Is the God of the Bible a hypocrite?

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Ah.
Go right ahead and ignore whatever doesn’t fit what you like to believe. . .but don’t expect that people will respect that as a strategy.
 
stpurl said:
There are other mortal sins. Fornication, adultery. . . lots of ‘mentally healthy’ people commit those. So. . .

At least you’re honest. You say, "You believe’. God will probably understand you far better than we do. I think you will find that He will probably say, “I know you really wanted the best for people, Qwerty, according to the imperfect ideas you had of ‘being best’, and you didn’t understand the correct Catholic view. I’m not ‘holding that against you’ that you were wrong, because you weren’t trying, in your mind, to reject me.”
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Do you think that God is going to say, “I’m not holding this against you,” to Episcopalians and other Protestants who use contraception, honestly believing that doing so is not a sin? Or what about gay men who are Christians and honestly believe that being in a same-sex relationship is not a sin, especially since many Christian denominations now tell them that it isn’t? If someone honestly believes that something is not a sin, then in doing these things, they aren’t rejecting God.
 
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There’s never ever only one question in these kinds of threads though. There’s always follow up questions. I mean I could scroll through dozens of posts and hope someone asked the exact things on my mind or just start a new thread.

And although there’s always some overlap, the “hypocrisy” question in the first post was an angle I haven’t seen before, and i feel better off for now knowing the answers to that.
 
Thorolfr said:
Do you think that God is going to say, “I’m not holding this against you,” to Episcopalians and other Protestants who use contraception, honestly believing that doing so is not a sin? Or what about gay men who are Christians and honestly believe that being in a same-sex relationship is not a sin, especially since many Christian denominations now tell them that it isn’t?
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There are three conditions for mortal sin:
  1. Grave matter
  2. Full knowledge
  3. Full consent of the will
Remove a minimum of one of those and it’s not a mortal sin.

That’s why only God is the judge of a person’s soul. And He’s much more reasonable and merciful than many religious people make Him out to be.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
I always think these discussions just go nowhere. There are people who are just completely dead set against God because of their own ideas and their minds are not open to change.
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When you say, “dead set against God because of their own ideas,” do you mean dead set against the Catholic conception of God and what He requires of us? There are lots of Christians who believe things about what God requires of us that are contrary to Catholic teaching, but that doesn’t mean that they’re dead set against God.
 
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Interesting that so many threads here seems to dissolve into the heavens & hell debate.

I will have to ponder what I think the significance of that is.
 
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Anyone can be in good grace with their Father, if they want to be. Whether here on Earth or with God after death. I believe that’s true for those who are Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, or Catholic.

I cannot fathom a scenario where God saves some subset of 1.2 billion Catholics and sends the remaining Catholics and 6.3 billion non-Catholics to hell.
 
The great thing is this is not either or. One can love and do good works for more than one person at a time.
 
Mortal sin has to meet the requirements of knowledge and intent.
 
Because, as someone once said, all Americans are protestant, even the Jews, Catholics and Atheists.

There is a deep seated protestant mindset that is almost intrinsic.
 
  1. God defines the moral code for man. He is not bound by his own moral code.
  2. God is goodness itself. He is the absolute good. His goodness is not defined by or dependent on conformity to anything external to himself. Anything else is good according to how the conform to him.
If I kill someone intentionally and unjustly, I have committed a mortal sin from which I should repent lest I merit hell. Because God has imposed upon me a moral law that forbids me from murdering anyone.

God, however, can kill me, you, or anyone the heck he wants because he owns our lives and our lives are his to give or take as he wills. Therefore, if he kills me or you or anyone, if for no reason but his own sovereign will, then it is still good because God is Good. Period. Full stop.

Therefore, if God judges someone to go to hell because he did not choose to love God, then that judgment is good because God is Good.
 
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
 
No, a hypocrite is not someone who judges justly, but someone who exacts a different standard of another that they do not apply to themselves. We would be hypocritical in refusing to forgive someone when we ourselves are sinful human beings. In other words, you who require mercy and are dependent upon God’s grace, but refuse mercy to another, would be a hypocrite. God on the other hand actually is righteous and is capable of judging the unrighteous justly.
 
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QwertyGirl said:
Have you never been wronged by someone who you love and who loves you, but who refused to apologize? Then you forgive them anyway, silently, in your heart, and your relationship continues on as two people who love each other?
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That’s a real interesting question and here’s why.
Yes, I have forgiven a person who continued not to give a crap what they did.
Yes. We continued to have a superficially okay relationship.
But it was never the same.
I don’t hold grudges.
But it can never be the same relationship anymore without that unresolved thing between us.

Please note, this is not the same as a person who has held out a thousand unspoken olive branches and are too inept or bashful to find the words, but feel bad about the event in their heart.

The people in Hell aren’t sorry. They don’t want reconciliation.
 
They won’t come back. When we die our wills are fixed toward or away from God. That is dependent upon our choices in this life. The souls in hell want to be there. They hate God and themselves (and everyone else) and wish to be as far from God as possible. They also know they deserve to be there.
 
I have a person who I love dearly who many years ago wronged me terribly. We talked it over, and she said she wasn’t sorry because she didn’t see her actions as “wrong”. I remember, very clearly, thinking I had a choice. Either forgive and let it go, forgive and move on (as in end the relationship), or don’t forgive at all. I chose the first. For me, it wasn’t all that hard. For others, they would make remarks to me about it. How could I “give her a pass?” etc. I just really loved this relative of mine that much. Our relationship didn’t suffer over the episode because I chose to not let it suffer. We are as close today as we ever were. We have grown to be different people, yet are relationship has remained strong.

This is my personal experience. I don’t expect that others have had the same. But it is possible.
 
repentant2 said:
That’s a big if. In all the addicts I’ve worked with, few actually want to get better. They just want to be enabled. Which is a really good metaphor for most sinners.
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This.
They want to feel better, not be better.
 
Yes, friend, that is how it works. When you are addressing Catholic Christians on a Catholic site and they are giving you specific Catholic doctrine, you don’t say, “Well fine, your doctrine is OK for you but I don’t recognize it for me”.
If we were in the non-Catholic section and addressing this topic, I’d be the first to recognize that non-Catholics ‘see’ differences. But you are addressing a Catholic perspective and insisting that the only things that we Catholics can answer you on are based on only those ‘sins’ you choose to recognize. You want to limit the whole discussion to your ‘choice’. That isn’t how it works.
 
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