Organized Religion?

[Unregistered]

Organized Religion?

**Why is organized religion necessary? Can we just be more good than evil?** I feel like, if our good actions outweigh our bad actions, then God will have compassion on us. And instead of having a set of rules or standardized guidelines to differentiate good from evil, could we just follow our God-given conscience?

All I know right now is that:
a. There is a God, ONE God
b. There is good and evil
c. Good people go to a good place when they die (something like Heaven), and evil people go to a bad place when they die (something like Hell).

I really value the opinions of everyone on here, because I know how much they care about their faith.

--------------------------------------------------

This is a question that I feel also may go with this topic:
**Is 'faith' anything more than a nice way of saying a guess?**



Thank you so much with helping on these questions!!

 

[revlynn]

I'm glad you asked these questions, because they are the way many people think. However, this is not a true representation of how things are, according to the Bible.

We need to go right back to the beginning. God created people in His own image and likeness - He wanted us to be as much like Him as it is possible for a finite creation to be like an infinite Creator. Every time, and in every way, that we fail to be like Him, we are failing in our created purpose, and that is sin. God's standard is not our good weighed against our bad, but our good weighed against His good - and there's no prizes for guessing who comes up short in that comparison. ("All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" - Romans 3:23, emphasis mine.)

Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, every person who has ever lived on earth has fallen short of God's glory (sinned). None of us has met the standard for heaven, which is why God the Son became man as Jesus Christ, to die in our place and pay the penalty for our sin, thus making it possible for us to go to heaven.

And instead of having a set of rules or standardized guidelines to differentiate good from evil, could we just follow our God-given conscience?

The problem is, because we are sinners living in a sin-filled world, our consciences have been corrupted. For instance, there are people who think it is perfectly alright to kill, rape and destroy in the name of their god. There are people who thought that their god actually wanted them to fly planes into buildings full of people. They were following their conscience, but their conscience was corrupted.

That's why, in the Old Testament, God gave a Law for man to follow. That Law reflected His character, and showed them how they should live in relationship with Him. However, an external law could never give them the ability to live that way: that had to come from something on the inside. So, after Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for man's sin, God gave His Holy Spirit to live within the spirit of every redeemed person and transform us from the inside out (if we will allow Him to do so.)

Is 'faith' anything more than a nice way of saying a guess?

Yes, it is much more. Faith is how we respond to what God says in His Word about Himself, us, and the relationship between us. It has three aspects:
1. Believing - if we have faith then we accept that what God says is true.
2. Behaving - if our faith is real, then we will act accordingly.
3. Belonging - true faith is not just intellectual assent, but a relationship based on our acceptance of what God says and our trust in Him for salvation and for life.

blelssings,

Lynn