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Looking back on the responses... yes, I've read them. Numerous times.
Understanding where the majorities travel, I see both sides of the lines. I see, too, that this thread ain't going to end with all parties thinking along the same lines. Now; I don't follow either the church, or the scripture, but I respect both. I've friends from all walks of spiritual life, and none of them do I scorn for their beliefs. So, here is where I stood almost twelve years ago. I'd have been almost fifteen, back then.
For much of my youth, I had been searching for reasons to believe in the bible. To believe in the priests and the preachers; their teachings and doctrines. I would say I was lucky enough NOT to have a superimposing family whose life values were based solely on faith and religion. At the same time, that may have proved to have been a flaw in life. I don't know.
Simultaneously, I found less and less that if I was to find faith with the scriptures, to take them fully and completely literally would have been folly in and of its own right. I read from the bible; asked my questions and was not satisfied with the answers, based on the different perspectives I was getting from different preachers from the same churches I attended.
Between the ages of fifteen and twenty, I walked with Protestant, Methodist, Catholic, Jehovas, etc. Different preachers for the same organizations had given me differing views that invariably led fellow members of the church into arguments, disputes and verbal eruptons that I would not by choice return within several weeks. At that time, I was a sponge for the knowledge they might grant to me.
If I was to find the faith in myself, however, I found I could not rely on them. I chose not to rely on them. I returned to my father's belief, in the end. That to find the kingdom of god lay not within the church, but LOOSELY within the scriptures, and with the self.
Now, in my youth, as well, I was known for being a bit of a rebel. For being the one that cracked the foundations, so that others might explain themselves a little more. One of the classes I ended up taking for a filler to my schedules was a bible study class. This was back in Eastern Kentucky. Definite Bible-Belt materia, this region. Yet, the teacher had asked that each of us pose a question at the beginning day, and ask if we had found our answers to that question at the ending day of the class.
My question: For a Scripture of God to have been re-written so many times, removed from and added to by the elders of our civilizations, why do we follow its doctrines as though they are truth?
My answer: For seven of ten people, the scriptures are what we are raised to believe to be true. Despite our historical teachings that the bible and its doctrines have been a ploy to keep us as a mob of people in line with what our elders and teachers want for us; not for what we ourselves yearn to feel for in a faith.
Scriptures alone, or church with them?
Because of my youth, I cannot in good faith follow either--I take my own path to find god in the end.
I hope this gives another perspective upon which to guide your responses in the future, De Maria.
We've got something in common. I once did not believe either party myself. I was atheist. I have now come to believe the Catholic Church passionately.