non-demonational Christianity

I, personally, was a Catholic and actually born Catholic

However, within the past month or so I've come to realize that you don't have to describe to a particular church to worship or be of god, and well I started to be a bit skeptic of the Catholic practices and beliefs.

I believe that as long as you're a good person, do good for the most part in life and have a relationship with God, worship him and accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, your good. I believe we as Christians, should be united and be as one and not to be divided into Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists etc, for I don't believe in god's eyes it matters what you are

What do you think?

Originally Posted by brilander

I, personally, was a Catholic and actually born Catholic

However, within the past month or so I've come to realize that you don't have to describe to a particular church to worship or be of god, and well I started to be a bit skeptic of the Catholic practices and beliefs.

I believe that as long as you're a good person, do good for the most part in life and have a relationship with God, worship him and accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, your good. I believe we as Christians, should be united and be as one and not to be divided into Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists etc, for I don't believe in god's eyes it matters what you are

What do you think?

You got the bolded part right, but the rest I am not so sure about, I don't care about the many religions as long as they don't kill each other, we will find out one day, but we have a many years ahead of us.

I don't think each religion should be at each other's neck. I think one believes what they believe, and they shouldn't force their belief's on others and tolerate others

Originally Posted by brilander

I don't think each religion should be at each other's neck. I think one believes what they believe, and they shouldn't force their belief's on others and tolerate others

So true, they need to get along, like, I don't believe half the crap that you believe in but I am not going to strap a bomb on me and blow you up.

Originally Posted by brilander

I, personally, was a Catholic and actually born Catholic

However, within the past month or so I've come to realize that you don't have to describe to a particular church to worship or be of god, and well I started to be a bit skeptic of the Catholic practices and beliefs.

I believe that as long as you're a good person, do good for the most part in life and have a relationship with God, worship him and accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, your good. I believe we as Christians, should be united and be as one and not to be divided into Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists etc, for I don't believe in god's eyes it matters what you are

What do you think?

Christians should be united. But unity comes from real, theological unity, not from superificial unity. To say, "Christians should be united," is quite laudable (and a theological necessity: the Church is one), but we can't start uniting different denominations that often have conflicting positions on different issues.

How to reconcilze the Baptist and Catholic views on salvation and justification? I'm not sure you can. These aren't merely superficial differences. How about the divide between those who believe in the Real Presence and those who don't? I don't think either side is going to take kindly to the opposite position.

Unity is good, but truth is better. Unity never should come at the price of truth.

May I ask, which Catholic beliefs and practices are you skeptical of? Do you believe that Catholics made them up?

I must say, I don't believe that any church is just as acceptable to God-- for the very reason that I don't believe that just any beliefs are acceptable to God. If God founded a specific church, then he certainly prefers people to be members of that church. I would imagine that God has a definitive preference for the truth, and whatever church contains the fullest truth, God would want you to belong to.

That reality, of course, does not excuse violence.

Originally Posted by brilander

I, personally, was a Catholic and actually born Catholic

However, within the past month or so I've come to realize that you don't have to describe to a particular church to worship or be of god, and well I started to be a bit skeptic of the Catholic practices and beliefs.

I believe that as long as you're a good person, do good for the most part in life and have a relationship with God, worship him and accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, your good. I believe we as Christians, should be united and be as one and not to be divided into Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists etc, for I don't believe in god's eyes it matters what you are

What do you think?

Well, that would be great!
Except there's that little thing called human nature bogging us down.

I think that humans are, in part, naturaly abrasive due to the fact that we aren't all robots and have identical thoughts or feelings.

Therefore, there are always going to be theological differences of opinions between Christians until Jesus comes back and lays down what He thinks.

Then all of us will simultaneously slap our heads.

There's just one problem that I have with your statement though.

I persoanally beleive that to be saved, works aren't a requirement, but they just come naturally if you are genuinely saved.

Humans are always going to be flawed to a significant extent, and therefore can't be good enough to please a perfect, un-blemished, holy God. That is, without Jesus. With him, then God sees his own son in place of us.

I persoanally beleive that to be saved, works aren't a requirement, but they just come naturally if you are genuinely saved.

I generally agree with that statement as well.

I've no wide knowledge of all the different denominations but as long as they suscribe to the core doctrines of the Christian faith then I guess they are all generally permissable. When you meet God on judgement day he is not going to ask "So, how did you interpret verse XX:XX in the context of XXXX when cross-referencing with XXXX?" He'll simply ask "Did you accept my son Jesus Christ as your saviour?" As long as you've got your answer ready then you'll generally be set.
I like the analagy of the family. We all have the same father, but we are all slightly different children (aka denominations). Although there sometimes may be bickering amoungst us we all bind together through hardships and love one another.

