I feel as though belief alone cannot save man. I have found in the baptist culture surrounding me, there is the statement of "once saved, always saved" a statement I'm fond of for in a way it's a mighty compassionate one but also holds a great weight of apathy. In a lot of ways the surrounding culture is sinful in that, while it is simple to just be kind, it is not a thing that I believe is propped up enough as an actual virtue. I believe many value their indepedence, their individuality, and freedom over compassion and love. I find that many Baptist Christians have been rude, judgemental, prideful, consistently intoxicated, and so on. But for some reason it is dismissed and brushed off due to the actual conviction and belief that they hold instead of their own social character. I think now people struggle with belief, and their lack of belief prevents them not necessarily from being good people, but not being able to find the value in being a good person outside of feeling like it. I believe that many, particularly protestant, sermons push statements where believers are only that - they simply see the events as described in the bible as true and as an event that happened that they see value in, but not much of anything else. Whereas, while this isn't universal of course, in my experience the sermons I got the best feeling out of were ones in which we need to be patient, we need to be humble, we need to be more loving and give grace to those who anger us, and so on. I think many Christians would be upset for this sense of simplicity, but many of those same people are that of unkind, lacking compassion, and consistently bashing other people. I think I'm a post-theist.
