Is a stone necessarily a stumbling block? Not if you’re careful and pay attention to the right things. Someone who has a smartphone in their hands has more intellect available to them, so to speak, but if they are not paying attention to what is most important, they’re going to trip and fall flat on their faces or worse.
“Feelings”? Forgiveness is about being welcomed into the Kingdom; whether or not guilt feelings go away isn’t relevant.
Not a bad point!
I suspect this should have a /s at the end
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Actually you don’t know yours – my statement was about the Bible in its original languages.
Think of intellectual capability like a menu: the guy with little intellect has a small menu, the guy who is brilliant has a large menu. The essential items on each menu are the same, but the brilliant guy has a lot more things he can ‘order’ than the other guy.
I was just standing on one to trim branches out of a tree to make it more bird friendly. But at one point getting up on it again to do some more trimming I tripped on the edge of it.
So it both wasn’t and was a stumbling block – the difference being how I stepped near or on it.
Similarly, a strong intellect can deal with things and not stumble, while another dealing with the same thing may stumble.
[My current favorite example is me vs Bart Ehrman: we both encountered a stone called “variant readings”; that encounter served as a step up for me, strengthening my faith, while for Ehrman it was a stumbling block and served to shatter his faith.]
The idea of forgiveness is to restore a broken relationship, first and foremost. The removal of guilt feelings is a lovely but secondary result. People still can certainly feel guilty even after being forgiven.
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Maybe the difference (hypothetically and not necessarily in practical reality) was that you did not pay close enough attention to how you stepped on it the first time so as to successfully replicate the effort a second time?
People can even feel guilty for doing the right thing – that’s how screwed up we humans are.
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So who identifies the broken relationship?
God does. Not tell you. How do you know?
Richard
What is the subject of that fragment?
What relationship? An awareness of a relationship is predicated and needing subjects.
hmm
Richard
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I do not believe in the Christian god, so sin, a religious construct, does not exist for me.
Every decision I make, and I believe this holds true for you too, is a calculation of benefits and costs and it happens in an instant. For example, if I’m walking on a rocky trail, I have to assess the stability of each foot placement on unpredictable ground. I assess and make my move. If the rocks rolls and I twist my ankle, it doesn’t mean I made a mistake (or sinned if you like) because I didn’t have a full suite of knowledge. I chose benefit over cost with the information available to me. Step here, advance; benefits outweigh the costs. But I didn’t have all the information I needed. I didn’t know how unstable the rock was.
To me, it’s the same with what you call sinning. First, a sin is an action that gains its relevance when compared to an abstract definition of right and wrong defined by religion.
Second, the action (not a sin) gains its relevance when compared to an existing, written, kinda agreed upon set of laws, mores and norms. Like butting in line.
Third, without your god and social norms, an action would be value free. A tree falls in forest; a fact. It kills a deer; a fact. A family of hunter gatherers starves because they missed the nutrition; a fact. Some kin cries; a fact.
I’m arguing that only the second and third statements are true and relevant.
I have never sinned.
Any actions I’ve taken can only be considered a mistake based on previously unavailable, post facto evidence.
It’s very hard for me to act in accordance with statement three. Not sure a human can.
So what you are claiming is that you have never made a selfish decision or one that you knew would cause harm or distress. That you have never said a cruel word. You cannot be expected to give to every person or charity that asks but you do what you can. And any harm or distress that you might have caused can be attributed to circumstance or a lack of information at the time.
Although possible, such perfection in decision making and morality would be seen as remarkable by most of the world.
Having said that, Sinning is specifically an action against God
So technically this statement is a sin
Richard
As usual, ignoring the biblical references and attempting to sidestep. For someone who claims that we can only interpret scripture if we can read the original language, your posts here sure are often devoid of any scriptural references in support of your claims. I present biblical evidence and your defense against that evidence is what…“actually you dont know yours”?
If i dont know mine, then it should go without saying one would expect to see a biblically referenced counter argument. Id suggest you dont have one.
You don’t know that Genesis 1 is not talking about science, and by insisting it is, no matter what language, demonstrates more than adequately you do not know what you are going on about in your failed hermeneutic that dishonors God.
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Hi Richard. Thanks for the response. I know my comment sounds arrogant and impossible but it’s really neither. Let me try again with the addition of something I didn’t include: intent. In my example of a step on a rocky trail, I assumed that the reader would understand that I wanted to continue further down the trail, thus a desire to take a step.
With intent in mind, with intent as a weighty factor in my decision making, if I make a selfish decision, it’s because I want the outcome to satisfy a selfish desire. Hypothetically, I have said hurtful words before simply because I wanted to. I had a set of values to satisfy and, without bogging down in a list, one of them was to cause harm. I said hurtful words. Person was hurt. I was correct in my decision.
Now if my hurtful words caused the person more than hurt, like self-harm, something I didn’t anticipate, then its fair to say my words were a mistake. BUT, at the time of my assessment, the self-harm was not considered, so my decision met my standards.
It’s a weird concept I admit. I’m focusing on how a decision satisfies me and not any other outside social constraints.
To address another part of your thoughtful comment, I said “I do not believe in a Christian god” and you said, “So technically this statement is a sin”. I don’t understand that. Please explain if you are inclined.
And God spoke all these words:
2“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3You shall have no other gods before Me.a
SIn is primarily a religious word related to God. So we have a paradox
You do not believe in God.
If God does not exist then there is no problem, but,
If God exists then your disbelief contradicts the 1st commandment.
To all intents and purposes, you are your own God. You live by your own standards and creeds (not God’s) so you place yourself above God.
Basically, your statement about sinning is meaningless because without God there is no sin, but if God does exist then you sin by not believing in Him.
Richard
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Or never failed to live up to his own expectations.
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Sin has a broader use than just religious. The word may have originated in a religious context, but there are sins against other things than God. There are sins against society, for instance – reckless driving would constitute one.