My friend it you have any other motivation besides Jesus Christ and God's love, then you need to seek and yield to Him, that what you need. I promise you He is there with you.
"What Jesus tells me is to stay in my church, a normal, conservative, lutheran one. He tells me, they are legitimate christians, they are loved, they live with God already. That while UR is a worthwhile topic, I shouldn't sell my soul to it, so to speak, so that I would not try to get out of what I have already learned so far in my church."
Paul tells us, 2Co 6:17 Wherefore come ye forth out of their midst, and be separated,—saith the Lord,—and, one impure, do not touch; and, I, will give you welcome,
"This is where I see a true danger of UR, that the people who believe in it leave their churches, that they try to stay on their own without fellowship."
2Co 6:14 Be not getting diversely yoked with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness?
Friend when you come out you are not lacking fellowship. The greatest fellowship you can have is with Jesus Christ.
"thinking that their belief in UR allows them to look down on other Christians"
I believe that sir is an untrue statement. I am UR, but if anything UR loves other Christians for they know that a denomination such as Lutheran teaches that a loving God will send His children to a place of heinous imaginations of men's doctrines. I was raised a Lutheran till I was 17, I had to memorize and believe a lot of things I couldn't believe. This much the Lord has revealed to me, if some minister is giving a sermon and what he is teaching is false, get out. Can your minister find a verse in the Bible that will refute the truth of… 1Ti 2:3 for this is ideal and welcome in the sight of our Saviour, God,
1Ti 2:4 Who wills that all mankind be saved and come into a realization of the truth.
Should he be able to then I would like to see it.
"When I compare myself to other Christians"
Now that is a mistake, you should compare your self to Jesus if you are going to compare at all. Php 3:12 Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Php 3:13 Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
Php 3:14 I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
"The problem of ET is not so much the doctrine itself, but how we handle it. Do we do it like Fred Phelps, or like Martin Luther? Like Calvin (whom I really dislike), or like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Mother Therese? Like Jonathan Edwards (whom I also dislike much), or like Martin Luther King?"
You handle it like Jesus He set the example and the Apostles continued to lead that way.
"we aren't present yet at Judgment Day"
No but we are being judged now, 1Pe 4:17 because it is the time of the beginning of the judgment from the house of God, and if first from us, what the end of those disobedient to the good news of God?
My friend, until you step out on FAITH, you will never know; when you do you will slip, fall, get up and start all over again. We are all growing maturing just like babies do, we are 2Co 5:17 so that if any one is in Christ-- he is a new creature; the old things did pass away, lo, become new have the all things.
We have to learn as we grow Heb 12:4 Not yet unto blood did ye resist--with the sin striving;
Heb 12:5 and ye have forgotten the exhortation that doth speak fully with you as with sons, `My son, be not despising chastening of the Lord, nor be faint, being reproved by Him,
Heb 12:6 for whom the Lord doth love He doth chasten, and He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth;'
Heb 12:7 if chastening ye endure, as to sons God beareth Himself to you, for who is a son whom a father doth not chasten?
Heb 12:8 and if ye are apart from chastening, of which all have become partakers, then bastards are ye, and not sons.
Heb 12:9 Then, indeed, fathers of our flesh we have had, chastising us , and we were reverencing them ; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of the spirits, and live?
The thoughts you spoke of early in your post I tell they come to all of us, maybe in different ways, for we are yet carnal. 1Co 3:3 for ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal, and do ye not walk after the manner of men?
Psa 103:14 For He hath known our frame, Remembering that we are dust.
Don't know if this is of any help, it sure has helped me!
