If it were not for the Lord, and his teaching about love, i would give up on Christianity. It causes me so much distress. Its as if i am clinging to hope, love, and faith, but without everything else. I consider this liberty. Liberty is joyful but religion is not. Any thoughts?
Religion.
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Soyeong
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Is this the path of the sepant?:
James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
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- Mar 17, 2015
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Well, one thing you could do is pick some people around in real life to initiate (or increase) some more "love your neighbor as yourself" with, and have more of the here and now results of doing as Christ said. It can be surprising, I learned. People that I didn't expect to be all-that to know turned out to be blessings to me in ways I could not imagine ahead of time. Now this 2nd greatest commandment is very rewarding to do, and there is more, which I didn't guess, could not imagine, such as the unexpected and sublime results of doing the greatest commandment as He named it. And more, there is the "forgive" commandment from Him which also is so wonderful once we do it, that is to the level of real forgiveness in our hearts to individuals that have wronged us, because of how wonderful the feeling is from doing that, just so good. More than release even. It's...more. For me 'christianity' is mostly these experiences, here and now, and drawing closer to Love (yes, with that capital L; "God is love"). We even have more yet, in that as we seek to do God's will in these things, then we are getting into the wondrous results that open up such as in John chapter 14.
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Notice the words pure and undefiled religion. James is teaching us about simplicity, in my opinion.
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Soyeong
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That is an important exception. Religion can be good and bad depending on what it teaches, so we should not speak against religion as a whole, especially when we are seeking to follow the religion taught by Christ. When a religion teaches hope, love, and faith, then it doesn't make much sense to consider this to be joyful, but to say that religion is not.
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Hieronymus
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Soyeong
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So Christ did away with this?:
James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
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