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tonyrey
Guest
I am not the one who asserted that we can be unable to repent!
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mytruepower2
Guest
You can object if you want to, but there’ve been lots of people throughout human history who had no capability to understand the moral law fully, and could only have been saved through fear of the Lord. There’s a reason it’s been seen as a virtue, in the past.
Most importantly, however, you’re simply wrong about what the moral law is. The moral law is not to do what you believe in, but rather, to do what’s right.
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tonyrey
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SentinelofTruth
Guest
Yeah, first non-quoted sentence of post #18, you did.
I’m not sure what is meant by “a formed will”.
And what if we’re wrong about what’s right? Are we to be sent to hell for honest intellectual error? God is a fair judge, and he only punishes you for doing what you had reason to believe was wrong. Not for an error of reasoning made in the honest pursuit of truth.
Correction: fear of the Lord isn’t a virtue, it’s a gift of the holy spirit. Furthermore, that’s not what it’s supposed to mean. God obviously doesn’t want his children that he loves very much to be so terrified of him that he can’t use them as effective servants. “Fear of the Lord” really means “fear of displeasing the Lord”.
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LibralAteoJesus
Guest
When you have a free will, to please him or you end up in Hell, that certainly looks like fear.
Choose me or else…
Fear of displeasing god is the fear of what would happen to you if you displease him.
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tonyrey
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Della
Guest
It’s not that simple. What is?
Let’s use marriage as an example (please forgive me if I used this already in this thread). But, when we look forward to marriage we aren’t thinking (if we’re in love and want to get married): “Well, if I don’t please him or her it’ll end in divorce and then where will I be?”
Love is the center of our relationship with God not servile fear. God is a person not a set of rules and regs. Life is all about love–how we show it, how we use it, how we bring others into the circle of our love. Those who don’t love us and whom we don’t love are simply outside that circle–even if we have the best of intentions towards the rest of the world. Love is an intimate relationship not one of mere duty, yes?
Because of who God is–the One Who Is. To be apart from him is to be apart from the creating force of all things. To do this we much willingly and knowingly desire to be apart from him. See, I said it wasn’t simple, but it is profound. It can be hard to grasp just how important salvation is. I once read that a man came to the Buddha and asked how he could be saved. The Buddha took him to a lake and pushed the man’s head under the water until he nearly drown. When he’d regained his ability to speak the man angrily demanded why he had nearly drown him. The Buddha replied, “To show you how to be saved. When you want it as much as you wanted to breath, then you will know how to be saved.” Of course, this story may be not be a true one, but it stuck with me because the principle is true.
Jesus said the same thing–when you want God more than you want anything else in the world, then you will have him. God wants our love because he is love. In love he created us giving us life (which he will not rescind even if we no longer want it–we are immortal beings, after all), sentience, and the ability to choose. He wanted us to freely choose love. If we choose not to embrace his love, we will do without it, like a child who refuses cake because he wanted another flavor. It’s really that silly to refuse the love of Love himself but it’s also means that if we reject what God has freely given us, he will not force himself on us. If we refuse infinite love, we will not get it.
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LibralAteoJesus
Guest
But marriage is different:It’s not that simple. What is?
Let’s use marriage as an example (please forgive me if I used this already in this thread). But, when we look forward to marriage we aren’t thinking (if we’re in love and want to get married): “Well, if I don’t please him or her it’ll end in divorce and then where will I be?”
Love is the center of our relationship with God not servile fear. God is a person not a set of rules and regs. Life is all about love–how we show it, how we use it, how we bring others into the circle of our love. Those who don’t love us and whom we don’t love are simply outside that circle–even if we have the best of intentions towards the rest of the world. Love is an intimate relationship not one of mere duty, yes?
Because of who God is–the One Who Is. To be apart from him is to be apart from the creating force of all things. To do this we much willingly and knowingly desire to be apart from him. See, I said it wasn’t simple, but it is profound. It can be hard to grasp just how important salvation is. I once read that a man came to the Buddha and asked how he could be saved. The Buddha took him to a lake and pushed the man’s head under the water until he nearly drown. When he’d regained his ability to speak the man angrily demanded why he had nearly drown him. The Buddha replied, “To show you how to be saved. When you want it as much as you wanted to breath, then you will know how to be saved.” Of course, this story may be not be a true one, but it stuck with me because the principle is true.
Jesus said the same thing–when you want God more than you want anything else in the world, then you will have him. God wants our love because he is love. In love he created us giving us life (which he will not rescind even if we no longer want it–we are immortal beings, after all), sentience, and the ability to choose. He wanted us to freely choose love. If we choose not to embrace his love, we will do without it, like a child who refuses cake because he wanted another flavor. It’s really that silly to refuse the love of Love himself but it’s also means that if we reject what God has freely given us, he will not force himself on us. If we refuse infinite love, we will not get it.
You are not dealing with an all powerful, all knowing, all loving person.
If you end your relationship in marriage, you can live happily with another or no person without having to be tortured forever.
God is supposed to be a one being, but to marry we have multiple options of persons to choose and if we don’t choose any of these persons, they are not going to abuse us, otherwise they would be considered evil people if they do so even if we willingly don’t accept them.
In marriage, child marriage is forbidden, but in Christianity, infant baptism is there.
It does definetly look like accept me or else.
It’s your choice.
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Della
Guest
No human analogy is perfect, so I don’t expect any to be able to express the love relationship I’m talking about.
The Person we are dealing with is not like any other person we can know or love. He is absolute, which is why he is, in his being, simple. It is either God or nothing, but that nothing is eternal–always right now, not ever to end.
