Hi I am a 52 year old MTF TS. I am also a devout christian. I have a degree in Pastorial studies from a christian college. I am wishing to start a bible study open to gays, lesbians, bi, Trans and strait people. I live in walla walla wa. I have a place to hold the bible study that is private and can hold up to 25 to 30 people. It has a kitchen area. From this bible study I hope to build a chruch founded on the principle God loves everyone. I am seeking others in the Walla walla area to join and help me do this. I have pastored a chruch and helped as a leader at many, before I transitioned. I do not believe anyone neds fixed due to their gender or sexual choices. I do believe we all want to feel loved by our creator. If you could repost this any where it would help or email me where to send this I would appreciate. I am disabled and do not work so I am available any day or evening to do this. If anyone reads this and is interested please email me. Once you have contacted me via email I will give you my cell number. I am seeking serious people who want to help build a group based on God's love for all. Not built on hate, punishment, hell fire, or anything that is not based in God's love. I am also not seeking a group who only want to reach those "like" us. This is whats wrong with all churches that condemn us so why follow their ways? As I said I have a degree in Pastorial and Biblical Studies ( BS degree double major). again I want a group will to reach out to all who are broken hearted, marginized, dis illusion with a church who only wants those like them. I am not morally ambigous and take the bible as God's word. The bible is not the issue that seperates those who are marginalized by the predominate churches doctrine but man's interpretation of that book. Having read and studied extensively I have found most groups that exclude have chosen the harshest interpretations without regard for what it meant in Jesus' time or in the Greek. I can work with greek and hebrew helps and dig into the meaning of greek words that go far past the english words to their roots. So feel free to email me if this is something you would be interested in.

I sincerely applaud your efforts and your desire to make something truly loving out of a religion that has all too often been used to propagate hatred via harsh interpretations of scriptures as you have suggested.

Best wishes in your endeavor.

~~~~~

Just as a side note, I personally don't believe in the religion that you have chosen to support and perpetuate. Even in it's most loving form I still have problems with it overall in major ways.

None the less, I'm glad to see that some people are at least trying to take it in a more positive direction.

So I support your efforts if only because they represent true love and compassion which is certainly something I believe Jesus would give his full support to whether he was a divine incarnation, or a mere mortal man. Either way, I'm sure he would support love, compassion, understanding, and the positive values that you are attempting to resurrect in his name.

So I support your efforts.

Kimimalia,

You must be motivated indeed to feel up to such a challenge, but then again, it's not like you haven't faced seeminly insurmountable challenges already in your life.

I tend to agree with Abra's statements



Many of my friends/family would have been lost without the social safety-net that comes of sharing thier beliefs with others, in a loving, open, and accepting environment. The Jesus MCC is that place in my neck of the woods and like the best of Christian Churches, they continually contribute ideas, funding, time, and effort, to many community projects and they never shy away from political challenges where human rights are concerned.

That's why I feel like Abra and why I support you efforts and why I too send you my warmest wishes for success in your endeaver. I will keep the information you have sent and while I visit (internet style) with others, I'll be sure to give any who will be in your area the information. Word of mouth can be great advertising.

I thank you for your kind words. I understand not all believe as I do and respect their right to do so. But if you would like to discuss some of the things you disagree with I will be most happy to do so. I have that most of the time what peoplr disgaree about is most often some ones particular interpretation of biblical scriptures to prove a certain point of view. And in almost all cases only one of the several other possible interpretations. Fel fre to ask anything.
Kimi

I am familar with MCC and actually have attended the founding church in west hollywood many times.

I thank you for the offer to clarify, but my concerns are extremely deep and profound. Nothing that a few re-interpretations of a few verses could ever clear up.

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I'll take the opportunity to voice some of my concerns below just in case you might be curious. I do not require that you respond to these in any way, and I certainly don't expect for you to "defend" the religion. If you choose to do that, it's your choice.

This is not meant as an 'attack' on the religion but simply my honest sincere reasons why I have problems with it. And trust me, although the following is going to be fairly lengthy it is far from compete.

By the way, you don't even need to read this if you don't care to. I'm not asking for a reply. I'm just taking the opportunity to refresh some of my concerns on this open forum. This will be lengthy so if you chose to read it I suggest that you prepare a cup of tea first.



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Background Information

I've studied science my entirely life, and spent my entire career in scientific research. I am totally convinced of evolution, the Big Bang, etc.

Unlike many atheists I do not automatically take any of that to mean that there can't be a spiritual nature to reality. On the contrary I consider myself to be a highly spiritual person innately, emotionally, and intuitively. On that level I 'believe' in a spiritual essence to life.

On a purely intellectual level I realize that I cannot know with logical certainty. And thus intellectually I must confess to everyone, including myself and any Gods that might exist, that I sincerely and honestly don't know. Thus intellectually I am agnostic with respect to the spiritual nature of the universe.

Moreover, if a genuinely benevolent "God" does exist, then that "God" would appreciate my HONESTY, and would not even want me to pretend otherwise for. What kind of a God would support dishonesty?

So even if a benevolent God exists, it cannot possible require that I believe in it as a matter of pure 'faith'. I certainly also do not believe that such a God would expect me to worship it out of fear of punishment, or out of lust for a gift of paradise or eternal life.

Moreover, if such an intellectual God actually exists, why should that God allow for many different religions to even exist? If it can inspire men in one nation to write about it, it should be able to inspire all men throughout the world to write about it, and there should be no question about "Which religion is the right one to follow" because all cultures who were spiritually inspired should have been inspired by the very same spirit.

So that's my preliminary view.

Now working through the Bible from Alpha to Omega I'll pick out some major concepts that I have problems with concerning the Abrahamic and specifically the Christian version of that religion.

