Originally posted by Artic Warrior:
Whoever the "pope" of the baptist chirch is should get rid of him. Its humans like him that give religion a bad name. Extremists can suck my.
The Baptists don't have a "pope" like figure. That was one of the reasons for the protestant movement, Martin Luther didn't think that one person should be responsible for interpreting the Bible. Before the reformation (the word Protestant means reformation in English) the Bible was only avaiable in Greek and the followers as a rule did not own or read the Bible. They got their teachings from the Pope, Bishop, or Priest via official doctrines or at mass. Luther believed that each person should be resposible for reading and studying the Bible himself and to learn from the bible directly, not from the priest. In order to do this he translated the Bible from Greek to German and made it avaiable to everyone in a language they could read. Luther basically wanted a deceneralized church where no one person was considered to be the "leader."
The point of the story is no one person or religion is flawless. If you believe in God you can't believe that God has a "favorite" group of followers or something. It's not like when you die and get to heaven God's going to say "well, Melissa, you led a pretty good life....BUT your mother decided when you were a child that you would be raised Catholic so you are going to burn in hell!!!!!" Sometimes I wish people would just get off of their freakin high horse, and act like a human being and realize that everyone else is just a human being too...who makes mistakes, who isn't perfect, who bleeds, crys, feels...
Yes, I am on a lovey kick today thank you for asking.