? who is anyone of us to demand what God should and shouldn't do for us?
even Kennedy said, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"....

etc...etc... i dunno... i guess it works both ways... and on how you look at the entire situation, inclusive of the intention, action, history etc...

even if He is the creator and we are the created, he says that he will not force you to believe in Him...but He does want you to believe in Him...
as a God, he doesn't force us... so who are we to force anyone of our fellow man ourselves? proper guidance and right judgement becomes important here...

is it really God and the bible's fault...or is it human weaknesses justifying itself...?
who is judging who? and who is teaching who, what?

i think the more important part of this is your relationship with God.
just as your relationship with your parents..
you can't really have a good relationship with someone if you don't know who they are...
the bible tells us who God is.
if the bible is a diary of who God is...
it is up to the reader to find out how to get to know Him better...
it is up to the reader to discern which people are saying the truth of who God is...and which are just misinforming others for personal gain...

it can't all be just our imagination or feeling or logic of what we perceive or project God to be.... it is a relationship between you and Him...and the key words of the bible in order to have a relationship with Him are FAITH, HOPE and LOVE

but it does become an almost impossibility to have a good relationship with someone if the rules are not being followed... even in this world, given the best intentions, a crime is still a crime, but the severity of the crime is yet to be determined based on the entire situation...ignorance of the law does not preclude one from being punished by the law... and some rules, are not governed by mere common sense...especially not at this day and age of lost innocence...

Religious teaching is sort of like the kids game 'Chinese Telephone' where you line a few kids up, whisper something in the first one's ear and they pass it on. By the end, the message is often garbled so badly that it doesn't resemble the first message in the least.

Every person behind a pulpit (real or imagined) passes along the message that they think they understood. Along the way, it gets just as garbled.

Couple that with human foibles like greed or the need for attention or the sociopathic need for control and stuff gets out of hand, quickly.

precisely... it is human weakness of misinterpreting the bible.
this should not be the basis of giving up on God.

in the end, it is not your relationship with a religion.
it is your relationship with God.

it is up to you whether to believe in one religious protocol vs another.
and that becomes a matter of your experience involving God, and in knowing for yourself and aligning yourself with people who can help you become
closer to God, throughout the good times and the bad...the best and the worst..

it does not seem right to judge other people's relationship or non-relationship with God...it is far more important to look at one's own. do not compare.

Hummm....I was wondering why this thread was in " General"..
Now, I see why.

It belongs in General Religion due to it is asking questions on whether you should follow the Bible or your heart..

Christian Singles Forums are for those that totally believe in following the Bible and not questioning if you should..

Agreed, that is what I meant.

Ecclestiastes 11:9
Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.


our heart is but an organ provided to pump blood through our veins,, what we call following our 'heart' is often just following a wordly/fleshly urge

and out of those urges are the wrong choices and not the one's in Gods 'instructions'

so I dont ever feel it better to follow our 'hearts' unless our hearts are filled with Gods word,,,,




2 corrinthians 11:3
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.



Eves heart wanted the fruit, and it had knowledge of good and evil so 'certainly' it would make her equal to god which is of course a good thing too,,,right?


,,just be cautious, and I know how hard that is in a world telling us the bible is outdated and nonsensical and all that matters if how we 'feel',, trust me

Mme La Mar�chale: Are you not Monsieur Crudeli?

<Crudeli: Yes, Madame.

Mme La Mar�chale: Then you're the man who doesn't believe in anything.

<Crudeli: In person, madame.

Mme La Mar�chale: Yet your moral principles are the same as those of a believer?

<Crudeli: Why should they not be -- as long as the believer is an honest man?

Mme La Mar�chale: And do you act upon your principles?

<Crudeli: To the best of my ability.

Mme La Mar�chale: What? You don't steal? You don't kill people? You don't rob them?

<Crudeli: Very rarely.

Mme La Mar�chale: Then what do you gain by not being a believer?

<Crudeli: Nothing at all, madame. Is one a believer from motives of profit?


-- Denis Diderot, "Conversation with a Christian Lady" (1774), trans. Derek Coltman, quoted from S T Joshi, ed, Atheism: A Reader, p. 229


http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/diderot.htm

Rather a 'Sticky Wicket'...doing what we as adults think is right by our 'ADULT MIND' and what we 'SHOULD' by 'EXAMPLE' with our own children! Isn't it about teaching the basics; building the foundation for the principle of faith and then allowing the young adult to decide whether or not they want to pursue it further? And if I lost you with that I'll just give you my example: I was force fed Southern Baptist faith twice on Sunday/Wednesday evening service and youth group on Saturday - strict Southern Baptist Church! But with lots of variances that our dear pops put his foot down about: "there would be card & table games, there would be radio, there would be TV when we ever got one, there would be school dances, there would be music besides the piano {record players} and never pester him about attending - because he wasn't going to hell - he was � Indian and Indian's didn't go to hell he lived it with all you white people daily!" And he set about teaching us what he had been taught from his own father after many years of suffering under the Catholic Church in Canada when they'd removed him from the home!

Long story short; it helped give me the basics to know what was in the bible - we had to read it from the beginning straight through to 8th grade graduation and have most sections memorized for functions at church {our father supported mother in this --- freaky but he said it made our minds better} maybe it did but it just made me realize that the white mans bible held lots of inconsistencies and � truths when the Indian way was just pure COMMON SENSE.

So if we - as parents don't provide the building/foundation upon which our children can either build a faith with GOD or chose whichever way they want to go...how exactly are they going to get that information - where's it going to come into their life from? See my point?