~~~~~~~

Adam and Eve - the story

In the beginning God supposedly created Adam and Eve, and they were without knowledge of "Good and Evil". However, in this religious sense the only meaning of "Good and Evil" is based entirely on whether or not God approves of something or God doesn't approve of something. If God approves of it, it's "Good", if God does not approve of it, it's "Evil".

Adam and Eve were supposedly without the knowledge of "Good and Evil". In other words, they could not have known that to do things that God disapproves of is "Evil". They were told not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of "Good and Evil". And they didn't, until a serpent convinced Eve that it would be ok to eat from the tree even thought God said that she shouldn't do it.

So she ate the fruit and convinced Adam to eat it too. Suddenly they knew they were naked and they were sore ashamed and hid themselves.

~~~~~

Several points here.

First off, if they didn't know what was "Good or Evil" before they ate from the tree of the knowledge of "Good and Evil" then they had to have committed that act in total innocence not knowing that it was indeed "Evil" because they didn't yet know the difference between "Good and Evil".

So the story contains this extremely illogical paradox.

Moreover, if after eating this fruit they suddenly realize that being naked was "Evil", then wouldn't they have been committing an "Evil" act by being naked prior to that even though they didn't know that they were being "Evil".

Why would God have had them running around naked in the first place if he already knew that he disapproves of that?

So this story itself contains problems.

However, that's not my real concern. My real concern follows:

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Adam and Eve - and Scientific Knowledge

The whole premise of the entire biblical story rests on the idea that Adam and Eve's fall from grace is what brought death, and imperfections into the world. There are even passages in the Bible where it claims that thorns started to grow on plants after the fall from grace.

However, scientific observations show us that death, disease, thorny plants, and all manner of imperfections existed on planet Earth long before humans ever showed up on the planet.

A person doesn't even need to believe in "evolution" per say here. If you simply accept that humans are indeed a recent addition to planet Earth, then it doesn't really matter how they got here, the observation that the world was dog-eat-dog long before mankind showed up tells me that mankind's fall from grace could not be the reason the world is the way it is today. You'd really need to pretty much dismiss all of our scientific knowledge to believe that.

Having studied the sciences my entirely life, I have far more reason to place my faith in their truths than I have for believing that mankind's fall from grace is responsible for the way the world is in general. Why should animals start eating each other just because humans sinned?

This is an extremely important issue, because the entire biblical picture is solely based on the whole idea that mankind fell from grace from God and is in dire need of repentance. That's the crux of the religion.

So I'm not even remotely prepared to accept that premise, and as you can see, any attempt to merely "re-interpret" a few versus isn't going to help much here.

~~~~~~~

Adam and Eve - The Fall from Grace - Can it be Salvaged?

I am often asked. Is there any way that you could be convinced that this "Fall from Grace" and scientific observations could be possible be justified to co-exist.

My answer to that is truly no. Either science would need to be so dreadfully wrong that even our computers wouldn't work, or the biblical story would need to be given such extreme abstraction that it would basically render it virtually useless in terms of containing any useful information. I mean if you need to apply that much abstraction to the Bible, then at what point do you pull in the reigns to try to get anything meaningful from it?