Personally I think that faith and works are generally inseperable, as Alehandro said. That is, if you have faith then you will naturally do works. God is easily pleased by your works, but He is not easily [i]satisfied/[i]. I.e. it is good that you walk a little old lady across the road, but no matter how many little old ladies you cross roads with it'll never be enough. In this way, it doesn't matter how good or numerous our works are as they wille never amount to enough. I.e. You can be an average person or the world's best long jumper but no matter how good you are you'll never jump across the Grand Canyon.

Bobslob, I'm curious as I have only a basic understanding of the Catholic denomination, but according to them what happens to the other denominations on judgement day? Are they treated in much the same regard as Catholics? Are they sent to hell as they did not follow all the traditions/practices? Are they just given a lesser position in heaven? Thanks.

Originally Posted by skate_mate

I've no wide knowledge of all the different denominations but as long as they suscribe to the core doctrines of the Christian faith then I guess they are all generally permissable. When you meet God on judgement day he is not going to ask "So, how did you interpret verse XX:XX in the context of XXXX when cross-referencing with XXXX?" He'll simply ask "Did you accept my son Jesus Christ as your saviour?" As long as you've got your answer ready then you'll generally be set.

I hope you don't think this is in bad taste, and I don't mean this in a bad way but, by the time you get to your particular judgment, it's too late for questions. I don't think God is going to ask you, it's His turn.

On a more serious note, do evangelical/fundamentalists (I'm not sure what you group yourself as, I hope I don't offend!) think God actually asks you a question at the time of your judgment, or is it more of an exercise to get you to think what you should be doing?

I like the analagy of the family. We all have the same father, but we are all slightly different children (aka denominations). Although there sometimes may be bickering amoungst us we all bind together through hardships and love one another.

To bring the analogy further, a family is one. The denominations are like divorce, or abandonment.

Bobslob, I'm curious as I have only a basic understanding of the Catholic denomination, but according to them what happens to the other denominations on judgement day? Are they treated in much the same regard as Catholics? Are they sent to hell as they did not follow all the traditions/practices? Are they just given a lesser position in heaven? Thanks.

The traditional position of the Church is ,'no salvation outside of the Church.' Reformulated positively, rather than as a negative anathema, it becomes, all salvation is through the Church.

People are expected to be Catholic. If you are (invincibly) ignorant of Catholicism, obviously God will not require you to be Catholic. The concept of invincible ignorance (the Catechism)...

1793 If - on the contrary - the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.

On invincible ignorance (an Encyclopedia):

Ignorance is said to be invincible when a person is unable to rid himself of it notwithstanding the employment of moral diligence, that is, such as under the circumstances is, morally speaking, possible and obligatory. This manifestly includes the states of inadvertence, forgetfulness, etc. Such ignorance is obviously involuntary and therefore not imputable.

Invincible ignorance, whether of the law or of the fact, is always a valid excuse and excludes sin. The evident reason is that neither this state nor the act resulting therefrom is voluntary

That page, likewise, defines vincible ignorance, if you are so inclined to read. To make a rather simple paraphrase, which may be inaccurate, invincible ignorance cannot be overcome, vincible ignorance can and should be.

Anyway, it probably would have been easiest if I just pasted this bit from the Catechism:

"Outside the Church there is no salvation"

846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337

Feel free to explore the appropriate page in the Catechism and check the various citations.

Thanks a lot of answering my question(s) =).

On a more serious note, do evangelical/fundamentalists (I'm not sure what you group yourself as, I hope I don't offend!) think God actually asks you a question at the time of your judgment, or is it more of an exercise to get you to think what you should be doing?

I don't really know what denomination I am actually. I only *really* became a Christian in September (only like two months ago o_o) so I've not 'shopped around' to see what denomination I'll suscribe to as of yet. I read a part of a book regarding fundementalists and from what I could gather (I think the book was severly misrepresenting them I think) they wish to take just about everything in the Bible literaly which is clearly absurd (you should inperpret poems as poems, parables as parables, etc) so I doubt I'm one of those. Currently though I am going to a Baptist church and I think I generally agree with all of their practices.
I've only briefly read Revelations so I don't have comprehensive knowledge of what God shall do on judgement day; I merely stated that scenario to give the analagy of what will happen (as far as I know it will; your denomination obviously states differently).

I believe in the Unity of all the Denominations, but don't think it is likely to happen. I still think its important to stick together. I attend both a Christian Reformed Church and sometimes a Non-Denominational Youth church and think that is importatant.

But I don't think the denominations will join together because there are so many tiny things they dissagree on, Im guilty of this too.

Yeah, I'm a pretty much non-denominational Christian, though I guess you could say I'm a more "enthusiastic/charismatic" version of a Baptist. I look at the Bible from my point of view, not from a religious point of view. I'm not actually attending a church at the moment (though looking for one); I'm in a "fellowship night" thing where a bunch of families meet every Saturday night for dinner and Bible study. We're not bound by our own "religous views" or whatever, so we can look at the Bible from a non-biased point of view. Actually, we read somewhere in the New Testament that the highest demon is that of religion. Not religion as in your devotion to God, but the kind of religion where you live your life by a set of rules. After Christ's sacrifice, we don't need to follow a set of rules, because they are written on our hearts.
All that to say that all these denominations are different because of religion. I would love it if we could all just follow the Bible, not follow the Bible filtered through our religious views.

