Sunday morning Rambling The Church

Ah yes its Sunday morning (ref. my blog from Saturday) I got even less sleep last night for some reason I just could not shut my mind off I woke up on and off till about 3 am then I decided to go ahead and get up and I have been up since 3 am watching movies. So because of that I will be tired here in about another two hours or so and not feel like doing a damn thing today. I have too much going on in my head I guess that I can’t let go of I think they say that’s what keeps us up.

But now it’s Sunday morning and that brings me to my next thought I suppose there are allot of you that are getting ready to go to church. I myself have not gone to church regularly for over I’d say more then 15-20 years. Most of my teen years were filled with going to church.
This may interest you to know during that time in my life I WAS NOT FORCED to go by my mother and father. I at the time chose to go. Much of my preteen to teen years I was in a private Seventh Day Adventist School and it was just the thing to do with friends. I asked my mother if I could go. And of course she said yes and I did. I stayed in the church for almost all of my teen years and into the first few years of my adult life.
Then something changed I began thinking what is it about this that is missing and by this early adulthood time in my life I had started to doubt EVERYTHING. I was becoming someone who if it could not be proven then it’s not true. I mean come on I had never seen anyone walk on water, I had never seen anyone heal someone by the touch of their hand whets that all about? In my mind they (meaning Christians) call it faith BECAUSE it CANT be proven. I.e. you have to have FAITH that God is real. Now wait let me back up just a second. I do believe that Jesus was real and he was on this earth and that the bible is real. That’s for the most part where it ends for me. I think the Bible is a story of the past nothing more nothing less. I don’t think that it’s a story of what is to come.
Then of course you have all different levels of churches and people and everyone is telling you the way you are doing it is wrong. That because you don’t believe this way you’re not going to be saved. And this was happening even in the Adventist church. I had this conversation with someone not too long ago. At the time (when I was going to church) I was what I thought well studied in the bible and what it said. I thought that the Adventist way was the right way. I believed that what I was doing was the way to salvation. However now after the conversations that I have had since then with people of all kinds and of different churches was it the right way? And now that I have been away from the church so long I can’t tell you if it was right or not. But I know at the time in my heart that I thought it was the right thing to do. And it upsets me to think that I had been brain washed at the time into thinking what I was doing was right and what everyone else was doing was wrong. I mean cause now that I look back on things from my Adventist years. They were very upfront about it if you don’t do it this way YOU WILL NOT GOTO HEAVEN! I remember that very clearly. And every single church you go to will try and tell you the same thing. “our” way is the right way and the way to salvation.

A person that I have talked to about this in great length has told me well read it for yourself study the Bible. And well ok that’s all well and good but I’m not one that studies well on my own. So I would like to get into a Bible study group or something like that. But then it’s like school if you are studying with someone who believes a certain way they are going to put there take on it. It’s kind of like when you are a kid in school if I teacher were to have told us that 2 + 2 = 6 then everyone would be running around today saying 2 + 2 = 6.
So for the early years of my life the Adventist were telling me that 2 + 2 = 4 but now as I start to look into things again I got people trying to tell me 2 + 2 = 6.

If there is a God witch I’m still struggling with….. Are you telling me that if there is an Adventist, a catholic, & a Baptist at the gates of heaven that one of those is not getting in because the way they believed is wrong? If God truly loves should it really matter that everyone’s views are slightly different as long as we are all working towards the same goal and that is everlasting life and eternal salvation through Christ our lord? I’m going to keep studying I guess but I still don’t know what is right and what is wrong I guess I never truly will till I’m at the gates of heaven or hell. This subject if you believe or not really interests me to no end and I don’t get to talk about it enough.
Sorry to ramble on that’s my thoughts for the day have a GREAT Sunday church or not!

~Dan