I guess I think it hinders more than it helps people coming to Christ directly… but having said that people can come to Christ through the catholic church for sure.

The Bible/God never commands Christians to give 10% of their income. New Testament Christians practiced Giving – not tithing. And yes, they are two entirely different concepts.

Giving is a spiritual act in which we act out of LOVE – not out of legalistic, religious obligation.

God doesn’t want or need our money.

Nevertheless, I’m glad that things worked out for you.

Peace & Blessings!

Science and the Mormons

The Mormons are a religious sect that emerged from Christianity in the United States in the Nineteenth Century. They added to the Bible their own scripture, the Book of Mormon, translated by Joseph Smith from an original text in a language he called Reformed Egyptian. According to the mythology of the Mormons, in 1827 the angel Moroni gave Smith these texts, which were engraved on golden tables. Smith could understand them without learning their language through the divine magic of two special lenses that he used to read them while he translated them.

Smith and his followers were persecuted by traditional Christians, who forced them to travel slowly and with great sacrifices until they reached what is now Utah, where their descendants dominate the religious and social life of this American state.

According to the Mormons, the Indians of the Americas came from Egypt more than 2,000 (two thousand) years ago. They used this myth to convert many Indians to their religion. “We were taught that all the blessings of our Hebrew ancestors made us a special people,” said Jose a Loyaza, a lawyer in Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah. “And this identity gave us a sense of transcendental affiliation, a special identity with God.” But Loyaza gradually learned that there was another outrageous irony to his faith.

He rejected his religion after learning that evidence provided by comparative DNA studies between American Indians and Asians conclusively proved that the first humans that migrated to the Americas came not from the Middle East but from Asia.

For the Mormons this genetic confirmation of the origin of the Indians in the Americas is a fundamental collision of science against religion. It is in direct conflict with the Book of Mormon, which, according to their religion, is a completely error-free historical work that must be interpreted literally.

The Book of Mormon is also fundamentally racist. It narrates that a tribe of Hebrews from Jeruselem went to the Americas in 600 B.C. and split up into two groups, the Nephites and the Lamanites. The Nephites carried the “true” religion to the new world and were in constant conflict with the Lamanites, who practiced idolatry. The Nephites were white (in 1980 the Mormons changed the word to “pure”), and the Lamanites received from God “The curse of blackness.”

The Book of Mormon also narrates that in 385 A.D. the Lamanites exterminated all the other Hebrews and became the principal ancestors of the American Indians. But the Mormons insist that if the Lamanites returned to the “true” religion (Mormonism, quite naturally), their skin would eventually become white like the skin of the Nephites that their ancestors had exterminated.

But despite these outrageous racist insults, many Indians and Polynesians (who also, according to the Mormons, are the descendants of the Lamanites) converted to Mormonism instead of telling the Mormons to go fuck themselves. (Through some perverse mechanism in human psychology, these converts are like homosexual priests who support the Roman catholic church or other gay people who support any type of Christianity.)

“The fiction that I was a Lamanite,” said Damon Kali, a lawyer in Sunnyvale, California, whose ancestors came from Polynesian islands, “was the principal reason that I converted to Mormonism.” He had been a missionary for the Mormans before he discovered that genetic evidence proved that the Lamanites were only a religious myth, and he could not continue his efforts to convert others to Mormonism.

Officially the Mormon church insists that nothing in the Book of Mormon is incompatible with the genetic evidence. Some Mormons are now saying that the Levites were a small group of Hebrews that went to Central America and after many generations of marrying with the natives they met, their Hebrew DNA disappeared into the DNA of their neighbors.

In 2002, officers of the church started a trial to excommunicate Thomas W. Murphy, a professor of anthropology at Edmonds Community College in Washington, an American state at the extreme northwest of the continental United States.

His trial attracted a lot of attention in the American public communications media, which ridiculed the church and insisted that Murphy was the Galileo of Mormonism. The general contempt provoked by this publicity seriously embarrassed the officers of the church, and they stopped the trial.

women…samaritans…tax collectors…innkeepers…the poor

good post mate. i’m fascinated by Jesus. let’s lift Him up more.

But I already miss it, I’ve missed it most of the summer to be honest!
Personally, my times of most significant growth have more often than not been linked to a small group of some kind… Either university, or FAPC, or small youth fellowship groups (nurture groups…) etc

I think you are 100% right to recommend them, they are awesome!

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

You should reject it as a person of conscience.

“Christians do not believe most of the central themes in Islam.”

I’m afraid I don’t agree with you there. While Christianity and Islam are very different in some respects, certain beliefs are common–the most important being belief in one supreme deity.

While reading your blog, I found many things that I agreed with as a Muslim. In fact, I found it interesting that many of the concerns you have about the Christian community are concerns that educated Muslims have about their community as well.

“Christians believe and have their hope in the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob… not the god of Abraham, Ishmael and Kedar.”

I’ve heard this objection before, but frankly I’ve never really understood it. I mean, it’s not like Muslims believe God to have attributes that Christians would object to. In fact, take a look at this verse from the Quran:

Say: “We believe in God, and in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and, their descendants, and that which has been vouchsafed to Moses and Jesus; and that which has been vouchsafed to all the [other] prophets by their Sustainer: we make no distinction between any of them. And it is unto Him that we surrender ourselves.”

Also:

Say: “O followers of earlier revelation (Christians and Jews)! Come unto that tenet which we and you hold in common: that we shall worship none but God, and that we shall not ascribe divinity to aught beside Him, and that we shall not take human beings for our lords beside God.”

So, the Quran actually encourages Muslims to interact with Christians on the basis of this common principle. Note: We do not say that Christians and Jews have “their own god” because it is inconceivable that any god except God can exist, which is why we believe everyone worships the same God. If Muslims disagree with anything, it is the *way* followers of other religions worship God, not the God they worship. Therefore, we do not revile “the God of other faiths”, and we believe in all the prophets that were sent by Him.

If you wish to read further, you can find a good translation of the Quran here: http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/koran/koran-asad-nocom.html

Islam does not need to be presented as a valid way to God by a Christian–that would hardly make sense. However, presenting it in a way that encourages intolerance and prejudice (as in the aforementioned quote) is just plain wrong and when it is done in context of the current political climate by such an important public figure, it only makes life more difficult for the average Muslim.

There is nothing terrifying about peace; however, I don’t believe that Islam will ever be taught to Christians in a way that Muslims would like. Because when taught to Christians it will not be presented as a valid way to God? Christians do not believe most of the central themes in Islam. Christians believe and have their hope in the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob… not the god of Abraham, Ishmael and Kedar.