Magus55

Because God doesn't force salvation on you. He isn't gonna force people to spend eternity with Him. Jesus opened the door, but nothing is gonna happen unless you walk through it.


Sin is a plague that covers the world. One persons actions are extremely severe, and have lasting effects - hence why sins you seem are stupid or minor are so severe. And no one ever said sin entering the world was fair. Its just what happened through humans disobeyal. Is it a fair that a child is born with a terminal disease based on genetics?


Probably not to your satisfaction, other than Jesus' life was infinitely valuable, and blood is the life of the body, while the penalty for sin is death. Combine the shedding of an infinitely valuable and perfect human's blood, and you can cover the death penalty of an infinite number of sins.

Because God doesn't force salvation on people. Part of the process of salvation is admitting that you need a Savior, and accepting Jesus' sacrifice as sufficient to pay for your sins.

Probably not, although only God knows. Jesus died for all sins, past, present and future. The Ot saints were saved through faith also. And God makes the call on what happens to those who have never heard the gospel.

winstonjen

However, he will force people to suffer in hell. No two ways about it, unless people can leave hell and enter oblivion.


Says some religions. And rather than teaching people how to improve, it teaches that you should follow black and white rules under all circumstances, and also to pass responsibility to other people.

ObiKenobi

How do you know this? This assumes that you can ever know the intention of god, when as you and many other theists have said before that we can't know.

No, so why would it be far that we would be born with the sin of someone we don't know and don't even believe ever existed.

ObiKenobi

So because Christianity offers something for free this is now what gives it its "ring of truth"? So if only Islam would offer free admittance into its version of heaven then this would make it more true in your eyes? This just makes no sense at all. This is like saying if I give away a sugar pill that I claim to be a miracle cure for cancer, which it obviously isn't, for free that this makes my claim somehow more truthful.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Magus55
Sin is a plague that covers the world.

Goodness is a blanket that also covers the world.

One persons actions are extremely severe, and have lasting effects - hence why sins you seem are stupid or minor are so severe.

One persons actions are extremely severe, and have lasting effects - hence why good deeds you seem are small or minor are so great. It's a shame that fundamentalists don't try to be optimistic and look at it this way, rather than always seeing a half-empty glass.

Because God doesn't force salvation on people.

If he takes babies to heaven when they die, that is forcing salvation on them. I've seen some self-contradictory doctrines in my life, but yours is top of the list and deserves its place there.

The Ot saints were saved through faith also.

I'm curious as to how this system works. Are you saying that animal sacrifices covered a certain percentage of sin and faith covered the rest? Jesus says that faith can move mountains, so why didn't god just let the faith of the "Ot saints" save them, rather than insisting that animals die as well?

And God makes the call on what happens to those who have never heard the gospel.

Seems to me like you've already made that call for him. You have said that all sin must be punished, and that he cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, by your reasoning, he has no choice but to send people to hell if they die without hearing the gospel.

Mentalepsy

You didn't answer my question. I didn't say anything about forcing you. I asked why God doesn't let you decide after you die. I don't see why Jesus' death only works if you believe before you die.

Saying "it's just what happens" doesn't answer the question of why God chose such consequences. If I were God, I would certainly know better than to let the screw-ups of one person wreck my entire creation.

That still doesn't explain why this is so.

That doesn't explain the "faith" part.

If Jesus' death pays for all past sins by default, is salvation being forced on those people who already died? If so, why did you object to this above? If not, by what mechanism can they be given a choice but we cannot?

Further, if in fact this somehow does not force salvation on past sinners, why couldn't God just wait until the end to sacrifice himself, thus saving everyone?


Well, if only Jesus' blood can cleanse you of sin, and you can only be cleansed by having faith during your life, wouldn't anyone who hasn't heard the Gospel be sent to hell? Besides, doing otherwise would force salvation on them, wouldn't it?

Mad Zur

So god isn't perfectly just or perfectly merciful.

He's kinda just, so he won't let sin go unpunished, but he'll allow an innocent to be unjustly punished instead of the guilty.

He's merciful enough to forgive us for our sins, but not merciful enough to refrain from punishing anybody for them.

Why not switch the two, being just in the sense that no innocent gets punished and merciful in that no one at all gets punished? There's the problem of being a little unjust, but we see that in Christianity, too. And in this one, he manages to remain all-merciful, unlike in Christianity.
It isn't that we don't want to go through the door. We aren't willfully turning down Jesus' offer. It isn't that we don't like the door, or we'd rather go through another door (If hell's door is locked from the inside as you say, I'll be leaving soon after I get there). It's that we can't see the door. God doesn't have to shove us through, but couldn't he at least show us that it's there?

We don't see a door, we don't see a God, and we're not going to walk into a wall.

(The use of this smilie rarely portrays the actions of the poster accurately. :banghead::banghead::banghead:)

JTurtle

Because he TAKES away our sin. Look at it this way, someone has to pay for your sin. And Jesus paid too high a price. So believe that............................

Jonathan

JTurtle

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Mad Zur
So god isn't perfectly just or perfectly merciful.
[QUOTE]

Yeppppp....actually He is!

Jonathan

Mentalepsy

Too high a price? Considering that the price a human has to pay for stealing a paper clip from the office is an eternity of horrible torture, I'd say Jesus got off pretty light.