Some of them are just condemned as fakes.
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I just want to say hats off in really misunderstanding the human timeline of religious development. But also…. The point you were trying to make is irrelevant to my argument.
Also just to note, while it’s possible that Adam was a real man used as a fictional character like how Jonah was, I think it’s far more likely that he was a fictional character completely and never existed. But even if he did, that changes nothing about accomondationism…. It just means Adam was also an accommodation within the story of Genesis which was an accommodation.
Saying that there are religious Hindus, Muslins, Buddhists, Christians and Jews, and cultural Hindus, Muslins, Buddhists, Christians and Jews. and those in the latter groups may or may not be Christians.
Again you type “Muslins.” Do you mean Muslims? (typing on your phone maybe)
I think that distinction may be more solid in the case of Muslims and Christians. Not so sure about Jews and Hindus. It has been long known that being Jewish is more racial and culture than religious. And I think the same is true of Hinduism (especially cultural). Christianity and Islam have clearly stated definitions according to beliefs, but not so in the case of Judaism and Hinduism. Perhaps this is because Christianity and Islam are so much younger and felt more of a need to distinguish themselves from other religions.
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And that is your problem.
You prefer to accept the writings of humans over the perfection and universality of God. You would condemn 75%+ of humanity over a book. I do not care how sacred that book is but if it paints the picture of God you paint it is wrong!
And as I hold Scripture as sacred myself, the only conclusion I can make is that you are reading and understanding it wrong.You are more concerned with details and individual verses than the message and whole understanding of God in it. Just as the Trintiy is not expressed in obvious terms, so is the underlying nature of God.
You have turned God into a vicious, selfish, and vane being who wants to be worshpped and wiill punish anyone who does not conform, not here, and now, no, that would be to lenient. For eternity!
Like @mitchellmckain I want nothing to do with that version of God
Richard
Can you really be so surprised that this looks to me very much like an invention of human beings to turn religion into a tool of power over other people? If this is not God and thus doesn’t come from Him, then where does it come from? This use of religion for power is what so many atheists see when they look at religion and that is how I was raised. So… my response is to say “YES BUT there is more to religion since many aspects of religion are not convenient for this purpose at all.” I have turned this into a rule of thumb for discerning what comes from God and what comes from man.
The problem is that the rank and file, that is the common believer, is not looking for power for themselves. I am not even sure that they realise the power or coercion involved. It is just a bind accetance of Sripture and Paul in particular.
It just seems ironic that one one hand they are claiming it is nothing to do with action while on the other hand they are dmeaninding this obedience, or that restricti0n. If God has claimed that sinful actions do not matter, whty would He then insist on righteous ones?
The crunch would seem to be Christ’s repeated comment about good fruits nad bad fruits. The fruits (actions) refelct the intent and the understandinng.
The people both here and within Christianity as a whole, who focus on themselves instead of their fellow person, cannot see that by doing so they are going against what God wants. Becaue, God wants harmony on this earth not the next. He wants us to live the right way on this earth, but not for reward or fear of punishemnt, but because that is the right way to live.
All this talk about a fallen humanity, be it some sort of disease, or even your angle of habbit, they are showing desdain for humanity Judging humanity to be corrupt and needing redemption. Claiming that anyone without faith in Jesus cannot do good or be honorable, even righteous. .And in doing so God is insulted and criticised for “allowing” His creation to be so,or at least, not stopping it. And to claim that it was deliberate, both in terms oof existence and the mehtod of overturning it, is to make God a schemr and untrustworthy. How can you trust a God whose plan all along was to let His creation fail and then provide, even insist on, the atifdote?
There is something intrisically wrong with any view that claims Humanity is not as God made them. It puts the power in Adam (humanity) not God.
As far as I am concerned God has shown that sin does not matter (to Him) and that it is not a facto in any relationship we want with Him. It is the thought that counts not the actions be they righeous or sin… Forgiving sins is not the absolution the church claims it to be. The thought and the intent remain, and it is that by which we are judged, not some verbal alegience or the acceptance of forgiveness.
God can forgive our sins, but still convict our thoughts and motivation… And what is more, that intent or motivation cannot be hid or forgotten.
I find you an engma. Your views are not orthodox in structure but many of them reflect Biblical fundamentalism. You don’t rely on the comentary or the church doctrine, but what you have gleaned from Scripture is still dictated by the way yo have come to terms with Christ and Paul. Please do not see this as criticism. I do not want to change you…In many ways you approach is what Christ asked for, being inocent of greed or the search for power. But, I think you have focussed on what is bad in organised Christianity and not seen those of us who see past the “dangers” of religion. And I politely ask that you find the good habbits rather than the bad ones in people
Richard
Of course not.
