Atticus_Finch

Saved from eternal damnation and separation from God. Christians beleive that all who die without saving knowledge of Christ will go to hell. That is what you need to be saved from.

With respect to homosexuality, suffice it to say that Christians accept Paul's writings as devinely inspired and therefore the word of God. I do not expect a non-Christian to accept them as so.

I do not want to be drawn into a debate on the relative merits of homosexuality other than to say that it saddens me greatly the horrible things many people say about homosexuals supposedly in the name of Christ. I believe homosexuality is a sin but a sin no different than the sins I commit such as lust. I think Christianity's focus should be more on our sinful nature in general and not on particular sins.

The only thing that really sets homosexuality apart from other sins these days is that many in society are demanding that Christians abandon the teachings of their faith in the name of society's definition of tolerance. That is something which I do not believe we can do and be true to our faith. Many "Christians" are reacting to that demand in a totally inappropriate and harmful way. On behalf of those people who profess to be Christians, I apologize.

Regards,

Finch

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: Atticus_Finch ]

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: Atticus_Finch ]</p>

Talulah

Contextually, I believe that we can take Paul's statements to mean that when men 'burn with lust' towards one other, then there is something that they recieve 'in themselves.' As to whether this is a penalty, well I guess that it open for interpretion. Notice that women who 'exchange the natural use' don't recieve anything, natural or otherwise

Glory be!

Viti

Hi Finch. Thank you for the explanation, unfortunately I disagree with all of it as I think Paul was a power hungry woman hater with sexual hang ups and the reason that Christianity is so abbhorant to many.

David Bowden

[I had asked: "What exactly are we saved from?"]

"Eternal damnation"? I still wonder at how I once believed that this was the default setting for all of humanity. Can anyone demonstrate that "eternal damnation" does exist? It is claimed and threatened but it is not at all evident. It seems nothing more than a myth about some oversized parental disapprobation. Can anyone demonstrate otherwise?

The gospel's empty threat. Shunned by God? This concept is meaningless to anyone who doesn't already agree with Christianity about God's existence and attributes. For anyone who does not already feel "un-separated" from God (or is not simply in need of some therapeutic social approval), there is no negative appeal at all in this concept of "separation." I do not fear this same thing when I reject Judaism, Mormonism or Islam; why should rejecting Christianity bother anyone in the slightest?

"Saving knowledge"? Beyond knowing what the gospel/NT/church claims about his life and nature? I know all of these things, and once believed that they were true; but that is not salvation - it is only the knowledge and acceptance of a set of (face it: dubious) claims about the universe, human nature and our place in it. I now reject those things as falsehoods, just as I reject the Baghavad-gita and stories about Mithras (and their notions of salvation) as falsehoods.

If by "saving knowledge" it is meant some sort of palpable "relationship" with a deity, then I look at Hinduism's Krishna-worship as older examples of the same sort of thing. Can anyone demonstrate that the Christian's "saving knowledge" actually "saves" any more than any other tradition's?

Hell is a common mythical element. Its putative existence (and that of heaven, or Elysium, or whatnot) has been brushed aside even by theists and polytheists since pre-Christian times. Our knowledge of it comes only from story.

Disagree? Where does Christianity's first knowledge of hell come from? Was it not adopted from other cultures, and adapted from the earlier Hebrew notion of sheol? Is it not just an age-old fiction, re-molded to suit the purposes of Jesus or his inventors? Can anyone demonstrate otherwise?

There is no reason to believe that it actually exists. It is nothing to be saved from, nothing to be feared. Does a Christian fear the hells or oblivions or bad karmas of other traditions? There seems to be no reason to fear anything as fictional as those things.

Given no reason at all to believe that any of these things exist, there is still nothing from which anyone needs to be saved.

Given no reason to believe that "saving knowledge" means anything at all, Christian salvation is really nothing to you in this life, nor in the moment of your death.

Salvation (any religion's flavor), and the things from which one is supposed to be saved, are nothing more than the verbage out of which they are constructed. No matter how vividly we imagine them, they do not become more real than this. Can anyone demonstrate otherwise?

-Wanderer

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>

sighhswolf

I wholeheartedly agree with you LadyShea.
Paul was a power hungry repressed homosexual who had a terrible hatred of women.
He was interested not in the gospel of Jesus, he was interested in the "Gospel of Paul".
He took some pretty good general teachings of a Jewish Rabbi and turned them into a bigoted, discriminatory, elitist gentile religion.
He segregated the Jews and the christians in a very adept manner, and divided many houses among themselves.
Wolf

Sci_Fidelity

But OTOH, you want to condemn segments of that society based on laws invented by ignorant goat-herders, while your local catholic priest is probably violating those laws with impunity...

Viti

Hello Wolf! My feelings toward Paul seem too vehement for many people, it sounds like you see him in very much the same light I do. In fact, my absolute loathing of Paul's teachings was what started me on the path to atheism. I kept asking my pastor and others in my church..."How can I follow what makes me so angry?". I stopped going to church regularly at age 12, and only called myself Christian until I was 21 (I was more or less apathetic to religion during that time but kept the label for convenience)

Dr Rick

What a horrible way to view oneself and humanity in general.

Sci_Fidelity

Yeah, so then we can all live life with no vices whatsoever- what a miserably boring existence.

Gar

The real question is, why can't you accept Winney the Pooh and enjoy your reward of eternal life here on earth.