Thoughts about truth, knowledge and faith

[frienduff thaylorde]

On ‎12‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 10:11 PM, frienduff thaylorde said:

YEAH but their how do we know we know jesus was focused on a false sensual love.

mine has an answer.  IF YOU LOVE ME KEEP MY SAYINGS.  that alone is how we know ITS CHRIST we love and not some other man twisted version that is taught.

 

Oh, lets clear that up.   A lot of people are thinking they know JESUS and hearing from the Holy spirit.   When in fact its neither.   Jesus don't preach a false sensual love

that embraces the sinner WITHOUT CORRECTING them .  The true JESUS is not focused on unity with the world and rome and all other religions for world peace and good works

as one.     The true Christ would not teach us focus on doing good works but no need to correct or preach the gospel , just be all inclusive and find common ground in wordly things.

THEY aint hearing from the HOLY SPIRIT.    oh its a spirit and spirits .    now a word from JOHN.

Beloved believe not every spirit , test the spirits , for many false prophets have gone out into the world.     We seriously need to test all things taught by all .

and like a diabetic test his blood sugar..............KEEP testing and do it daily.   

[frienduff thaylorde]

On ‎12‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 2:37 AM, IainL said:

I know you have good intentions.

Let me just add something though. There are plenty of denominations in the world and even more religions and traditions outside of Christianity. There are whole schools of theology and countless books on the same subjects but saying different things. People may be  evil but mostly those who read scripture are not stupid. If the Bible was always easy to understand there would not have been so many different interpretations. 

Remember that I have been dealing with these some of these questions for more than 10 years. But I can say that in the end, allowing myself to ask these kinds of questions have actually strengthened my faith in some way. I am not so confused that I am unclear about what I believe. 

To answer your question: I am not sure what answer you expect. I can think of many things that could answer it. But I will say that I love God because of who He is and what He has done. I love God because He first loved me. So I obey him as best I can. I am not perfect yet, but I seek to obey him. Jesus said if we love him we would obey his commands and he then goes on to say that his command is that we love one another. I think the answer you are looking for must come from there. 

 

 If the Bible was always easy to understand there would not have been so many different interpretations. 

Here lets answer this first .    The reason their are so many different intepretations, is due to the lusts of men.  

IF truly the love of GOD has been shed on our hearts , then truth alone is what we love.  and the SPIRIT guides us in truth.

but men have always sought to find ways around the truth , to justify their own evil and still feel saved.

an example.     a man puts away his wife.   just got tired of her , but of course made excuses .    He goes to find a way to justify why he can remarry.

and believe me , HE will be given his hearts desires whether for evil or not .   He will be deceived and hear and see what he wants.  He will be given a twisted

interpretation that allows him to remarry and feel saved and justify it .     People do this with all sorts of JESUS sayings.

and believe me,  if we desire our lust , and wont repent ,  we will be given a delusion to believe what we believe is truth , WHEN IT AINT .

and now a word.     IF  the prophet has been deceived, I the LORD have deceived that prophet.

or another place,   I WILLL answer that prophet according to the idols of his heart.  IF his idol is money or remarriage or whatever it is,

That is why we have so many different intepretations.    The bible is not hard to understand .   Its simple to those who love CHRIST .

what makes it complicated are the lusts of the heart  .     Many have twisted many scriptures unto their own destruction.

BUT IF THE HOLY SPIRIT be our guide,   HE GUIDES us only in truth.   and the way is simple not confusion.  GOD is not the author of confusion.

Satan is, man is , NOT GOD.  

[john1]

On ‎12‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 1:36 PM, IainL said:

How do I know what to believe?

Matthew chapter 4 verse 4

Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
Romans chapter 1 verse 28

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
 

John chapter 8 verse 31,32

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, " If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

2 John

 ⁹ Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

Job chapter 23 verse 12

I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.

 

^{Matthew 11}

²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Luke chapter 21

³³ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Romans chapter 10 

¹⁷ Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.

Mark chapter 13

³¹ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

James chapter 1

²⁵ But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

James chapter 4

⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Isaiah chapter 45 verse 19

I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob's descendants, 'Seek me in vain.' I, the LORD, speak the truth; I declare what is right.

Jeremiah chapter 9

²⁴ but let the one who boasts boast about this:
    that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
    justice and righteousness on earth,
    for in these I delight,”
declares the Lord.

Jeremiah chapter 5 verse 1

5 “Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem,
    look around and consider,
    search through her squares.
If you can find but one person
    who deals honestly and seeks the truth,
    I will forgive this city.

Psalm 119 verse 114

You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.

[GreyDestiny]

I can feel this, especially as someone relatively new and ignorant. 

I was... Supposedly raised a Christian. I say supposedly because my parents didn't do much by way of teaching me. Just handed a small child a bible and figured i'd read it, much less understand it. In truth, unfortunately, that bible just collected dust. That's not to say i'm entirely upset; i'm rather quite glad to not have old habits a younger mind would've clung to. Might have beeen nice to start earlier than I have, though.

Any Christian is on a neverending quest to learn more and grow closer, I feel. I have had some trouble, but I believe the answers we are looking for are with God. There are definitely more people out there that know WAY more than I do, but we need to keep in mind that nobody knows everything. I feel that what it means to be Christian is to seek out the lord, for the lord is truth. Some folks just get so lost and caught up in wording that they leave little room for feeling.

