I feel that many people that would "fit" into this room have similar beliefs, and many have quite different beliefs. It looks like about half of APA members identify themselves as Christians, yet I haven't seen many post here. Being a room for Christians, it seems to me that anyone that believes in Christ should be able to post any belief or pose any question that they wish regarding to their own faith or curiosities--without intent to offend, of course. I don't think this is a place to try to "convince" the validity of one belief over another (faith doesn't work that way, after all), but it does seem like it should be a safe place to explore varying thoughts, values, and opinions. I think the more we explore and even question our own faith the more answers we get, and the stronger our faith becomes. There are many, many areas where my knowledge base is lacking and I'd love for all of you to share your insight with me.


I wanted a place to talk about things like the following statement from KC'swifey:
But as briefly as possible, the question of taking the Bible literally or not, is a question that inherently causes confusion. What I mean when I answer is probably not what you mean when you ask. What I can say is that I try to read the Bible with the intent that the author wrote it. In addition, I also believe that it is the infallible Word of God, meaning I don't pick some passages as God inspired and others as not. Its either all true or none of it is.
I want to ask things like...the intent of WHICH author of the Bible? And what about the translators...were all of them also God-inspired, or how does that work? There are soooo many translations of the Bibles, and the passages are really different in some of them...how do you know which one to believe? Which canon of works do we claim as the "true" Bible, and what does that mean for the other Bibles that are out there...are the blasphemous if they contain more or less "books" than ours? And, of course, our own interpretations of what we read differ, I think especially depending on our purpose for reading the scripture.

To say that something is "the infallible Word of God" and "God inspired" mean two totally different things to me. God inspires plenty of good acts and good intentions, but that does not mean that mankind does them without fault. It is not like any of the authors of the different parts of the Bible claim that what they are writing is without fault, or that they wrote it while in being divinely controlled, just that they were divinely inspired.

Anyway, I'd love some insight from all of your, and to see questions of your own!