[awareness]

Okay bro UntoHim, thanks for moving things around to better facilitate discussions.

Originally Posted by UntoHim

Ok Harold, ZPN and others here, it's time to move forward on this thread. I think everybody has a real good handle on where you both sit, and it's getting rather tedious watching both of you talk over and past each other.

I think bro Z and others of us are having a great discussion. I'm not reading past bro Z, nor is he past me. We're just struggling to make our points. And good points have been made, especially by bro Z and Ohio.

Harold I would like to see you be more of a theologian here then a philosopher and humanist.

I'm like Popeye : "I 'yams whats I ams, and dats all that I 'yams" ...

I'm an ex-local churcher, and my tree was bent by that storm. And shaped by it.

I remember it clearly, still today. After leaving the local church I was in great turmoil. Cognitive Dissonance was running wild in me brain. Where does one go, what does one do, after leaving The Eternal Purpose of God?

During this crazy milieu, one morning I awoke and sat up in bed, thinking, 'boy I fell for everything without question, without knowing anything I gave my life to and believed in.'

And right then and there I determined I wasn't going to be that way anymore. I determined than that I would study everything I had been involved in in the LC and before, and seek God's guidance to do it.

That has been quite a journey. God has led me to truth at any cost.

Just recently, for example, God led me to the present book I'm reading. God spoke thru brother Zeek. The book is One Jesus, Many Christs" (Click it to see it on Amazon). It's about the many ways early Christians went after Jesus.

This is going to be very hard for you since you apparently take much of the Bible to be "mythology". Furthermore, if you really believe that Christianity revolves around "this magic Bible concept" then maybe you are in the wrong area of the forum. I stuck this thread in the “apologetics” area so that maybe we could keep all the discussions within the general realm of Christian apologetics and theology.

Not so bro UnToHim. We still need a baseline. And the Bible is that baseline, man or God written, cuz it's all we've got.

The Jesus that you fell in love with was sent to us from this very same “God of the Old Testament”. The Jesus you fell in love with proclaimed “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3) This Jesus also quoted frequently from the Old Testament, and never once did He tell anybody that any of it was mythology, rather “until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished”.

If so then why aren't we all Nazarenes, like James at Jerusalem, the brother of Jesus, who were totally practicing the law and customs of Judaism. Why did the gentiles and Rome hijack the Christian movement, and suppress the James version of following Jesus? Why do we break the Ten Commandments and not honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy?

So the God that Jesus spoke of and exemplified is the very same “God of the Old Testament”,

It's not a matter of God. God is God. "I am that I am" ... and it's not our business to God what he is.

It's rather a matter of depictions of God, and that is the human part of the Bible. Men come up with depictions of God, in the Bible, that defame God, and make him a heartless monster, meaner than the meanest human ; a serial killer ; genocidal, with indifference to suffering, even to innocents. Like telling the Israelite's "kill everything that takes breath," even the livestock and critters ... even after inscribing on stone "Thou shalt not kill."

It’s even rougher for those lurking and trying to follow along, and this is of my utmost concern.

Fret not bro UnToHim, the Lord has led many down the same road I've been on since the local church, and will lead many others as well. Who are you, or we, to decide for others where the Lord wishes to lead them after they leave the local church?

....where the playing field would be much wider – to include humanistic and philosophical considerations along side of the standard Christian apologetic and theological realms.

I don't wish to lock horns. Why see it that way? We're having honest discussions out here. Sure we'll have problems here and there, understanding each other, but we'll get along. We're all adults, and should be able to have honest discussions without getting our panties in a wad. Just because I don't always agree with bro ZNP, doesn't mean I don't respect him or care less for him. I appreciate ZNP's view points. He's obviously a smart man.