From Dottie:
Dear Liberal Preacher,
“If one wants to believe in heaven, but has a problem with the bible contradicting itself, does that person call himself/herself a Christian or just a spiritual person?”
Dottie
Dear Dottie,
There is a growing number of people who want to be spiritual but don’t care for the baggage of being Christian.
There also is an an increasing number of Christians who are jumping at the bit to tell other Christians they are not Christians. If you don’t believe like me, then……….then you aren’t a Christian, they say. That’s their little illusion and their propaganda.
Don’t believe a word of it. Just because a loud mouthed Christian/preacher says you are not a Christian or just because a church council says you are not a Christian does not make it so.
Christians have believed diverse things about God and scripture from the beginning of Christianity. Conservative Christians don’t want you to know church history. I mean, how can you read ten minutes of church history and not see major differences among the Christians? And as for biblical contradictions, early church figures, unlike many modern Christians, at least fessed up to problems in biblical interpretation. I’m not saying I like their “solutions,” but at least they fessed up.
Dottie, I, like you, believe in heaven and am honest about contradictions in the Bible. I have friends who are spiritual but not Christian. Hope you will join me in staying Christian. The world needs some honest Christians.
Yes, definitely yes, you can be a Christian and be honest about biblical contradictions. In fact, I would argue that if you aren’t honest about biblical contradictions you aren’t being the Christian God and the world needs you to be. I hope and pray the Christians don’t believe and live certain biblical texts or the world is in trouble.
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