So true. Preaching personal interpretations as the absolute mind of God is a perilous endeavor.

And the greatest irony of all is that this is not only an abomination to Jesus, but it's also totally anti-Protestant.

Protestantism as a religion stands on the foundational principle that no mortal man speaks for God or Jesus in terms of interpreting the scriptures for other mortal men. This is why they rejected the idea of having someone like the Catholic Pope interpreting the scriptures for everyone.

Yet these Protestant Paper Popes have rejected this basic principle of their own religious movement by attempting to claim that they personally speak for God and everyone else must cower down to their personal interpretations.

In truth, the "Designer Christians" are really the only true Protestants. Each one having a personal walk with Jesus and interpreting the hearsay rumors about HIM in their own personal way.

That's only true form of Protestantism really. Protestantism as an 'organized religion' that has Paper Popes who claim to know how to interpret the scriptures better than other mortal men, are nothing more than individual Protestants who merely want to turn Protestantism back into Catholicism with them being the self-appointed POPE.

This is precisely the danger of this religion. Whether it be a personal desire of an individual to establish himself as the ultimate Paper Pope, or whether it is the over-zealous lust for control of a real Pope, the bottom line is that this religion loans itself to be the basis for a religiously-driven fascist dictatorship.

This is why it's an extremely dangerous religion.

As a "Personal walk with Jesus" it's just fine.

I have a "Personal walk with Jesus". I am the ultimate Protestant. I took the religion very seriously. The idea is to read the scriptures and come to your own conclusions. My conclusion is that the Old Testament was totally false mythology, and the New Testament is over-zealous rumors about Jesus who was actually a Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva.

There's as a Protestant, this is my own personal interpretation of the scriptures. And thus my own "Walk with Jesus" is to recognize him as a Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva.

For Cowboy to personally judge my relationship with Jesus as being invalid is a personal judgment that he personally makes against me based on the fact that our interpretations of the biblical scriptures do not coincide.

But that's the foundational principle of Protestantism was all about. A protest against having any mortal man interpret the scriptures for other mortal me.

Yet that is precisely what Cowboy is attempting to do for me, and for everyone else as well. Only HE speaks for God and Jesus!

He's the antithesis of Protestantism.

It's arrogance gone berserk.

He thinks he speaks for God and Jesus above all other men. It went to his head. He wants to be the POPE.

Cowboy wrote:

No, that is precisely not what i'm doing. I've said it many times before and i'll say it again, if you feel there is another interpretation(s) to the verse(s) that I supply, I would LOVE to talk about it. I've never once said I know all and everyone else is stupid, no. That is what life is for, it's a growing experience.

I'm not a protestant, i'm not an antithesis of protestantism, i'm not catholic, i'm not baptist. I take no "title". I'm just a simple follower of Jesus Christ. And that is why again i've said many times if i've misinterpreted a scripture or something of that nature, to please inform me so I can look into it again and deeper to see where my error is/was.

You're thinking too hard in absolute terms Cowboy.

You're missing the point entirely.

I've disagreed with many of your interpretations of scripture and you've disagreed with mine. And that's fine.

That's the whole point. Your interpretations are precisely that - your interpretations. And mine are mine.

So where do you get off constantly preaching to everyone, "Our Father wants this, and Our Father wants that, etc."?

If you feel that God expects these things from YOU, then more power to you!

Have I ever once told you what I think God expects from YOU?

I'm quite sure that I haven't.

All I do is show how I see things wildly differently from the way that you see them.

And it doesn't truly matter whether I'm a 'believer' or not.

Take something like the Great Flood, just as a story. True or not, it makes no difference. What MORAL MESSAGE do you and I get from this story?

You seem to be getting some sort of message that if you're bad God will be displeased with you and punish you. (i.e. he'll drown you or cause some other horrible fate to come your way)

I see the message of this story simply telling me that God will always protect me no matter how evil the world around me appears to be. This is because when I read this story I identify with being Noah, and not with being the idiots at Sodom and Gomorrah.