Finally my response to the question "Can it be Salvaged?" truly amounts to another question:

"Why should I even want to salvage this story?"

Why should I want to bend over backwards trying to place my faith in a story that claims that all of humanity is in hot water with our creator and in dire need of repentance?

Why should I have any motivation at all to try to salvage such a story?

In all honesty (and honest should be important to any benevolent God that might exist), I would actually prefer that the story is indeed false.

So if I'm going to have FAITH, I would prefer to have faith that it is indeed false.

I don't need to believe in the Greek fables of Zeus to believe in a spiritual essence of the universe, and neither do I need to believe in the Hebrew fables of Yahweh in order to believe in a spiritual essence to the universe.

For me it's simply doesn't come down to either the Bible is true, or Atheism is true.

Other possibilities exist. In fact, I actually prefer a mystical view of life.

If we believe that "With God all things are possible" then why put God in such a constrained box? Allow that God can be far greater than we can even possibly imagine, and also far greater than the Hebrews could possibly imagine when they created their patriarchal Zeus-like image of a God.

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The Zeus-Like Image of God

This is another thing that I find extremely disturbing about the biblical picture of God. It's really not even a unique picture of a God.

People back in those days attributed storms, and rain, and drought, and earthquakes and tsunamis and all manner of natural disasters to the "Gods" being angry with them. So thy felt a dire need to appease the Gods. And a very common notion was that Gods could be appeased by blood sacrifices. Not necessarily human sacrifices, even the blood of an animal would suffice. But the standard superstition was that making blood sacrifices to the gods would appease them.

Well the biblical God is no except to this common superstition.

What are the chances of that?

What are the chances that the "REAL CREATOR" of this universe just happens to be appeased by blood sacrifices just like every other man-made mythological God?

What a coincidence that would be!

Also why would a truly all-wise, all-benevolent God be interested in having people kill an animal to make atonement for their sins?

That very notion right there is yet another concern that causes me to toss the Bible on the shelf marked FICTION right next to Zeus and company where it obviously belongs.

Zeus was supposed to be the "God of Gods".
Yahweh is the Hebrew version of the "God of Gods".

Zeus could be appeased by blood sacrifices
Yahweh can be appeased by blood sacrifices

Zeus is imagined to sit on a throne and RULE over his creation Kingdom.
Yahweh is imagined to sit on a thrown and RULE over his creation Kingdom.

They both have things like angels or other messenger "gods" etc.

They both gave birth to demigods, a son born of a mortal female.

The list goes on.

It's just the Hebrew's version of Zeus.

It's not even original in these kinds of details.

Why would the real creator of the universe basically be like Zeus?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Blood Sacrifices

This concept of blood sacrifices to pay for sins is paramount in Christianity because it carries over to have meaning in the New Testament with the crucifixion of Jesus.

Jesus died to pay for our sins.
The blood of Jesus is the only thing that can 'wash away' our sins.
Etc.

Here we have a God being appeased by the crucifixion of his own son.

I had already found the whole blood sacrifices thing to be weird and not something that I can believe that a truly intelligent benevolent God would be interested in, yet Christianity culminates to having this concept be the pinnacle of their religion.

A God appeasing himself to "pay" for the sins of mankind.

I make absolutely no apologies at all when I say that this is truly the most absurd notion that I can possibly imagine.

If a God wants to forgive people for "disobeying him" (which is all that sin truly amounts to), then what would be the point in having his son crucified before he can forgive people?

It makes absolutely no sense to me at all. And like I say, I don't think you could "re-interpret" enough verses in the whole Bible to justify this, or make it sound reasonable to me.

~~~~~~~

Ok, I'll quit now. This should be enough to show you that it's pretty hopeless to think that anyone is going to convince me that these stories are worthy of belief based on 'faith'.

I honestly and sincerely see absolutely no reason why I would even want to believe them on "faith".

The only reason I can possibly imagine is if I truly believed that it's either "The Bible is True" OR "Atheism is True" and there are no other possibilities.

I would need to think that narrowly before I would even begin to consider the Bible being "worthy" of placing my "faith" in.

And to be perfectly honest about it, if I had to chose between the biblical picture of a God who is appeased by blood sacrifices versus atheism, I would truly prefer that atheism is true.

I would rather there is no spiritual essence to life at all, than to believe that there is a spiritual essence to life and it's run by a God who is appeased by blood sacrifices.

I mean seriously. I would much rather that life was just a passing accident than to believe that God is that weird.

