Going to hell? Fringe lunatics

We would agree that Paul was inspired by God to continue teaching in Corinth. It doesn't follow at all, unless one decides to impose their own view on what is written, that Paul would just be a conduit for God to speak through without involving Paul's own thoughts. It just means that Paul was gifted, and inspired, to preach to the Corinthians and as Paul would agree, to do so in spite of his human failings.For example: Thirty years ago I believe I was led into a ministry of leading sing-alongs with seniors. I have been doing it ever since but as anyone who has heard me can well attest I don't do it perfectly.I believe that the Biblical authors, were inspired to write down their experiences of God and that now we in turn are to allow ourselves to be inspired by what they wrote. We are to be inspired to reflect God's love and righteousness to the world, we are to learn from the mistakes that have been made by the various authors and the people they wrote about, we are to be led in all truth by God's Holy Spirit and the Bible is one of the gifts given us by God to do that. Will we do it perfectly? Not by a long shot.I have been going through the book of Joshua. It is a blood curdling story about Joshua going from one town to another killing everyone in sight declaring that God is delivering them into their hands. Does that idea bear any resemblance whatsoever to what Jesus taught? We are to look at the story of Jonah and be inspired to sort out how he went so wrong and to draw parallels in our own lives, both as individuals and as societies so that we don't make the same mistakes.I contend that if we try to turn the Bible into one long book of rules and other absolutes we are missing out on so much of what God wants to teach us. As I have said before, I don’t believe that the Bible is the 4th member of the Trinity. God has created us with free will and to treat the Bible as a book that would have us follow without question a set of laws negates our ability to follow God, as seen through the lens of the resurrected Jesus who we are told is the word of God. We are to follow out of love not fear.The Bible chronicles the history and stories of God’s people. When looked at from a distance it tells the meta-narrative from creation to new creation and calls us to see where and how we fit into that story. Edited by GDR, : typo

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I'm not questioning your faith or your love of God but in writing that you sound so much like the Pharisees. They believed if they just followed all the food laws, kept the Sabbath with all that entailed that they would be alright and that God would return, rebuild the temple and vindicate them. Jesus told them they had their model wrong.I suggest that the model God wants us to follow is simply that of love, a love freely chosen, because love is where our heart is, not just so that we can be on the right side of God.Once again I go back to Micah where we are told exactly what it is that God wants of us. We are to humbly love kindness and do justice. There is nothing in there about getting our theology right. The same message is echoed in Christ's parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25.The road to hell is one freely chosen as well. It is the road we choose to travel when we are unwilling to accept love that supersedes our love of self. I suggest reading C S Lewis’ book The Great Divorce.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Sure, but let’s look at where he is going with this. He has just finished preaching The Beatitudes in which he describes the life that we are to lead now in anticipation of the time when God’s will, will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven, or at the time of new creation.Just before the verse you quoted, Jesus said that he hadn’t come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them. This was a revolutionary message. It was new beginning and when you read the beatitudes you can see that the laws to which he is referring to aren’t about absolutes but are generalities such as blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and blessed are the peacemakers. He then goes on to give a series of things not to do such as murder and things to do such as loving your enemy. But once again these things are encapsulated in what he says towards the end of the sermon when he says, In everything, do unto others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. In other words unselfish love fulfills every jot and tittle of the law.