Beware! This topic may upset you: Denominationalism and Why I disagree with it.

First I want to start off by saying that my goal for writing this blog is to make people think. I do not intend to offend anybody, but I am about to go over a very touchy subject amongst Christians in general. I was saving this particular topic for after I finished explaining my evolution from an atheist to a New Testament Christian. So yes, I am a Bible thumper. But I received an anonymous comment today on one of my early posts that stated the following:
"For many years the church of Christ has had a reputation for believing if you belong to any other church, you are going to Hell. As a Christian affiliated with another denomination, feeling very secure in my salvation it has always offended me. I sense you are less narrowminded than some of your brothers and sisters-and that's a good thing!"
I feel compelled to write this blog now, because I do not want this person to get the wrong idea about me. If I could I would ask this person to study with me I would (I am trying to figure out how to get my email link on here, but I'd rather write this at the moment). I feel like I should address each point individually.
Please understand, I am NOT making fun of this person. I just don't want anyone to get the wrong idea about me. I don't look forward to disabusing this person's ideas of me. I mean, I'd like to be thought of as being open-minded, but I feel after I address each of these points some of you will not think I am open-minded at all. Also, if any of you disagree with about the scriptual references on denominationalism please tell me where I am in error.
Let me first clarify: I attend an independent church of Christ. We support ourselves, and we consider ourselves to be undenominational. We encourage anyone to point out how we may err from the Bible. We understand that there was only one perfect person in all time, and that nobody could possibly be perfect, but we can do our humanly best to follow God's Word. (If any of my church family read this and disagree with my synopsis please let me know ASAP so I can correct myself :) ). If you would like please feel free to visit our website http://www.princestreet.org/. What I learned there was one of the things that attracted me to my church, and I feel so blessed to have found them. All right, back to my anonymous commenter.
Point 1
My commenter states, For many years the church of Christ has had a reputation for believing if you belong to any other church, you are going to Hell.
I understand how this reputation has occured. Please let me explain (to the best of my abilities). I have chosen my specific independent church because they do their very best to stick to what the Bible says. When I was trying to figure out what church I should attend I was very discouraged because I had no idea which denomination to choose. As far as I could tell NO denomination had it absolutely correct. Some believed in faith only, some believed in baptism, some did not take the Lord's supper, etc. It was very, very confusing. I was telling this to a friend of mine who grew up in a church of Christ (which I didn't know anything about). I asked her, "Doesn't anybody just go by the Bible, period?!?" She said, "You could always check out a church of Christ, that is what they do." I started doing research immediately! What do you know!?! According to Wikipedia (which is my go to for a quick reference) the churches of Christ try to go as closely to the Bible as possible, there are still divisions, and some have become institutionalized, but they try their hardest to be as close to the early churches that were started by the apostles. This was very logical to me, and therefore, very appealing. I didn't have to worry about who was right and who was wrong (in the denominational scheme of things). This is a long story that I may continue in another post. The point is, what attracted me to a church of Christ is that members of the church try their best to do what the 1st century churches tried to do. So here is the thing. We believe that the Bible holds the ultimate authority about how a church should be ran. Therefore we believe there are scripturally correct ways to run your church and scriptually incorrect ways. We try to avoid the scripturally incorrect ways, because that would mean that we were in error, and we would not be headed through the narrow gate on the narrow path that leads to heaven (please see