the treatment of the Bible as Divine when it was written by men. Not God.
It is treated as divine for a couple of reasons:
1) The Bible has just as much archaelogical evidence to prove that it accurately depicts historical events as any History book does.
2) There are several hundred prophecies documented in the Old Testament that were fullfilled hundreds of years later (this is probably the main reason that people consider the Bible to be inspired by God - not written by God).
3) With all the evidence of the influence of God in the Bible, it says in 2 Timothy 3 that, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God."
don't see a lot of Christians acting Christ-like
What I see in short supply is a lack of generosity in spirit.
I tend to agree with you here. We are all a product of an overall selfish society. It often seems that there is more evil running rampant in the world, and even in the church, then there is good. I am not much of a saint myself. I love God, and try to obey His every command, but I often do not do what would be considered honorable in the sight of God. I would say that if you hung around me 5 years ago, and hung around me today though, you would see alot more righteous living today versus before I began to seek God.
I believe that once we believe in the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ on the cross, we are justified - we are "considered" righteous in the sight of God. Justification is instantaneous upon receiving it.
After we go through immediate justification, God begins another process in us called sanctification. Sanctification is when He begins to purge of of our impurity and unrighteousness.
Justification is immediate - sanctification is a process. They are both a result of faith in Christ. Christians who are not acting Christ-like, are in a process of sactification. Or they really aren't Christians and just call themselves Christians (but that not up for us to decide.)
Also how hard is it to live mostly ethically?
I don't know about you, but I have an extremely difficult time doing this, but let me throw a thought at you, and see what you think:
Since I believe in God, I obviously believe in the devil as well. The greatest gift to man kind is salvation and eternal life with God in heaven. Naturally, God and his "Heavenly hosts" want us to receive this gift. The devil does not. Because I believe in Christ, and have recieved this gift of salvation, the devil is pissed, and wants to try and take it from me. The devil is gonna throw everything he can at me to try and get me to turn my back on this gift. On the other hand though, if someone hasn't receive this gift, the devil is cool with that person, and isn't as concerned about throwing temptations their way.
I think it might be harder for Christians to do what is right, in a way, because they have received this awesome gift from God, and the devil and his dominions are pissed about that. The devil isn't pissed at the people who have not yet received that gift! I know this is alot, but this is what I think.
Whattaya think??