Thread:Floatingaxehead/@comment-5175866-20160830212217/@comment-28478783-20160901203649

Hey, the thing is, I may be a special case. I have returned back to this not only due to a feeling of responsibility for this, but also a desire to see the Bible being represented through the lense of Christians such as ourselves. These programs are pretty neat, but the man issue has been that either life gets in the way, or interest is lost. I still see former editors such as Snowstripe and Annabeth and Percy on Community Central, so in that way you can see that there is still a need for reinvigorating interest in the Bible. People like me often come to see what this is about, and are sometimes disappointed with the number of individuals who are here. As a result, because there isn't too many people to return to, they simply drift somewhere else.

What I do suggest, though, is to outline why the Bible is such a fascinating text. It indeed is something that needs to be researched, but I can tell you one thing, and that it is novel among the periods it was written for its consistency as well as historical authenticity, and ironically, there are scores of people out there who will do "research" and publish falsified claims as "evidence" to prove that the whole text and it's relavence to our current lives is something that should be treated with the same gentle appreciation of a childhood fairy tale. The characters mentioned are either real, or mentioned as metaphors for real people, and the themes produced are things a lot of people don't want to come to grip with as being true. As a result, the effects of our society on the people in speaking about how unimportant the Bible is in our own lives leaves an impact on even those who call themselves Christians and who should have an intense zeal to learn it and to study it (it is God's word, after all). But life gets in the way, distractions occur, and people leave the scene. Here, it gets a little common, but that may because the vast majority of people who don't know about wikias (or would even decide to participate and remain in a wikia community) are the target group for recruitment, who may be focusing on other things, such as missions, preachings, debates, writings, studies, or self-discipline. I myself didn't know about this until very recently. As a result, this wiki needs to be better advertised, and not merely among wikians. I could tell several of my Christian friends about the wiki, but they are almost all away at some other place, whether its the Air Force Academy or the high school I graduated from, and they are nearly all booked with something (a complaint my bible study leader gave us after attendance dropped severely when school started). Still, the abilities of this as a means for them to network and communicate has great potential, if people do find it attractive. The programs are great, but if people don't know about it, they can't join.

Also, I have already familiarized myself with a lot of ugly truths presented in the Bible. One of them, the idea that one should remove a part of them that causes them to sin (Matthew 5:29-30) has been one that I struggled with for years until the sheer rationality of it struck me in the face. Even if treated metaphorically, I know that anything that directly leads me to sin needs to be removed from my presence, and it also basically calls people who know they have an issue they can't control to find a way to get it treated, something which a person needs to apply even to their own daily lives. If they will do it to their body, why wouldn't they remove an external cause of sin from their own daily lives? There is this, as well as many others. The Old Testimate in particular includes a lot of things, such as many of David's mistakes, which almost horrified me the first time I came across them. I know many parts of the Old Testimate aren't exactly G-rated stuff, but there is always a lesson resulting from it. The clues are in the details, and each and every character was intentionally included, whether for reasons known or unknown to us. We won't always like the words spoken, but once we append them to our hearts, and commit Him, we will be restored. And there are some words in the Bible that I really do like. One of the points in the Old Testimate was that we do have issues that God had to accomadate for, and he did it in the New Testimate with Jesus, who replaced Abraham's son, as well as the firstborn of the Isrealites in Egypt, as well as the sacrifices we would have to make in order to make our peace with God.

As a result, I am still drawn here, due to either habit or the Holy Spirit, or both. It is not necessarily the programs, but the content, that pull me back.

20:36, September 1, 2016 (UTC)