God's Plan, Hand and Friendship

Three dogmas of my inherited Christianity I must analyze:

1. Hand of God
2. Friendship of God
3. Plan of God

The "Hand of God" idea is that behind all the events that occur in my life, some almighty being is watching and manipulating things for my good.

Implications of this are enormous! Where do I begin?
(fill in later)

The "Friendship" dogma is expressed in the "personal relationship" aspect of Jesus/God. This is that person I've been talking to all these years. This is also part of that "God is reaching out to you continually" set of sermons. ("If you are not close to God, who moved? You or Him?" - duh...)

This is also part of that "God/Jesus/Holy Spirit lives in your heart now thus you've been 'born again', and can behave and act and love like God and will be raised from the dead and get eternal life, etc. etc."

The "Plan of God" idea is that what every born again Christian has heard repeatedly - "God has a plan for your life." What this means is that the infinite master planner of the universe who personally knows and cares about me (Friendship idea) and who causes things to happen in my life (Hand idea) has thought out some wonderful fulfilling plan for my meager existence on earth that I can assume involves things like:

• who I marry,
• where I work,
• where I live,
• who I meet and
• what I achieve.

This is primary 101 evangelical Christianity of America's 20th century.

My new word for this brand of Christianity will henceforth be - "billy-graham-gelism".

If I am to give up my present ideas of/about God - these are some of the primary assumptions in life (that I have thus far built my life upon) that I must work around.

Rant:

You think it's easy giving up on God? Damn you simple minded shallow-headed
atheists! Giving up on God isn't just giving up a silly supposition about the theoretical origins of textbook species. Its about my everyday confidence of how to live, walk, think, breath and expect life to proceed!

In billy-graham-gelism terms this dogma is pretty much summed up in the meaning of the cryptic words of "knowing Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior" which is the same as "having a personal relationship with God" and this is the payoff from when you "acknowledge the need for Christ in your life."

Hmmmmmm..... sounds like the first step in understanding billy-graham-gelism is to decipher these basic euphemisms and to be able to condense about a zillion Christian sermons.

...and I have both these qualifications ....more to come :)