Quote from: BitChick on May 29, 2013, 02:50:27 PM

Do I have no idea what right or wrong is without God?

Personally, I do think that God or more precisely, the Holy Spirit (or our "conscience" as some people call Him) does speak to us and tell us what "right and wrong" is. Where does our sense of compassion come from?

I have to be honest here. You lost me at "Him." I can't wrap my head around the need to externalize my emotions into the form of a man. I feel this is degrading, disempowering. It makes me feel inadequate to care for myself- like I ought to be ashamed of being a her, not even capitalized H.

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Most would say from parents or society or it has "evolved" but I believe God puts that in our hearts and speaks to us. Also, I use the Bible as my moral compass as well when my own selfish desires get in the way of what really is the right thing to do.

I am a librarian. I love books. Looking to a book for advice and guidance is what literate people must do. Limiting yourself to one book is bad. A variety of voices will give you a well rounded outlook on every subject.

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The Bible says "There is a way that seems right to a man but it leads to death." That is why I need to read the Bible and make sure I am not just making up my own ideas of what right an wrong are.

When someone reads a beautiful book, old, new, technical manual, autobiography, novel, whatever it is, that someone grows. No matter how hard.anyone studies anything,.at the end of the day we have our prejudices, biases, ideas, interpretations, revisions and opinions about our reality, all influenced only in part by what we have read, heard, seen, felt. There can never be a way to not trust yourself to decide right and wrong.

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The more I listen to Him, the more compassionate I can become. The more loving I can be. The more I can care about others, regardless of their beliefs, be it atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. I don't have to agree with people that think differently than I do, but I need to love them and try to show them that God loves them too. The difficulty is that in "loving" them, I often feel a compelling sense of showing them that they are on a destructive path.

You are deciding to listen. You are the one making choices about what ideas influence you. It is imperative that you take responsibility for your own mind, your own taste and broaden your horizons.

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Let's imagine this. Hundreds of people are on the top of plateau with a huge cliff all around. They are all blindfolded. However, you are not. The people are walking towards the edge of the cliff. Do you just let them walk off to their death or would you try to stop them from going over the edge? Probably the best thing to do would be to try and convince them that they are wearing a blindfold! But in a strange way many don't even realize they have one on at all and they do not listen, or even argue with you. You care deeply about them so you get more and more intense. Maybe one or two take off their blindfold and then see that they almost plunged to their death without even realizing it.

Replace "blindfold" with "book." This is precisely what I feel when I see someone letting tradition and a single collection of books that have been more extensively rewritten and resold, mistranslated, butchered and mangled from a not actually THAT old original text think for them. I hope you can see that the point Im trying to make is that the bible is only one book in a countless sea of deeply moving literature.

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This is how it feels as a Christian.

You have no idea how much worse it feels to disagree with your Jesusfreak peers about such basic stuff in the way a non christian does in a predominantly christish context. Check your privilege before you start feeling like you need to save those you do not even claim to understand.

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We believe God has miraculously helped us "see" (we once were blind but now we see). Out of. compassion for those that cannot see we try desperately to get others to see the truth (sometimes people who say they are Christians do not do this in a loving or compassionate way I admit! This angers me more than anything too BTW! Also, Jesus got more angry at people like this too than any others) So it is a problem for sure. How to love without offending. How to care without coming across as pushy, arrogant? Should we just let others choose their own path without doing anything at all? It seems that is what most people want us to do. "Live and let live." But is that the "moral" thing? Is that the right thing?

Coming back around we are left with our own personal, private moral dillemas that no amount of focused, unquestioning, faithful self indoctrination can ever facilitate without our own being to make the final judgement.
In conclusion, You are your own God, you should feed your god the gods of the past, and not only feed it The Bible's cocacola and mcdonalds. Your god will get very sick if you only feed it one meal, and meals based around a happymeal.