I've had the same conversation about the water into wine miracle. I think it's a mistake to interpret that miracle as being a defence for alcohol consumption. (I don't drink at all, but I wouldn't condemn someone for having a drink with dinner, etc). I agree that drunkeness and a lack of sobriety is the real issue. However, using the miracle to defend alcohol is missing the point of the story, entirely. It's easy to take that approach to justify almost anything. I agree that being a "carnal" Christian isn't a small or minor thing. It's definitely a big problem within Christianity and remaining in that state can really reduce any effectiveness we could have in reaching others. I do believe that faith in Christ should have a transforming effect on our lives. We should be constantly growing and maturing and overcoming (we all have our own weaknesses/sins we are more prone to committing). Our faith should be producing Godliness in our lives.
We are all coming from different backgrounds/experiences. I do try to give others some leeway in some areas (we may have different convictions on certain issues depending on our personal spiritual experiences). I was raised in a Christian home and gave my life to Christ when I was very young. My outlook on the Christian faith has definitely been shaped by my upbringing/experiences. I will grant you that one danger for Christians who grew up in Christianity is complacency. It's easy to feel "safe" because of your background. I agree that regardless of a person's experiences or upbringing, we all need to come to Christ the same way.
Same here, I don’t drink any alcohol but there’s nothing I’ve seen in scripture forbidding it’s consumption, only drunkenness. And when I did drink alcohol that was the whole point of it to achieve drunkenness. Unlike you, my upbringing was a pagan or at very best ‘cultural’ Christian..deceived, devoted to sin not even realizing it as sin, carnal to the max.
Had a brief stint at a Sunday school as a child, and occasional Easter/Christmas services at a denominational building overseen by your typical modern pastor lording over, no multiple men getting up to share their gifts or elders overseeing things like in the first century church model. Of course which I had no idea about in those days. I just went along with it all and impatiently looked forward to the end of the timed service, always checking through the itinerary brochure trying to gauge how much time was left LOL. Sometimes I would pick up a bible from the back of the pew in front of me and read.
Probably been in a church building less than 2 dozen times my whole life weddings and funerals included. I can understand what you mean about complacency though even though I am still relatively new.
But my experience has its advantages..I know very well that the life of loving sin and Christ rejection, following the rudiments of the world is surely not worth it and for me lead to a fairly dark place with a sort of feeling of no escape. So I put my hand on the stove for all you people who came up as Christians and it burns indeed. A disadvantage is I got caught up in the devil’s backup plan for new converts, manmade false religion. Satan uses it to pull people back into the world very subtly, sneaky. So I research and study on both sound and unsound doctrine, and desire to be able to easily distinguish. I’ve heard all this and that in my time both as a pagan and a convert but it turns out after testing many popular themes of manmade religion to God’s word they just don’t align.
Which leads me to another thing that has been on my mind, and we have all heard this mantra before from proponents of false manmade religion, ‘accepting Jesus’. Never gave it much thought at all. Then over time as I went through the New Testament and gradually became more familiar with it I didn’t recall seeing this statement, at least in the version I use. And I want to be perfectly clear I am not one of the KJV onlyists I do not agree with such people..in fact they are liars when they claim that version is God inspired, (after all, it isn’t in the Bible that the KJV is inspired LOL) all it was is just a scholarly attempt at getting a better English translation at that time.
Anyway, as far as ‘accepting’ goes, 2 Corinthians 5:9 and Romans 15:7 lead me to believe that it is God who accepts/receives us (depending on the translation) through the Lord Jesus Christ, and what Christ has done, no mention of us mortal humans ‘accepting’ Jesus. I’m going to have to say that is unbiblical after testing it to God’s word, unless I missed something. But to accept’ would suggest we are to ‘approve’ or ‘give admission to’, and who are we to ‘approve’ or ‘give admission‘ when it comes to Christ, that sort of places Him in a sort of subordinate position the way I see it.
This ‘accept Jesus’ mantra is a product of the false revival men, modern pastors/wealthy hirelings such as Billy Sunday, Charles Finney, and Billy Graham, some of the top billed showmen and gurus of corporate manmade religion in their days. Just another element of the corporate religion business model..a means to create many false converts and bring in large numbers of unrepentant sinners to the pews/boo koo bucks to the collection plates. Speaking of these false revival men, as a side note, nowhere in the New Testament is any ‘revival’ mentioned, that I am aware of at least..there is however a mention of a falling away/many departing from the faith and giving heed to doctrines of devils (1 Timothy 4:1).
In my experience, there was no ‘accepting’ of Jesus that day where out of nowhere and fully unexpected God graciously reached down and allowed me to take my first step out of the sewer. I could literally feel anger coming down on me, I could feel the displeasure I had caused by the way I lived my life (God is angry with the wicked every day Psalms 7:11). I remember looking up to the sky that day and feeling like the publican in Luke 18, sort of intimidated to look up there. Was humbled to the max and learned then, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs ch. 9. There was no ‘ok Jesus, I guess you’re good enough for me after all, I accept you.’ More like I accepted how lowly I was before God, accepted what I was, and what I deserved..and realized who I needed to turn to, who to follow out of the filth I was in, in hopes of not getting what I deserve when I leave this decaying realm. The follower is the subordinate. No alter calls to ‘accept Jesus’ with emotional music in the background or reciting a sinner’s prayer would have ever been able to bring me down where I needed to be to fully grasp the truth. Speaking of that in fact I think that’s a better way to put it we need to turn to and hold on to the Lord Jesus Christ rather than ‘accept’. Servants don’t ‘accept’ their master. Take His yoke upon us and let Him pull us through.
It’s like the further I look into all these buzzphrases, mantras, and creeds of manmade corporate religion, the more unbiblical deception I encounter, like a rabbit hole that leads into a sewer. It’s almost like a snowball effect. You research one lie and it leads to other lies..you research those other lies and find more lies used to reinforce or cover up the lies about the lies about the lies about the lies. I forget exactly who said it but it really holds true, if you keep repeating a lie enough eventually people will believe it and that seems to be the blueprint of manmade corporate religion.