LukeWebb wrote on Mar 9
th, 2013 at 1:40am:
Their organization, their rules. Too often the media and the so called victim themselves try and use something like I'm gay, I'm a woman, I'm ethnic, etc. just as a way to get their own way and it makes it look bad for the people who actually are legitimately being discriminated against and people don't take it seriously. I'm pretty sure he didn't not get the badge because he's gay, but if he doesn't believe in god and the organization has it as a requirement then look no further.
100% agree. Happens all the time.
Quote: My personal opinion on such things is that as long as you follow the teachings it doesn't matter what you believe, I am an agnostic, I don't really have belief in any specific religion but I see good and evil the teachings and members of all of them and I learn from that and live my life accordingly, you don't have to believe in god to lead a christian life and if there is a god he shouldn't require you to kiss his butt every sunday just to get get in heaven, just that you heed his warnings. I've always thought church needed less praise and more learning, the reason for this being that they haven't updated it enough since the Feudal days when people were servants to the king. As far as not believing in god to be in the boyscouts I personally think it shouldn't matter as long as he learns the teachings, I have even met ministers he don't believe in god but believe only in the good that the teachings can do.
That's another argument altogether.
I respect your opinion and understand it, however some of this appears to be said without understanding what it means to actually be a 'Christian' (Fun fact, it's thought that that term originated as an insult).
You're 100% correct, you do not need to believe in God to live a moral life, I'm sure we all know people like that. However, a Christian life is not what you'd expect.
Being a Christian does not mean you are good or perfect person. Far from it. There's a common misconception that being a good person gets you into heaven, but this simply isn't the case.
Romans 3:23
"For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God"
God created us all with free will, as a relationship without it is completely empty and without meaning. If I wanted, I could make my laptop say 'I love you GeneralMushroom, I worship you, I'll do anything for you!', but I don't. (Really, I don't). Why? Because there's no point.
The danger of free will is that we have the option to say no, and this does happen.
Sin isn't just 'doing bad things'. It's an act of 'We think we know better than God, we'll do it our way'.
'Do not murder', actually, I think I will benefit from murdering someone, so I'll do it. Believing you're better off doing it your way than God's way, and this has a pretty good track record of not working out.
We believe that it is not good people that get into heaven, it is
forgiven people. God knew the problem that we make mistakes, and that we aren't (for lack of a better word) good enough. That's why He directly intervened in the form of man. He came down to Earth Himself to fix the problem.
We believe Jesus is fully man and fully God. How this works, no-one knows (neither do we know why light acts as a particle and a wave, yet we believe that too). He lived what we would call a perfect life, suffered the most painful form of torture and death, took the judgement of our sins upon himself so that all who believe in him would have eternal life in heaven with God.
Romans 5:6-8
"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Living a Christian life is knowing, understanding and believing that Jesus died for YOU because He loves YOU so much. It has nothing to do with how many times you go to church or, 'kiss his ass'.
We praise him as a response to what he has done for us. Worship is the act of living a life that glorifies Him.
When I became a Christian in 2009, I wasn't a nice person. But through the grace of God and understanding what He has done for me, I try to live a life that emulates Christ as a response to what he did for me.
This is where the teaching comes on. It's about learning how to live the way God planned for us. None of that 'don't eat pork, get circumcised etc' from the old testament chapters like Leviticus. That was helpful advice from God about how to stay healthy and safe in an age of poor hygiene and hostile nations.
I'd recommend watching this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSB46UcTEkI know I've gone majorly off topic and I apologise for that, but I hope you've enjoyed reading it