Hello.
I spend a lot of time among Christians and I notice that they abide in some wrong ideas and it’s hurting them and makes their faith so much less appealing especially to the younger generation who are taught to think independently and free.
Okay...
What I mean is, they have ideas about God, spirituality and the world not how it’s actually observed to work. For whatever reasons. For example they think that if they live holy lives with fewer sins, they get automatic blessing.
But they do - though not, perhaps, the blessings some expect. Chiefly, above all, the Great Blessing of a holy life is deep, rich, joyful daily communion with God. No one living mired in sin can enjoy this greatest of all blessings. From them, God is obscured, hidden behind the barrier of their wickedness. A holy life is a life protected from the death of sin, too. All sin, God warns in His word, produces corruption and death of some kind - death of joy, peace, contentment, inner stability, relationships, physical health and, finally eternal death in hell (
Romans 6:23; James 1:14-15; Galatians 6:7-8). Another blessing, then, of a holy life is the absence of the "death" of sin.
Or they think if they pray enough or with the right heart, whatever they ask probably will happen.
Well, this just isn't what the Bible says. There is more to a positively-answered prayer than my will to have it so. But the Bible
does say that the prayer of a righteous man avails much. (
James 5:16) But "avails much" is not tantamount to "get everything you ask for."
Or that somehow the world around them will align so that because of their faith and kind of special place with God because of Jesus, they’re privileged: protected from sin and evil, have better and clearer understanding of things, all circumstances working for their good etc. This is not at all how things work.
Christians
are privileged, though not necessarily in the way you've described here. A holy person
does benefit from divine protection - spiritually above all and, in a lesser degree,
sometimes physically, too. And the born-again person
does have a clearer understanding of spiritual matters than the unregenerate person. This doesn't mean they are smarter, or more academically knowledgeable, but they
are wiser than the non-Christian, if they have steeped themselves thoroughly in God's truth and live in accord with it. It is a
fool, the Bible declares, who says in his heart, "There is no God." (
Psalms 14:1; Psalms 53:1)
When the Bible promises that "all things work together for good," for those who love God (
Romans 8:28), the "good" is defined in the very next verse: "For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of His Son." (
Romans 8:29) Verse 29 does not, then, promise any and all good to those who love God but ONLY the good of becoming more like Jesus in and through every circumstance.
Maybe I’m not explaining it well right now. It’s hard to pin point. They are full of very wrong ideas. Not that the Bible necessarily explains it that way. Maybe the way organized religion and theology have been developing, and with churches running basically on money, a kind of deceiving teaching that is attractive to people at some level is being offered. There’s something wrong on a fundamental level.
Amen. It is, at least in part, that most Christians are profoundly ignorant of the basic, orthodox doctrines of their own faith, generally unfamiliar with the contents of the Bible, and deeply carnal as a result. In such a condition, false teachers have crowded into the Church, making merchandise of believers, and luring them into the sort of nonsense you have pointed out. Really, these days, most of the Church is occupied by nominal, cultural Christians, who have no real relationship with God at all.
Also there’s a fixation on I’m true and you are not true. Kind of prejudice and arrogance.
Among believers? Yes. But what is a "true Christian" should be ajudicated by Scripture, not mere personal opinion. There is a true Christianity and many false ones. This is stated often in the Bible.
The fact is, nobody understands and knows God,
Is this true? If
nobody understands and knows God, how is your statement here correct? It asserts a truth about God, doesn't it? Something that
is known and understood about God, which knowledge you have declared is possessed by no one.
The Bible does not reveal to us
everything about God, only some things about Him. But what it reveals is sufficient for us to properly know and walk with Him. We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater because God, despite His special revelation of Himself to us in Scripture, remains in many respects mysterious to us.
So claim to absolute and final truth is a little too opinionated, I think.
Well, this is more a cultural statement, a statement of the current prevalent relativistic/postmodernist philosophies dominating western societies. And it is self-refuting to boot. What is the statement "There is no absolute truth" but a statement of absolute truth?
