Theological Rantings

What seems odd to me about Christianity is why one must believe 2000 year old stories to be true before God can accept you into heaven. Personally, I'm not accepting or rejecting Christ, I'm simply not believing he exists. The Bible, whether its true or false, contains stories that are really quite hard to believe, yet our eternal salvation seems dependent on it! A man’s level of skepticism seems to me a strange criteria for eternal life with God.

So Jesus, being eternal God, took the body of a man, was killed, brought back to life, ascended bodily into the stratosphere (where I assume he disintegrated) and resumed being majestic, eternal God. Where exactly is the sacrifice? Jesus never died, he was God before and he's God after. That earthly interlude must be like drops in the ocean for an eternal being. For God to truly give his only begotten Son how about actually killing him...as in ceasing to exist. Now that would be a sacrifice worth mentioning!

Since Jesus never really died, the tortured body he possessed seems important to God. How exactly would blood from that body bridge the gap between our sinfulness and God's holiness? If God is so holy how can spilling blood achieve anything? God seems unwilling or powerless to forgive unless something is killed. In the OT it was animals, in the NT it was Jesus. What sense does this make? So I can come to God in humility, love, and repentance, sincerely asking for forgiveness yet its all meaningless until blood is shed. If a man commits a crime against you and later seeks forgiveness would you tell him to go perform a blood sacrifice first? Where does forgiveness reside - in an external blood sacrifice or a sincere change of heart from the INSIDE? Someone once said, "clean the inside of the cup and then the outside will also be clean". The whole notion of blood sacrifice is something out of the dark ages.

Answers to Prayer

Here's some very sobering thoughts on prayer. When we pray, at that very moment, a child is starving, or drowning, or being beaten and abused, or losing body parts to leprosy, or acquiring a tapeworm, or suffering through any one of a multitude of diseases. With 6 billion people on the planet its a horrible fact of life. Yet for some unfathomable reason people still think there is a God who hears and answers our prayers.

Dear God, please lead me to the right job; as a little boy chases a ball toward a landmine. Thank you Lord for leading me to this great job opening, as this little boy, having had his legs blown off, stares down in terrified disbelief.

Dear God, please heal brother John's arthritis; as a little girl struggles with her abuser. Thank you Lord for healing brother John, what an awesome God we serve. As the praises continue, this little girl, having been raped and murdered, is stuffed in a bag and thrown in a river.

How can we ask for anything in prayer while children are suffering through atrocities. I wouldn't even want a God to answer my prayers while at the same time ignoring the cries of children. What kind of monster does that make God out to be? Or us?