Disobeying God = Disavowing God?

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TedDC said:
Because it defies reason by effectively rendering the totality of one’s life meaningless, reducing it to just one final act. Why would God give us numerous opportunities in life to choose good or evil, if a single bad choice at the end negates everything else?
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If you wanted to choose good, why would you choose bad at the end?

Although in any case we are majorly dumbing down the theology here.
 
There are rules to obey… If you love me you will keep my commandments. Any man who says he loves me but does not keep my commandment is a liar. The choice (free will) is man’s decision. Christians will not judge you, but rather forgive you for your sin if you are seeking forgiveness. The choice is yours. There are mortal sins which are deadly to the soul and there are venial sins that are not deadly.
 
curlycool89 said:
If you wanted to choose good, why would you choose bad at the end?
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It’s important to be precise in the language. People don’t “choose good or evil”; they choose to perform good acts and evil acts.

Throughout our lives, everyone chooses to perform some good acts and some evil acts, the quality and quantity of those acts varying with the individual. But in your theology, none of that matters if a person’s last act was evil and he did not repent prior to death. That is the part which does not make sense.
 
RPV2017 said:
There are rules to obey… If you love me you will keep my commandments. Any man who says he loves me but does not keep my commandment is a liar. The choice (free will) is man’s decision. Christians will not judge you, but rather forgive you for your sin if you are seeking forgiveness. The choice is yours. There are mortal sins which are deadly to the soul and there are venial sins that are not deadly.
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That is what you believe. I do not believe that everything the Catholic Church defines as a “mortal sin” does in fact destroy one’s soul.
 
TedDC said:
I think what many of us find dubious is the idea that one unrepented sinful act prior to death would negate an otherwise virtuous life and send a person to hell.
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Virtuous people don’t commit mortal sin (that is, a terribly wrong action, known to be wrong, done on purpose, without a good reason) without repenting at least in their hearts, quite soon after realizing their mistake.
 
TedDC said:
That is what you believe. I do not believe that everything the Catholic Church defines as a “mortal sin” does in fact destroy one’s soul.
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It is written “Your ways are not My ways”.
 
jmcrae said:
Virtuous people don’t commit mortal sin (that is, a terribly wrong action, known to be wrong, done on purpose, without a good reason) without repenting at least in their hearts, quite soon after realizing their mistake.
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Exactly right. The straw arguments of a few of the people in here rest upon the presupposition that a good person would deliberately do something evil and not feel bad about it. But that assumption is a fallacy. Good people don’t do evil things and not feel bad about it. If someone lived a good, virtuous life, and committs an act of evil, there are a number of possibilities: 1) he could have become a bad person overnight (unlikely) 2) he could be insane (also unlikely, but a possibility) or 3) he feels bad about it, and the act was truly inconsistent with his character.

Your arguments rest on this assumption that if a person does an evil thing that is presumably inconsistent with his character, and is unrepentant, he will go to Hell. But if it is in fact inconsistent with his character, he would necessarily be repentant! We regret doing things that are inconsistent with our character or beliefs. If it was consistent with his character, he wouldn’t care.

I think it’s so odd that people worry about the problem of mortal sin and Hell so much when, in reality, if you truly love God, it’s pretty hard to go to Hell, even if you mess up. People should be worrying more about loving God. All those incidentals will fall into place.
 
TedDC said:
Throughout our lives, everyone chooses to perform some good acts and some evil acts, the quality and quantity of those acts varying with the individual. But in your theology, none of that matters if a person’s last act was evil and he did not repent prior to death. That is the part which does not make sense.
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If he did not repent prior to death, then maybe he actually didn’t care that much about God. Every moment in your life matters. It about every single second of your life, not just 1 moment where you “accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour”.
 
TedDC said:
Exactly - I do not believe that all Church teachings are His ways. Some are man’s ways.
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The Church is God’s body on earth. When it speaks, that’s God’s voice you hear. When it acts, that’s God, acting in the world.

The soul of the Church is the Holy Spirit.

