JIM LEE
I spoke to an Anglican worshiper early in the year of 2001, and I want to focus on this issue. Since I first met this lady I am discovering more and more that most Christians are not Christians after all, they only think they are. For want of a better word they are “church attendees” only, or you could say pew warmers with a very limited knowledge of the bible. To most of them the church is no more than a social club and a place to gossip. They are for want of a better word, cafeteria type Christians. In other words, they select only what they want.
In the past, I had discussions with a middle-age female Anglican worshiper when she visited our home one day in February 2001. I shared with her that my wife and I no longer believed in God or Jesus after doing some serious research into religions. She then informed us that she still believed in a God, but she stated, that her and her Christian friends really thought that the bible was a book of myths.
How can someone be a Christian if they have no belief in the bible? Just how many supposed Christians think like this? Is calling yourself a Christian some sort of ego trip? The mere fact that many may think that the bible is a work of myths throws some very serious doubt on what they actually believe.
If Adam and Eve are considered as myths, what happens to the “Original sin” we are all supposed to be contaminated with? Christians who believe that the story of Adam and Eve is a myth, cannot call themselves true Christians, because if there is no Original Sin then there is no need for a redeemer (supposedly born of a virgin, so as to be sinless) by the name of Jesus born some 4000 years after Adam and Eve. Why it took so long is anybody’s guess. Just why, if the Adam and Eve story is a myth, was Jesus crucified to save us from a sin we did not originally commit?
It becomes extremely important for the true Christian to believe the Genesis account of the Adam and Eve story about original sin, otherwise the introduction to Jesus as the redeemer in the New Testament and Christianity are meaningless exercises in futility. According to the teachings of Christianity, “All people are contaminated with the original sin” of Adam being tempted by Eve to taste the forbidden fruit. That, according to Christianity, makes everyone born contaminated by sin regardless of his or her belief or unbelief as taught by the church. If our contamination was because of Adam and Eve regardless of our consent or belief, then shouldn’t Jesus’ redemption be passive? By this, I mean, shouldn’t his sacrifice cancel out all sin whether we consent or not, or whether we believe or not?
To come up with a different argument or excuse, is to say God condemned us unconditionally and made redemption conditional. Christians often remark, “that God is no respecter of persons.”
The implication of this Christian argument is that Adam’s Original sin was superior to Jesus’ sacrifice, because Adam’s sin condemned all of us, whereas Jesus only saved some of us according to the teachings of the Christian church.
Question: Wasn’t Jesus’ crucifixion greater than Adam’s mistake? If the crucifixion and supposed resurrection triumphed over the Original sin, than the debt for all sin is paid for all time, regardless of our consent, regardless of our belief, and regardless of our faith. If there is no need to be a believer because we supposedly inherited a mythical Adam’s sinful nature, then there is no need to be a believer in order to be redeemed. Either Jesus paid the price for all sin for all time or he didn’t. To say that only those who accept Jesus, are redeemed, is a contradiction.
Why would a just and perfect god hold an innocent person responsible for a sin that was comitted by someone else?
Great insight however it is sad to see christians who have no idea what they believe and why. I grew up in the church for 30 years and never once read the bible to see what it was saying I only read it to find what other people told me I should find. If that is the way you search the bible the only conclusion you can possibly come to his that the whole thing is the worlds greatest hoax. However, if you are able to shake off every doctrine you were ever told about what the bible says and you discovered what the original hebrew and greek were saying to the original recipients of those words then a whole different world emerges. Two choices arise from this standard. Either we all evolved by a random chance and my evil natural desires to hurt others for my own gain are a result of random chance and death is the only natural force in the universe while life is here by random chance, or it was all created, life, evil, death, all of it is either random or created. The bible in the original form only offers two options. Life is temporary for most, when they die their death is forever, nothing according to the bible can live forever, all things die. There is however a chance for eternal life according to the bible, this is the give and take, their either is or isn’t. You can believe it or not, what happens after that is still to be seen.
One thing is for certain. What the Hebrew Tanach does reveal is the word Sheol is the common grave of mankind. The Greek translation of the old Testament mistranslated the word Sheol to be Hades or Hell. So there is no hell as punishment for mankind in the original Hebrew. Best wishes Jim Lee