Mathew 7:13-14!). We are warned repeatedly throughout the New Testament to watch out for men replacing God's Word with their own ideas (1 Corinthians 1:18-25--men are fools, God is not; 1 Corinthians 2:4-5--faith based on God's power, not men's wisdom; and especially 1 Corinthians 4:6--Nothing beyond what is written; 2 Peter 2:1--false prophets; and many more). Another point on this subject, in Matthew 15 Jesus is discussing with the Pharisees and scribes the problem of tradition. Jesus points out that Isaiah prophesied that the people worship God in vain because they are teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. Jesus is telling these men that they will all be going to hell because their hearts are not in the right place when they worship God. They are too focused on the traditions of the elders, and have made them like laws (doctrines by men). This is what I, and many fellow New Testament Christians, worry about for the many, many people out there who are practicing in a denomination.
Point 2
My commentor states, As a Christian affiliated with another denomination, feeling very secure in my salvation it has always offended me.
Why do you feel offended by this if you are very secure in your faith? If you are secure in your faith you shouldn't let these opinions bother you because you know you are going to heaven. These people who believe you are going to hell are just wrong, unfortunately for them. I, myself, am not offended by muslims believing that I am going to hell. I am not offended by anybody thinking I'll be going to hell. I hope they would tell me so I could correct my ways and hopefully make it to heaven.
But let me ask you this: have you really studied the Bible? Or are you just going by what you were taught (traditions of your family?) If you have then please email me, because I want to go to heaven too! I want to know I am right with God. But let me also ask you this: on judgment day, if Jesus asks you, "Why did you choose to follow that denomination?" what will you tell him? Can you defend your answer? I don't know what Jesus will say to anyone; that is impossible for me to know. I can only know what the Bible tells me. But if Jesus asks me why I worship with the people I worshiped with, I will be able to tell him, "Because Lord, they tried harder than any other church I looked at to follow your Word and not man's ideas." I am not completely confident in my salvation. But I am going to do my best to not go to hell. I honestly do not want anyone to go to hell. I want us all to go to heaven. The Bible says that God wants us all to go to heaven. But God can not allow sin in his presence. Because of this, God made a way for us to join him and he explained that way to us in the Word. But he did not make it that easy to find (which Jesus also explains in Mathew--the reason for parables). Why would God want somebody who didn't honestly strive for and seek Him and do their utmost to please Him? If you have any doubts that your church is teaching in error please keep the following scriptures in mind: Romans 14:23 (if you doubt you sin).
And finally,
Point 3
My commenter stated, I sense you are less narrowminded than some of your brothers and sisters-and that's a good thing!
I cannot say if this is true or false, but I believe that by your definition of I am just as narrowminded as my brothers and sisters in Christ. I believe that if a person does not follow, to the best of their ability, what the Bible says, then they will go to hell. I know this is going to upset many of my friends and family. I do not want you to go to hell and I am not judging your actions. As I have mentioned in previous posts, we have no way to know what God will do except for what we can read in the Bible. I know I am not perfect, I sin all the time, I can't help it. I do know that if I repent I'll be forgiven, but I worry that I might not have repented of everything I need to repent of by the time I am judged. I believe that the Bible tells us that our hearts will be judged (please correct me if I am in error!). I can not judge you because I do NOT know what is in your heart. I can judge your actions based on what the Bible says, but I truly can NOT say this person or that person will be going to hell and none of my brethren can either. I am sorry that you have been offended in the past. I hope that this post does not offend you, but that it does help you to think about your beliefs and be able to defend them!

