Is Christian faith necessary for Selfless Love?

[PRmerger]

Do you really think there is anyone, anywhere, who, given the choice, with the certain knowledge and proofs of God and Heaven’s existence, would freely chose to reject them and chose come kind of eternal torture whatever form that may be, instead?

I don’t think so.

Sarah x

We do that each and every time we sin, Sarah. Each and every time.

 

[tonyrey]

This entire conversation is a waste of time!

Then you’re wasting a heck of a lot of time on this forum which revolves around the question of God… We would miss you but probably you could find more inspiration on an atheist forum…

 

[atheistgirl]

Then you’re wasting a heck of a lot of time on this forum which revolves around the question of God… We would miss you but probably you could find more inspiration on an atheist forum…

Erm, did you read the whole post

It was a joke.

With PRMerger.

And she got it

Now, if you start a thread in the cooler section on what is humor, I’ll happily jump in to give you a sense of it

Sarah x

 

[atheistgirl]

but probably you could find more inspiration on an atheist forum…

:bigyikes:

Hang out with atheists

Have you seen the things those people get up to

No thanks.



Sarah x

 

[atheistgirl]

We do that each and every time we sin, Sarah. Each and every time.

Using the Catholic criteria of a moral sin (the one that cuts you off from God’s Grace) being

Grave matter

Full and complete knowledge

Deliberate and complete consent

I would think it’s actually quite difficult to commit a moral sin, for most ordinary folk.

Sarah x

 

[PRmerger]

Using the Catholic criteria of a moral sin (the one that cuts you off from God’s Grace) being

Grave matter

Full and complete knowledge

Deliberate and complete consent

I would think it’s actually quite difficult to commit a moral sin, for most ordinary folk.

Sarah x

I guess so.

 

[PRmerger]

That being said, I don’t HAVE to concede anything, as it pertains to my discourse here on this thread.

Indeed. I think we are in agreement that you are under no obligation to do so. And you have every right not to do so.

Oh, you misunderstand, TS. I wasn’t speaking from a rebellious “You can’t make me” POV, as in “You can tell me that I HAVE to take a shower every day. But, I don’t HAVE to because you can’t make me. It’s my right to bathe whenever I want to.”

I was responding to your comment that something was necessary. My opinion is that what you were proposing was, indeed, not necessary. Like your saying, “It’s necessary that all cookies have raisins in it.” My response would be: cookies do not HAVE to have raisins in them. (In fact, raisins have no place in cookies. Ick.)

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Using the Catholic criteria of a moral sin (the one that cuts you off from God’s Grace) being

Grave matter

Full and complete knowledge

Deliberate and complete consent

I would think it’s actually quite difficult to commit a moral sin, for most ordinary folk.

Sarah x

Actually it is quite a deliberate process. And yet we have so many who are looking down to see if they are about to step on a crack, instead of looking ahead at where they are going.

If I were an atheist and someone said, “look there is a better way to live. There are 67,000 rules you get to follow, and at any given moment you can be paranoid that you maybe broke one or more and at any given time you can enjoy full anxiety over whether your soul would be eternally tortured if you die – but maybe you’ll be happy forever because you just don’t ever know,” I’m not sure that would be bait this fish would take.

Alan

 

[samiam1611]

Oh, you misunderstand, TS. I wasn’t speaking from a rebellious “You can’t make me” POV, as in “You can tell me that I HAVE to take a shower every day. But, I don’t HAVE to because you can’t make me. It’s my right to bathe whenever I want to.”
…
I was responding to your comment that something was necessary. My opinion is that what you were proposing was, indeed, not necessary.

Well if it is not necessary to provisionally accept a claim for the sake of discussion why did you respond to my question with

I don’t know. Let me see the evidence and I’ll discern.

If it is not necessary, you won’t have any problem answering my question(s) which may or may not “require” that you to accept that an atheist has ever risked/sacrificed his life in order to save another without being given any specifics.
Thanks so much for clarifying what agape is and how the atheist military guy’s sacrifice differs from Kolbe.:flowers:

 

[atheistgirl]

Gajowniczek was a stranger to Kolbe, not a friend, end of story. Basically then, all you’ve got is a Phantom PR Kolbe. Unless you’re also set on reinventing God in your own image, I suggest you admit to Him, privately if you like, that you got this one wrong.

Something else occurs to me here.

It’s not logical to assume, or presume, a self sacrificing action on the part of a Christian is motivated by agape.

We would need to know the true motivation of the person, and the state of their mind, before making such a claim.

What I mean is, a depressed Christian could be about to kill himself, notice a gunman on the lose, and that instant decide to jump in front of the spray of bullets to end his own life, due to his mental illness and depression.

He wasn’t trying to save anyone else, he was trying to end his own life. A mortal sin.

In the process of doing that, he prevented the gunman killing any more people as he’d emptied his magazine, enough time for the cops to grab him.

This guy would be hailed as a hero, not only that, he’d be lauded as evidencing agape for his fellow man, and possibly made a saint!

When in fact he acted out of selfishness caused by his mental illness and depression and had no intention of doing anything other than ending his own life.

Sarah x

 

[inocente]

That’s very interesting.

Could it be argued from the above, that Jesus didn’t lay down His life for everyone, out of Love, but only His friends?

To be His friend, you have to do what He commands. If you don’t, you’re not His friend.

So Jesus didn’t die for all mankind, out of Love, He died for His friends, those that did what He commanded them to do.

My quote didn’t include the preceding verse, it’s: My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.

He’s saying love without limits - whenever we have a choice to act with or without love, be his buddy and do the former.

