Christians, if your God is all powerful, than why must He conform to the Bible?

I'm a Lutheran Christian, but I also believe that God, being God, doesn't have to conform to *anything* and that God does not belong to, nor is God the exclusive property of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Bahai's, Hindus, Buddhists, or anybody else.

Some people imagine God with a penis and testicles; others imagine God with a vagina and a clitoris; others conceive of God as a Spirit. I know a few who think of God as a Hairy Thunderer, a Cosmic Muffin and I sponsored one person in Al-Anon whose understanding of God was an orange, another person whose understanding of God was the group and the Steps, and another person whose understanding of God was a stained glass window. (For a long time, my concept was the Higher Parent because the own parenting I received from my biological parents was so piss-poor.)

You can learn about God in the Bible, but you can also learn about God in the Torah, the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Wiccan Rede, through people, places and things, and by science (including evolution!), mathematics, physics, logic, art and music (just to name a very few).

Personally, I have some of my closest contact with God when I'm skinnydipping in a lake by myself. Here I am, here are the hills and mountains, pleasantly cool water which I'm experiencing all over my body (is there a better sensual pleasure?); and since I'm usually wearing goggles and a snorkel I can observe the fish, any vegetation in the lake, and the sheer beauty of the experience. Do I really *need* to read the Gospel of John to have a conscious contact with a Power greater than myself at that point? Absolutely, definitively NO.

I call God "God" because my native language is English. Spanish speakers call God "Dios", French speakers "Dieu", German speakers "Gott", Russian speakers, "Gospodi" and Arab speakers "Allah". Were I to go live in any of these countries, I'd probably refer to God by the specific name of that country. The only reason I refer to God as a "He" (even though I don't believe God is male) is because English does not have a good neuter pronoun as do other languages.

God created the religions for OUR benefit — not His. Our religions are pathways to God, but they really don't benefit God one bit, nor does God need them. Furthermore, when our religions allow us to start compartmentalizing people and denying them their humanity because "they" don't believe as "we" do, our religions can become very much a force for evil and a great deal of evil has been committed by religious people in the name of God.

Fiinally, I experienced hatred first-hand from a fundagelical Christian denomination, the Calvinist Baptist church in which I grew up, when I came out as a gay man when I was 15. I was officially excommunicated and "shunned", and there are people from that church who 40 years later who do not acknowledge me when they see me on the street when I'm visiting my hometown. Frankly, I could care *less* what they think or what they think about me: I accept myself; I have made my peace with God about being gay; and I'm quite sure I'm not the very first gay person God has ever encountered in this world who still believes in God and will not renounce either being gay or being a Christian. I attend a church which accepts me and my partner.

Just don't ask me, as did a member of my sister's fundamentalist cult, why I worship a cartoon character rather than the living God: the member of my sister's cult thought that "Lutherans" worshiped Lex Luthor, the villain from Superman. Apparently the guy had never heard of Martin Luther — but then again, he was homeschooled so what could we expect.

It is true: Luthorans DO gather around a big, krypton lamp on Sunday morning and pray for the death of Superman. (By this point, my sister had overheard the conversation, walked into the room and said, "Mark — *BE NICE*!")

I think that the question is not the right one. Not He, but we as humans should learn from the Bible to understand better what we should do.

Not all religions lead to God. Some worship the devil and others might very well be human imagination. I've seen people in the psychiatric hospital who were communicating with "beings."

Those who are willing to mix religions and claim that "God does not belong to, nor is God the exclusive property" should reflect on the fact that religions do have contradicting fundamental beliefs and some are monotheistic other polytheistic, the two are not compatible. Some teach forgiveness, while others "eye for an eye", I understand the need for coexistence, but that does not happen by ignoring facts.

He doesn't have to conform to the Bible.

Some faiths do get it wrong and teach hate instead of love (Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps, e.g.).

They do turn away reasonable, rational people who would otherwise be His followers.

