Jarlaxle

If Christianity is true, why did God put such importance in believing that Jesus was the Son of God? What is so important about the story of Jesus besides the fact that the story itself says it saves us? Does the belief in the story save us, or is the story telling us how we were / are saved? What is the "philosophy" behind making ones salvation dependant upon believing a story or not?

~Jarlaxle

Autonemesis

That, my friend, is the $64,000 question. I have never heard a coherent, let alone satisfsactory, answer to this question.

Why would a god create beings with faculties of reason and intelligence, only to require them to abandon those gifts under pentalty of eternal damnation? Yet we are to accept that this god is loving and cares about us. It makes absolutely no sense at all.

spurly

In my opinion it is because the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is what brings us back into a right relationship with God - a love relationship with God.

If we don't believe that the blood that was shed on the cross was shed for us, and if we never let the Holy Spirit apply that blood to our lives to cover us and our sin from the wrath of God, we can not enter a love relationship with God.

It's sort of like a criminal condemned to die on death row. Then, at the last minute a pardon is handed down from the governor. But let's say that the condemned man refuses to accept the pardon. What happens? He might still be killed. The pardon must be accepted.

Kevin

Jinto

So, let's get this straight: God sends his own son down here, we kill him, and God loves us for it?

This is one sick God: not only does He not give one flip about his son, but he also allows us to be forgiven because of it. This is not unlike telling a mass murderer that he will be pardoned if he just kills one more person.

Good, since he doesn't sound like the king of guy I would want to sleep with. By the way, has God ever considered that relationships with one's peers are often far superior to relationships with one's inferiors? Perhaps He would have been better off creating Goddesses than humans.

Okay, first of all what the hell is a governor doing handing a pardon to a convicted criminal when no new evidence has been presented of his innocence? Second, in this scenario the criminal already knows that his actions were wrong and that he is going to die (if he wasn't competent to figure that out, it would be illegal to kill him), whereas the overwhelming majority of people who would go to hell under your system are people who DON'T know they are condemned, because you have not yet established so much as the existence of the alleged judicial system. If God's existence is really so obvious that it can be legitimately considered a failure of humans to acknowledge it, then every single person who does not can truthfully claim a defense of mental disease or defect, since we don't see the obvious. As such, not only does God punish those who are insane, but He overwhelmingly favors it while at the same time handing out pardons to people who actually understand and therefore SHOULD be held responsible for their actions. And you call this justice?

(please note that the above is based on the supposition that the bible is literally true, which everybody humans would call sane believes is false)

mike_decock

Why not? God can't accept the love of someone who is ignorant of the blood?

The fallacy in this argument is that it isn't a pardon, it's penal substitution. Supposedly, Jesus paid the price of every condemned man. If the price has already been paid, how is there justice in making a criminal pay the price AGAIN?

As far as accepting the pardon, what if the criminal is ignorant that the pardon has been issued? Should he still be killed, even if the executioner knows that a pardon has been issued? What if the criminal simply can't believe he has been pardoned? Where's the justice in executing a man who has been pardoned?

The penal substitution model makes no sense. If the price has already been paid, then there is no need for salvation unless God is completely lacking any sense of Justice.

-Mike...