[joydriven]

When two groups of people who both believe that Jesus Christ is their savior slaughter each other because they disagree slightly in how they feel Christianity should be, it is barbaric. That this seems justified to you is scary.

Hi, Torrere. Either I miscommunicated or you misread me. I was actually criticizing the so-called "Holy Wars" and made my views on murder pretty clear. As I said, we do not live in a theocracy as the Israelites did in the Old Testament. The theocracy form of government ended long before Rome conquered the Jews. With the incarnation of Jesus and the instatement of a New Covenant, things changed bigtime. The God of the Bible does not call his people to fight crusades for religion during this time period following the New Testament, and, according to the Bible, he won't do so again until the end of the world when he comes (again, incarnate) to lead it himself.

True--it's your prerogative to call me what you want, but for myself I would deny a religious association with the groups you mentioned. I would not identify myself as an Arian (again, "Arian" + "Christian" = a contradiction in terms since an Arian refuses the doctrine of Christ's deity, a doctrine which is imperative to his salvific power), nor would I identify myself with Catholics (because of other major doctrinal deviations from the Bible). These are doctrinal points of contention, not slight disagreements. As I stated before, there may have been good-but-falsely-taught people on either sides of those wars, but I would not place much stock in either side being made up of truly Christian warriors.

Just as you do not seem to fault ALL Muslims for extremist acts of Islamic terrorism (that would be absurd), nor should you assume that the "Christians" who called themselves "Christians" in the crusades you mentioned are truly representative of all who would call themselves Christians throughout history.

As has been stated, we're talking about the God of the Bible here. The one who revealed himself in the pages of a book that has lasted down through the ages as the best-selling and the most influential book of all. We're not talking about the Arian idea of God. We're not talking merely about my own personal "take" on God, about the Catholic's "take" on God or the Muslim's "take" on God.

The God of the Bible. Not the contrived, passed-down, watered-down god of traditionalism-steeped, Bible-neglecting churches. Not the alternative man-made gods (whether wooden or merely inventions of the mind) that have no ears to hear or eyes to see or hands to help people with.

Humanly, we want a god who is our own creation--something we can wrap our minds around and comprehend and find the beginning and the end of. But what true and lasting security can the offspring of mortal minds offer? Show me a book besides the Bible that wasn't written by merely wise mortals. Show me a book besides the Bible that doesn't offer another man-made alternative.

I don't want wood, hay and stubble. I don't want a god that my own village silversmith made out of silver that got into the mines as the result of a big bang or some other fantastic non-God origin. I want something bigger than me to worship. I want something bigger than any man (even nice respectible prophet-type miracle-making men) to worship. No other religion on Earth offers me anything that matches up to the God of the Bible.

Frankly, I don't even want a religion. I want a relationship. That is what the God of the Bible offers me. I haven't found a better, more substantial, more well-documented, more proven object for my faith than I find in Jesus Christ the Righteous.