Day: March 31, 2015

Fighting Over Theology: “My Way Is Right, Your Way Can Go To Hell”

Photo by Dave Tada

erelah-tabbris asked a question:

What do you do when you have a bunch of different people telling you their interpretation of the bible a bunch of different ways, and if you dont believe in their way you go to hell? There are so many. If you sin you lose salvation, if you aren’t perfect, if you don’t do works, if you like un-godly things, if you mess up at all, all these ways saying its that way or hell. How do we know who’s is the right way? And what if we are all wrong?

Hey dear friend, to be truthful: I think having multiple interpretations is okay. What’s not okay is when these interpretations turn me into a jerk.

When a church says, “My way is the only way,” I think the main intent is that everyone likes to be in the Insider’s Club. It feels cool to have the keys to supernatural secret-sauce. We like a tiny little narrow doorway of doctrine.

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Heroes, Villains, and Coffee



No one is the one-dimensional, black-and-white, evil caricature that we so wish them to be. No one is the version of a person you worship on a pedestal.
It is easier to hate a cartoon-parody idea; to denigrate a hologram; to blast an artificial; to praise the effigy.
If you and I could sit down for coffee: we would discover multiple dimensions, a mess of motives, hidden layers, two profoundly broken people hanging on.
We are wildly struggling, conflicted, complex.
We are not wholly evil nor holy good.
Let go of heroic prejudice and villainous archetypes. There was only one hero, crushed at a cross; and one villain, who was defeated there too.
So we blood-stained sinners are stripped of pretension and cling to the true good; us sinners saved by an undeserved grace.
The sooner we get there, the sooner we are known and truly know.


— J.S.