A couple of days ago I wrote a post about politics, so today I'm going to write about the other forbidden subject...religion. It's not going to be a long post because I haven't thought a lot about it, but the following thoughts came to be today as I was drying my hair, of all things.
My family, meaning Bill, myself, and my children, are all different religions. Bill is a Baptist, my children and their children are Pentecostals, and I'm a Quaker. Now Pentecostals and Quakers are on each end of the spectrum, about as far apart as you can get, as far as style of worship goes. Baptists kind of fall in the middle of the two but is closer to Quaker than Pentecostals. Since there are no Quaker meetings where we live, I attend a Baptist church with Bill. We have also attended the Assembly of God church that my children attend on occasion.
Yet, we all worship the same God, we all read the same Bible, we all believe that you must accept Jesus as your personal Savior to be saved. The main difference is the Quakers don't believe you must have a water baptism for the salvation to "take".
This isn't to say that I don't approve of baptisms, far from it. I have seen 2 grandchildren and my son baptized and cried with the rest of them. I've seen people baptized at our church, and felt very blessed. I know that this act means something to each of the ones baptized and I wouldn't take that away from them for anything.
I had a very dear friend who was very concerned that I wasn't baptized. She asked me one day if I would do it for the members of the church. I told her that to me that would be very hypocritical. Yes, the other members of the church would be happy, but why should I do something that meant absolutely nothing to me. That seemed like it would take away the meaning for those who did believe in baptism.
Each denomination has a different style of worship. Some of them are not based biblically and I don't believe that it could be a true religion. But, as long as it is a true Bible based church, with true believers in Jesus as their personal savior, I say let people worship how they want. What is more important, salvation and eternal life or church membership and following the ordinances of a church? To me, I'll take salvation and eternal life every time!
Made this longer than I had planned, but the words just started to flow.
I decided to check out your blog after reading your comment on mine. Very nice! You have guts to take on religion and politics in a personal blog like this and I found it very interesting, your comparisons and feelings about your families various believes. On the topic of politics, your thoughts and mine are mirror images on all the points you mentioned. I could have written that post myself.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. The blog about my husband is http://hearttoheartjourney.blogspot.com.
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