This isn't new, but my youth pastor's sermon this morning brought to mind the fact that a great many people -- who claim to be Christians -- have serious misconceptions about God and spiritual matters.
One of the more intriguing findings is that not all people who call themselves Christians believe all the conventional Christian beliefs. For example, one percent of Christians do not believe in God, 8% do not believe in the survival of the soul after death, 7% do not believe in miracles, 5% do not believe in heaven, 7% do not believe in the Virgin birth and 18% do not believe in hell.
Another poll reveals even more differing opinions on the nature of God.
Most Americans agree that there is a God, but their perceptions of who God is and how much God controls events on Earth vary greatly. There is no consensus on God’s gender, form or role on Earth:* A plurality (42%) of all adults (but only 37% of men) thinks God is male, but only 1% thinks God is female. Almost half of all adults believe that God is neither male nor female (38%) or that God is both (11%).
* Only 9% think of God as being like a human being with a face, body, arms, legs and eyes. Almost half (48%) think of God as a spirit or power that can take on human form, while 27% think of God as a spirit or power who does not take a human form.
* Less than a third (29%) of the public believes that God controls what happens on Earth. Half (50%) believes God observes but does not control events on Earth, while 6% believe God neither observes nor controls earthly events.
* A slender (53%) majority believes that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God, but 32% think they worship different gods.
It's impossible to attain a right understanding of God through observation and experience, because God is supernatural. The only way to learn about God is through revelation, because revelation is God telling us what he's like. It's like how a father tells his kids what he does at work all day; there's no way for the kids to find out much on their own, and they only know as much as the father reveals. If you can't get God to send an angelic messanger to you directly, I recommend checking out the Bible.
Interesting.
Question: What if someone wanted to know about God, but wanted to use his reason, wholly assisted by revelation or faith to do so?
JR: Then you couldn't get very far, could you? Assuming you meant "unassisted".
That's what I meant. That indeed is a typo.
I take it then that you don't think much of the natural theology of our Framers, of the Declaration of Independence, i.e., the laws of nature & Nature's God.
JR: You don't think the Framers' theology was informed by the Bible? It seems pretty clear to me that it was, even for the deists.
If it were, it wasn't intentional, but whatever they incidentally absorbed from the culture and tradition.
The natural theology that underpins the Declaration was exactly that -- using man's reason, unassisted by faith or revelation, but looking to nature for certain "self-evident Truths" to ground our system of rights based government.
God played a part: he grants the rights. But that was "nature's God," meaning God as we can understand him from our reason, not faith or the Bible.
I don't think our framers, as a whole, had anything against revealed religion (they thought it had a positive influence on society). But they turned to natural theology for public principles.
There are similarities: natural and revealed theology both have a monotheistic God. And most of our framers talked about a God who could intervene with His Providence, but they never, in their public proclaimations, referred to him as the Trinitarian God of the Bible (or cited Scripture). It doubtful that any of the first half-dozen or so Presidents believed in the Trinity.
But they also spoke in a way as not to offend orthodox Christians, giving them the impression that nature's God was *not* their Trinitarian God. The natural God was sort of the lowest common denominator God.
JR: C'mon man, you expect me to believe that you actually think our Framers -- who lived in a far more Christianity-infused environment than we do -- were only incidentally influenced by the Bible? Please.
"Natural" theology (whatever that means) isn't monotheistic -- the vast majority of people groups are pantheistic or polytheistic. Plus, George Washington was most definitely a Christian, as were many others of the founders. Plus, of course, you're probably familiar with the Jefferson Bible, the whole purpose of which was to extract the moral teachings of Jesus from the religious -- from the Bible.
It's totally absurd to argue that the Framers of our country were only incidentally influenced by the Bible.
Yes of course the framers I referenced were influenced by the moral teachings of the Bible. When I used the word "incidentally," I meant that look to HOW they were influenced by it: By in large, they didn't believe the Bible was the revealed word of God (I am not referring to all framers, but rather a number of very important ones, like the first four Presidents and others).
Instead they put the focus on man's Reason, in order to find the Truth and the Bible was only true insofar as it was reasonable (and some found the teachings of the Bible to be more reasonable than others. It's interesting both Jefferson & Adams were "men of reason" and both rejected parts of the Bible. But Adams would probably accept more of the Bible as reasonable than Jefferson).
Russell Kirk refers to this as Deism (not all people defien Deism this way, but if this is the proper understanding of Deism, then a huge % of our most important framers were Deists).
"Deism was neither a Christian schism nor a systematic philosophy, but rather a way of looking at the human condition; the men called Deists differed among themselves on many points….Deism was an outgrowth of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientific speculation. The Deist professed belief in a single Supreme Being, but rejected a large part of Christian doctrine. Follow Nature, said the Deists (as the Stoics had said before them), not Revelation: all things must be tested by private rational judgment….”
BTW: I've done some pretty extensive research on Washington in the past year, and this describes Washington's sentiments to a T as well.
JR: I was pretty sure George Washington believed the Bible, but Wikipedia claims that many of the prayers attributed to him were later heavily edited. I'll defer to you on the matter, but I don't think it's of great importance. I still think it's pretty clear that the Founders' religious views would have been almost entirely different if they hadn't had the Bible. But there's no real way to know.
* A slender (53%) majority believes that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God...
53% are also WRONG. Allah was the name of a rock idol worshipped among hundreds of other such rock idols at Mecca. As Muhammed (the false prophet of the false god) developed his theology, he incorporated the name into his teachings.
The idea that Allah is the same deity as that worshipped by christians and jews is one of many lies promulgated by Muhammed (the false prophet of the false god) in order to give his newly founded theology substance.
I'm not religious or spiritual... but I do recognize the good it can accomplish through the efforts it inspires us to make.
It also, however, inspires people to do bad things.. to other people, themselves, or the world we all inhabit.
It seems to me, then, that religion and spirituality are just clothes we wear. As clothes go, though, they're pretty transparent. They don't do a good job of hiding our good or bad deeds. Quite often, however, they are amplifiers of those deeds.
how can anyone really claim that they know exactly who God is or what he desires? if following black and white "facts" from the bible on how to live and what to think is the absolute answer then tell me where does faith come into the equation?