Choosing a faith

Phat, I have never heard of "Church of God (Holiness)."Also, I do not call individuals Satanists. I refer to certain
doctrines as being satanic.And, I understand that God did not create evil. Satan,
himself, was perfect in all His ways until he allowed
inequity to creep into him.Many who are baptized allows sin to creep back into
life. This is why Paul tells us to put on the whole armor
of God.There are some denominations that teach once an
individual has accepted Christ that they cannot lose
their eternal life, even if they end up being mass
murderers.Once an individual accepts the premise that once saved
always saved, they must also accept that there's nothing
that can prevent them having eternal life.This would even be true for Hitler and Himmler, if they
had accepted Christ years before they began their evil.I am familiar with the passages they quote to support this,
but they are falsely interpreting the scriptures if they
contradict these perfectly clear verses.Hebrews 6:4-6 "For it is impossible for those who were
once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and
have become partakers of the Holy Spirit,5. and have tasted the good word of God and the powers
of the age to come,6.if they fall away to renew them again to repentance,
since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God,
and put Him to an open shame.There is no known way tho make these three little verses
any clearer.

I humbly suggest that you are misunderstanding Paul on pretty much all of Scripture with your understanding of what it means to be saved.You and many others seem to believe that it refers to salvation. In other words we are saved to be with Christ in the life to come.I would disagree. The Scriptural message as that we are saved for "vocation". We are saved so that we can serve Him in this life by spreading His love into the world by what we do with the life we have been given.God isn't concerned about what we believe, or what we do, but is concerned with "how we love" and how that love plays out in our lives.As far as the next life is concerned and the human role in it, I'm happy to leave to God and His perfect loving justice and wisdom.​

You are so close to being a humanist. The love of humanity is there as is the compassion for the human condition (the good and the evil) and the desire, the need, to address and alleviate that suffering in others.Now lose the excuse. This love is human. It is of and from you. You do not need to credit anything or anyone else.That is the understanding that you should be sharing with this world. Life, the universe and everything is what it is. How we react to it, what we do in this reality, shows our value, if not to some uncaring universe, then, at least to ourselves.It seems a god is not necessary for life to be. History shows humans evolved in the cauldron of a vicious evolution. Our burden as Humanists is to overcome the bloody killing instincts, the hateful feelings against “them”. Knowing that these are deep survival instincts born of millions of years as both predator and prey, as conqueror and conquered, that cannot be easily overcome. We can do so in this population but such requires intellectual and emotional enlightenment. Strong critical intellect honest in its rigor.GDR, a major part of that intellectual enlightenment is to eschew fantasy and acknowledge reality. Religion only stymies progress with unsupportable and manipulable fantasy. There is no little voice. There is only you.You are here, my brother. The Hitchens Bridge beckons you to cross. Join enlightened humanity. Free membership, secret decoder ring and tickets for our next annual baby-eating gala dinner in November, on me.

I’m very much afraid that I’m a long way away from being a humanist. Firstly I have lived long enough to know a world where people didn’t lock their doors; would as often as not leave their keys in the car; in which as a 6 year old come roam on my bike to wherever I wanted as long as I was home for dinner; I would catch the bus downtown; a world where where there were no people living on the street. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some things that are better now, but overall they are far worse. I never heard of anyone I knew committing suicide. I graduated high school at 5ft 2 inches and 100 lbs. I didn’t play on the football team but I wasn’t bullied either. It was a world that was culturally Christian.
I have now lived in a world for several decades that is fundamentally based on secular humanism. You can argue otherwise but IMHO life was far better for nearly everyone then, than it is now.
As far as being a Christian is concerned I am convinced of the resurrection being an historical event. I believe that In Jesus we can see the nature of the one He called father and understand His call on our lives which can be quite neatly summed up in the Golden Rule.One place I differ from people like ICANT is the amount of focus they appear to have on the life to come and who is in and who is out. Jesus said in both Matthew and Luke that the great command is the command to love others as we love ourselves and that we are called to even love sacrificially which is why I say that God is not particularly concerned with what we believe, or with what we do but in how we exercise the gift of love given to us.
I believe however that ultimately the next life will be impacted by how we love in this life and trust in God to be the exercise perfect judgement in with compassion and love. Firstly I would suggest that you hold these views because you have grown up in a culture that has a Judeo Christian heritage. I see evolution without God as one of “nature, red in tooth and claw” and espousing “survival of the fittest’. I believe that it is that “still small voice” of the Spirit of God that pushes us to rise above that. We both have our unprovable beliefs Actually, I was a fan of Hitchens as he forcibly attacked the fundamentalist view that understands that Yahweh in the OT actually did command genocide and public stoning. He was actually siding with Jesus on that.
In the end it sounds by your post that you too espouse the call that is seen in my signature so it seems to me that you are close to quietly slipping across the short bridge to the Christian faith.

