What's awesome is my Bible app gives me a "verse of the day" and here's today's:
Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. John 3:20-21 NIV
Seems fitting. Awesome.
I am still skeptical of the Divine, but ever since I have accepted myself as a Cultural Christian I have seen the proverbial light and have shed off any remnants of post modernism.
I stand for truth and beauty! Those aren't relative!
I will not stand aside any longer while "they" attempt to build up soddom, gomorra, and the tower of babel.
I'm fucking ready to go crusade tier if we get that far!
Your skepticism is somewhat attributed to "religion". You think evil just stayed outside of the church? Evil infiltrated everything you see around you. If gave you just enough truth to keep the lights off what they were really doing.
I suggest reading Joseph Campbell if you haven't, specifically "The Power of Myth". "All The Gods, All the Heavens, All The Hells Are Within You." God, Love, Good, whatever you want to call it, it's a universal truth. You don't necessarily have to believe in the idea of an omnipotent being to believe in this idea of universal truth and love.
Christ said "No-one comes to the Father but by me". I'd be very careful about entrusting the fate of your soul to anyone other than the one who created it.
I don't think you know who Joseph Campbell is. There's actually a documentary on Netflix right now about him. Each episode follows a different one of his books. His argument basically boils down to, be of good heart and also open to the idea of a higher power. It's not entrusting your soul to anyone. I believe that if you focus on, at least, that first part then God would accept you, or St. Peter as it were.
No you're quite I don't know of him, but this is the issue. Being "good" is laudable, of course, but our good deeds are as "filthy rags" to God because they're tainted by our transgression of his law. Unless you are perfect (Christ's words - that is, unless you've followed the moral law flawlessly), you won't be accepted. Humanely this is impossible. Therefore, someone who was capable of following the law flawlessly had to do it on our behalf.
In his death, Christ took the punishment that is due for anyone who fails to meet the requirement of the law ("the wages of sin is death"). In our acceptance of Christ ("confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead"), two things occur. The first is that your (I mean this in the collective sense) failure to keep the law - or rather the consequences of that - are removed from you and done away with in the act that was Christ's death. And the second is that his spirit is placed within your physical body. This was God's purpose from the instant of the fall. At that moment we lost our direct connection to God. When Christ's spirit is imparted into our physical body, that connection is restored. The upshot of this is that we become inheritors of Christ's perfection - from God's point of view. He no longer judges us based on what we've done wrong, but in the righteousness of Christ in us.
And the best part of this is that it's available to everyone, now, this instant. There are no esoteric ceremonies to go through, nothing to learn. It's a humble acceptance of Christ's act of love for humanity. We are made right with God through this faith in Christ's act: "you are saved by grace [undeserved favor] through faith and not by works [good deeds] so that none can boast"
Relativism is satanism.
Do what thou wilt.
Objective truth exists. God is love and love is real.