Forget all the legalistic and divisive stuff that some folk delight in, Jesus was against all that. There are no hoops you have to jump through, think of Jesus as the personalization of love and you’ll understand that you’re his friend if you love others.

Martin Smith sings the especially slushy version of his anthem - What a Friend I’ve Found (Friend Forever)

I found the comment about not chosing Him, He chose them, interesting also.

If you’re in a foxhole with your soldier buddies and you die to save them, it’s your choice not theirs. It was His choice to die for us all. The fruit he talks of is love, not whatever religion we put on our profiles.

If Jesus picks and choses who can be His friend, then I guess people like me are the unchosen

It’s kind of by definition that those who think they’re not good enough to be his friends are the ones he really likes to hang out with.

*There’s always chocolate *

Can it be white chocolate, maybe with hazelnuts? I really like white chocolate with hazelnuts. Please, please, please?

 

[inocente]

Something else occurs to me here.

It’s not logical to assume, or presume, a self sacrificing action on the part of a Christian is motivated by agape.

We would need to know the true motivation of the person, and the state of their mind, before making such a claim.

What I mean is, a depressed Christian could be about to kill himself, notice a gunman on the lose, and that instant decide to jump in front of the spray of bullets to end his own life, due to his mental illness and depression.

Yes, it also occurred to me. There would be a lot of candidates for depression in a concentration camp and perhaps Koble was one and acted differently to normal. There’s no way of knowing.

Maybe we should never dissect heroes, it always tends to put doubts in our minds. Maybe the greatest hero is the Unknown Soldier, because we don’t know if he or she, or what religion, or what color eyes, but we know people died for us so that’s OK, we can honor them all.

 

[atheistgirl]

Maybe we should never dissect heroes, it always tends to put doubts in our minds.

Isn’t there some expression about you should never meet your hero for that very reason, they never match up in real life to their hero status in your mind.

Maybe the greatest hero is the Unknown Soldier, because we don’t know if he or she, or what religion, or what color eyes, but we know people died for us so that’s OK, we can honor them all.

That’s a very poignant sentiment and beautifully put.

Sarah x

 

[atheistgirl]

Can it be white chocolate, maybe with hazelnuts? I really like white chocolate with hazelnuts. Please, please, please?

You betcha

I’m going to make a white chocolate hazelnut torte this morning and put your name on it

Sarah x

 

[inocente]

That, Sarah, is exactly the point I was going to make in response to inocente’s post.

Thank you for doing this for me.

Without the Church to act as the lens through which we interpret the Scriptures, it could very much be interpreted that Jesus died only for his friends. Only for a few.

That would be the logical position from what inocente is trying to argue.

You’ve claimed before that the Church has this amazingly nifty and wondrous interpretation of scripture tucked away somewhere, but it must in be a top secret location as no one else seems aware of it.

The whole idea of having someone else interpret scripture for us seems a little lazy, if not whacky - after all, who interprets the interpretation? Does someone interpret the interpretation of the interpretation? Sounds like Chinese whispers.

But it also implies that scripture is way too technical for ordinary people to grasp, and I’m curious about whether you read the passage for yourself, for if you did surely you’d have seen the previous verses and know that Jesus is talking about love. Do you really think Christ can’t get his message across to anyone without a PhD?

Incidentally, I note you’ve given up trying to argue Jesus was talking about strangers or brothers. Who knows, this reading-what’s-written gig might catch on.

 

[inocente]

I’m going to make a white chocolate hazelnut torte this morning and put your name on it

Do you accept Paypal?

 

[tonyrey]

:bigyikes:

Hang out with atheists

Have you seen the things those people get up to

No thanks.



Sarah x

I wonder why… (not that you don’t hang out with them but that they “get up to things”.
It’s probably because they think they’ve delivered themselves from evil …)

But wait. It can’t be that because they believe evil is a myth.

Anyway they think they’ve at least delivered themselves - from Big Father! And then whose clutches do they finish up in?

I know you think I’m going to say the Devil. If you do you’re mistaken…

They finish up in their own clutches!

It may seem an advantage but it isn’t… I know. I’ve been there. Seven years in solitary…

 

[atheistgirl]

I wonder why… (not that you don’t hang out with them but that they “get up to things”.

That was supposed to be a kinda fun post, but hey, if we’re being serious, do people of faith ‘‘get up to things’’ also?

Anyway they think they’ve at least delivered themselves - from Big Father!

I’m sure that’s true for some of those that had a faith, but in my case, and in the case of the majority of people I know, there’s no sense of being delivered from anything, and there never was any faith or belief in a Deity of any kind to begin with.

Sarah x

 

[PRmerger]

You’ve claimed before that the Church has this amazingly nifty and wondrous interpretation of scripture tucked away somewhere, but it must in be a top secret location as no one else seems aware of it.

Well, friend, since you’re bringing up previous discussions, I think it’s important, given your quoting of the Scriptures to support your view, that I bring up your comment that you made that you don’t believe all of Scripture to be inspired.

You said so right here:

Orignally posted by** inocente ** I already said I don’t believe the whole of scripture is inspired by God,

So before we go into the stranger vs brother vs friend discourse why don’t you 'splain how you know that this particular verse you quoted is inspired? And if it’s not–if it’s just a wise saying from a really neat guy, why should I believe it?

 

[AlanFromWichita]

This guy would be hailed as a hero, not only that, he’d be lauded as evidencing agape for his fellow man, and possibly made a saint!

When in fact he acted out of selfishness caused by his mental illness and depression and had no intention of doing anything other than ending his own life.

It reminds me of a line in a Rich Mullins song “Brother’s Keeper.”

And I will be my brother’s keeper
Not the one who judges him
I won’t despise him for his weakness
I won’t regard him for his strength

Alan