Now, there are actions and statements that come from individuals in the Church, which go contrary to what the Church teaches and does. We have to discern the difference. But Jesus has protected the Church in such a way that it is not possible for those statements or those actions ever to become “a teaching of the Church” or normative for the Church.

Even those very bad Popes who were having affairs all the time, never changed Church teaching to say that these activities were okay to do. (Unlike what we see in some Protestant churches, where fornication and homosexuality are no longer taught to be sinful; they have now become “lifestyle choices” in those organizations.)
 
curlycool89 said:
If he did not repent prior to death, then maybe he actually didn’t care that much about God. Every moment in your life matters. It about every single second of your life, not just 1 moment where you “accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour”.
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According to this logic, though, the best thing I can hope for is that I get hit by a car on the way out of reconciliation - all the better to leave this sinful world and be happy!

Of course, that sounds ridiculous. Yet it’s also symptomatic of the sort of defeatist thinking (“this is just a test…”) that this sort of thing encourages.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I saw a priest to ask him some of these questions. He basically ended up saying that at death free will is over. I asked why God would take away free will if He wanted people to all join Him. The priest responded that God doesn’t take away free will, death does. Then I responded that if God determines what death is, then He does take away our free will. He rejected this again, but didn’t seem to me to be making a real argument.
 
aperture said:
According to this logic, though, the best thing I can hope for is that I get hit by a car on the way out of reconciliation - all the better to leave this sinful world and be happy!

Of course, that sounds ridiculous. Yet it’s also symptomatic of the sort of defeatist thinking (“this is just a test…”) that this sort of thing encourages.
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It’s not a test. It’s an actual emergency. 😉
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I saw a priest to ask him some of these questions. He basically ended up saying that at death free will is over. I asked why God would take away free will if He wanted people to all join Him. The priest responded that God doesn’t take away free will, death does. Then I responded that if God determines what death is, then He does take away our free will. He rejected this again, but didn’t seem to me to be making a real argument.
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It was not God who brought death into the world - it was Adam, by means of sin.
 
aperture said:
So Adam decided that death would take away his free will?
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Adam chose freely to commit sin, which caused there to be such a thing as death. Death stops the consciousness of the mind, which is what takes away our free will. God didn’t create death; God created life. Death is the absence of life.
 
jmcrae said:
Adam chose freely to commit sin, which caused there to be such a thing as death. Death stops the consciousness of the mind, which is what takes away our free will. God didn’t create death; God created life. Death is the absence of life.
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But if Adam didn’t decide that death would stop free will, and God didn’t decide such, then who exactly did?
 
aperture said:
But if Adam didn’t decide that death would stop free will, and God didn’t decide such, then who exactly did?
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Nobody. It just does. That’s what the word “death” means - the stoppage of thoughts going through your mind, and the stoppage of choices being made.
 
jmcrae said:
Nobody. It just does. That’s what the word “death” means - the stoppage of thoughts going through your mind, and the stoppage of choices being made.
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Death is the end of biological functions - it is not by definition the end of free will. To say that something “just does” without God also seems wildly contradictory to the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent God that is responsible for all creation.
 
aperture said:
Death is the end of biological functions - it is not by definition the end of free will. To say that something “just does” without God also seems wildly contradictory to the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent God that is responsible for all creation.
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Death isn’t part of the Creation. It’s an absence - a void place where the Creation is not. God didn’t create Death - God created Life. Death is the absence of Life.
 
jmcrae said:
Death isn’t part of the Creation. It’s an absence - a void place where the Creation is not. God didn’t create Death - God created Life. Death is the absence of Life.
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But when biological death occurs, Catholicism holds (if I’m correct) that a particular judgment occurs, at which point a soul makes its way to heaven or hell. Therefore existence continues after death, but free will does not, correct?
 
aperture said:
But when biological death occurs, Catholicism holds (if I’m correct) that a particular judgment occurs, at which point a soul makes its way to heaven or hell. Therefore existence continues after death, but free will does not, correct?
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Right. Everything that makes us alive - everything that experiences change - stops at the moment of death.
 
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