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Princess Leia: I happen to like nice men.
Han Solo: I'm a nice man.
On Christianity — Page 2
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Originally posted by: GundarkHunter
Personally, I get a little tired of the whole, "If God is all-powerful and loves all of us, why do bad things happen to good people?" argument. Bad things happen to good people because:
(1) God gave us the ability to make our own choices. This life is an opportunity to learn how to be better, kinder beings than we currently are, which requires the ability to make our own choices. If we can't make our own choices, we are nothing more than one of 7 billion pawns on a giant chess board called earth, moving at the behest of an all-powerful being who wants us all to turn out the same way. People are going to make good choices and bad choices. The key is knowing that our choices, no matter how insignificant, affect others.
(2) As before, God wants to challenge us to improve. We are brought into this life with certain challenges, and will meet more challenges along the way. Some of these challenges will be man-made; some will be there from the beginning. Again, how we respond to these challenges determines what we make of our lives.
I provide you with the following analogy: you want to learn how to ride a bike, and your parents would like to help you learn. Will you learn if every day, your parents continue to hold the back of your seat so you don't fall down? No. Is it better for you to learn through the experience of a few scraped knees? Yes. Is there going to be pain as a result? Yes. Will the pain make you a better person? Yes. Will you understand that teaching your children in that same way is best? More than likely.
Me, I take responsibility for my own actions. That is why I can continue to believe in God when tragedy surrounds me in this world.
Personally, I get a little tired of the whole, "If God is all-powerful and loves all of us, why do bad things happen to good people?" argument. Bad things happen to good people because:
(1) God gave us the ability to make our own choices. This life is an opportunity to learn how to be better, kinder beings than we currently are, which requires the ability to make our own choices. If we can't make our own choices, we are nothing more than one of 7 billion pawns on a giant chess board called earth, moving at the behest of an all-powerful being who wants us all to turn out the same way. People are going to make good choices and bad choices. The key is knowing that our choices, no matter how insignificant, affect others.
(2) As before, God wants to challenge us to improve. We are brought into this life with certain challenges, and will meet more challenges along the way. Some of these challenges will be man-made; some will be there from the beginning. Again, how we respond to these challenges determines what we make of our lives.
I provide you with the following analogy: you want to learn how to ride a bike, and your parents would like to help you learn. Will you learn if every day, your parents continue to hold the back of your seat so you don't fall down? No. Is it better for you to learn through the experience of a few scraped knees? Yes. Is there going to be pain as a result? Yes. Will the pain make you a better person? Yes. Will you understand that teaching your children in that same way is best? More than likely.
Me, I take responsibility for my own actions. That is why I can continue to believe in God when tragedy surrounds me in this world.
Great point, Gundark Hunter. Also remember Job and what happened to him. God does test us. Remember the saying "the only place where it never rains is the desert" Life will have problems. Sometimes the problems are a result of nothing we did, but someone else's actions that isn't our fault.
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Originally posted by: greencapt
I'd like to hear how each of you interprets the 'free will' aspect- At what point were 'people' (collectively and future generations) given the choice? I understand as written Adam and Eve were given the choice, but just because they screwed it up why does everyone else in history have to pay for it? Isn't that a bit like punishing the whole class when one person doesn't follow the rules?
I'd like to hear how each of you interprets the 'free will' aspect- At what point were 'people' (collectively and future generations) given the choice? I understand as written Adam and Eve were given the choice, but just because they screwed it up why does everyone else in history have to pay for it? Isn't that a bit like punishing the whole class when one person doesn't follow the rules?
Funny you should bring that up. My personal belief is that we are responsible for our own sins, and not for what Adam and Eve did. What Adam and Eve did by partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was to bring mortality into the mix. Prior to this, Adam and Eve lived in a state of ignorant bliss, and it was only by partaking of the forbidden fruit that they knew joy and sorrow. They also made it necessary for a Saviour, being Jesus Christ, to come into the world and make salvation possible for all of us. i'm not going to discuss this point any further in this thread, but PM me if you want to know more.
