Give because you want to and not because you think you have to. Don't let people trick you into giving away all of your money to crazy pastors who teach God is a genie.
Dear @joeyarnoldvn , I agree with you! Currently, It seems that all religious groups in the world are corrupt.
I would not say all religious groups are corrupt. However, many are to various degrees. I would say weirdos infiltrate as many groups as they can to hack off at the foundation to what people believe. You can boil down all religions down to two groups.
Question one would be the following: "Do you believe you have to earn salvation?" Most religions teach you have to work hard enough and do enough good actions to obtain eternal life in Heaven or whatever they call their version of Heaven or Nirvana or the Afterlife or whatever else a religion or cult or sect or denomination or whatever else may believe in. But they may not use specific words to say this. They may not directly tell people this is what they believe which means it takes many years for people to see what they teach and what they believe because they may make it very complicated and hard to follow. I am using very simple words to outline what they might believe.
Most religions will say you have to be a good person. That means they believe you have to save yourself. In other words, you have to earn your salvation. If you ask them if they believe this or not, they may not tell you or they may not know. They may lie or they may not even know what they believe. Many people do not really know what they believe because it takes a long time to summarize and analyze belief, be them right or wrong. It is good for an individual to start with internal belief regardless of whether it is right or wrong. That is the starting point. What you believe is what you believe. You may not know everything that you believe, think, feel, do, imagine, know, understand, the intuition, the moods, the feelings, the emotions, the heart, the soul, all of that stuff in your spirit and brain and throat and your gut and stomach. It is critical to know what is inside you both the good and the bad. It doesn't matter what is inside you. It is like cleaning your house or room. So, you can simply pick up each thing inside your house or inside your body and carry it outside. Look at it and write it down. You can document each item and then put all of your things or beliefs back into your house.
You can also choose to throw away some of your beliefs and replace them with new ones. But you can't do that if you don't know what is there. Many things gets lost inside our Heart House. We forget what is there. They become buried deep inside.
I said earlier that the first question is if a religion believes that humans must earn salvation. Most religions believe this doctrine or idea. They may not always directly say they believe this and some religions may not even know they believe this. There is only one religion that truly does NOT believe that a person must be good enough to achieve and qualify salvation or eternal life and that one religion is the heart of pure Judeo-Christianity which is not to be confused with Catholicism, Jewish Zionism, Islam, etc. So, I would start with that distinction between different religions. Christians believe they must ask Christ to save them. But others believe they have to save themselves before they can be saved. Some may even believe that Jesus cannot save them until they save themselves first by being good people. But you can never be good enough when compared to God who is perfect and eternal. You would have to do ultimate good with omnipotent power and everything else everywhere for all of eternity without sin or evil deeds or mistakes or anything bad or anything less than perfect through ultimate power and do it everywhere all at the same time through all dimensions and timelines and everything to compare yourself to God to be a good enough person to make it into Heaven or to be saved. But Christians believe you cannot save yourself and you have to ask Christ to save you and then Christ Jesus will come into your heart and change your heart and make you into a new person to help you be a good person.
I said this was the first question.
But there are other questions too regarding what different religions believe. There may be many questions that people can ask different religions regarding what they believe about different things. After that, you can categorize different religions or the corruptions found in some of the religions to see where they are or what they believe. Some of this might be very important.
But the first question is the most important. I would say other things are important too which may be connected to the first question. I would start with the general outline of the first question. If a group claims to be Christian but believe they must do enough good deeds to be Christians, then they are trying to earn salvation. But that is impossible to do because you cannot be good enough when compared to AWESOMENESS of God.
Dear my spiritual brother @joeyarnoldvn, It is difficult for me to understand your vast and difficult theological ideas.
The reason I became a Christian is because of one faith.
I believe there is no other savior but Jesus Christ!
So, I do not believe in Judaism and Islam.
However, I think Catholic and Greek Orthodoxy are branches of Christianity!
A good foundation is in that one faith, that one savior. Catholicism does NOT believe in that one faith. They do NOT believe Jesus is the Savior.
Dear @joeyarnoldvn, Do you remember that the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed represent the only truth and faith of Christianity?😳
The Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed were born in ancient Catholic times and are shared by all Christian denominations.
Catholicism is the same as Protestantism in that it takes the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed as the basis of Christian faith.
Catholicism started around 300 years after Jesus. Christianity started with the disciples of Jesus. Catholics will say Catholicism started with the disciples of Jesus. That is a lie. There is a ton of church history people should look at. You have to look at these two words and understand what they mean. The first word is Christianity. The second word is Catholicism. But these two words are not the same words. But Catholics will say they are the same word. But they are not the same word. But they will lie to you and say they are the same word. You can easily know when something is a lie or not lie if you know the truth. If you know what these two words really mean, then you would know the differences between these two words. But the problem is a word can have more than one meaning. That is how Catholics can lie to you. They can confuse you by using different meaning to different words in order to say that two words that are not the same are the same. It is easy to see the lie if you understand the foundation and fundamental pillars of what these two words mean.
Dear my spirtual brother @joeyarnoldvn , I agree with your assertion that Catholicism emerged 300 years after Jesus. I oppose the claim that Catholicism is Christianity itself. However, it is true that the Catholic Church created the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed as the core ideas of Christianity.
It is also true that the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches carried out the first Christian missions to Europe and the New World.
In the history of Christianity, it is also true that Protestantism was separated from Roman Catholicism.
In Christian theology, Protestantism and Catholicism are mostly identical. Although Protestantism denies the worship of Mary and the doctrine of purgatory, Protestantism and Catholicism are the same in soteriology and eschatology.
I admit that Catholicism was born out of early Christianity, created by Jesus and the 12 apostles in the history of Christianity, and that Protestantism was separated from Catholicism.
Do you remember how the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches fought a 1300-year war against Islam and defended the Christian civilization in Europe?