Struggling with my Christian belief

At the time of Jesus and afterwards,many Jews rejected him. It was Jewish religious leaders keen to uphold the laws they had invented and added to the OT, that put Jesus on the cross.
Yet the OT did predict the coming of Jesus Christ while the NT stands as the book representing the Christian faith.

If you stick with the bible, you can't go far wrong. Even though it's been rewritten, technology today has been able to translate the oldest written God breathed word. Many Jews today still reject Jesus hence they stick with the OT.

To date there has never been peace in the Middle East. There was a glimmer of peace when the Roman's ruled but peace hasn't ever been achieved. Yet Jesus never lifted a sword, never beheaded anyone or persecuted them. The faith is clear, the 10 commandments are a code for life.

I was brought up a baptist, every Sunday morning the children would sit in the chapel for the first part of the service, we spoke the verses we were each given to learn and then there was the children's address, we then left for the Sunday school rooms at the back where our parents collected us from following the main service.

I don't go to Church. Well, occasionally I do but it's rare. I get all my learning and reading from my NLT bible by Tyndale so it's straight from the horses mouth. I find the more pure the reading, the more it's clear what is actually meant. Otherwise, you can end up polluting your faith with sect beliefs that are often portrayed as Christian. I read one the other day on FB that said it was possible to be a whole heap of things and still be Christian.
Er..........no it's not.

hapgran - so as a self confessed Christian is it just or right to exert pressure on your g/children to believe something you do and they do not? Conversely is it your place to judge them either?

I think respect for the person is central to your concerns. I am sure your grandchildren respect your beliefs. You in turn must respect them as individuals with the free will to reject religion if that is their choice. It surely should have no impact on what you believe yourself. Only worry about the things you can change and as other posters have said, hell may merely be a made made concept to encourage conformity.

I am a devout atheist if there can be such a thing!! However, I have seen just how much solace and support various religious belief has given patients I have nursed over the years, so believe me when I say I am not making light of your dilemma. Sometimes you have to prioritise the most strange things in life, and merely let other things go. Perhaps this is one of those occasions?

We don't even know for sure what were Christ's teachings really. The gospels were written quite a long time after he died and the stories in them conflict in part. Of course you can choose what you believe and what you don't. That's what being human means. Ideas, such as Christian teachings, don't exist without human minds. Human minds invent ideas and human minds use the ideas as they see fit.

Also, it's perfectly clear that christians can and do pick and choose, otherwise there wouldnt be so many different christian denominations.

The Dead Sea Scrolls???

Nina out of interest what sort of things were they saying you could or couldn't be ?

Sacrifice of animals, sexual immorality, murder, false idols plus all the commandments.
Then there are the 7 sins of greed, lust, envy, gluttony, pride, sloth, wrath.

Basically, a true Christian doesn't question the authority of the bible or interpret it to suit themselves. You either accept it as way to live or you don't.

I find the bible fascinating not least because it's the world's best history book. If you look on Youtube, there are full length films of each book starting right back from Genesis. OK, they're a bit corny but some are right up to the current day. James Cameron, (Titantic) has made a film about the The Ark of Covenant. This is what Indiana Jones was about. Great film. They now believe that the ark of covenent in somewhere in Ethiopia.

Sorry Bluebelle, I didn't answer you properly. You can confess and repent if you accept Jesus. Then you're forgiven. But you can't be a Christian while carrying out a belief or behaviour knowing it's wrong. If you don't know something is wrong, then that's a whole different story. No one can blame someone who doesn't know any different.
But if you convert to Christianity, follow the faith, drink yourself into the ground every night and have flings and affairs, then that's not living the life of a true Christian.

Well, I know I always seem to be disagreeing with Nina, but I have a passion for accuracy. How else can we make informed decisions. The Dead Sea Scrolls had nothing to do with Christianity but contained copied portions of the first five books of the Pentatuch. What we call the Old Testament. Plus a few portions of Proerbs and the Book of Daniel. And a few other non referenced texts.
I think Nina is referring to the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) which judged that non Jewish believers did not need to follow Jewish law but refrain from food given to idols, sexual immorality, meat from strangled annals and blood. Nobody is sure what the blood bit means. Halal, not to murder, blood transfusions, sex during periods? There's a raft of different interpretations.
Important to remember that at that point Christianity did not exist but belief in Jesus was viewed as belief in the Jewish Messiah.

The dead sea scrolls confirm the world Jesus existed in. They also confirn that Christianity was part of early Judaism so they provide insights into the very earliest forms of Christians and their writings in the NT.

