Check The Fineprint



Use a magnifying glass if needed!



Have you ever found yourself skipping over the fine print in a contract? I have, many times (especially with Apple updates). Sometimes it can have uninttended consequences. For example, if your lease on a new home doesn't allow pets, but your profession happens to be training bassett hounds to be attack dogs (they are vicious), and you run your business out of your home your unintended consequence would be needing to find a new profession, that includes less furry clients.

Now what if you didn't read the fine print on finding a new place of worship, or even in picking a faith? That could be disastrous. So what are some things that should when examining the "fine print"?


• Don't Take People At Their Word Sometimes people from other faiths only reveal the extremely palatable parts of their faith system, and wait until you are neck deep in the system before they reveal the more frankly quirky and weird parts of their faith. For example, many Christians in an initial conversation with a Mormon would believe that we hold the exact same beliefs. On the surface level, that is fairly accurate, but once you dig into their faith, especially in the teachings of Joseph Smith, the LDS church and the Book of Mormon, you see that they don't quite match up. In fact, they have almost completely deviated from many foundational  teachings of Christianity. Make sure you examine the actual scriptures, not be spoon fed answers. Search intently for whether what someone believes is true.
• Names Aren't Everything- I know people who are Ford people. And Apple people. And some people are Baptists, Presbyterians, or Methodists, and staunchly so. This can lead to disastrous consequences if you take a congregations denominational name as a means for measuring credibility. Just like assuming that the Gamecube was a good system because Nintendo made it is a fatal flaw (an extremely fatal flaw actually), assuming a church is credible because it has Church of Christ, Presbyterian, or Nazarene on the sign can have disastrous consquences. An obvious example is Westboro Baptist Church. I am a Baptist myself and when considering their beliefs (notably that God delights in the deaths of people because their sins like homosexuality) I cannot say they would truly be Baptist, or even really a church. Some churches can be just as extreme and deviant in their views but without as much press. Not digging to find if they are accurate and right in their views can lead to unwanted problems.
• Cross Examine Faiths-  One of the best ways to understand what a group believes compared to others is by comparing them to other faiths. Now in this you do have to know what are non negoitables when understanding a faith. For example, in historic orthodox Christianity the view of Jesus as fully God and fully man (a paradigm known as the hypostatic union) is a non negoitable foundational belief because its impact on our understanding of how Jesus' death provided atonement for sins. If you look at a belief system like that of Jehovah's Witnesses, who reject the divinity of Christ, we can see that many non negoitables, in  particular Jesus' divine nature are rejected by the people of this faith. This practice can show you how two faith systems are or are not logically and theologically consistent.

Whenever we fail to understand things ourselves we fall into the trap of agreeing to something that doesn't particularly jive with us. In leasing apartments, it can be costly. In gaming consoles, it can be infuritating. And in faiths the consequences are eternal. Always be sure to understand ever term of the fine print before agreeing.

Is God Insecure/Arrogant Since He Wants Us To Worship Only Him?

Is God just a loving old grandfather figure in the sky, a judgmental crazy man, or something else?

Many people, Christian and non-Christian alike, find it hard to believe that God would really judge people for not worshiping Him, but rather some other deity. In their mind the thought it "why isn't worshiping Allah, Kali, or Zoroaster not good enough? The people who worship them are sincere!". No one wants God to judge people or punish them (myself included!) so we resort to this thinking. The battle cry of "GOD IS LOVE!" makes us overlook the justice of God. It also makes us stray into thinking that since "God is love" that since he loves people he is uber of everyone and accepts no matter what, even if you hate him. To atheists it is even more appalling that any god, whether the Christian God or some other god, at all would judge anyone! I saw a post by a man who was a self proclaimed atheist, debating a person on Twitter ( I frequently enjoy stalking twitter debates. I find it more enjoyable than being a part of them). His thought was this:

" [An] Omni-present, Omniscient, Omni-benevolent being will send u to hell for eternity for not loving it. How insecure can it be?"

Now this may seem to be a kind of arrogant seeming statement for Christians. But the thing is, we have the presupposition that God is worthy to judge, while an Atheist does not. To clarify it's not that a Christian will not question this, but that they are less likely to question the legitimacy of God's right to judge. I have at times even wondered if God was arrogant, because I felt he needed to be humble. All the time it is all about Himself and it took me a long time to find the contrast between this and the humility humans are called to.

 If you look through the eyes of a non Christian (and even me during this struggle), many see God on almost a human level, thinking that God cannot judge man, just as a human being cannot judge man. So with this line of thinking we can think God needs to be humble. So to see someone who can judge all people, regardless of their intentions, it may seem insecure and because our propensity for us to want people to be humble. We see people like Hitler or Mao as being people who have thought themselves worthy to judge others and can unfairly attribute this same quality to a God that it doesn't fit. God becomes a guy in the other room with a gun with this example who threatens us unjustly, rather than a loving God who wants what is best for us and punishes us when we disobey. God is not being arrogant. He is being just and impartial.

Do you see God like this?

What the grand question I think we need to answer is, what gives God the right to judge all people? Why is he not arrogant when he judges? To be blunt, it is because he created all things. He created all things in the world and of the world. The things we use to create objects (the raw materials), like the metal in the computer I am typing on, were created at some point. He made these things from nothing. We have brilliant scientists who have been able to create basic elements of life in laboratories. But when you think about it, they had to use things that were already created to make even tiny amino acids. None of these creations were made out of thin air with things that didn't have with them at the time. God has ownership over all creation, even us. 

Now to take this to a human perspective, we can look at copyright laws as an example. I cannot tell Apple what they should do with the rights to the Apple IPhone. I cant make them share the design with people and allow their competition to share in their creation. And with this Apple can do what they want when they have a patent to something like the IPhone. If they want to put less memory on it, they can. If they want to only sell them in Bangladesh, they can (albeit that would be a very limited market!). They have ownership of this product and all rights to it. No one else does. Microsoft cannot tell Apple how to make, sell, or market their IPhones. In the same way God can do as he wants with his creation, and that is his right. Like Apple, he is not arrogant or insecure when he handles his creation the way he pleases.