God does use science to reach people and He did use evolution to create life and the world.

You can call Him Odin, Yahweh, Jehovah, God, Juan, or Susan. I suspect He isn't as hung up on words as some of His followers.

God is not a he. Or at least He is as much as 'he' as a 'she' because He is a spirit and does not have genitals. The masculine pronoun is just used more out of convention.

Call Him any name that makes the most sense to you, that you understand best.

This is all basic Catholic teaching.

What do you mean by conform to the bible. He doesn't have to conform to anything. Are you suggesting that instead of allowing us to use freedom of choice, He should make us believe? I think most christians would say they have all the proof that need. God has demonstrated to the world all his powers. Some people will still not believe even with miracles or proof or scientific evidence. Faith is believing in what you cant see

I think he is making us do the work it takes not only prove that we have the desire to learn and grow and progress, but the ability.

The purpose of our lives is progression. We are trying to become like God. This cant be an easy journey. There is a lot to learn and it will probably take a lot of time and effort.

If we cant even demonstrate the most basic ability to trust Gods ability to teach us and rely on him and do the simplest things to gain an understanding of the most basic principles to progress here right now, then how are we ever going to be able to learn the more advanced things?

I think we are all put in situations that allow us to take steps to spiritually progress, but we still need to demonstrate a desire to want to do so. We also need to show that we have the ability to do so.

This is why I think things are done the way they are. It is to force us to do the work it takes to progress and grow. When everything is handed to you then you just dont get as much out of it.

Brainwashing needn't imply swinging pocketwatches or drug healing: it is simply the trouble made to drive men and women clear of their beforehand held strategies and into new, unquestionable ones. A Christian upbringing most commonly, however no longer continuously, entails indoctrination into historic strategies related to the production of guy, his situation on the earth and so forth, and not using a possibility to impeach those ideals, and hence he's brainwashed. Observing the variety of clappy-pleased mega-church buildings that exist, equivalent to Hillsong, and the propaganda despatched out continually to Christians from televised pastors, you could without difficulty see that such men and women are actually being brainwashed into throwing away a reliance upon empiricism and proof to transport into an simpler process of blind perception. It's delicate, above all to people who find themselves already being indoctrinated into the religion of the Christian Church, however surely exists. All the "born-agains," whose perception in technology and guy's possess energy to form his lifestyles was once wholly destroyed while, as they are saying, God got here into their lifestyles and "stored them." Despite all of the proof to the opposite, many combat valiently for the intent of creationism no longer when you consider that the concrete proof tells them this is a most probably thought, however when you consider that faith, and their elders and their friends and their meant God tells them so. Really, it is all as an alternative creepy. Listen to your self: faith is a community that guarantees men and women "don't stray" - any individual who questions the major strategies held through the Christian Church is a heretic. This is, certainly, brainwashing.

Hello,

God doesn't have to conform to anything that we can say about him/her/it. God just has to be God. Starting there, we can say that man can only know anything about God if God chooses to reveal it to man. If God chooses to remain hidden, he is able to do so. Humans are free to think whatever they want about God, but nothing prevents them from being self-deceived except supernatural revelation from above.

Christians believe the Bible is revealed truth from above and that it accurately speaks of events which actually occurred and that it provides reliable guidance and wisdom.

Yours in Christ, Nick

Try to ask God these questions before asking humans but not the ones who believe the biggest hoax in history, evolution.

Real science proves that God created supernaturally, not by any science you learn in school. It's called common sense science. When you find things in nature that you enjoy - brilliant colors of birds and butterflies, songs of song birds, fragrances of flowers, then you find out that common sense rules.

God conforms to His Word and that is part of the miracle of the Word. When the Word predicts things, they always come true.

The bible is his word authored by mere humans. It conforms to his wishes not the other way around.

I see what you're saying... I'm sure he could change the rules up anytime. That's like saying "Why does the president conform to the laws he makes?" he doesn't. The laws conform to him. You have it backwards I think.