Kind-of-serious Question

My Hebrew Bible class has brought up some interesting questions this semester. As I knew already, there are seemingly irreconcilable contradictions in there, which I have found to actually be reconcilable, when you take into account the beliefs of the authors. However, there are some passages which the Christians interpret one way, and apparently the Jews interpret other ways, which we have been studying. It is completely true that when you read something, you're going to interpret it in a biased way, depending on your personal beliefs and preconceptions about the material. For instance, I read many of the passages in the Bible to look forward to Jesus. But when they were written, Jesus had not come yet, and therefore many other people interpret them to be talking about Israel as a nation, or a future messiah king. My TA, who is a Christian, does not read these passages to be talking about Christ. So my question is, does salvation require you to believe in the Bible? I understand in the NT, Paul (?) said all Scripture is God-breathed, or inspired, and therefore is the word of God, and obviously we should believe it. But we are saved by grace, not anything we do. How do we reconcile that? I believe that believing in Jesus and what he did brings us salvation, and everything else stems from that. But if those other things don't follow, what does that mean? Are you really not saved and only fooling yourself? Or does it matter to your salvation? I'm pretty sure that's something I'll never know.

Cool quote of the day:
**Live life like it's going out of style**

The Predicament of the Youngsters

The youth in America today are between a rock and a hard place. With the election coming up, most of us have already voted because early voting seems to be the trend here. But who to vote for? On the campus of UNC, you would be led to believe that the entire world is in support of Obama. Is that really the case? I don't know. But the problem with this first election that many of us are able to vote in is not exactly who to vote for, it's why we're voting for them. If we grew up conservative and end up voting for McCain, people say, "Oh, you're just voting for him because that's what your parents are doing." On the other hand, if we vote for Obama, people say, "You don't really believe in what Obama is doing, you're just rebelling from your parents because that's all you've known." The same goes for people who grew up with Democrats for parents. If they vote for Obama, it's because they're just following in their parents footsteps, and no one wants to do that. But if they vote for McCain, they're rebelling from what they've grown up with. [this typically seems to be the case, though, for those of us who have grown up with Republican parents]. What to do? I honestly don't know. I do know, though, that our choices should be made by ourselves with our own judgment and not influenced by any outside source. Whatsoever. If we make the same choice as our parents, it will be because we are educated about the issues and the candidates and have chosen for ourselves to vote for that particular candidate. If we decide to vote for his opponent, it is because we have educated ourselves and chosen the other person all on our own. We should not consider ourselves, or be considered by anyone else, to be "educated" if we now differ from our parents, nor should we be considered "uneducatede" if we make the same choice as that of our parents. We live in an individualistic society, and that's how it needs to be. "Such blind obedience to a single candidate or ideology is dangerous and inimical to healthy democracy. This attitude transforms individual and free-thinking voters into a group of mindless automatons. It is not too late to reverse these trends, however, and it is up to our generation to do it. Please, when you vote, do so because you support the policies and issues that a candidate stands for. An uneducated vote is worse than no vote at all." (Brock Baker, DTH)