Importance of Belief

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ClemtheCatholic

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Is believing in God the single most important thing?

God Bless and Thanks,
ClemtheCatholic
 
For those who have no concept of God, following the natural law.
 
Bezant said:
Clem

Are you asking whether belief is the most important thing for salvation?
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Yes, sorry I didn’t clarify this before!

Is the first step in evangelizing to get the people to believe or to get them to stop certain mortal sins? Or both. 😉
 
ClemtheCatholic said:
Is believing in God the single most important thing?

God Bless and Thanks,
ClemtheCatholic
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The Fear of the Lord is the begining of Wisdom…to recognize God as greater is the fabric of the Wedding Garment of salvation.
 
ClemtheCatholic said:
Yes, sorry I didn’t clarify this before!

Is the first step in evangelizing to get the people to believe or to get them to stop certain mortal sins? Or both. 😉
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I would say both.
Faith and repentance always go hand in hand. You really need both because either one by themselves is useless. Unbelievers repent of sin all the time without actually turning to God. Repentance must flow out of a desire to be reconciled with God; which is impossible to do without faith.

Hebrews 11.6, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.”
 
ClemtheCatholic said:
Is believing in God the single most important thing?

God Bless and Thanks,
ClemtheCatholic
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No, loving God is the single most important thing-that’s the entire goal-and that’s why the first and also the greatest commandments are what they are. The reason faith is important is because we can’t love God without first believing in Him- and we’re born not believing in Him. The reason, according to our church, that we don’t believe in Him is because our ancestor, Adam, more or less forfeited faith when He denied Gods authority by disobeying Him. IOW, God was no longer Adam’s god; man no longer had a god; he was his own god. Adam effectively exiled humankind from the garden.

Why God had Adam stand in proxy for us all I don’t really know. Our faith teaches that we fell corporately and, by Christ’s Atonement and through the ministry of His church, we’re raised corporately, even as justification happens to us one at a time. Apparently He wanted to use the evil that resulted from the abuse of Adam’s free will, along with that of his descendants as they followed, to bring an even greater good out of it all.

The Catechism teaches that God’s creation was made in a state of journeying towards an ultimate perfection, our wills playing their own respective roles in the matter. In any case we need to take an honest look around-and in ourselves-and ask, 'Is this the way it was meant to be? Is there something wrong with humankind, something that could/should be otherwise? Why does sin/moral evil exist at all? And the church’s doctrine of original sin can then begin to make a lot of sense. IOW, regardless of whether or not we deem it to be fair, the brute reality of sin, of evil that sort of transcends reason, should serve to help prove that the doctrine of Original Sin, with it’s explanation for the origin of evil, is valid.

And we also have to ask ourselves, Do we really even care? IOW, if we continue in sin ourselves, aren’t we, regardless of our sin’s degree of seriousness, already confirming Adam’s sin? Do we even want to believe? The Catechism teaches that, by his sin, Adam (man) preferred himself to God, wanting to be like God but apart from and not in accordance with God. It also says that man let trust in God die at the same time. Do we prefer ourselves to God? I’d submit that this is what we’re here to learn. Jesus said that apart from Him we can do nothing. That’s the essence of the New Covenant, the reason for the Atonement; man needs God after all; God exists and is trustworthy beyond measure, and apart from Him we can do nothing, we can’t overcome either sin or our ever-impending death.

The Atonement is God’s sheer uncondional love in action. It draws us to Him without forcing us, it convicts us of sin, the sin in man that wants God dead. Jesus quoted scripture that says man 'hated Him without reason’, hates the one authentically perfect, beautiful, most innocent thing, that which man really needs in order to be complete, in order to have true life and have it abundantly, and have it eternally. And that hatred, that pride, that unwarranted anger- this sin that humiliated, tortured, and crucified Jesus -is exposed for what it is as we come to understand just Who He is, and how totally undeserving He was of this act performed by sinful man: the righteous dying for the unrighteousness, forgiving it all the while, taking that sin down with Him instead of resisting, instead of forcing us to change or simply annihilating us. So by this act we’re simultaneously convicted of sin and forgiven of it, to the extent we accept the offer.

And His Ressurection completes and crowns the picture; Jesus rises, death is conquered, love is definitively confirmed, triumphing after all.
 
You’ve done it again, guys! Thanks so very much for taking the time to reply and giving such great answers!!! :):)🙂

:blessyou:
 
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