sakrilege

That is a lie. I was sitting in a bible study praying for guidence, I hardly consider that turning my back on him. I did not want to become an atheist, I fought it for years. If anything, god had to have hardened my heart for me not to believe he exists. The only other choice IMO is that he doesn't exist.

Mentalepsy

Why?

I don't know about you, but I can't pick and choose what thoughts and emotions I experience. Why did God select them for his list of sins?

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Fortunately, sak, you aren't separated from God right now. You simply have your back turned to Him. Since He is Creator and Sustainer, everything from the heat of the sun to the breath in your lungs can be considered under His control. The thought of real separation ~ God turning His back to you ~ is a frightening thought indeed.

First of all, it was God who chose the consequences of "seperation." He chose horrible eternal agony. He could just as easily have made it so that seperation has no particular positive or negative outcome. Why didn't he?

Second, why does God turn his back on anyone at all? If he's sustaining a bunch of corrupted fallen sinners right now, I don't see why he can't continue doing so after they're dead.


Have you a response for my previous post?

DBT

Yes no doubt that I could be wrong.
It's a very murky and contradictory dogma.

It seems that God was happy with all his creation and Adam and Eve.
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"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good".
untill the time that they disobeyed..
And that was the fall of man,the original sin.
according to the old testament the sins of the father are carried by his sons
And so we all carry the sin of Adam.

I think that the origin of evil is a seperate issue.

The serpent is assumed to be satan but the bible only states the snake as being the most intelligent beast in the garden.

The book of Job portrays "Lucifer" as one of the sons of God making regular visits to heaven to report about his wanderings.

The idea of Satan as such seems to be a new testament introduction

There are apocryphal stories that say that Lucifer rebelled because he thought that God should not have created man.


perhaps somebody with better knowledge of the subject can comment.

Furyus George

Forgiven, repaid, whichever...I think semantics has reared its ugly head here. This is simplistic, but see if it makes any sense: I own a business. You owe me $20. You can't repay the debt to me. I take a twenty out of my wallet, place it in my till, and show your debt as paid in full in my ledger.


This is very hard for me to explain, especially to someone who I assume requires repeatable, verifiable evidence before they believe something. To me, God has so cleverly hidden himself throughout nature and life, and yet at the same time is seemingly everywhere and in everything if one just opens up to Him. I know this is bounding off into the supernatural and may therefore sound like hogwash, but to me God is obvious.

It's like enjoying a good movie or book that has clever turns and twists that you never saw coming. I'm sure this will sound absurd, but the very fact that I can't prove God exists leads me to believe He does. Sorry if this is obtuse.

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In what ways is it obvious that the Bible is true?

This is also hard to explain, beyond the facts that the 66 books were written in three different languages, on three different continents over some several hundreds of years and yet all point to Christ. When I became a Christian I had barely read a Bible. Now, some 14 years later, the Bible amazes me with its message. From my perspective, it's obvious the Bible is true. This perspective is the gift of God, and is available to anyone who wants it. I'm nothing special.

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Really? You believe the Bible is true, don't you? Do you therefore not really want forgiveness, but just want to avoid hell? Why does increasing certainty imply different motivation? Are nonbelievers the only ones who can truly want forgiveness?

That's why I wrote about saving our own arse. Yes I wanted to avoid hell when I became saved. As I've grown as a Christian I realize how I need this forgiveness. I wasn't very clear I suppose in what I meant. It seems to me that to really desire this forgiveness, when there is no verifiable, tangible proof that we'll get it, beyond faith in Christ, is more sincere than if God was empirically proveable. Does this make any more sense?

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No, he does not. Punishing the innocent for the crimes of another is NOT justice. And what criteria is that? Only someone who never sinned is allowed to be punished for sin? How exactly does that make sense?

Only someone innocent and pure can pay the debt for us. Surely, we could have paid it ourselves but that would require eternal punishment. Christ sacrificed for us when He did not have to. By one man we were made sinners, and by one Man we are made free.

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Why does seperation from God imply going to hell? Why can't he just eradicate my existence, or send me to an alternate heaven with no God there?

I can't give you an answer to that, friend. Perhaps it is becuase our souls are eternal and can't be eradicated. And a heaven with no God certainly wouldn't be a Heaven. In any case, you needn't find out. Sincerely ask Christ to save you and He will.

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This is making even less sense now. If the punishment for sin is seperation for God, then why is it that God himself is the only one who can be punished? On the contrary, it appears to me that he would be the only one who could not be punished! How can God be seperated from himself? And even if it was possible, why is Jesus not seperated from God right now?

