God is not a Sugar Daddy.

An important part of college is living with people who are different than you. Whether it's your roommate, the people in your dorm or the people in your classes, everyone is different than you, yet, somehow we all manage to live together in a community.

I know we usually don't like to be around people with different opinions than us, but I think it is important to be around good people whose views differ from my own. There's a girl in my hallway who has opposite views than me on almost every issue, and I absolutely love it. We sit there and have long discussions about our views. It's amazing because even though we disagree, we are both heard and we respect each other's opinions. We never tell the other person that they're wrong, call each other names, or offend each other; we just have a conversation. It gives us a new perspective that we can each chew on and that might alter our overall view in some way.  Really, that is how society should be.

My friend and I are in the same Bible class, and we often discuss issues that come up because of that class. The thing is, my friend believes in God and that Jesus died so she could go to heaven. Here's the catch: she doesn't believe the Bible. She says she just doesn't trust it because of the potential for human error between what God intended and what the original writers wrote. Because of this and the fact that God gave her free will, she feels that she can do whatever she wants, even things that
I would consider to be a sin.

I disagree. I do not think it is possible to be a Christian without believing in and trying to follow the Bible.

First off, where does the idea of Jesus dying for us come from? The Bible. If you believe that, you already believe some of the Bible. She herself always tells me she hates it when people pick and choose from the Bible; she says either don't believe it or believe it. The problem is, by picking only the part about Jesus dying for her sins, she is picking and choosing. Our societies basic morals are in the Bible. If she believes in justice, fairness, love, responsibility, peace, and self-sacrifice in terms of charity, she believes in the Bible.

Secondly, after God chose people to write it, it was passed down through centuries of people, copied by hand and translated, all of which explain minor inconsistencies. Yes, there is a little human error, but it doesn't matter because of all the things that are constant. For a book written over centuries with several different authors from several different time periods, it is incredibly consistent. In several parts of the Bible, it is constant in its depiction of salvation by God's grace through faith in Christ.

Thirdly, is it that she really doesn't believe the Bible? Or is it that she doesn't WANT to believe the Bible? She is a very independent person, and I respect that. However, she wants to be able to do whatever she wants. She hates rules and being told what to do. Maybe she just doesn't like the idea of having rules or of being told a certain way she should be living, so she chooses not to follow the Bible.

Okay, moving on..

I have a few strange uncles on my mom's side. One, Uncle George, has schizophrenia. The other, Uncle Warren, is just.. well.. odd. I kid you not, he looks almost exactly like Si from Duck Dynasty: Beard, glasses, hat and all.

Si Robertson from Duck Dynasty. Actually, this could be Uncle Warren. I'm not really sure.

While he's odd, he's also very religious. He goes on "God rants" at family dinners, and, honestly, I usually zone out. However, sometimes he has some interesting words of wisdom. At Thanksgiving this year, he said something that stuck with me because I was surprised by a term he used: "Sugar Daddy." I don't know how he even knows what that is; I guess he must be more cultured than I thought. And even weirder was the sentence he used:

"God is not a Sugar Daddy." 

Of course not! How could God even be compared to one?

For those of you who are somehow less in-the-know than my uncle, a sugar daddy is a rich old man who lavishes gifts on a young woman in return for her company.

Think about it: How many people, like my friend, just hang out with God once in awhile, yanno, pray a few times just to let him know that they believe in him, and then just expect to be lavished with all of his gifts?

That isn't how it works.

Salvation is an undeserved gift from God. It isn't defined by our actions. However, when you are saved and when you are God-fearing, you have to go the extra step and try to live your life for him. He requires us to follow his commandments. God did give us free will, but with that he gave us a responsibility to his own.

Being saved doesn't end with the initial act. The act of being saved should inspire a change in your heart, which should change your life from living out actions of the flesh to producing fruits of the spirit. In other words, we need to stop doing bad things and instead, do good things because of what Christ has done for us. When you are truly saved, living sinfully just isn't an option because you convert to a new nature of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Not sin.

Therefore, you can not be a Christian and ignore the rest of the Bible.



Shoutout to my friend, Will, and his blog: Halfway to Perfect
You can't just say you're going to be fit and just magically be fit. Living a healthy lifestyle also requires working for it.