Originally Posted by Nightwing726

Yeah, I'm a pretty much non-denominational Christian, though I guess you could say I'm a more "enthusiastic/charismatic" version of a Baptist.

Out of honest curiosity, what do you mean by "enthusiastic/charasmatic?" Thanks.

I look at the Bible from my point of view, not from a religious point of view.

This leads to a very interesting topic. What is the best way to read Scripture? I have my own ideas.

2 Peter 3:16 notes:

16 speaking of these things 12 as he does in all his letters. In them there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures.

The principle that people who "ignorant and unstable" distort Scripture and blur its true meaning is, I think, a fairly clear principle.

In fact, Satan himself quotes Scripture to prove his points:
Matt 4:6

6 and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: 'He will command his angels concerning you and 'with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"

Which itself is from Psalm 91: 11-12

11 3 For God commands the angels to guard you in all your ways.
12 With their hands they shall support you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

If Satan himself can quote Scripture, we must take caution in how we do.

How can we know that we aren't being "ignorant and unstable?"

Proverbs 14:12 counsels:

12 Sometimes a way seems right to a man, but the end of it leads to death!

I don't think our individual judgment is necessarily sound in these matters.

I think this fits in with 2 Peter 1:20

20 12 Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation,

Interpretation of the bible, therefore, is never an individual exercise. Also, evil and ignorant people can misinterpret the Bible or twist its meaning, whether unknowingly or maliciously.

I'm not actually attending a church at the moment (though looking for one); I'm in a "fellowship night" thing where a bunch of families meet every Saturday night for dinner and Bible study. We're not bound by our own "religous views" or whatever, so we can look at the Bible from a non-biased point of view.

Referring back to what I was just saying, how can anyone have a "non-biased," point of view? I don't think the question is "unbaised" but "whose bias?"

Actually, we read somewhere in the New Testament that the highest demon is that of religion. Not religion as in your devotion to God, but the kind of religion where you live your life by a set of rules.

By a set of arbitrary rules, perhaps, which the Law has become. This does not demean other rules.

John 14:15

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

1 Jn 5:3

For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments.

After Christ's sacrifice, we don't need to follow a set of rules, because they are written on our hearts.

After Christ's sacrifice we no longer need to follow the Mosaic Law.

All that to say that all these denominations are different because of religion. I would love it if we could all just follow the Bible, not follow the Bible filtered through our religious views.

But is your view of "not following the bible filtered through our religious views," a more valid view than viewing it as through our own respective religious views?

Originally Posted by brilander

I, personally, was a Catholic and actually born Catholic

However, within the past month or so I've come to realize that you don't have to describe to a particular church to worship or be of god, and well I started to be a bit skeptic of the Catholic practices and beliefs.

I believe that as long as you're a good person, do good for the most part in life and have a relationship with God, worship him and accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, your good. I believe we as Christians, should be united and be as one and not to be divided into Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists etc, for I don't believe in god's eyes it matters what you are

What do you think?

I totally agree with this. As long as you take Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are good to go. And if not, He will forgive you regardless. The Lord was sacrificed so you may sin, and sin, and you will always have hope for redemption.

Originally Posted by Bobslob

Out of honest curiosity, what do you mean by "enthusiastic/charasmatic?" Thanks.

Um, it's like a less "religious" thing. It's more focused on God, rather than on the church. The enthusiastic/charismatic thing is a kind of nickname for many evangelical Christians who... are more... enthusiatic. Really. There are some churches I've been to where they believe the same stuff, but they're very legalistic about it and not very outgoing during worship, that kind of stuff.

Originally Posted by Bobslob

How can we know that we aren't being "ignorant and unstable?"

I don't think our individual judgment is necessarily sound in these matters.

Interpretation of the bible, therefore, is never an individual exercise. Also, evil and ignorant people can misinterpret the Bible or twist its meaning, whether unknowingly or maliciously.

Referring back to what I was just saying, how can anyone have a "non-biased," point of view? I don't think the question is "unbaised" but "whose bias?"

But is your view of "not following the bible filtered through our religious views," a more valid view than viewing it as through our own respective religious views?

Apparently I was a bit unclear in my post. I don't think individual judgement is very good, either. I don't go through the Bible and just slap my own opinion on it. And I never make an assumption about what the scriptures are saying before I talk with others who've read it as well (usually the entire fellowship group). As far as bias and religious views, I meant that we don't get our information from anywhere but the Bible. We don't have any pre-assumptions from a certain denomination's views.

Originally Posted by Bobslob

After Christ's sacrifice we no longer need to follow the Mosaic Law.

Yes, I probably should have said that specifically. Thanks for pointing it out!