These are all good questions...I wish I had more time and knowledge to spend with them. The way I see it, God is the only one who can be punished because He is pure and can finish the sentence. The point you should focus on, however, is that God chooses to take this punishment in our place. Its as if a judge sentenced you to five years and then said he would serve it for you, though he is innocent.

To me, this gives Christianity the ring of truth. A man-made or devised religion would have us working our butts off with rules and regulations, much as we see in the Islamic world, to earn Heaven. Christianity offers paradise to us for free.

Furyus George, hopes he made a little sense.

Magus55

/sigh. Can we get a freakin sticky on this concept? [edit: implied insult deleted. Krosis GRD mod]: God is holy and righteous, and can't allow sin to go unpunished. In order to be righteous in God's eyes on your own merit, you have to be able to obey the law perfectly (because God's standards are perfect, since He is perfect). Now, no human on Earth can actually meet those standards, because we all have fallen short of God's glory and standards. So, unwilling to let all of creation suffer the penalty of sin that His righteouness requires, God offered away out through mercy and grace, instead of our own merit and work. God is the only one perfect enough to obey the law and meet His standards of perfection. So God (the Word: the second part of the Trinity) came to Earth in human form, to be the perfect sacrifice that would pay for all of humanity's sins. Jesus, being God, and being perfect, was infinitely valuable in the Father's eyes, and therefore, through His death, had the power to wash away the sins of everyone who believes on Him. God paid our debt, because only He was capable of doing it.

winstonjen

He also defines what 'sin' is, so it's his own fault. If he didn't consider humans unclean for urinating (Leviticus), or prohibit mixed fabrics, there would be less for him to get angry about.

Might makes right cloaked under a guise of 'perfection'.

Because he refuses to remove the 'sin nature'.

Exactly. He lets us cheat on the test.

Only because god decided that was the only way.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Magus55
[edit: implied insult deleted. Krosis GRD mod]: God is holy and righteous, and can't allow sin to go unpunished.

Then please tell me what he does about the sins of babies (which you claim that babies commit) and the sins of Israelites (which you claim were not completely wiped out by animal sacrifices). Could you also explain what happens to the sins of, say, Native Americans and Aborigines who died before the white man christianized them?

Mentalepsy

If the debt was forgiven, though, why all the mess with the sacrifice? Why not just forgive it?

How does that desire for forgiveness translate into the faith in the Bible, as opposed to faith in some other forgiving God?


But why? It doesn't make sense for us to inherit Adam's sin, and it doesn't make sense for someone innocent to take the blame. Why is this how it is?


Why not? God of all people should be able to do it. Besides, our souls haven't always existed, right? If God made them, I don't see why he can't un-make them.

Why not? God could make it heavenly if he wanted to.


But the sentence is seperation from God, isn't it? How can he serve it?

I'm afraid I don't see why that is.

Mentalepsy

If Jesus was already punished for our sins, then why do we still need punishment if we lack faith? Why does God not just explain the whole thing after you die and let you in to heaven if you want?

If I have a pet gerbil, I'm not going to try to teach it calculus. It's not reasonable for God to hold us to his own standards of behavior if by our nature we aren't capable of meeting those standards.

Two people! Adam and Eve sinned. Why does all creation have to suffer for that? Bobo the Ape was off eating some other apple at the time; why should he be punished?

You're not explaining why this is so. I've got the part about how only God can meet God's standards (makes sense), but why does that imply the rest of it? When we convict someone of murder, we don't say "Well, murderers don't meet our standards of not murdering people. Fred, go find someone with a clean record and we'll throw him in jail for twenty years- only a non-murderer can pay a murderer's debt to society." That doesn't make sense. Can you explain why God does this?

And again, why do need faith in order for the perfect sacrifice that pays for all humanity's sins to work?

Is Adam in hell? He had icky sin all over him, and Jesus was a long way off when he died. And as QoS asked, what of people living after the sacrifice who have never heard of it?

captainpabst

Magus - I appreciate your honest and succinct reply. If I could accept these assumptions:

1. God exists
2. He is the Christian God, and only the Bible, as complied by Roman Catholic council, is His revealed innerant word.
3. He is unwilling to change his egotistical and judgemental stance on human behavior, refusing to acknowledge that he himself created the problem.
4. He was pleased by his own suicide, enough to forgive us for his own mistake.

Then maybe I could make sense of the Christian salvation mechanism. I hope you'll understand that these objections are not meant to be trite, but are actually very serious intellectual irreconcilements.