{"id":11897,"date":"2010-12-30T09:29:53","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/?p=11897"},"modified":"2010-12-30T09:29:53","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:29:53","slug":"thruway-christians-founding-document-for-teens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/2010\/12\/thruway-christians-founding-document-for-teens\/","title":{"rendered":"The Teen-Friendly Version of the Founding Document of My Hippie Pinko Christian Group"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>(This morning a member of the Facebook group I started, Thruway Christians,<\/a> asked if I\u2019d write a version of that group\u2019s founding document for teens. [You can read the original document here.<\/a>] I loved the idea\u2014so here\u2019s the teen version of that document.)<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re Christians, for sure. But we think conservative Christianity is way too harsh, and liberal Christianity way too lame. So we\u2019ve joined this thruway movement between them.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we think:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Jesus Christ was, and is, absolutely real. He performed miracles (duh: he was God<\/em>); he sacrificed himself on the cross so that everyone could be forever reconciled with God; he rose from the dead; he left behind, for everyone, the Holy Spirit.<\/li>\n
  2. Christianity is supposed<\/em> to be all about living a life of love, compassion, fairness, peace, and humility. That\u2019s it.<\/li>\n
  3. The Bible isn\u2019t just one thing. It\u2019s a bunch of writings done by a ton of different people over about a zillion years. It\u2019s poems, songs, history, allegories \u2026 the whole thing is just crazy dense. To really get whatever you\u2019re reading in the Bible, you have to know something about whatever time and culture that part of it was written in. Also, the people who wrote the stuff that eventually made it into the Bible were just people.<\/em> Through the Holy Spirit, God was definitely working through them as they wrote. But it only stands to reason that not every single word that made it into the Bible is exactly<\/em> what God would have texted, or whatever. People who make the actual words of whatever translation of the Bible they\u2019re looking at more important than the message of the Bible are totally missing the point.<\/li>\n
  4. Church and state should be separate. Fair is fair.<\/li>\n
  5. Paul rocks, no doubt. He\u2019s the best. But it\u2019s Christianity<\/em>, not Paulianity.<\/li>\n
  6. God\u2019s not male or female. He\u2019s both. He\u2019s all. People who have to have God be a \u201che\u201d need to let it go.<\/li>\n
  7. The only way to think being gay is a sin is to never actually know any gay people.<\/li>\n
  8. Where in \u201cNo one comes to the Father except through me,\u201d does it say you have to be a Christian in order to get into heaven?<\/li>\n
  9. If you\u2019re worried too much about the afterlife, you\u2019re not worried enough about this life. Living a life of love means not having to worry about hell.<\/li>\n
  10. God wants to forgive and teach us, not judge and punish us.<\/li>\n
  11. God can handle converting people. Our<\/em> job is to love people.<\/li>\n
  12. Divorce completely sucks. But the idea that God wants anyone to continue suffering in a hopeless, damaging marriage is ridiculous.<\/li>\n
  13. God doesn\u2019t want women \u201csubmitting\u201d to anyone.<\/li>\n
  14. Evolution being true doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s no God. The two aren\u2019t incompatible.<\/li>\n
  15. What really matters most about a person isn\u2019t how they define God. It\u2019s how well they treat others.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here’s a version of the founding document of the Thruway Christians written for teens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1528,"featured_media":11898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Teen-Friendly Version of the Founding Document of My Hippie Pinko Christian Group<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here's a version of the founding document of the Thruway Christians written for teens.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/2010\/12\/thruway-christians-founding-document-for-teens\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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