Observations on Humanity's Arrogance

I've been thinking about this for awhile, but I guess what prompted me to write about it today is Sunday's Bible class. We were discussing 1 Peter 1:17, which, to paraphrase, says that if we call God our Father we should act as our Father would have us act. This led us to a couple of other discussions. But one thing that struck me is the fact that we don't have to understand God to believe him. In fact, we are absolutely incapable of understanding God outside of what He has shared with us in the Bible. The Word in the Bible is the only thing we can be sure of, we can speculate and theorize all we want, but we can not prove anything. Which boils down to, you have to have faith. Now if you have faith in the Bible, that one thing is true, for instance, that Jesus was raised from the dead, then how can you possibly say that parts that don't agree with "science" are not true? Jesus rising from the dead definitely doesn't agree with science. So let's think about science for a minute (don't forget, science is how I make my livelihood, and I happen to love science).
Science as defined by dictionary.com:
-noun

1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3. any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4. systematized knowledge in general.
5. knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.
6. a particular branch of knowledge.
7. skill, esp. reflecting a precise application of facts or principles; proficiency.

Origin:
1300–50; ME < MF < L scientia knowledge, equiv. to scient- (s. of sciēns), prp. of scīre to know + -ia
So, basically, science is knowledge gained through observations and experimentation of the world around us. One way I think about science is that it is a vast accumulation of observations that has been collected over the last few millennia. It started off very slowly as philosophical observations about the way things worked. But humans built on each idea, proving or disproving it, adding to the collection a little bit at a time. Galileo was what some consider the first modern scientist. He proved that the universe did not rotate around the earth. This made some religious factions very mad, because they believed that God made the heaven's to circle earth. The Bible doesn't say that of course, but that is what humans wanted to believe. That the earth (we) was the center of the universe. I do not see a problem with proving an easily observable fact (given the right tools). However, a drawback to science is that men start to speculate and theorize on a variety of other things; things that we can not prove, because they can not be observed. These things include the big bang theory, evolution, the age of the earth, how the mind works, global warming, etc. These are things that we can not observe or measure with our own eyes or instruments that can see them for us. We can make a variety of assumptions to help us "prove" our theories. But assumptions are man-made. So here is my problem, there are plenty of so-called experts out there that are leading countless average everyday Janes and Joes down the wrong path because they think they know things that humans have no way of actually knowing as absolute truth. There is only one Being that really knows the how, when, whys, of the list I mentioned above, and that Being is our Creator. It is ridiculously arrogant of humanity to put it's trust in man-made theories and kick our Creator to the curb.

Don't get me wrong. I understand what the skeptic is thinking while reading this. You are thinking, "Why should I believe the Bible?" and my argument for that is listed under Biblical Authority (which I have learned more stuff I could add to it, but not tonight).
One more observation on humanity's arrogance. . . not related to science. How could ANYONE presume to know why God caused this or that natural disaster (yes I am referring to Pat Robertson's comment on Haiti and God's punishment, or should I just say the typical response from Pat Robertson in the face of a natural disaster?). NO ONE, except God, knows the hows or whys, of a natural disaster. Yes, that is a science we can observe. But that doesn't mean we can say God did it because you deserved it. If someone tells you God punished you (or this person or that people or etc) because of such and such by doing so and so, you can then be assured that they are not true believer's in Christ. I do not believe a true believer would presume to know God's will. A true believer should understand that the only things about God we can know are the things God has told us about Himself in the Bible.
I pray that you are all blessed and that God is with all of the people in Haiti, giving them strength and courage to face the challenges they have been given.

Being an Atheist

For a short time when I was a teenager I decided I would be an atheist. It seemed a lot easier than wondering if I had the right religion or not. It wasn't. If you are an atheist you still have to have a lot of faith. You have to have faith that after we die we cease to exist. You have to have faith that there was no Creator. You have to have faith that there is no supernatural, there is only what is natural. This is actually very hard to do. There is no meaning to life if you are an atheist. There is no purpose. If you believe there is no afterlife and we are a product of evolution then what is the point of being here? Is it to make ourselves happy? Just to live and reproduce? As an atheist I was very hard pressed to come up with a reason to exist. I finally decided that purpose was to live life, which of course leaves you with no real purpose, because what is life? I went around and around about this, to no avail.

