Although I am not what you might call a believer, I hit always found church story to be pretty fascinating. I first studied the story of the Church not out of highbrowed curiosity, but out of spiritual need. You see, I was having trouble with the belief that I was brought up in. My parents were extremely religious people, but I felt that the belief was hypocritical. They preached the love of God, and yet they believed that every sinners would go to hell. They talked most the forgiveness of God, but they thought that he actually had it in his heart to torture grouping indefinitely for committing limited sins in this lifetime. To me, this didn't make any sense. I didn't poverty to believe in a cruel God who would doom grouping to eternal suffering. I hit researched the story of Christianity to find out how this belief has come about.

It turns out that church story is more complicated than grouping tend to inform it as. There are every kinds of story of the Catholic Church books out there, but most of them are written with a particular agenda. Either they are written to alter grouping back into the fold, or they are written to denounce the church. I didn't rattling poverty either. I wanted to read some church story that was written from a clean and balanced perspective that gave every side its equal chance. I was interested in truth, not ideology. I leave ideology for the believers.

When you study early church history, you find out how political everything was. It turns out that one of the most important agendas for the early church was to consolidate belief. To this end, they repressed anyone who believed things assorted than the mainstream churches. The Gnostics and another heretics were burdened for their ideas. Church story is most early Christians reaching up with one story to deal with every the believers. They emphasized Heaven and Hell because it would drive greater obedience. Had they been interested in heterogeneity of thought instead of in creating a uniform code of belief, things might hit been very different.

In the end, datum church story did not return me to my faith, but it did give me spiritual benefits. Because of my Christian story readings, I hit definite to theorize my own beliefs autarkical of any religious doctrine. It has prefabricated me feel much happier than before.