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Originally Posted by Ohio
I would encourage you to stay. Focus on the positive -- faith, hope, and love. Remember, there would be no epistles in the N.T. unless the church had "issues." The Lord is faithful to purge each assembly.
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Put another way, if you held opinions contrary to the pastor and the elders, but didn't make them a point of contention, would they tolerate you?
I think about the children a lot. Do they want to see the adults arguing about the finer points of doctrine, and dismissing others' abstractions for their own, or do they want to see the adults receiving one another (and them) in love? Humility is not a word, it's a consistent series of actions spurred by an attitude consistently held.
The original "church split" in the 4th century, at the Chalcedon Conference, was over an abstraction, that centered around the Greek word meaning 'nature'. The Oriental Orthodox went one way, the Greek Orthodox went another way. Even today if you ask them what it was all about, they say, "It's complicated." I would rather be simple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by byHismercy
The reformed position takes scripture and its' interpretation makes so much sense sometimes. One problem I have with it, though is it doesn't align God with His will for us all. He desires that NONE should perish. But then He somehow changed into a god who chooses some but not the rest....leaving them to perish for eternity? I cannot believe our righteous Lord would create us with the foreknowledge....yes, the intention....of letting most of them suffer hell, forever. To say He alone chooses is to say He doesn't love us all. It is to say that He didn't die for all. Which is verbatim what I was told in the reformed assembly the other day. ``We believe He didn't die for everybody! Only His elect!" This god breaks my heart. And does not seem to match His own word??
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I don't see easy answers coming to such questions. I think a lot about Jesus and how he saw the Father, especially in the Hebrew Scriptures. And how he saw himself and his role. I felt like the Jews were very constrained by the word (God's command) and Jesus was constrained most of all. And yet all of this was (somehow) 'his' choice. If it were the Father alone, how could there be a reward?
Somehow both points (detervminism v/v free will) seem so opposite, and I can't logically reconcile them, and don't even try. Yet somehow it somehow feels like that's the way it was.