Guilty as charged here. I blame my farther for my foul mouth 
I refuse the idea of “perfectionism” and don’t believe that any of us will be “perfect” but God’s grace is able to hold us and help us live a Godly life. Though it may not be a “perfect” Godly life, there never really is a 100% Godly life anyone has lived to my knowledge and hit my up if you know someone who has lol but God’s grace is able to see past our hiccups and take us in as we are. But we aren’t left in how we are, but over time in our life we are changed and made ever so slowly to be Christ like.
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Well put. I went through a period of my life when I felt God calling me to lead a sinless life, to the best of my ability. I honestly put forth my best efforts. The most important thing I learned was that it was impossible, and it drew me no closer to God. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I throw things into a “weightier” or a “lesser” basket. The weightier things are those that deal with justice, mercy, and faithfulness. In other words, the things having to do with our relationships with the Lord and with others. The lesser things are, well, everything else. I try to leave those between the Holy Spirit and the individual conscience. Not always successfully! haha
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How about blasphemy. We are not loving God or Jesus if we are profaning either name. And then there’s this, in the New Testament:
That reads like a rule to me. What is immoral is failure to love, and we are given standards to gauge ourselves by.
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He still does*, but it is not accomplished by focusing on ourselves and on our behavior. But we need to understand what is loving and what is not, and if our hearts are tender and focused heavenward, we will recognize when we fail, be repentant and ask for help, after the manner of the father in Mark 9:24.
I don’t know how many times I had read through Psalm 18:1** before I realized I had not owned it for myself. (I had been a Christian for decades.) When I finally did, at first my prayer was, “Do I love you, Lord? Help me to love you.” It wasn’t too long before it was, and still is, “I love you, Lord. Help me to love you more.”
*1 Peter 1:16 The context about being like a child is significant, and so is the OT reference.
**Let’s not unhitch that verse from the New Testament, please.
Okay. That’s why I asked what you meant. But we still might quibble over what constitutes blasphemy. I also would point out that we are not loving God or Jesus as we should whenever we commit sin. The fact that a person is momentarily caught up in a sinful act doesn’t necessarily mean their love for Christ has disappeared. It’s not an all-or-nothing affair.
Yes, it does. I never said there are no rules. I said the “weightier” commands are those that involve justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Christ gave us rules in those areas (e.g. the Sermon on the Mount), but more importantly, he gave us an example to follow. People will always find loopholes in a rule-based ethic. The story of the Good Samaritan makes that plain. Love your neighbor. “And who is my neighbor?” As you know, the story ends with “Go and do likewise.”
Yes, that was my point. I just didn’t explain very well. I found the attempt was impossible, and it drew me no closer to God because I was focused on the externals of performance.
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When I began the journey of repairing my relationship with God, the guidance I received focused on two things: forgiveness and gratitude.
I was very keen in the beginning to focus on hidden knowledge, sacred rituals, and groups of chosen people. Much to my initial annoyance, I was told to ignore all the ancient teachings (which seemed so glamorous and exciting!) and work hard every day to understand what forgiveness and gratitude mean from God’s point of view, not from the usual human point of view.
It took me a bit over a year of working every day to begin to understand these two practices originally taught by Jesus.
What I didn’t know then (but later came to understand when I was encouraged repeatedly to learn more about neuroscience) was that these two practices – forgiveness and gratitude – will help the brain rewire itself faster than any of the other practices recommended for Christians.
Sadly, when I entered Divinity school, I quickly realized that forgiveness and gratitude weren’t part of the curriculum and weren’t ever going to be. We were taught about prayer, liturgy, hymns, hospitality, contemplation, and so on. But never a word about forgiveness, though you can tell from the Gospel of Mark that forgiveness was one of Jesus’ chief concerns.
Thought I should also mention that throughout my journey, my guidance from God has never included the concepts of perfection or purity. The only thing close to perfection would be the idea of consistent effort – not consistent outcomes, but simply the effort to keep trying my best. Fortunately, I know that when I fall short of my best effort, God forgives me, picks me up, dusts me off, and encourages me to keep going. It’s God’s insistent forgiveness which has taught me human beings – made in God’s image – can also learn to forgive.
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My advice is to integrate different sources of truth. I’m an engineer and have always pondered the big questions of physics. I’ve since noted striking similarities between the Christian view of creation, and the secular view propounded by Elon Musk and others that the universe is a “simulation”.
Indeed I have searched long and hard for some idea or philosophy outside of creation/simulation that doesn’t end in infinite regression. (e.g. if the universe is a generated part of the multi-verse, what generates the multiverse? Then what generates the multiverse generator etc?) Once you decide infinite regression is logically incoherent, you are left with either creation or “brute fact”. But nothing in our universe seems like “brute fact”. So it seems more likely that brute fact is just a tempting place for people to stop thinking, and more likely that we are indeed in a simulation or creation.
Then you have to ask “if so, why are things so bad?” - and no other religion has a coherent concept of the “fall”, which we understand as an allegory from Genesis.
So I think Christianity is logically consistent with the best understanding of physics. I have much more to say on this topic, feel free to google my handle and contact me.
Perhaps not to the philosopher in the throes of deep contemplation. But to the ordinary working person, and to the ordinary scientist, facts do seem “brutish” enough to be worth studying and to become worthy of earning such a categorical label.
That could be true (the “stop thinking” part), but I’ll suggest it isn’t necessarily so. Even with brute facts on the ground (even if some of those may turn out to be false), there is still an as yet unexhausted domain of contemplation, learning, and philosophizing to be done even from within this singular creation just taking it as it is. As you point out the ‘simulation’ overlay or any other potentially infinite regressions of universes within universes don’t address the actual problem, but just kick the can down the road.
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Many claim they have Christian faith and are saved but when politely questioned only the rudimentary basics exist. Nothing has been thought through deeply at all, and therefore it takes little to be knocked out of your tree.
Biologos may provide you with scientific comfort and directed evolutionary common sense but it will also cause a thinker like you to re-examine and research scripture deeply to verify claims
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