\u201cFor I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me\u2026Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me …\u201d<\/p>\n
When I was a teenager, I had a very strong fundamentalist faith in God and the Bible. If the Bible said it, it had to be true. I felt that I had a calling.<\/p>\n
I would go off to myself in the country side and talk to God. I’d ask him questions about the suffering in the world that I saw everyday. I begged him to talk to me in the way that he talked to others in the Bible stories that I had read. My conversations were always one-sided. He never answered.<\/p>\n
One day, I decided that he did not answer because he was not there. If I believed so strongly in the social gospel, I would have to find the answers myself and to live my life in such a way to address these issues. From that day, I became a human rights\/social justice advocate.<\/p>\n
The roots of my beliefs in human rights\/social justice came from my reading of the Bible. These Christian ideals were the very basis for most of my beliefs. So while I no longer believe in God or that Jesus was God, I do hold the social gospel in high esteem.<\/p>\n
Since I am no longer beholden to a faith that requires that I believe in superstitions, I am free to live a life that promotes the social teachings of Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cFor I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me\u2026Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[840],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}