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It seems that you believe the Bible literally otherwise there wouldn't be much for a zealot to argue about. Translations can be very interesting and sometimes cause all sorts of confusion. We can see that from manga raws . My mom speaks studied Hebrew along with middle eastern cultures back in college and my dad reads Latin and host of other languages so they have some interesting incites for me. My mom really helps when I have a question about ancient Jewish culture which is painted all over the Old Testament.

Being involved is pretty important. In my church the leaders are lay people and we each get different "callings" for periods of time, including our new Bishop. Recently I got a new calling to help organize the Sunday School classes for the adults and before that for the 3 years since I got back from Japan I taught Sunday School to the teenagers, which was a lot of fun. I made sure to bring candy as often as possible. It seemed to relax the class.

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Most people know us as Mormons though .

Wow! Folks like you who give themselves to missions put theological doctrinal zealots like me to shame by applying theology rather than arguing over it with others.

What is your particular faith/denomination?

I've been to 7 churches within the last 10 years after having left in 1998 the Assemblies of God church from which I grew up. I've found worship and teaching over at Grace Community Church (I'm from the LA area), much to my liking, but after 3 years there having remained unconnected, I've found a smaller local community church within the last few months who had need of my talent (playing bass, not watching anime or reading manga or agreeing with you or debating Fenrir_Valindri et al...if you can call those talents).

I love the KJV. I think the manuscripts upon which that translation is based are still the best in terms of doctrinal integrity and having a clear view of who Christ is as both man and God. Furthermore, nothing surpasses the English language of the Elizabethan era in which the KJV was translated, where words were more diverse, producing clearer and more precise expressions of thought. It's a shame that much of the language had become archaic and we lost a lot of that clarity and precision.

I do find that for routine study, I go to the New KJV or the English Standard Version, both of which are excellent translations that retain the same clarity and clearly delineate the deity of Christ as the KJV, but modified for modern reading. The ESV does suffer from omissions of certain passages that were in the KJV, I think because of the use of different manuscripts as source. So far, I've found that as in the KJV the Lord's prayer ended with "For thine is the kingdom and power and glory forever, Amen", which is the only declaration in the prayer where the rest had been petitions, this was conspicuously missing from the ESV as with many other translations.

God bless and Merry Christmas!

I spent a couple of years as a missionary in Japan. I agreed to go anywhere and it was pretty cool to end up in a culture that coincided with some of my interests as I had always liked anime/manga. Of course, I was so busy over there I didn't have time to watch any so I just had to catch up when I got home . The scriptures in Japanese have furigana so didn't get very good at reading the kanji and am still working on that. Reading the Bible in Japanese is very interesting because the translation is to modern day simple terms that even I as a foreigner could understand. No formal training in King James English necessary, though I still love my KJV. The most interesting thing is that the Japanese translation had many more subjects (like who did what) than the English versions I've seen. It points out who is saying or doing what which was very fun because sometimes I have to really think through who is addressing whom as the English leaves it out, which is really rare from reading Japanese and English. It must have been the Portuguese influence back in the 1600's.

It sounds like you have gone to several churches on your quest.

I suppose I understand why it could be taken as sarcasm. I've built a reputation of being a cynical poster. But here I wasn't being sarcastic.

The "we" is universal of humanity, including Christians, even, or especially, we of the Reformed traditions (Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, etc.) who take what Paul wrote in his epistle to the Roman church seriously, and recognize within ourselves a predisposition towards opposing any thing about, from, by, and of God where it is in conflict with what we ourselves desire, including the person of God Himself. To make matters worse, we are inclined to desire anything else but God.

I currently go to a non-denominational church, but they are Reformed in their faith confession, at least according to the pastor to whom I've asked about their central view on the matter. I've given my life to Christ several years ago, but only within the last year had been persuaded towards the Calvinist understanding of the nature of the believer's salvation by the grace of God alone through faith alone in Christ alone. TULIP is the acrostic of the set of 5 basic views of the state of men with respect to God and what God has done for an elect small, unfortunately not the whole, mass of humanity.

"Yeah. And the one thing they hate most is the God of Israel. The notion of god is tolerable so long as he's the kind that's impotent and dead, and ain't the type to get in the way of the absoluteness of human autonomy. "Not thine will, but my will," we love to say."

Very interesting. Which belief system is this sarcasm stemming from? Believing in a (omni)potent living God who is involved in human life whom asks that people do "His will" is not that common at the cost of giving up ones own will. I'm guessing you have a Christian background, but I am unsure of the denomination. The "we" you used indicates you have a group of friends or peers who think the same way.