Don’t rush past Good Friday

So while you, as an individual, might not believe in God or the Devil (Satan/Lucifer/the prince of lies, etc), they most surely believe in you, and your free will to chose between good and evil, and living a good life or living in sin.

I am Christian, however I do not celebrate anything but Easter day “resurrection” day itself. It is a day of Family and Remembering what this day represents.

I cannot get behind any organized religion, and will not attend a denominational church or even a nondenominational one. Sadly they all have rules not in the bible and I have actually witnessed churches where parking is reserved for the large donors. The person who leads the church (pick your title by church) who refuses to stop the cackling gossip sections and will do the bare minimum for the congregation when a member is in need, as his pocket swells.

Yes I know God and the Devil are real, I do my best not to allow them in my life and do attend my pray closet nightly.

When people ask me to prove God is real?
I tell them search your soul for no arguments I can make are more powerful than your own soul telling you the truth.

When they say he cannot be real because he lets bad things happen.
I respond this way:
I have never had a bad thing happen in my life! You have never had a bad thing happen in your life! What You and I and all others have had happen is a <Lesson from our Heavenly Father> we were doing something and he corrected us, even allowing a person to have a disease or die is a lesson. We may not understand it at the time but in reflection years from now we can look back to see that event molded us in the direction we took to get to where we are now and the person we became. All those times you call bad, I am thankful for as I learned because I let my heart and soul be opened to hearing. Now I can help others through my experiencing those times and easy their suffering and that is Godly intervention. His lessons prepared me to help others.

And to those who say God does not exist and your a fool for believing in him and living that way.
I say to them:
Is me, living a life trying to help others and show others kindness, when they are in pain of heart or body and by living by the golden rule is so bad to you, then you do not have to come around me, but i will still be here if you ever do need someone to help.

I think a person needs to keep the holidays in their heart for what they “mean” and celibate the meaning by their families traditions. Mine growing up gathered for Big meals, said grace, sung hymns on occasions when the guitars presented itself, ate lots of sweets and hid eggs for the kids. But it was about God and Family.

Now Christmas, LOL I am often called Father Christmas because of how steadfast I am on respecting old traditional style christmas (Americana with a little German thrown in)

I also must say I appreciate seeing this topic and discussion.

Happy Easter

I have a personal thought on this time of year that I think is worth mentioning.

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Imagine an all powerful God.  He can do anything, create anything and reigns over all of reality.

He created people, a world for them to live in and a universe to support that world.

He loves his creations like children and as such did not create worship robots and gave them free will.

With this free will they strayed and needed to be saved and brought back to love.

God creates Jesus, essentially a part of himself.  And to prove his love to his creations and so that they would truly understand his love he allows his own creations to torture and kill this part of himself knowing that he is all powerful and can do anything to them at any time.

The death and resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate sign of love and the personification of God’s call for us to come to him.

For me that puts it in a very logical perspective.

Thanks for this thread. Rare nowadays for anyone to even admit it.

If you look at the entire story of Jesus, I personally am left with only 1 thought.

That an all powerful being created sentient people and gave them free will, even to rebuke him.  And after seeing how those creatures acted selfishly, God did not eradicate them all or lash out mindlessly at them.  He decided to send a part of himself to the world and allowed his own creatures to torture, mock, and kill that special part of him he sent to Earth so for thousands of years they would understand.

He did that out of love.

God showing us that level of love, patience and humility is a demonstration of his divinity as NO human on Earth is capable of any such thing.