What is the meaning of, “one day you will see your own light.” ?

Or is that another version of “somehow looking ‘within’ to find your own meaning?”

I could be misconstruing your words. However, in most of the English usage I have met, the two phrases are equivalent. Yet you appear to deride one and use the other as a possible escape from the first.

Just a question.

A resource which might be helpful in getting anyone’s mind outside of their “geographic” boundaries would be here:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/

This is a website devoted to an early 20th-Century author named G.K. Chesterton.

Come to think of it, since this author is roughly a century old, and resided in England, he might help the reader get out of “temporal” boundaries also. That is, the common cultural assumptions of early-21st Century America.

Just a place to start thinking.

Incidentally, if no one ever questioned their beliefs…Christianity would never have produced the divisions that it has, and probably would never have exploded from a small band of fishermen/tax-collectors into a worldwide faith. So divisions resulted later on…they’re partly our problem, but they also point out a reminder that no Christian is perfect, either in sin-lessness, or in understanding of the mysteries of God.

I’d love to hear back from you. (I think my name will link to my email, if you want to clarify things one-on-one with me.)

I’m rather at a loss to know how to respond to your comment. Given that you don’t appear open to discussing why I believe what I believe (and no, it’s not because I’m unquestioning), it’s not at all clear what the appropriate response is.

If you’ve a suggestion for me, I’d be glad to listen.

I really don’t get how a person who must use the most of their reasoning abilities to use the best information available to them to make essentially life or death decisions about code … completely throw that to the wind and instead think that somehow looking ‘within’ gives some kind of meaning.

You make a great point, doctrines are divisions, they are differences in opinion. Have you ever noticed how the opposite can be said of scientific theories? Over time, the lesser of them are either disproved, like theories may and can be unified, but ultimately, science discards those that cannot stand up to scrutiny.

Have you ever wondered why topics such as homosexuality, freedom of choice, and female ordination are so contentious, even just among say just protestants? Lets not forget Catholics, or Greek Orthodox, all of which think they have the right path?

I just don’t get it, I bet you can code like a demon, always asking exactly the right question, yet, you cannot or will not question your religion, most likely a result of your geography more than anything else.

Oh well, maybe one day you can see your own light. Several resources I have found helpful:

http://www.exchristian.org/
http://www.religioustolerance.org/
http://www.infidels.org/index.shtml
http://www.infidelguy.com
http://www.atheists.org

Absolutely. It’s not for me to look at anyone and say, “You’re going to heaven,” or “You’re going to hell.” Only God, who can see what’s in our hearts, can do that.

What Jesus says in the scripture is, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” Now, it’s conceivable that one could come to the Father through Jesus without being aware that it is Jesus who brought you, just as it’s possible to get driving directions from a stranger without knowing their name. If so, all praise to Christ–I’ve no desire to shut the gates of heaven against those he’d bring in. But if it is possible, I’d judge it the exception rather than the rule, and for a preacher to tell people to attach their hopes to such a slender reed strikes me as presumptuous.

But all that’s to the side of my main point, anyway.

Seems to me your job and mine is to tell the Truth, explain the process and let those who will make their choices and then to argue with them if they make the wrong one. But in the final reckoning, if they dont get into the life boat after repeatedly hearing the call to come, who’s to blame?