However getting us back to the point I was making earlier you invalidate your claim that priests are better suited to interpret the bible if you ignore the accepted priestly wisdom of the Vatican and decide to interpret it yourself. Your very action of being on the fence says "I'm going to interpret the bible how I see fit not some guy in a funny hat in the Vatican"
In other words despite your protests to the contrary you're doing pretty much what GOatmaster said you should.
Yes, priests ARE better suited to interpret the Bible. Not to say that ordinary folk can't do that to - most of the stuff in the Bible is pretty clear anyway. If I want to interpret a huge scientific formula I'd go to a physicist. If I want to interpret a C++ code I see a programmer. I CAN do those thing myself and get then done accurately, and the programmer of physicist can very well make a mistake, but that doesn't happen very often.
However, you should have noted that I never claimed my interpretation is more correct than that of G0aty here or the church. My whole point was to prove that different interpretations CAN be made.
From absolute, not-open-to-interpretation passages, you mean.
Speaking of which, after talking to the priest today he did confirm two things:
- all sins are NOT equal, alltough no sin is insignificant. As he put it "The small sin is nothing more or less than the greatest sin after the big sins."
What's the difference between small and great sins except in the eyes of men? Does God treat them differently? In what way? We already established Purgatory doesn't exist. So how, then?
- Churches stance is that catholics shouldn't (not mustn't) support death penalty. Being for death penalty doesn't make you a non catholic.
It means that you don't agree with the Pope, which is what Kara's been saying.
@ G0aty
Well I darn well better. Self-proclaimed Atheists, agnostics, Muslims, etc. are one thing. But you sir, you claim to be a Christian. And you are going around talking to people as if you had the slightest idea what that means when you don't, and your words betray that you don't. Do you have any idea the kind of image you are giving Christ with the way you talk, the way you act?
You say there are very few people you are comfortable sharing your religion with. Well, hear this right here and right now: Everyone on this message board that knows of you as a Christian is looking to you for a definition of what that means, and my how you've led them astray. Whether or not by choice, you sir are a False Teacher. As a Christian, in the name of all that is good, I demand you to correct that.
You can take your self-righteous air of superiority and shove it where the Sun doesn't shine.
Actually, that's what I've been saying for you to do with your false teaching. And I'm not being self-righteous. I am not confident in my own righteousness. I AM confident in my knowledge of Scripture, ans have affirmed what I believe with many other Christians, both catholic and otherwise, and just can't see how Romans 10:9-10 can be interpreted any differently than it's stated in the Bible.
You presume I don't know the word of God and my religion and at the same time you yourself are an infallible instrument of God. Now, I'm just as secure in myself and my beliefs as you are in yours, if not more. Yet I don't go attacking you, claiming you to be non-christian, a deceiver or whatnot and demanding apologies or conversion.
You know why? Because it's not nice. It's not my place to do so. Because I don't consider myself infalilble. And because I'm don't have the habit of trying to force myself on other people.
I never once said I was infallible. I just know Scripture, know that not all things are relative, know that certain things are definitive and cannot be reinterpreted, and that doing so is to make it the product of one's own imagination instead of letting it be the Word of God. What you are doing is called twisting Scripture to suit your own ends. You already have a set-in-stone idea of what is right, which is that Sins are not equal, and that stealing candy cannot possibly net the same punishment as murdering someone. So, instead of looking to Scripture to find out for sure what is correct on the matter, you're taking Scripture and rewording it, reinventing it, "reinterpreting" it, whatever, to make it look like God supports you, something false "Christians" are notorious for in history. I can cite examples, but I believe THAT would not be nice.
So why don't YOU stop telling other people what to believe, eh?
Because, sir, it is beyond me to continue to allow people like you to give people like me a bad name. You take away God's power to work in these peoples' lives by setting up all sorts of preconceived notions for them by which they base their interaction with all Christians. Either change your name or change your actions. If you're going to say you're a Christian, that is, "Little Christ," act like Christ and believe in Him. John 3:17 states that God didn't come into the world to condemn it, but to save it, yet here you are trying to condemn anyone who is beyond your personal idea of what is redeemable. That's not a Biblical view at all, and I point this out to you very firmly and very definitively, yet you refuse to correct yourself based on the words of the God you claim to believe, and instead reinvent His words to suit yourself. I've not asked you to change anything based on what I've said alone, FYI.
Where in that did I say you're free to interpret the Bible as you wish? There are parts that are somewhat up for debate as to their meaning, but there are parts that simply cannot be stated more simply, which are the very parts you have time and again attempted to reinvent and reimagine in a way to suit your own opinions.
And I disagree again. How hard it is to understand that simply because YOU can't fathom a different interpretation it therefore cannot exist. and gee golly, what do you know, MY interpretations happens to be exactly the same as the official one of the church. I may be wrong in many thing, but in this? Highly unlikely.
If the Catholic Church interprets Romans 10:9-10 differently than the way those two verses are written down, they are flat out WRONG. There is no other way for a sentence like that to be interpreted. It is a very solid and absolute statement. That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. There is no other way to interpret that. That's like reinterpreting somebody's street address. Now here again I demand you stop this foolishness.
And yes, I meant that in the Biblical sense of the word. That is, one without knowledge of God.
