{"id":7044,"date":"2026-03-14T20:17:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T20:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7044"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:16","slug":"the-starting-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7044","title":{"rendered":"THE STARTING PLACE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At this point in my life, if someone were to ask me &#8220;How can I be saved?&#8221;, the first thing I would ask is \u201cWhat do you mean by \u2018saved\u2019? Saved from what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the hypothetical person answered, \u201cSaved from hell\u201d or \u201cI want to know how to get to heaven\u201d, then I would know there&#8217;s a lot of weeding to do before there\u2019s any planting.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By and large, non-believers have picked up a lot of the same misconceptions held by Christians regarding what faith is all about.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But if that person expressed a desire to be saved from \u201cself\u201d or \u201csin\u201d or \u201cfear\u201d or \u201cmeaninglessness\u201d or &#8220;death&#8221;, or if he or she expressed an interest in knowing their Creator or how to fulfil their purpose for being?<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those are much more important questions.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And a very different starting place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At this point in my life, if someone were to ask me &#8220;How can I be saved?&#8221;, the first thing I would ask is \u201cWhat do you mean by \u2018saved\u2019? Saved from what?\u201d If the hypothetical person answered, \u201cSaved from hell\u201d or \u201cI want to know how to get to heaven\u201d, then I would know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7045,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7044\/revisions\/7045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}