Of course, I also see this story as being nothing more than a fable with a moral. I don't believe that any actual Zeus-like Godhead actually drowned out the bulk of human population and saved some guy in an ark full of animals.

So our views of these fables differ GREATLY. And that's ok.

You take your interpretations as yours, and I'll take mine as mine.

There's no need for me to tell you what God expects from you, and there's no need for you to tell me what God expects from me.

Have a little FAITH in God that he can deal with his own children individually.

We don't need to agree on what scriptures mean. That's the whole point.

You seem to be getting some sort of message that if you're bad God will be displeased with you and punish you. (i.e. he'll drown you or cause some other horrible fate to come your way)

You're missing the point again.

It doesn't matter where you "stand" on biblical issues or interpretations. That's what I'm saying.

Your relationship with God is yours.

My relationship with God is mine.

Where each of us stands with God is between us and God.

However you view the parable of the flood is your own business.

And how I view it is mine.

And this is true for all the parables that are told in the Bible.

We don't need to agree on any of them.

That is because the flood isn't a parable lol. The flood is just that, the flood. That is what the rainbow is for, it is a symbol of the promise from God that he will never flood the earth again.

That is because the flood isn't a parable lol. The flood is just that, the flood. That is what the rainbow is for, it is a symbol of the promise from God that he will never flood the earth again.

I accept that this is how you view it.

That's what you see. And that holds meaning for you.

Having some understanding of what rainbows actually are, I see the rainbow in the story as clear evidence that it is indeed a parable. Perhaps the rainbow itself is a metaphor for something else?

Perhaps the rainbow simply symbolizes that Noah and his family saw the beauty in life and thus appreciate nature for what it truly is in its nakedness. And this represents the true covenant between mankind and the creator of all things. It's always been there. It was just highlighted in this parable as an artistic metaphor. Like in bedtime stories for children. It's nice to have a colorful touch for an ending. It serves to make the story more memorable and romantic. And besides, you wouldn't want your children to go to sleep having nightmares about floods after you told them this story.

Instead they can dream of rainbows and animals procreating in the sunny fields of mud.

Cowboy wrote:

Here's the reasoning of the rainbow.

Or perhaps it symbolizes the promise God has given us not to flood the earth again.

You don't think that an author of a parable could write these things?

What are authors of parables supposed to do? Come right out and tell the reader, "Oh by the way these stories are totally fiction so don't believe a word of them?"

I don't think you'll find that in very many works of fiction.

Obviously whoever wrote the story wrote the lines you just quoted. They came directly from the story. That doesn't mean that God wrote it. It just means that the author is making up a story and claiming that this is what the God in his story did.

I'm sure if you read all the other ancient religions from Greece, Egypt, Europe, and wherever, they all have stories claiming that their gods did this, that and the other thing. That's what people did back then. They made stories up about the gods. This was a quite common practice all over the globe actually.

I don't think you'll find that in very many works of fiction.

Well if you take everything you read seriously as verbatim truth then you must also believe that lightening comes from Thor's Hammer.

While the spiritual side of scriptures cannot be verified, archealogical and scientific evidence is in abundance.

And i say AMEN to that... Abundance and feel with your heart.

You can limit yourself as much as you like. It's your life.

Not limited nor limiting myself, I can do anything and everything I want to.

Please forgive the tongue-in-cheek...

You take a simple phrase. (male and female created he them. Go forth and fill the earth).

Into 'meet marry. have kids ... nice home...
'Gives instructions ... should be... most sufficient...'
Where in Genesis does it say all that?

How in Genesis did you arrive at such a statement based upon GENESIS...

Living proof as to why one should be very careful when using a tool of man.

One begins to think one can then weild said tool as though one is a master craftsman...

Yet the true function eludes one.

That is because the flood isn't a parable lol. The flood is just that, the flood. That is what the rainbow is for, it is a symbol of the promise from God that he will never flood the earth again.