I think your post was instructive, especially the last line, which stated,
“We should let the Bible determine what our belief is, and not let our ‘belief’ determine for us what the Bible says.”
Sounds great in theory, but as one can see, in practice it is not quite that easy...which explains, of course, why there are so many different Christian religions, with wide differences of belief between them, and supposedly all those beliefs based on Biblical understanding...people have been arguing and fighting for ages, on points of belief, and have come to absolutely no resolution, and I dont expect they ever will...in many cases, only one belief can be true, and yet the arguments continue...
For example, Catholics believe that Mary, remained a virgin, even after the birth of Christ...many other non-Catholic Christian churches, believe that after the birth of Christ, Mary resumed a normal sexual relationship with her husband Joseph and went on to have other children...these two views, extremely different from each other, and directly opposed to one another, are supposedly based on Biblical understanding, taking from Biblical scriptures...yet, they both cannot be true....Mary either remained a virgin after the birth of Christ or she did not...she either had other children or she did not...there are no nuances here, yet you have various Christian churches opposed to each other on this particular subject, and all is supposedly based on the understanding of Biblical scriptures...so it would seem, that your advice is easily given, but difficult to follow...
So true; for ALL of us come to 'religion' with some kind of information already imprinted on our brain.
(Maybe Hubbard is right after all!)
And that's what happens when you MIX the BIBLe with something else.
(No; I will NOT be discussing C vs P differences in this thread.)