Machiavelli

I've often heard that according to Christians, in order to go to hell, you must reject Jesus.

If this is the standard, I won't go to hell since I've never rejected any God personally. And I would imagine that if God presented himself to me, I'd more than likely accept it.

For most Xians I encounter, the standard appears to be that you must believe what other people say about God in order to get into heaven.

It just bugs me when they accuse people of rejecting god when the only being reject are their idiotic ramblings.

gee

Machiavelli;

I understand how you feel here; there are many idiotic Christians and I'm guilty of rambling as any of them.

Don't focus on me and my idiotic ramblings. Focus on the claims and accounts of Jesus. If you accept or reject anything - accept or reject them on their merits.

gee

Machiavelli

So it's belief in the "claims and accounts" of jesus from other people that gets you in?

Beetle

There's really no such thing as a "christian standard for salvation" that is universally accepted among all those who call themselves christians. Many liberal christians deny the need of humans to experience salvation (at least "salvation" as it's understood by more conservative branches).

The usual take among american conservative/evangelical christians (though there are exceptions) is that an individual has to believe that Jesus is God incarnate who died for his or her sins and has to "accept" Jesus and choose to "follow" him. They would deny that they're asking anybody to believe what "other people" say about god as they believe that god has revealed himself in the bible (which is believed to be the infallible word of god).

So "not rejecting" god would not be enough according to their view of things - there needs to be a positive decision "for christ." I'm afraid you'll be joining the rest of us in the firey pits. Bring marshmallows.

dlj

Luke 10:
25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 26"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" 27He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" 28"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

I always found the evangelical, conservative (yes, typically American) view that Beetle summed up nicely to be a littl weird considering Jesus gave completely different answers such as this one and also the one in Mark 10:17-23ish. Note the complete lack of all the believe Jesus is God or performed miracles or taking him as a personal lord and savior, etc. Food for though.

Beetle

The way they explain it is that Jesus is pointing people to the Law (and what they have to "do" to be "saved") in order to show people how utter incapable they are of obeying the law. They claim that anybody who actually tries to love god with all their heart and love their neighbor as themselves will eventually fall on their face. Thus the need to gain the "imputed righteouness" of christ where the sins of a person are traded for the perfection of christ (like a spiritual yankee swap). That's the evangelical reason for why the epistles talk about salvation in a manner very different from Jesus in the gospels.

Magus55

Salvation requires you accepting that you sin and need to be saved to be righteous in God's eyes, and accept that Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose on the 3rd day to sit at the right hand of God.

If you believe in that and admit it to God in prayer, you're saved.

Magus55

What do you think loving God with all your heart, soul and mind means? Can you truly love God if you aren't willing to accept the gift of eternal life he offered through Christ? Loving God is all thats necessary. But you have to look deeper to find out what that means.

Diogenes the Cynic

This isn't really a Bible question. Off to GRD.

seebs

The question of who, or what, is being rejected is not a trivial one. I think a lot of people paper over the parts of this that haven't been thought through. I've seen both Christians and non-Christians oversimplify this.