The rank and file are considered the dupes. These forms of religion are designed to make them pliable/useful. It logically follows that if forms of religion are created for the purpose of power over others then most people in religion are the ones it has such power over.
It is not about them, but about where religion comes from.
Thus Stephen Weinberg says “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” He is wrong of course. All it takes is ideology, whether it is a religious ideology or not. In communism the fact that the rank and file are dupes is pretty explicit in the writings of Lenin.
Yes. And this is what it means to have the law of God written on our hearts. It is also how I understand the meaning of faith quite opposed to entitlement: that you do what is right for its own sake and leave salvation in the hands of God. For too many “faith” has come to mean a work of belief in dogma, or in God giving people some power to save themselves.
I found this in the Westminster confession and was quite incensed by it. Saying that doing good simply doesn’t count when you are not a Christian.
And in this I think you go a little too far. What Jesus says is “Your sins are forgiven so go and sin no more.” Forgiveness is offered quickly and easily. But the point has always been to change and overcome these self-destructive habits of ours. Of course then we might ask why did God requires offerings and why did Jesus die? That is because there is a problem with cheap forgiveness – it leads to thinking exactly what you say here… that sin doesn’t matter. And THAT is a formula for making serial killers and sociopaths who see no reason not to do terrible things. Yes God can forgive without any voo doo, but we MUST understand that sin is a problem – something that creates suffering like Jesus on the cross. We very much have to see that!
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First, the intrinsic claim is that the Bible is THE WORD OF GOD not the writings of humans?
Take the 10 commandments, they were written by THE FINGER OF GOD onto the tablets of stone…twice.
The bible is Gods revelation, humans didnt simply cunjur it up. There is a big difference there.
Second, I can falsify your statement without even reading scripture…
How can you even know what the perfection and universality of God is without reading the words in the bible writen by the “writings of humans”?
Anyway, in support of my first defense above, I can think of three biblical examples where God physically wrote something Himself. These are:
10 commandments Exodus
On the wall of Belshazzars palace in the book of Daniel 5 (an argument God be made that an angel did this…does it really make any difference though as an angel isnt human?)
Christ writing the sins of the accusers of the women taken in adultery in the dust in John 7 and 8.
Right…so you now dissagree that the evidence put forward by science was that humanity came out of Africa or the middle east? You are denying that now right?
How is that irrelevant to the notion Hinduism cannot predate Christianity given ancient Jewish religion started closer to Africa (in the middle east)!
Homestly, i think yours wasnt a well.considered response there. You should of actually read the argument scientific facts before blurting out what you did. If you had done that you would have immediately realised that your best answer was alternative scientific facts to the theory generally accepted by science that modern humanity is traced back to Africa.
You cannot say that. Of course I have read the bible! I probably know it as well as you do, maybe better, because I do not dwell on the parts that support my doctrine.
But the bible does not claim it.
And that is the root of all the evil that comes out of false use of the bible.
I was not tallking abot specifics, I was talking in general. There are words that are written as quotes from God and the Decalogue is a unique intervention by God.
Just because God wrote the yen commandments does not mean He wrote all the rest.
THe Bible is human understanding of God’s reeelations. And it changes from Genesis to Revelation. It changes as people get to know God.
But it is always written by humans. Paul was not God, nr was his hand guided by god. And at the time Paul was writing to specific people, not you or me. He also addressed specific problems, some of which we can only surmise from his answers.
You are imposing such things onto peple who may not have those problems.
You are also imposing Paul’s idealism of righteous living.
Like I said above. God has shown that sinful actions are not the crucial part of living, It is not a large leap to infer that righteous ones are not the crux either. I am not talking about buying our way, I am talking about insisting on a specific behaviour.
Richard
Ok, i have redacted that statement. Fair enough point.
You think what I was highlighting was that humans came out of Africa?
Im going to stop you right there…your claim is playing games.
Paul was struck down with blindness on the road to damascus. He was given a choice…either stop persecuting christians or remain blind.
To put it another way, He was given a choice…preach the gospel as revealed to him by Christ in vision, or remain blind.
So now we have reestablised that fact, whos “words” did Paul record…his or Gods?