~~~~~

So I hope you see that a few "re-interpretations" of a handful of verses is not going to give me reason to reconsider these outrageous stories.

~~~~~~

Just as a reminder. I'm only sharing my views on this because you opened the door to the topic. If you see something in these stories that makes sense to you, then more power to you. That's really all I can say.



~~~~~

P.S. If you care to address the issues I raise feel free. I would be truly shocked and amazed if you could convince me that these stories are worthy of serious attention. As I had stated at the onset, these few examples I gave above are only a FEW of the problems I have with this religion. I could write a book as big as the Bible itself explaining why I feel that the biblical stories are utterly absurd.

Ok I can see you firmly believe in your faith assumption. It is not my job to convine you to believe or disbelieve in mine. Your faith assumption is similary to mine. Yours is matter has always existed, exists now and will always exisit. Sadly you can not prove that statement since you can only hazzard a hypothisis of matter having always been here. But there are times you can not see in the past as hard as science has looked. We can see matter is here by the effects it has on us at each moment. But we can not prove it will always exisit. We can only postulate this. Arguing evolution over creationism is pointless because there are as many view of evolution in modern christianity that accept the progress we see recorded in time as there are not. My fiath assumption is God has always been here, is here npow and will always be here. A point i can not prove either. Hence the name faith assumption. Like matter I can see God is here now due to His affect in people's lives. Another point of interest, the Bible never claims to be a scientific description of the world but a spiritual one. People have tried to force the bible to be a scientific description both by christians and non christians alike. But point in fact the Bible only claims to speak to the spiritual world. It claims to be a way to know God and his love. You can attack it scientifically all day and still not prove science disproves the bible. Since science cannot measure the soul or spirit of any one. In fact to date science has not been able to creat life in a laborotory with out using some living matter to give it that spark I would say sience has failed to disprove the bible as a spiritual guide. Logic is a useful tool in studying science, but how can logic be applied to something that can not be seen or measured but can be felt by its impact on the world? As many do you are comapring apples to oranges and saying the apple is not an orange and you are right they aren't. So as i tell those who believe in creationism quit trying to argue oranges are apples. or vice versa

But that is not the issue at hand.

Have I denied that there might be a spiritual essence to life?

No I have not.

We were talking about a specific doctrine that make very specific claims and defines a very specific character traits for its God character. Logic can indeed be used to analyze such stories. And it is my conclusion that when these stories are indeed examined closely they fail to be logically consistent with respect to the Character they claim their God has, as well as being inconsistent in general about claims they make in general.

So whilst an abstract concept of spirit cannot be logically analyzed I have no need to do that, because I don't deny any such thing.

However, just as we have dismissed Greek Mythology on the basis that is has no logical merit, I also dismiss Hebrew Mythology for basically the same reasons.

~~~~~

But yes, if you prefer to just believe on faith alone and ignore logic, then that's your choice, and if that works for you go for it. I'm sure you'll find like-minded people and have a successful church.

There are apparently quite a few people who enjoy placing their faith in the Hebrew stories of God.

So you should have no problem at all assembling a congregation or fellowship using that religion.

sorry to but in, but you might wanna take a look at this article...kimi wrote

this might be a surprise to you...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article7132299.ece

Well, not only that, but science isn't out to "disprove the Bible"

That's just religious paranoia.

Science is out to discover TRUTH.

And the truth that science discovered is that the world was diseased and dog-eat-dog long before mankind appeared on the scene.

No need to show how life was created or anything. That Biblical claim that mankind's fall from grace is responsible for the way that life is on Earth has already been exposed to be false.

It wasn't the intent of science to expose this fact, it's just a mere coincidental fact that this same information reveals that whoever made up the biblical fables was lying.

bacterium is living matter

I'm glad you agree.

If you read the article you'll see that this is precisely what they created from scratch: A synthetic bacterium. (i.e. a man-made bacterium)


~~~~~

So I guess science has officially disproved the Bible then.

~~~~

I personally felt that the previous observation that death, disease and the fact that the world was "dog-eat-dog" before mankind showed up is actually a better proof.

But to each their own.

The man-made genome was then transplanted into a related bacterium, Mycoplasma capricolum


living matter was still used,,,,nothing really disproving the Bible at all

That was later. That was after they had already gotten their original synthetic cell to boot up.

They named their synthetic cell Mycoplasma mycoides.

But after they had created that cell successfully they then transferred that genome into a natural cell called Mycoplasma capricolum and it worked in there as well transforming that cell into a new "species" altogether.

So not only did they create life from scratch, but they even created life that is compatible with existing life.

