You come across as an arrogant “born again”, the Lord Jesus Christ is my Savior sort and I’ve met many like you. And every one of those people rejected questioning a single thing they had been told or learned in a church that habitually lied to and continues to lie to them. Many would say “But this world isn’t my true home so why should I care, anyway?” My answer: “It’s a good thing Jesus didn’t say that.” Those people would simply grow angrier with me, as you have.

And cut and paste? Of course, I did that. I don’t have ready access to all of those Bibles, anyway, and why would I take hours to look up and type those words in my response? That would simply be stupid.

I responded as I did because I hoped you might remove the scales from your eyes and see clearly. Nothing “petty” about it. Bu no false piety, either. My bad for thinking that you might learn something new to you but as a believer in God, it’s still my responsibility to try.

But, yeah, 50 years young man. I attended a Baptist Missionary early in life than a Baptist church until I was 12. By that time I had read the KJV, more than once, and what I learned from it didn’t comport with much of the preacher’s sermons. I saw that attending church as a waste of time so quit going to church but kept reading, studying the Bible. I tried to get my friends interested, especially when they had problems and came to me to ask how I handled it all- I didn’t have much of a home life and they knew that. I told them all that I found my answers in the Bible. More importantly, I held a deep faith that God watched over me. I didn’t try to pass off my responsibility to be “saved” to Jesus: that’s a coward’s way out, not the way Jesus taught us to be. Notice that word “way”. Jesus taught the “way” to God, not that he was the way. That idea as him as our personal savior is a change to Christian belief that’s only a few centuries old.

And I learned when I was a teenager that much in the Bible conflicts with much else in the Bible. And I was like you at one time- young, arrogant, “I know it all” sort of person, but I grew out of that. I was “born again” in Spirit when I was 19 years old. I also knew that Paul, or someone claiming to be him, wrote that being born into the Spirit is like being born into the flesh, as both we are newborns, and newborns must grow. Paul told his followers that he’d fed them spiritual milk because they were babes in the Spirit and not yet ready for “spiritual” meat. Look it up. I took that seriously and did my best to grow spiritually. I prayed, daily, gave my life to God and trusted in God. And believe that I have grown but know full well no human is ever grown spiritually enough to claim any special position as one who can faithfully and without doubt lead anyone else to God. You haven’t reached that point but if you trust God, in your heart, rather than those verses written in the NT, then you just might have a real relationship with God. And I mean a true one, not one that depends on another, Jesus, to give it to you. Nor is it the place of any human to lead another to God because that is every person’ “cross to bear”. No one will or can do it for you.

You have to pay attention and trust, though. Trust that no matter what happens, it is for your own good, your growth in the Spirit. Pearls of wisdom may be set in front of you that you don’t recognize, and you shouldn’t toss them aside. Like the swine who trample pearls because they see no value in them.

Nothing in life is a coincidence: everything happens for a reason because God does have a plan for your life. There’s a meaning behind every little thing that happens to you or with you or for you or by you. Stop ignoring the little things, the “hunches” you get or first impressions or people with whom you meet or interact with because that is all for a reason. And is a lesson you’re intended to learn. Just because you can’t see or understand the reason, God can. Faith means trust in a thing you can’t see or touch or experience. Faith is another word for “trust”. So, just trust that all things are meant for your good and all things will work for your good.

Just like this interaction between us. We both are meant to learn from it. Just because neither of us know now what we are supposed to learn doesn’t mean God doesn’t know.

Trust.