By all accounts, the Nordic countries are great places to live and they are amongst the most secular societies in the world.

You're blaming secularism for your parents' subjective assessment of risk?Are you not aware that crime has been decreasing for decades but our anticipation of being subjected to it has done the reverse?

It seems to be a one-way bridge. Not that there are any laws or rules or anything, just the natural usage of the thoroughfare appears to be consistently in the one direction. But I say this from anecdote not from personal experience. I never had to make the trek myself. Oh I was given a book and some lectures, and I did voluntarily attend the Christian Youth Association weekly meets with attendant teen shenanigans but only because that’s where the girls were.I read Nietzsche, the bible and Heinlein early. When I became aware I was already deep into reality and the fantasies held no interest. Had the scales lifted from my eyes quite early. Seems I was intellectually born on this side.Regardless, GDR, you are a humanist. Which is good, but, would be better if you walked in the sunshine of photons instead of in the shadow of priests. Reality cannot be denied.I can't promise I'll be around to fulfill an obligation to walk with you if you do decide to cross but there are a half-dozen friends here who will step up in my place. You won't be alone.

Ya right. It was true of all parents. There were hundreds of 6- 8 year olds that would take buses into downtown Calgary to "Eaton's Good Deed Radio Club". It was a club started up by Eaton's department store and ran in numerous cities across Canada.I'd note that you are clearly typical of parents today who can't even imagine a world where kids are safe in society and people looked after each other.BTW, I was blessed with great parents.

I had the same experience as a kid as you did. What I'm asking is why you think the cause of parents believing that the world is less safe now is because of increasing secularism? (And also why you think this is a realistic fear.) So was I.

It was simply an observation of the difference between living in a culture where one is culturally Christian and in the same culture years later when it is culturally secular.

I hardly walk in the shadow of priests. I come to my own conclusions having read people like Hitchens, Dawkins and Sagan. Or we can wait and discuss it in the life to come.

No, you were making a point, equating the safety of children with increasing secularism.

But what else besides your perception of increased secularism also changed in the preceding years? Did the disparity in wealth lessen? Did the population grow tremendously? Did the christian society fragment into deeper fundamental divisions?What else changed about society besides your perceptions of the religion? Why do you seek to place "blame" for this perception change on secularism?

There are many communities in the US that are still as Christian as they were in the 1980's (the period of time where I was that age), and parents don't let their kids run around town like I used to back in the 80's. It was just a different time. I think part of it was the publicity kidnappings (and other related crimes) attracted during that same time period. It was kind of the last "innocent" generation. Assuming you are around the same age as I, we were also blessed in certain ways for being born in the pre-internet era. It was probably our generation that ruined it for our kids.

Well I grew up earlier than that, before the internet and just before drugs started being a problem I feel sorry for kids growing up today who are being robbed of that age of innocence.The biggest problem in the society then was alcoholism which was very largely a result of the PSTD that reulted from WW2.