~~~~~~~

In all honesty though I'm not surprise, nor impressed. At least not yet because I don't know all the details. But I'm willing to bet that they were indeed using various standard DNA codings and just putting them together like Lego blocks and calling that a "new genome", which of course it would be, but it's still basically using existing DNA codes and just rearranging them.

I would love to know if they truly understand the boot up process because there are extremely interesting questions associated with the answer to that riddle.

~~~~~~~

I don't need for mankind to be able to create life from scratch to know that it can be done. It's done ever single day in nature. And it's just atoms in the form of DNA molecules so OF COURSE we will be able to do it from scratch eventually, if we're not already there with this particular experiment.

That's a GIVEN. Scientists most certainly WILL be able to create life from scratch. There's no question about it. Life is nothing more than DNA really. And DNA is just a molecule. And scientists are getting better at building molecules every day.

~~~~~~~~

As far as the Bible is concerned. I'm far more impressed by the proof that mankind's fall from grace cannot possible have been the cause of the conditions of life on the Planet.

The whole "Fall From Grace" issues has been proven to be false. It doesn't really matter whether we can explain how life got started or not. Mankind could still not be responsible for the fact that this world is dog-eat-dog, and contains disease and death. It's always been that way long before mankind ever appeared on the planet.

So the main premise of the Bible has been reveal to be a falsehood.

is 'fall from grace' in the bible?


(as pertaining to mankind, or the world,,, as opposed to specific characters of the bible)

I don't know if those specific words are in the Bible, but the concept certainly is. Adam and Eve "fell from grace", or "sinned", or "disobeyed God" however you want to phrase it.

~~~~~~~~

Like I stated in a previous post in this thread, there are many other reasons to reject the Biblical picture as well - along these same lines.

It supposedly has a God who demands that everyone obey his commands. But he's never around. He's always playing hide-and-seek, and he's going to judge people's eternal fate, based on whether or not they believe ONE specific religion from one particular culture on earth over all other religions and/or cultures?

~~~~~~

With all due respect that's just not even close to being reasonable.

Why should I want to believe in an unreasonable invisible God on pure faith?

Especially one who is so anxious to condemn people.

The Christian version of this religion has Jesus saying that the road is straight, and the gate is narrow and FEW will make it to life.

Well, if that's true, then the vast majority of souls that this God creates are all doomed anyway.

Why would I want to place my FAITH in a religion has the vast majority of humans doomed?

Seems like a rather selfish religion to begin with. It's like my only possible motivation to believe in this religion would be to save my own butt.

And save it from what? Everlasting punishement if I fail to believe?

That's pretty harsh right there as well.

Why would I want to have FAITH that our creator sense decent innocent people into a state of everlasting punishment just because they don't believe in outrageously absurd stories of a God who has his son butchered on a pole to pay for their sins?

To me, that's already a sick perverted story. And to make matters worse, if I refuse to believe that it's TRUE I myself will be condemned to everlasting punishment torture and anguish.

What is so attractive about that picture?

To be perfectly honest with you it's utterly revolting to me.

If it's true I guess I'll end up in hell being RIGHT. I will be suffering for eternity, but at least I will have the consolation of knowing that I was right. The so-called God is totally unrighteous and unholy.

Of course if he's like Jesus and at the END he says, "I forgive you anyway because you know not what you do".

Then guess what? I was STILL RIGHT!

The whole claim that it was important to believe it in would have been nothing more than a HOAX perpetrated by God himself.

Because in the end he didn't keep his WORD, just like Jesus reneged on his WORD at Calvary.

The whole religion is oxymoron no matter how you cut it.

The only way it can be a "righteous" religion is if it doesn't matter whether you believe in it or not.

Abra's own words which proclaim Christianity to be a "righteous" religion.




I've been telling you this for over a year and you just recently admit this truth, yet deny it at the same time....

go figure...




One sitting on a park bench should not turn his back to someone attempting to speak to them, it may be a warning of "wet paint"... - Me

isn't that itself a falsehood? if you don't listen, do what he says, accept him into your heart, your not going to heaven? seems like a contradiction to me...

Contradiction of what? The man-made concept of hell and damnation?

well, according to cowboy, there is only one way to get into heaven... by following jesus and letting him in... thats the only way, right?.. so he doesn't care if we listen to him, but we have to accept him... maybe i'm confused, but the idea seems confused...