We have had choice from day one.
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For free will to exist, we must belive in a non-deterministic point of view of reality, in which the universe is not predictable nor chaoticly random, but somehow choices can be made. If God gives us weakness, free will and dosen't let us know of what is going on and the porpouse of our lifes, and dosen't let himself know of his holy existance, then why does God punish man for doing what is wrong?
The child, learning how to ride a bike, KNOWS she is on the bike to learn it. The parents didn't just bought a bike and had the child seat on it and told her nothing, being completely absent.
Of course, one could say that God cannot let menkind know of such divine existance because that would interfere on people's judgment, but if there is no point in the lesson given, is there a point in the teaching of the lesson?
It's all too complicated, and I've given up finding an answer and decided to let the experts handle this. I will live my life the best way I can, not doing harm to other people, and when I die, I'll expect nothingness. If anything else happens, oh well, surprise.
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There's evidence of our creator all around and inside us. Analyze the human heart for a minute, look inside yourself to your deepest desires. It is my belief that our desires were wired for God. We were made in God's image, so He is our definition of 'good' and we naturally need him. So we are faced with a choice, to "drink" from God or earthly things. That's the nature of addictions... we try to dull the desperatly painful need for God with earthly things and depend on them.
It's fascinating to me to see that maybe the strongest evidence of God is in our own design. Check this out too:
http://www.tasteheavennow.net/understanding_yourself/understanding_needs_home.htm
The only way to be truely humble is to just admit and accept that God is God, not us. I don't really like arguing for or against God's existance, because people will hear what they want to hear. If we don't soften our hearts and keep them hardened, and "push the truth away from ourselves" then we won't be able to believe the Truth.
It is not blind optimism, we have a wonderful hope. I think it was Paul who wrote that if these things were NOT true, that we would have wasted everything and would be the most hopeless people in the world. I agree!
God cannot be a subjective thing that we can all interpret the way we want to. He is objective, as is his word and his Son. All other religions, near I can tell, are human's attempts at reaching upward to grasp God with their own humanity and achievments. The message of Christ is the opposite, it's something you couldn't have predicted! God's display of grace, and bloody sacrifice for our sake. To pay for OUR sins and fill in our weaknesses with his strength. But if you set your heart to disbelieve and cling to earthly things to fill your heart, nothing will make you believe. It is an act of the will.
By the way, we ALL sin. None of us can deny it, it wasn't just Adam and Eve. They were the first!
I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently.
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http://ttrim.blogspot.com
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For example: Judas. He had the opportunity to not] betray Jesus. But he didn't choose that. We know that now. God and Christ knew it then. He still had an option before him. He chose unwisely.
I like to use this analogy:
Say that I'm your math tutor. I am your only instructor and you are my only student. One day, I prepare a test for you to take. I hand a copy of it to you and you begin on the test. While I am waiting for you to finish, I take a fresh copy of the test and amuse myself by filling in the answers how I think you will. I know what you know and what you don't, so I know exactly how you will attempt to solve each problem. Not only do I know which questions you will miss, but I know how you will screw up. I happen to finish the test before you, so I go ahead and grade my copy of the test. You got an 87. I mark it in red pen and put the test face down on my desk and decide to go home for the night. I tell you, before I leave, that you can look at my copy of the test for your score once you finish with the test. You don't believe me, but you find that I was 100% completely correct. Did I make you fail? Did my foreknowledge of your failure somehow influence you? Is my judgement fair? Did you earn your grade all on your own?
I always like Sci-Fi movies where they say that there's one past, one present but multiple futures. What is the future but someone else's past? How could there be more than one future, then? More than one possible future maybe. But there will be only one future. Just like there is only one past. And just as someone who is in the present can know the past, someone who is more than time can know the future. Without influencing it.
Xhonzi
IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!
"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005
"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM
"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.
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There is a selfishness involved to where authority is manifested in the flesh. People put themselves on a pedestal and pretend to be perfect, or brag and banter about how much they know about theology based on other books other than the Word of God, or worse, taking God's Word out of context to try to make themselves right. All of these things are mans failures, and not to mention.... driving those away who are lost and in need of a true love in the name of Christ, and not in the name of religion.