Best of luck on your endeavors, everyone.

[simplejeff]

On 12/14/2017 at 12:36 PM, IainL said:

I am starting this thread with no idea where it would lead to but I have decided to write down these thoughts because I think it will could be interesting to someone and I myself would like to hear some ideas.

Forgive me if this is a bit long. 

As a Christian, I am thinking about my understanding of scripture.

Some background: I have been a Christian since October 2000. I grew up in a Christian family and have been in church nearly all my life. My dad is a theologian and a preacher. My mother is a teacher and so I come from a strongly academic family which also includes theological He is in the Dutch Reformed Church. I was also in that church until I was about 12 or 13. After that I have been mostly in charismatic churches. There is a lot more to this and various complication in my family and home life that come into this but I think this should be enough for now.

The basic questions I have are these: How do I know what to believe? How can I be sure that a certain view is correct or not? Who do I trust to give me the truth? and How do I see the truth of scripture connect to the natural world and my real lived experience? 

As you can see, these are questions that have been asked by many people and there is probably no final answers to them, 

 

Now I want to expand on a few things and add some thoughts. They are just my ideas and could be right or wrong but they are sincerely meant and not aimed at anyone. 

I think I always believed that there must be a God. Even from a young age it just made sense to me. Many people argue that people are Christians mostly because they have been brought up that way. Yet I am quite sure that I would have become a Christian anyway even if I had not been in such a household. I have had doubts and there have been moments where I really questioned God's existence. But I could just never shake off the feeling deep down that there must be a Creator. I allowed myself many times to look at my faith as a Christian and ask myself whether, objectively, my faith was reasonable considering what I know right now. And every time I asked this it led me back to Jesus eventually. Of course, I think my objectivity is compromised, because I find Christianity attractive and want it to be true. That is just honestly my dilemma. Now let me assure you, I believe the Bible is true. I am just asking myself how this faith works practically. What is it about Christianity that makes it believable. In a way, this goes right into the idea of knowledge. What can we know? How do we know something? Is personal experience of something necessary for knowledge? After all, everybody and anybody could be wrong about just about anything. Or they could be deliberately deceiving me. To illustrate my issue let me mention this example of how we can be wrong about things: for many years I have played Monopoly. Recently I learned that I had been playing the game wrong all these years and that the rule we were breaking would have changed the whole game completely. I had simply accepted the rules that were given to me and never questioned it, trusting that they must know what they are doing. I find things like this often in far more serious subjects.

Consider this: would a person born deaf and blind be able to believe?   

This leads me to the issue of my mistrust of "experts" and popular beliefs.  I must confess that I do not know that much. Only enough to know how little I know.  When you have an abundance in something, it is easy to not fully make use if it. In my family we have an abundance in books and in people with high levels of education and knowledge. In spite of this, I struggle to understand highly technical information and I often find myself uncertain about my facts. I have always struggled to read as much as I would like to. I have tried. And this makes me feel so inferior in my family where dinner conversations are often dominated by intellectual subject. You find in my family atheists, Greek orthodox, universalists and other widely different beliefs. Most of my family, including my dad, believes in evolution and are entirely secular. It has dawned on me that knowledge really is power. Those that seem to know something can easily control and manipulate those who don't and it is this that leads me to doubt. A good argument can be wrong. For a long time I simply accepted what my dad said. After all, he is a very smart man. But as I grew older, I started to realize how he can even be wrong about subjects he is supposed to be an expert in.  So having a good argument alone does not ensure that what someone says is true. Proof is needed somehow. And even on this forum I have noticed that very often people differ even on what constitutes proof. This is also why i often avoid non-biblical books about philosophy and theology. For the sake of keeping myself from going insane with deep and difficult questions, I try to base my beliefs on Scripture and on what I can personally observe or experience. Even then I doubt my own understanding so much. I also have made a deliberate decision to stand on certain points where there is a lot of controversy in order to stop myself from being tossed around by opposing but reasonable sounding arguments.

One more thought that I have been sitting with. It has been interesting to me to look at the forums and note some of he debates going on.  I rarely allow myself to go to these ( because they only confuse and frustrate me more), except to just look at how people are presenting their point of view. I get the sense sometimes that no one has really determined what the bottom line is for each person. And in a public forums where anybody can join and have different motivations in joining as well as vastly different backgrounds, it is surely inevitable that the discussions will end up going the way they do. To someone like me, this does  not really help me learn or understand something better. I don't want to choose sides, I want to learn the truth (if this is possible. Is objective knowledge possible?) I am just not sure it can end up any other way, because I have rarely ever seen anyone change their original position on any of these debates. 

 

True as you say,  no one changes their mind, (or is very very rare if they do),  and no one gets saved from the internet.  That is also not the purpose of the internet.   Thus , it has not failed in its purpose,  only if people expect others to listen to them or to be saved, then it fails.  (or,  they listen, to voices not seeking God nor God's Kingdom, and continue growing more in the wrong direction, encouraged to do so by all around them).

How can you learn to hear the Shepherd's Voice ?  

How can you learn to follow God and God's Purpose , to know it perfectly and have peace and joy and righteousness ?