Wut.

I've been reading God's word for awhile now, as you know, and I came into college thinking I knew so much about the Bible. Well, at some point sitting in my Bible class, it occurred to be just how much of the Bible I had never actually read. I've mentioned before how each time you read the Bible, you pick up something new; however, having a class about the Bible takes that to another level. In Bible class, we don't just read the Bible; we also analyze it from other viewpoints. For example, sometimes we'll talk about errors in translation, or other times, we'll look at the different interpretations and theories of various theologians and scholars.

My professor likes to throw in some knowledge of the cultures and the time period as a part of our lessons, so we can understand where the scripture came from. Sometimes what we learn is really really cool, like how each of the plagues in Exodus were taking on an Egyptian god, proving that God is more powerful than any of their perceived Gods. So cool. On the other hand, some of what we learn is really really not cool.

There's a whole bunch of stuff that we've gone over in my Bible class that just straight up bothers me.

You guys know the story of the birth of Moses, right? Basically, all of the baby boys were being killed, so his mother sent baby Moses in a basket down the river where he was found by the queen who kept him and raised him as her own.

Turns out, that was someone else's story first! There's some jerk named Sargon who already had that birth story! Sargon of Akkad was a king in the area before Moses was a thing, so the author of the story of Moses would have already heard about Sargon when the story was written. It was apparently a cultural thing. If you wanted to be taken seriously as a hero and a leader, you had to have qualities that mirrored former leaders; for example, you had to have that birth story. It's possible that even though it is in the Bible, that story may not have actually happened.

Wut.

Several weeks ago, we came across a particular passage in Joshua that made me sick. Of course, I had read stories in the book of Joshua before, but I think we mostly focused on stories like how the Israelites marched around Jericho and the walls came down. However, this particular story was different. Somehow, in my 18 years of living and with my church background, I never once heard about this. It was almost like it was carefully avoided because it is so difficult to address, or maybe because they didn't want me to know about it. This is the kind of passage that is dangerous in that it can totally change your image of God, justify violence, and make you doubt everything. Ladies and Gentlemen, this passage is just plain hard: Joshua 11.

"The Lord said to Joshua, 'Do not be afraid of them, because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them, slain, over to Israel. You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.'" (Joshua 11:6). And that is exactly what the Iraelites did; they slaughtered everything. That's right, God commanded mass genocide in the Bible. While that is disturbing on its own, that's not the worst of it. According to my professor, there is no other evidence that this event happened in any other history. They go on to face the same groups of people later in history and later in the Bible, as if they didn't actually kill everyone. Just like how we say, "the Pittsburgh Steelers destroyed the other team," but the other team just lost rather than being actually destroyed, it could have just been an exaggeration used to express military victory. That story may not have actually happened.

Wut.

There's a whole bunch of other occurrences like those that I could go on about, but I think you get the idea.

The thing that bothers me most about these passages is the idea that something written in the Bible might not have happened. Something about this makes doubt snowball. I can't help but to wonder if these parts of the Bible might not be true, what other parts of the Bible might not be true?

If Moses wasn't really sent in a basket down a river, how do I know the plagues even happened? How do I know if Jonah was swallowed by a fish? How do I know if God made covenants with Abraham and David? How do I know that Jesus died for my sins?

My first instinct to try to make some sense out of this. Alright, so maybe Moses's birth story is like someone else's... Who cares? Excuse me, my birth story is very similar to several people around me. I was born in a hospital, and I'm sure many of you were, too. Even people with more unlikely birth stories never seem to be alone in them. I guess people back then just liked to kill baby boys way more often than they should have, and since it happened more than once, I don't see why the same thing that happened to Sargon couldn't have also happened to Moses.

I realize that that was a really sad argument, but I don't need that crazy logic to believe. Sometimes, I think that God made this difficult on purpose. Making stuff like this seem unlikely makes any faith that is in him just more valuable. If you can believe in Him even through all the crazy things that try to discredit Him, you must really, truly believe in Him. What good is a faith if there's no reason to question it?

I can't go around doubting the entire Bible. I just can't do that to myself because deep down I know God is real, and I can't waste my efforts trying to run from that.