An amazing story

Phat writes:It is impossible to know someone and then not know them....

Ringo writes:A lot of divorced people would disagree with you. It's quite possible to live with somebody for years and "never really know them at all", even though you thought you did. It can be a result of wishful thinking on the part of the "knower" or downright deceit on the part of the "knowee".
The "bride of Christ" does sometimes decide that He is "not as advertised" and divorces Him. Who are you to say they were never married?

christ-on-a-stick writes:How can I describe how I felt at that moment?(She was getting rebaptized in Israel with her church group) It was as though I was an "empty vessel, waiting to be filled". I almost felt as though I was in a state of shock - at once numb, but also hyper-aware of everything going around me. There was prayer, and singing, and smiling faces aglow with an indescribable joy - and yet I felt nothing, as though I were suddenly separated from these others by a barrier that could not be seen but was felt only by me. It really is more complex than I can adequately put into words here, but as I watched the line proceed and person after person get dunked into the water to the pastor's exhortations, at once it was as though I was on the outside looking in, observing some strange ritual in which everyone else felt a powerful spiritual significance. (she later attempted to share her feelings with her husband and was met by a rebuff...an unyielding attitude.)

COAS writes:Why were Adam and Eve cursed for eating from the Tree when they were duped Satan in the form of the serpent? If they didn't yet have the "knowledge of good and evil", why would God punish them for being tricked? Moreover, what exactly was bad about having the knowledge of good and evil, or wrong about the desire for it?It seemed strangely illogical. Considering that all of humanity had originally descended from Adam and Eve, didn't that mean to Cain must have married one of his sisters? If incest had been okay back then but was considered sinful now, what did that say about God's unchanging morality?The story of the Noah and the Flood brought on its own virtual flood of questions; they rose, unbidden, in my mind and were impossible to dismiss. How could it be that to utterly destroy the world, killing everyone (and everything) save a single family, was the best possible way of dealing with the "state of affairs" the world was in?The reasoning that Noah and his family had been the the only people in all of humanity at the time that were worthy of living, suddenly seemed like a dubious concept. What about the babies, the children???One of the stories that caused me the most mental unrest was that of Lot, his daughters, the angels in their home and the angry mob at their door. I had a passing familiarity with the story, of course, but had never really read and focused on it and pictured the scenario in my mind.As I re-read the passage again and again, a creeping sense of what I can only describe as revulsion came over me. How on earth could it be considered commendable for a man to willingly hand over his own daughters to be raped by an angry mob? I simply couldn't wrap my mind around it.Needless to say, my cognitive dissonance came into full bloom when we began studying the books in which the Israelites, by divine command, laid waste to the cities of their "enemies" and slaughtered every living inhabitant.Even more distubing where the passages in which they were commanded, further, to take all of virgins for themselves, and plunder the cities of their vanquished enemies. The pressure of this dissonance created more fissures in the basis of my belief. I couldn't put my finger on exactly why these questions were cropping up in my mind quite beyond my control, but it made no difference; they still came, fast and furious, and it was not within my power to make them magically disappear.