I believe that Christ gave Paul this chance/choice because he saw in Saul/Paul a genuine belief in what he was doing…that he genuinely believed persecuting Christians was what God wanted. (Just my opinion)
As per the usual for everyone reading it who doesn’t agree with most of the contents of the confession, this is a misunderstanding of the statements in question–the intent is basically “No action which a person can perform is good enough to save themselves; goodness in the unregenerate does not itself merit salvation or earn them benefits; and no good action occurs apart from God’s influence upon a person, even if they are unregenerate”, at least assuming that points on which everyone who holds the confession to be useful and generally accurate agrees upon is an accurate reflection of the confession.
But this thread does not need to be derailed by yet another discussion of whether or not Reformed doctrines are good.
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And yet the irony is, it is this forum that claims reformed theology is modern interpretation of scripture. Martin Luther started the refomation because of the corruption that had enterred the church…it was an effort to reverse the corruption, not add to it.
In any case, refprmed or otherwise, none of that fixes the dilemmas i posted from.Google.AI:
- Hinduism believes those who fail can keep having another crack at it until they finally get it right (refuted by the closing of the door of Noahs ark and the parable of the 10 virgins)
- Christianity teaches its the fruit of our faith that results in good works…not the Hindu model which says our intrisic spiritual efforts that result in our “rightepusness”. The bible tells us clearly, our efforts are but filthy rags. Only the cloak of Christs righteousness enables us to walk bodly in before the throne amd be deemed debt free…
That is not what it says and frankly it is not even coherent, for it suggests that if you ARE a Christian then the actions you do ARE good enough to save you. LOL Surely you don’t believe that. Good actions are not enough to save us whether we are Christians or not.
But let’s quote the passage in question: chapter 16 number 7.
Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others; yet, because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith; nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word; nor to a right end, the glory of God; they are therefore sinful and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God.
The conjunction is “or,” thus it is in addition to what is said before rather than a modifier. And it is clear to me that what is said before this last clause is wrong because there are counter-examples in the Bible. God certainly does see things done by people who are not Christians as good and is well pleased by them regardless of the fact that they are not Christians. Some examples are Noah and Job.
But of course, if you wish acknowledge this is wrong and should be corrected to say “sufficient to” rather than “or” then I would be all for it.
Nor do I buy into the idea that the good actions of those who are Christians come from God while the good actions of those who are not Christian do not come from God. Scripture is quite clear that all good comes from God and is inspired by Him regardless.
(head shake) no the more I read of it, the less I like any of what it has to say. This stuff is not in the Bible. It is an interpretation heavy with entitlement. It explains much of the atrocities committed by Christians around the world since 1642 when it was written. It clearly shows that Christians thought they were better than other people. And this is just wrong!
That is the most ludicrous, illogical conclusion yo have ever told me
Paul spoke his own word. He wrote his own words. He claimed that often he did things that he did not want to and could not do things he wanted to, yes but the implication was that those things ewere wrong not right!
Do you reall thnk that God took bver Paul’s body, completely? That would make him a second Crhrist!
Does God take people over? Has He ever taken you over?
You have claimed that God is maniouative, using blindness as a coercion.Obey me or stay blind! Where in Scrioture does it say that?
Do yo knw what a religious experience is? Do yo know what an encounter with God is? How were you “called”". Were you confronted with Christ Himself? How do you know what to say or write? Does God invade you against your will?
Is that what you think of God? A strong arm who gets what He wants or else?
Is that the gospel message you preach?
Richard
More than half of the global population are not any sort of Christians and a fairly large proportion of the so called Christians are only ‘cultural’ Christians or maybe should be classified as agnostics rather than Christians as they do not believe in the God of Christianity, at least not as churches teach about God, and hardly even follow the cultural traditions originating from past Christian culture.
I understand that these figures raise serious questions about why the ‘well-behaving’ believers of other religions or agnostics would not be accepted by God in a similar manner as believing Christians? After all, God is the creator of all humans and is assumed to love all people.
In this question, it is good to remember that we do not decide the fate of people. Our opinion can be whatever, it does not affect the fate of people. Forgiveness and salvation comes from God and He is the judge. If Jesus informed that he is the door, the way, truth and life, and that the way to the Father goes through him, who are we to question His decisions.
I believe that God will judge the believers of other religions justly. That is not a promise of forgiveness and salvation. If we care about these people and want to see them among the saved ones, we should support the spreading of good news about the Kingdom of God and the King and Lord, Jesus, to those who do not yet know Jesus as their personal savior.
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