So, the choice is ours. Eternal love or eternal suffering–suffering of our own making, not of God’s. Hell is the absence of God–something we cannot grasp except to call it fire and horror and desolation and weeping and gnashing of teeth. These descriptions all mean the person knows what he gave up but he was not willing to love while he was alive and able to do something about it. In the eternal now it is too late.
Another analogy. Recently a young woman climbed out a window of a college dorm to get to a ledge–just on a lark (this was a recent news story here where I live). She knew what would happen if she went out there and lost her balance, but she did it anyway. Well, the poor girl fell and died. No second chance to go back and decide not to do such a dangerous stunt. Does she regret it now? She probably does, but she made her choice and now she’s gone from this world with no chance of returning to it as she knew it. There are points in life in which we make choices and they are irrevocable.
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LibralAteoJesus
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Human analogy is often used by believers when it’s a motivation towards faith but when someone doubts and use human analogy, it’s often denied by believers, lyou cannot compare God to human nature, he is better. What’s good and loving about choosing God ( eternal love) or eternal suffering?
“God is eternal, our souls are eternal but our choices and free will are not as long as we are dead and going to hell”.
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mytruepower2
Guest
That all depends. Culpability, however, is a different thing than guilt, and should be addressed as such. Only God knows to what degree your guilt may be your own fault. Perhaps you spent hours playing video games or watching TV, which you could have spent studying ethics for the purpose of informing your conscience, and avoiding this error, but as I said, some people in history have simply been unable to grasp these truths. Is there any basis for God to judge them, which would involve some going to Heaven and some not going?
But actually, it’s worse than that.
You see, most people in human history have lacked -access- to sufficient information, perhaps through insufficient technology or insufficient money, and these people would also all be in a state of being “unjudgeable.”
The reason why I take issue with your model is that -no one- goes against their own beliefs. ** -No one.-** Every person acts in the way they believe they should, given the circumstances. Nobody goes out in the morning saying “Yee hee hee! Today I’ll be evil!”
Therefore, to suggest that your salvation rests on conforming to your own beliefs is rank universalism, plain and simple.
- I never said it was a virtue. I said it’s “been seen as a virture.”
- The kind of fear that I was describing is that even if you don’t understand the reasons to believe, or don’t agree with them, nevertheless, you attempt to “cover all the bases” anyway, as best you can, just in case, in much the same way that I continued going to mass, back when I was an agnostic. This is a far cry from being “so terrified of him that he can’t use them as effective servants.”
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SentinelofTruth
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If they have an honest intellectual problem with the faith, then they are actually obligated not to conform to it. One’s obligation is always to follow what is, to the best of one’s knowledge, the truth.
They wouldn’t be “unjudgeable”, they would just have to be judged as if what they were doing was right.
mytruwpower2:
This is a pretty flat denial of the existence of either sin or vice. And yes, people do so say that, that’s what we all do about 10-50 times a day, and it’s called sin. Because it’s not sin unless you freely decide to do it.
In short, what I hear when you say this is “we’re all perfect little angels, there’s no such thing as sin, vice, the devil, laziness, fear, or anything else that could possibly cause us to act against what we believe.”
No, it’s not even a short cry. How can we serve God, who is the ultimate personification of altruistic love, if our service to him is done entirely out of self-concern and zero altruism whatsoever?
LiberalAteoJesus said:
Our souls are only eternal in eternity. In time they’re temporal. Do not confuse “eternal” with “everlasting”.
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tonyrey
Guest
“displease” is a gross understatement. It is a case of revolt, lust for power and filial ingratitude.
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SentinelofTruth
Guest
tonyrey said:
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LibralAteoJesus
Guest
Every sort of refusing dictatorships has these qualities, that’s the bright side.
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SentinelofTruth
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LiberalAteoJesus:
Not sure what you’re trying to say here.
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tonyrey
Guest
Then you must be on the side of revolt, lust for power and filial ingratitude - which explains your aversion to Christianity…
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mytruepower2
Guest
Again, this depends on whether their “honest intellectual problem” is their own fault or not. Could they have found the answer to the problem through honestly looking for it, or were they -utterly segregated- from the truth in this area? That would determine whether a person was culpable or not; not how sincerely they may have believed they were right. No one thinks they’re wrong.
So you’re then saying that all of those people will be judged, categorically, as though they’re doing evil, regardless of whether or not that’s true? How can that be the case?
You clearly didn’t read what I wrote, so I will repeat it one more time.
“The reason why I take issue with your model is that -no one- goes against their own beliefs. -No one.- Every person acts in the way they believe they should, given the circumstances. Nobody goes out in the morning saying “Yee hee hee! Today I’ll be evil!””
“Therefore, to suggest that your salvation rests on conforming to your own beliefs is rank universalism, plain and simple.”
My point in making these statements is not that people -are- angels, but rather that most of the worst sinners -saw themselves- as angels. If you were the only standard by which you were to be judged, there would be almost no point in believing in God.
Because your motives ultimately don’t matter. It’s your choices that really count. As Saint Paul says, each man will be judged according to what he has done.
Notice that he -does not- say “according to his motives for doing it.”
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SentinelofTruth
Guest
I’m on your side here, but I don’t see how this follows.
Agreed, but I think the word “honest” connotates that they were looking for truth.
No, I did not say that at all. I said that they will be judged according to how well they followed what was, to the best of their knowledge, the truth. I’m not sure how to make this any clearer.
I assure you I did read your post. Repeating what you posted just because you think I mischaracterized you does not constitute a valid defense.
The “point” of believing in God is purely because it’s true, not because we are going to gain something from it. Only the sith analyze the “point” of an action entirely in terms of what they’re going to get out of it.
Are murder and self-defense different actions? Certainly they are. But if motives have nothing to do with morality, shouldn’t it be ultimately the same? In either case, you’re killing someone. But in the case of self-defense you have the motivation of saving yourself.
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