My best friend in high school believed that you ceased to exist after you died. We had a once in a life-time friendship. We told each other everything. She was the nicest person you would have ever met, which anyone who ever met her would confirm. She, literally, would not hurt a fly (and got mad at me if I ever tried to kill bugs). We went to a residential high school for math and science. We were roommates our senior year. One of the reasons I applied to my alma mater was because she wanted to go there (and I am glad I did--it was the perfect place for me). During the summer before our freshman year of college we wrote each other letters, she didn't have internet access and I didn't even have a computer and neither of us could afford to make long distant phone calls--we lived 2 hours apart. We started college. She had decided we should not be roommates because we should at least try to make friends, but we still planned to room together if that didn't work out. Our first week of college involved orientation with all the freshman. We didn't go to many things, we just hung out. We were used to living in dorms; we thought we didn't need orientation. We did go on our orientation trip to Devil's Den though. We started our second week. This was our first week of classes. She planned on going home for the weekend after our first week of classes. I thought that was weird because our high school classmates were getting together for a huge camp out party. She insisted I go to the party. I was broke (as usual). She gave me a $20 as a "loan." She gave me a big hug before she left with her mom for the weekend. I went to the party and drank for the first time. The next morning she went out for a walk around the park where her dad was a forest ranger. She took his gun with her and shot herself. I was devastated, but unfortunately I was not that surprised.
My best friend was severely depressed, which I always knew. We talked about it frequently, but she wouldn't get help. She frequently talked about how she thought when she died she would cease to exist. That was what she hoped would happen. After she died I couldn't stand the idea of her ceasing to exist. It was another reason for me to believe in an afterlife.
It was definitely my freshman year that I decided I was wrong about there not being an afterlife. I believed in an afterlife because I refused to believe that she ceased to exist. I still wasn't sure about a Creator, I would become positive of the fact that there was a supreme being in graduate school, but that is another post.
I didn't set out to write this blog about my best friend. But she was more of an atheist than I ever was. I always had a secret hope, deep down. She never did. I pray that God doesn't judge her harshly. I hope that I'll see her in heaven, but I know that I might not because she took her own life. I am comforted by the fact that God knows what is in a person's heart and God knows how sick she was.
I started this blog to explain to you what might go through an atheist's mind. At least explain what was going on in my mind. I wonder if what I am about to tell you is true for others. I would not be surprised if it was. As an atheist I clung to the idea that there was no God. When other people talked about how good God was or how much God loves us I would be very, very uncomfortable. It would cut me to the quick, just as Stephen's defense cut his persecutors to the quick in Acts 7:54. Because, as Paul says in Romans 1:18-25 says, we are born with the knowledge of our Creator. Unfortunately men like to speculate and rely on their intellectual reasoning, instead of the Truth. God eventually gives people over to their speculations and good men fall to ideas that are based on man's reasoning. What makes us think that we can come up with better answers than what God has given us? I know why men do it, because the Bible tells us why. Men listen to the devil tickling their ears with nonsense about how much easier it is to ignore the Word. I know that I ignored the voice that was telling me that there was a God. I ignored it for many years. The devil was telling me that it was impossible to prove that there was a God, hiding the fact that it was also impossible to improve that there wasn't.
You (yes you!) have to have faith in something. What do you have faith in? Why do you have faith in that? Can it be proven? Are you really sure you are right? Is there something tickling you deep down trying to tell you about your Creator and the meaning of life?
Are you wondering what the meaning of life is? I will tell you.
It is to love and worship our Creator and Savior. Does that thought make you uncomfortable? If it does than you need to start searching for the Truth. It is the Bible. But make sure you study with somebody who knows a lot about it. Make sure you ask questions! Make sure you are satisfied with the answers you are given. And always, keep searching. You will find the answers. I know this because the Bible tells me so.
I think my next blog will be about being an agnostic :).

