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Posted on 05/25/2015 5:31:54 AM PDT by C19fan
Millennials—soon to be the largest generation of Americans, surpassing the baby boomers—are fleeing organized religion in droves. As a result, a generation of Americans is creating a national existential crisis. How can a country that regularly proclaims “God Bless America,” emblazons its currency with “In God We Trust,” and mentions God so frequently that it could make a secularist nauseous, survive if the largest demographic is indifferent toward the Almighty?
According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, about 35 percent of millennials have no religious affiliation and thus are categorized as the “nones.” Approximately 56 million Americans are religiously unaffiliated, and the horde of “nones” grows steadily by the year.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
... in the last days...
having a form of godliness but denying its power.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
the term FAITH is so often thowon about with no regard as to its meaning in the Biblical sense isnt it!
one has faith in ones chair...or one would not sit on it.but ordnarily one does not place faith in said piece of furniture... for ALL THINGS.
Faith as a term is greatly misused in this post modern world
Faith in Humanity is terribly misplaced faith
Faith in God is the CRUX of the matter and modern “philosophers” .. know nothing of it... nor do they want to have anything to do with it.
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“Religion” without a Supreme Being, a supernatural deity of some sort, is an oxymoron. In the absence of such a central object to worship, that leaves only one other entity in the room, the individual that thinks the Universe began with himself (or herself) and ends with their inevitable demise.
There cannot be a more narcissistic, self-absorbed creature anywhere. Sure, we have plenty of them that approach that particular set of “ideals”, but it is also adjudged, there are no atheists in a foxhole, or anywhere where mortality is clearly under an existential threat of extinction. Deathbed conversions still happen, and there is distinctly a moment when the individual soul seems to be transitioning to another plane of existence. Various fleeting descriptions have come to us, by those who were apparently almost at the doorway, but for some reason, were returned to the earthly existence. Mostly, it is of the presence of some being composed of a pure energy, and assurances understood not by any spoken voice, but a wash of comprehension that sweeps over the soul of the nearly departed.
Real, or not? Whatever it is, a person should be hedging their bets by considering the possibility that an afterlife is a plausible outcome, and gearing their lives accordingly.
The reason they're fleeing organized religion is because they're religious.
Many spirituality oriented folks see it as something other than Christian in focus. They go to animism, American Indian, Rapa Nui, shamanism, sacred stones, almost anything other than Christianity.
And I know this from frequenting chat rooms with them in it; Christians were seldom welcomed or “tolerated.”
“Can we please get God out of religion?”
Yes, absolutely.
We can get God out of religion the day we begin to experience God first hand and move Him from “Religion” to “Science.” It is far better to experience God first hand than it is to just believe. It is better to “Know for sure” than it is to just have “Faith.”
All religions are just philosophies and theories about the ‘Anatomy & Physiology” of the human soul and how it interacts with higher levels of consciousness that we refer to as God. Is God real? Absolutely. However our perception of God is very limited at the level of consciousness at which we exist. “Loving God” is the most important commandment.
Matthew 22:36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Is Christianity correct about it’s philosophies and theories of the ‘Anatomy & Physiology” of the human soul? Yes. If people would follow Jesus’ teachings rather than just worship Him they would find the experiential meaning of “Communion” as described in John 17.
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.
Take a chance and invite the Holy Spirit into you.
***Sure. Just replace “God” with “insert your savior” ***
I often wonder. when Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s atheist former followers came for her and her family, with the strangling cords, chainsaws and sledgehammers, did she say...”OH MY GOD!” or “Oh my ME!”
Look at this Instagram...That’s it, all right. The spirit of the age.
This guy is going to be doing some serious back pedaling come Judgement Day..
Can we please get God out of religion? To begin with, the true God isn’t in “religion”, He’s available to all, though, through an active, real, living relationship with His Dear Son.
A preacher once said, “Religion is man reaching up to God. To have true relationship with God one must understand the bible is a story that reveals that it is God Who is reaching down to man. Not your way. Not man’s way. It is God’s way that is all that matters. And His way is through His Son.”
In my old age I see this in action with every teen and millennial who now think they know it all about everything, especially religion.
"Pertness and ignorance will ask in three lines a question that will take thirty pages of learning and ingenuity to answer. And when this is done, the SAME QUESTION will be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written on the subject."-Bishop Horne (1835)
At some point all these followers of "spiritual" subset of paganism find out the hollowness and unfilling of their belief system...
The church needs to fill that void , but has failed miserably in reaching them...
Way more interested in building and growing their attendance records than living out Christ commands...
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
~ John Adams
Yes, we can and we have made much progress in this area and the result - a nation on its way to hell. Hope you and your like-minded friends will be happy there.
That’s because what Scripture actually says about those who deny It’s absolute truth and what fate lies in store for them if they continue to deny their Creator hasn’t been preached to any of them in a long time. Pastors would rather be good guys that never upset anyone. It’s just too, too cruel, inhumane and traumatic to subject poor sinners to that kind of condemnation! After all, they are either born that way or have been traumatized and made to do the things they do! They have “conditions” that make their actions either unavoidable or someone else’s fault.
In fact, those who are responsible for guiding and teaching the sheep will be held accountable for the actions of those they failed to exhort and teach. That takes in a whole lot of preachers and pastors today. Even parents are increasingly forbidden to teach some of the basic tenets of Scripture or to discipline their children according to it. The result, as promised, is a world gone mad that can’t and won’t survive.
The basic teaching of today is to live with, enable, understand, give aid to or, at the very least, ignore evil.
There is no longer any consequence of practicing evil in this present world and no one is sounding the warning about the consequences that are coming. People today choose other gods, just like the Israelites did.
Did she not convert late in life? Not to herself, I mean to an actual religion?
Not that I know of. One of her sons, who figured in her SCOTUS case became a Christian minister and she disowned him.
The atheist followers were vile murderers who stole from her, she fired them and they came back with a vengeance. She seemed to enjoy having such people on parole around her.
Interestingly, some far more secular countries have higher quality of life than us.
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