All in all, the simplicity of Christ's love is lost in what man has made it through religion.
1 Corinthians 29: That no flesh should glory in his presence. 30: But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: 31: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
How many out there proclaim that THEY have something to offer... So many glorify themselves, especially in the name of religion. Those who proclaim only Christ in HIS glory... That is what we all need wether you agree or not. Christianity is about what Christ has done for every single one of us, not what man has raped Christ to be today misleading those who need Him most. As a Christian it is so frustrating to see.
Knowing Christ died for your sinful nature, defeated death and rose again on the third day and is now preparing us a Kingdom, and putting your complete faith in all that He is.... that is what it means to be a Christian. There is a price for rejection, but it is paid for with acceptance. It is a choice we all have. In Christ!
Galatians 2: 20: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
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Originally posted by: Coov
The whole purpose of "religion" is what man has interfered in from God's intentions. Religion is a dividing man-made shackle of rules and guidelines. Very little of it may be based out of the Word of God, but most simply just a bunch of empty rituals, do's and don'ts, and attempts to reach God through works and things that make you feel either good or crooked.
There is a selfishness involved to where authority is manifested in the flesh. People put themselves on a pedestal and pretend to be perfect, or brag and banter about how much they know about theology based on other books other than the Word of God, or worse, taking God's Word out of context to try to make themselves right. All of these things are mans failures, and not to mention.... driving those away who are lost and in need of a true love in the name of Christ, and not in the name of religion.
All in all, the simplicity of Christ's love is lost in what man has made it through religion.
1 Corinthians 29: That no flesh should glory in his presence. 30: But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: 31: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
How many out there proclaim that THEY have something to offer... So many glorify themselves, especially in the name of religion. Those who proclaim only Christ in HIS glory... That is what we all need wether you agree or not. Christianity is about what Christ has done for every single one of us, not what man has raped Christ to be today misleading those who need Him most. As a Christian it is so frustrating to see.
Knowing Christ died for your sinful nature, defeated death and rose again on the third day and is now preparing us a Kingdom, and putting your complete faith in all that He is.... that is what it means to be a Christian. There is a price for rejection, but it is paid for with acceptance. It is a choice we all have. In Christ!
The whole purpose of "religion" is what man has interfered in from God's intentions. Religion is a dividing man-made shackle of rules and guidelines. Very little of it may be based out of the Word of God, but most simply just a bunch of empty rituals, do's and don'ts, and attempts to reach God through works and things that make you feel either good or crooked.
There is a selfishness involved to where authority is manifested in the flesh. People put themselves on a pedestal and pretend to be perfect, or brag and banter about how much they know about theology based on other books other than the Word of God, or worse, taking God's Word out of context to try to make themselves right. All of these things are mans failures, and not to mention.... driving those away who are lost and in need of a true love in the name of Christ, and not in the name of religion.
All in all, the simplicity of Christ's love is lost in what man has made it through religion.
1 Corinthians 29: That no flesh should glory in his presence. 30: But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: 31: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
How many out there proclaim that THEY have something to offer... So many glorify themselves, especially in the name of religion. Those who proclaim only Christ in HIS glory... That is what we all need wether you agree or not. Christianity is about what Christ has done for every single one of us, not what man has raped Christ to be today misleading those who need Him most. As a Christian it is so frustrating to see.
Knowing Christ died for your sinful nature, defeated death and rose again on the third day and is now preparing us a Kingdom, and putting your complete faith in all that He is.... that is what it means to be a Christian. There is a price for rejection, but it is paid for with acceptance. It is a choice we all have. In Christ!
I am of the Reformed faith, meaning I assert the authority of sola-scriptura. I place no faith in organizations or men.
http://ttrim.blogspot.com
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In particular, I'm a baptist, but that's not what's most important - Jesus prayed that we'd love each other so much that we'd die before division (read John 17).
http://www.myspace.com/red_ajax