To be irritated by religious views...

[Frume]

I know I'll get flamed here. Of course it goes without saying that you are entitled to believe whatever you believe. And I understand that sometimes people turn to 'God' because that's their last hope. But..

My example that prompted me to write this...

I was on Instagram and catching up with a poor girl that I follow. She is 19 and has battled cancer 3 times. The page is updated by her mum and she says things like:-

'In Him we trust to heal his child'

'This is all part of His plan'

'He knows what he is doing'

Something good happens & then it's, 'God is good' or 'Thank you to Our Father in Heaven for making our prayers come true and healing his child'

Ok. Sure, that was it.. or probably science

The general 'Thoughts and prayers' when there is any kind of disaster. Because obviously that's all that's needed in a time of crisis.

@Walkingdeadfangirl

Sorry for late reply, its been a very busy Easter and only set to continue!

1. Already got it so I can save my airfare to Rome. Check out the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Canon Laws which is a summary of Catholic teachings and papal laws.

1. You have divulged from your origin point but to explain the Parable of the Musterd Seed : None of these disciples are asking in faith, they are asking out of personal gain. For us to truly ask in faith means we have faith that God knows what is best for us. We need to align our wills with the will of God, only when our faith is aligned with God’s will “nothing will be impossible to you”. Wanting what we want isn’t faith it is desire. Mou tains could be interpreted as our own sin, obstacles to our faith or following God's commandments. Or even the growth of the Church starting small.

1. God is perfectly full of mercy and perfectly just. The Catholic Church DOES NOT teach that only Catholics can experience the beatific vision (Heaven). However, if a Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist, Mormon, Pentecostal, Baptist, etc. gets to Heaven, it is through Jesus and only through Jesus. This seems impossible, but it is true and accurate. God’s mercy is limitless, unending, and down-right difficult to grasp. We will (or should) want to worship goodness, love, hope and mercy. And all those things ARE God. Of you don't want to, as I said earlier, the doors of Hell are locked on the inside.

1. Now, you're making a God out of yourself. God's mercy is limitless to his children even if they don't want it. But if you can't accept your wrong-doing then how can you accept his forgiveness? Repenting and forgiving go hand-in-hand. And yes, you can (and most people do) mess up and commit the same offence countless times but you would be forgiven each time if you repent and attempt to not make the same mistake again. We love God, right? We don’t want to hurt the ones we love, but sometimes our human nature gets the better of us and we sin. If we really and truly love God, then we should be really and truly sorry, correct? Hence, we must confess our sins and do penance for them.

@Acis

Reading the bible, there are a lot of metaphors and reference to Hebrew culture in those times that we would never understand in our current times. For example in The Parable of the Prodigal Son - It would have been utterly shameful for a Middle Eastern man in the 1st century to have run anywhere. To run would mean lifting tunics and showing bare legs and this would be seen as something highly degroatory. However, in the Parable, the father lifts his tunics and runs to meet his wayward son returning home. The audience at that time would have certainly have picked up on this extra information whereas the average reader now would not. What I am saying is not to write off the intelligence and social cues that are present throughout the teachings. Not everything may have been included in the bible. We're not as smart as we think.

Also, Catholics have teachings that we believe has come from God.The Holy Spirit guides the Church in a special way. He guided the Church in its process of discerning which books belonged in the Bible, and he continues to guide the Church in our interpretation of the Bible. Therefore, Catholics do not interpret the Bible for ourselves but we rely on the wisdom of the Church in understanding what God is saying through the Scriptures.

WhatisFreddoingnow, it's still a hell of a leap from picking up the significance of a man running to a whole complex particular judgment/final judgment scenario with more complex concepts of hell, purgatory and heaven thrown in. Given that Jesus isn't depicted as a snob, I take it that he didn't restrict his teaching to highly sophisticated and educated types. Would he really have expected the labourers, fishermen, farmers etc to work all that scenario out from parables? Why would he not have simply spelt it all out for them?

Acis,

I do agree with you. And I usually find the attempts at biblical "interpretation" to be highly contrived attempts to make the words mean something acceptable to a 21st century society rather than what was actually meant! Surely an omnipotent god writing a book to guide humanity for millennia could have made a better job of communicating his meaning?

I wrote this a couple of days back ...

The desperate ventures into "biblical scholarship" and "hermeneutics" always put me in mind of a battered wife trying desperately to excuse her cheating husband. We've caught him out by finding what is clearly a text message to the other woman. But miraculously by a process of exhaustive "textual analysis and hermeneutics" he manages to construct some ludicrously contrived interpretation in which all the words mean something else, and he's off the hook!

The Bible has all sorts of outlandish claims made on its behalf for its own profound importance. If god wanted us to understand the nature of hell (or a thousand other things vital to our existence apparently) why not express it clearly? Why write half of it in riddles, make the other half deadly serious and literal, but not tell us which half is which? If he wants us to live by its tenets why make it so impenetrably badly expressed that no one can agree what it means, to the extent that it seems for pretty much 2,000 years people got the wrong end of the stick about crucial parts of its message.

Obviously all these questions are rhetorical, because I find the basic premise that god exists to be highly unconvincing! But religions really don't help themselves with these equally unconvincing attempts to dig themselves out of holes of their own making. They could at least accept what their own holy books say. Instead it often seems like they want to adopt a rational moral philosophy (highly laudable) and then perform a square-peg-round-hole operation on their scriptures.

I was refuting your point that people in that time wouldn't understand things that Jesus was saying to them. They would have had a much deeper understand than the average person picking up the bible now would have. I was using it as an example. The point of the Parable isn't about Hell but about forgiveness and the love of God.

See above for my explanation of how Catholics view the Bible through the interpretation of the Catholic Church. In the early formation, there were councils to interpret some of the most complex aspects of our faith. As the Holy Spirit guides Church teaching, we believe that Catholic Church teachings hold true. We trust in the early Church fathers.

Look at it this way, I know almost nothing about Astrophysics. If a 'creator' (for the sake of this analogy) of astrophysics sat me down with a text book and told me to master it - I would struggle. I might get the basics but I would probably pick up misconceptions along the way. If however, a teacher helped guide qmultiple people who had dedicated their lives to learning astrophysics to come up with a way of communicating the text book in a good interpretable way (and could explain around the core info in the text book) and those people then taught me - I would be much clearer on the subject matter.

As to why we don't have all the answers in the Bible....

1. We have the Catholic Church so don't need a different updated version from God every generation. Guidance is given from the Church.

1. God reveals more truth when we respond rightly to what he’s already revealed.

1. Knowledge of God isn't the goal for the faithful. Obedience, love and a relationship is the goal. Noone (Christian or not) is going to have all the answers and know the mind of God. Will I have questions in the next life? Yes. I have a notepad full. I have to accept that God doesn't will me to know in this world and wants me to come to Him in faith.

1. We might not need to know it at this point in time. Or we might not be ready for it. Again, it's a trust in God.