Abraham and Isaac

God tested Abraham's faith by asking him to sacrifice his son. Abraham was willing to do this and almost succeeded when an angel suddenly stopped him from killing Isaac.

source

I've tried to hold back from sharing what I really think about Christianity, the Bible, and others' blog posts. I guess I didn't want to look like the obnoxious little religious boy who complains about everything. I've been afraid of judgment from my classmates, ironically from those who like to think they're open and accepting of everyone. But now I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care what people think, so I'm just gonna go for it.

I'm nowhere close to perfect, and neither is my religion. Christianity is a vast and complex belief system that is hard for anyone to understand. I was raised Christian and began really identifying myself as one when I was baptized in the 6th grade. I learn new things about my religion each and every day and I love digging into the true meaning and purpose of Christianity, including both the good and bad aspects.

This is why it saddens me to read a lot of the posts on this blog. I've spent my life trying to understand the Bible and its teachings, so it sucks seeing people tearing them apart week after week. I completely respect others' opinions and I believe that we should be able to post whatever we want on this blog, but I don't feel that respect coming back my way. I know people don't target me personally, but I can't help let the judgment and resentment that is conveyed in many posts get to me. I'd never rant about another religion or the lack of one because I know I can't understand it due to the way I live my life. No, I may not agree with whatever it is, but I have enough consideration to realize that it could be a very large aspect of someone's life and to not use my words to tear it down.

You'd never open a page of a book, read one passage, and make judgments about the book based the small fraction that you read. The stories of the Bible come together to paint the huge picture that is my religion, and the ones we've read only touch on a tiny piece of it. Yeah, some parts of them suck. Simply reading the passages and not having background knowledge of Christianity, you'd think God is this evil being who hates his followers (which I know is what many of you think). But I promise you that that's not the case. God didn't ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac just for kicks. Faith (which is incredibly hard to understand, often even for me) is the backbone of Christianity, and God was testing Abraham's faith with his request. It's more than just Abraham attempting to murder his son. It's the fact that Abraham was willing to give up what meant the most to him in order to be obedient to God. I think that's pretty amazing.

I know many of you don't agree with that, and that's completely fine. But I promise that looking deeper into Bible stories and not taking them so literally will open your eyes to the ways of thinking of others and will help make some of your posts not sound so unfortunately ignorant.

I guess I just sacrificed an hour of my night to write this post. Fingers crossed it's worth it!

Happy bday meredith ily