Gothic_J

but he does have the right words in this case. I posted this at one of my fundy sites - I expect it shall cause a shock:

your mind he will flail, your soul he will take
you'll sleep with the dead, for life you'll forsake
you'll die with the Keeper till the end of time
he hates that you live, your life is the crime
~terry goodkind

that is christianity at its most essential, yes? humans are worthy only of death - living is our crime. and so we shall be punished for eternity.

Rational BAC

That is Christianity at its most essential?

No

The guy does have a natural talent for rhyming though.

Gothic_J

yeah, hes a major seller in fiction. Im told a good description is ayn rand if she wrote snuff art.

Im arguing that it is the most essential - the meaningless of human life the premise in which god saves us.

mecca777

Yeah, Trent Reznor should see if his Patented Rhyming Dictionary is still where he left it.

As for the theme, I suppose you could reduce Christianity to that if you really dived into the "no salvation through works" angle, but it seems more nihilistic than most Christians would be prepared to accept.

wordsmyth

I very much enjoyed Terry Goodkind's first few novels, but he has a had a couple of stinkers in his book series too.

The Sword of Truth this is the name of the series
Wizard's First Rule Book One - Excellent
Stone of Tears Book Two - Very Good
Blood of the Fold Book Three - Very Good
Temple of the Winds Book Four - Very Good
Soul of the Fire Book Five - Poor
Faith of the Fallen Book Six - Very Good
The Pillars of Creation Book Seven - Very Poor (this book goes off on such a wild tangent from the rest of the series that it should have been a stand-alone novel, but even then I wouldn't rate it above just Good.)

The first book in the series is by far the best. It even explains what the "Wizard's First Rule" is, which is as follows... "People are stupid. They will believe anything, either because they want it to be true or because they are afraid it might be true."

seebs

Seems to me rather better as a description of traditional views of Satan than as anything to do with how Christians view God. God doesn't object to people living, but by all accounts, Satan does, and wants to punish them for it.

I honestly can't tell whether you're trolling or not; this is the kind of massive misinterpretation of a belief system that makes it hard to imagine that it's not intentional. However, I've noticed that there's a tendency for groups of people who are not members of a religion to sit around talking about it, reinterpreting it, and gradually changing the subject of conversation until it's something they made up themselves with only superficial similarity to the thing discussed; you see the same thing in groups of Christians talking about atheists. Someone comes up with some theory about what might drive people from God, and they talk for a while, and a few hours later, you have people who have this great "insight" that atheists are just terrified of the consequences of their actions, and are denying God so they can continue living lives of sin.

You might want to make a point of periodically checking with the people whose belief systems you're analyzing, and seeing whether perhaps you've gotten off track. I try to do this, and I find that it helps immensely.

beyelzu

seebs,

whats going on?

I hadnt seen a post by you for quite awhile.

great post by the way.

catalyst

You actually liked Faith of the Fallen? It may have been good, but I could not get past all the re-writing of Rand. It seems to me that at that point he was trying to stretch the series.

Perhaps I am wrong.

Gothic_J

richard. rand is dragon reborn - much better series, but also lagging.

ah, Im not trolling about this, its just my perception of christianity at its most base. the premise is you are not worthy of living - you needed to be saved from 'sin'.

as it happens, I *was* a member of this religion, and this was the ending interpretation. from what Ive seen, it begs nihilism or sociopathy.

catalyst

By Rand I meant Ayn Rand.