Changing Lenses

I have had a few good ideas over the 6 weeks since my last post. Unfortunately I never made the time to write them, and what is even more unfortunate is that I didn't write my ideas down. I am sorry that I have neglected this for so long. I will try to do better in the coming months.
If you are a friend on facebook you'll know that I was going to post this on Monday or Tuesday. Well I had a really great idea on Monday, but when I got home I got distracted and ended up completely forgetting my idea. Then I couldn't remember what I was all fired up to write about again until I was talking to a friend last night on the phone. We were discussing the topic that I am about to write about and I realized that was it! That was what I wanted to talk about. I promptly forgot what that was when I hung-up the phone. So now I write all of my little ideas down so I don't forget them. On my way to work I remembered this particular topic--finally--and wrote it down. I am sure by now you are wondering what could be so great . . . well I want to discuss what I have learned about changing your worldview. This is another something that I have not done any research on at all. I am sure somebody out there has already discussed these things, but I am going to tell you about it from my own observations and experiences with my conversion. This topic, in particular, is an excellent lead up to my next topic(s) which will be about my views on a young earth and 6-day creation. I think this is an important topic for any life-time Christians to understand when talking to non-believers who say that science refutes God. I am not exactly sure where this topic is going to take me, so please enjoy the ride :).
For those of you who knew me before I converted, I hope what I write here will help you understand how I have changed so dramatically. I am not the same person you knew even a year ago. For those of you who have never met me and are reading this for the first time (which I suspect is a random person here or there :D) you should know a little background on me: I am a scientist, I have a Ph.D. in a biomedical field, I have been interested in science since I was a little kid, I am a woman, I am extremely logical, my personality type is Introverted/Sensing/Thinking/Judging (which means that I like to be by myself, I like facts, I am not a "feely" type person, the type of personality that is perfect for a career in science) and I was not an English major in college (which I am sure you can gather by reading this, but I still try). One possible logical conclusion you can draw from these facts about me is that, besides being a nerd, I like things to be proven. I also like to prove things. I can't just believe what someone tells me. I need multiple sources. Et cetra. I think my point is that you would expect the person I just described to have a worldview like the stereotypical scientist. And I did—until last year.
I think it is very important to define worldview. Dictionary.com defines a worldview as follows:
1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.
So a worldview can be thought of as a lens that tints the interpretation of everything you see.
As you can see, if you view the world with a stereotypical scientist lens, it is very difficult to even believe in God, let alone believe that Jesus is our Savior. However, if you look at the world through the lens of the Bible things become completely different. As a child, my worldview was completely based on what my parents told me, which is natural. When I started going to public school, my worldview was altered to accommodate what my teachers, textbooks, and peers told me. I felt that if my teachers were allowed to teach me facts from the textbooks, then everything we were learning in school was correct and there was no room for things that weren't taught in my house or school (like God, mind you, I was raised with a strong sense of morality, despite my lack of religious upbringing). As I progressed through high school I ended up taking more advanced levels of science courses. In the south, at least, we were taught that evolution was a theory. I still thought my teacher was a religious nut, because, according to my textbook, it was a proven theory, which is almost the same as a scientific law. I ignored the quiet voice inside of me whispering, "How is it possible to prove something that can not be physically observed?" That voice ended up being very persistent and probably saved my soul.
Once in college I continued on my path of becoming a scientist (at the time I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but it was going to be science, for sure!). In cell biology I wondered how in the world lipids randomly arranged to form the first cell membrane, which also just happened to surround a DNA strand and a protein capable of tending to the DNA. In botany I wondered how a prokaryote (which is what bacteria are) "evolved" to a eukaryote (cells that make up non-bacteria living things). In biochemistry I again ran into the issue of which came first DNA or proteins. I finally had to accept the fact that there was a Creator of some kind. To me it seemed much more plausible then atoms randomly running into each other making more and more complex molecules until eventually life randomly happened. That made even less sense after I learned about thermodynamics (the study of how energy and matter exist).
The second law of thermodynamics is, basically, that everything decays. This law is unbreakable. There is no way that a group of random any things can eventually form a complex, organized item, with no outside organizer. An example of this would be if you had a bag of 100 marbles that were all exactly the same size, shape, and mass, but were different colors; it would be completely improbable that those marbles would sort themselves by color. To further this example, say the bag started off with all the marbles sorted by color, red on bottom, blue in the middle, yellow on top, and an outside source shook the bag. We all know that the marbles would separate out and eventually with enough shaking be completely mixed up. We all know that we could not, then take the bag, shake it up and eventually with even an infinite amount of shaking, would we end up with the marbles resorted. We also know that we could open the bag and resort the marbles ourselves, in fact the only way the marbles are going to be organized again, is for us to do it. This logic is what made me realize there had to be a Creator.
Once I accepted that there was a Creator made this world, understanding biochemistry, biology, and chemistry became a lot easier. Now I understand how life began. I know that our God had to put all of this together and I am no longer plagued by discrepancies in science (like the fact that it is impossible to take the "building blocks of life" and put them in a pot to try to recreate the "primordial ooze" which produced the first form of life). God did it!
I think this is a good stopping point. My next major topic will be the 6-day Creation. It will be shocking for those of you who knew me before my conversion :).
May God bless all of you.