I am a bible believing Christian – I have no religion in which I have to defend every teaching that is already established. I don’t owe anything to a religion, but I owe everything to God for all the amazing things he has done for me. I read the Bible to search for truth. I have one goal and one goal only and that is to please God, and meet him in Heaven. So I always read with an extremely open mind. I like to listen and hear the best of both sides of the arguments I present. Then after I have seen both parties best arguments, with prayer and an open heart I make my decision on what I believe.

I want to thank you for replying to my post, and not kicking me out. If Catholicism is what you bet your salvation on, it would make a lot of sense that the beliefs you have, are studied out with a open heart and prayer. I commend you on your educated answer. Nothing bothers me more than someone who bets something as important as their salvation, on “that is what my parents believed, or I am this religion because I was born as this religion, or that is what my priest, pastor, or preacher told me, or some other obvious uneducated answer.”

This brought me some new insight on some history in which I was not aware of, and I thank you for that. Although after considering what you said about that this scripture was referencing the Gnostics. Which could very well be – I believe that this scripture is condemning the Gnostics, as well as any other religion that was to come along and practice this sort of teaching. Whoever wrote about that men would choose to be single so they can completely devout themselves to God had a good point. The problem is that Priests either are explicitly or inexplicitly told not to marry either directly or through traditions in the Catholic Church. And the key word in celibacy is “choice” when there is no choice and someone tells you that you cannot marry. Then that falls under the realms of what this scripture is talking about. The same goes with fasting, fasting is great if on your own choice you decide to fast, but not if a religion tells you it is a sin to eat meat on Fridays.

http://www.catholic-pages.com/life/fridaymeat.asp is where it says that it is still required that you abstain from meats on Friday’s, Cannon 1251

I appreciate you knowledge, and I hope we can study out the truth together with open hearts and open minds.

God Bless you

Steven