The blood part means that God no longer required that sacrificial blood of animals. It is all written in the bible.
And sexual immorality referred to sodomy and adultery.

Well Im prepared to be corrected but I really think they were written before the time of Jesus and didn't refer to Christianity at all.

They record the earliest forms of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Interesting. Can't find anything relating specifically to the Dead Sea Scrolls in his theories though. Got any more detailed references? And shall we let the discussion go back to the original post? Think we've hijacked it a bit ?

I don't think you can trust the Bible to be a definitive text on Christ because it was written by and organised by man. It didn't find it's current form until the late 4thC or early 5thC. Initially people simple passed on the story of Christ in oral traditions. These were eventually written down but not all the 'gospels' are in the Bible as we know it. Men decided which books went in and which were left out.

I don't think you have to be a Christian to think that Christ's teachings on behaviour towards other people are valid and try to follow them. Being nice to each other just seems a good way of living.

Other religious teachers seem to have had the same idea.

Mohammed also taught that people should be nice to each other www.questionsaboutislam.com/faith-beliefs-
practices/islam-teaches-manners.php

Sikhism also teaches that all are equal and should be treated accordingly www.realsikhism.com/index.php?
subaction=showfull&id=1248311402&ucat=7

Hinduism “He who hates no single being, is friendly and compassionate, free from self-regard and vanity, patient, contented, fixed on me in heart and mind is dear to me” - Lord Krishna.https://www.quora.com/What-does-real-Hinduism-teach

The Buddha said, "Do not earn your living by harming others. Do not seek happiness by making others unhappy." online.sfsu.edu/rone/Buddhism/footsteps.htm

Just to clarify what a Christian is according to God! It is a person who believes that God got fed up with getting everyone to fight each other, so sent his own beloved son to earth to be born of a virgin & to die on the cross & join him again in heaven the message apparently to say ' look I have done this to my own son so that you know how sincerely I want you to stop killing each other as I previously did & want you to live in peace & harmony. To technically be a Christian it is required by God that you believe in the virgin birth & the crucifixion, & that the only way to him & heaven is this belief that that is what happened.Hence the New Testament being the new set of rules as opposed to the rules of the Old Testament , which is why those that hold true to the Old Testament will never behave as those who believe in the New Testament . Thankful there are non believers of any religions who manage to live & behave in a very tolerant manner to each other... just saying

The Old Testament is interesting as history - if you believe that people lived for hundreds of years etc, or came down in flaming chariots.

which, of course, may be true.

I have some of the lost books of the Bible downloaded on to my kindle, but people will keep giving me more exciting modern books to read so I haven't got around to them yet.

You will have to keep them there for a very rainy day Jalima !

It rained today and I researched my family history but didn't get that far back, although I have noticed that some people do

Thatbags - I'm with you! Ie the books of the NT (gospels) were written years after Jesus died (after stories about him were passed down orally ) Some were later selected to be included in what we now call the Bible. The Acts of the apostles and Paul's letters were written first. Its hard to know what Jesus actually said and did but his teachings eg the sermon on the mount do come through. A lot of the Catholic churches teaching eg purgatory, limbo, transubstantiation, etc are not in the Bible at all and were introduced much later. I don't recall any of Jesus' teaching referring to hell.
Of course we can pick and choose - surely we should use our intelligence! The OT can really be disragerded except as background. Jesus said he was the New Testament (New Covenant) to replace th old one . This is a bit incoherent but Im too tired to write what I mean properly!

Many parts of the world believe in the Old Testament & not the new , i.e. They are not Christian's & therefore firmly believe they are doing Gods will ! I recently googled religions, thankfully there are many out there that are very centred in humanity & helping each other.

BTW norose4, I dont think that you have to believe in the virgin birth to be a Christian. There are many interpretations of these stories and Paul never referred to them (nor did Jesus.) there are many stories of that era of miracle children being born of virgins which are very similar to the nativity stories. As a biologist I would like to point out that any baby born of a virgin (which is impossibl anyway) would b a female - the Y gene has to come from somewhere. And also at the beginning of Matthews Gospel there are 17 verses of genealogy to show that Jesus was descended from David and Abraham through JOSEPH ! Makes no sense at all if he wasnt the father!

Oh I do think there are many religions which have broadly the same ideals about how to live though!

Not impossible to be born of a virgin now Pollyperkins artificial insemination etc . It is a fudemental core belief if one classes themselves as a Christian that they believe in the virgin birth.