What does it mean to be a Christian?

By fallible you mean imperfect? Well, God is perfect. Imperfection can't dwell with Perfection for eternity, without a price. We must first be made perfect through Jesus.


And perhaps our ability to sin is to show us that we aren't equal with God. That we are below Him, and that we need Him in order to live.


Edit: A Christian is a follower of Christ, indwelt with the Holy Spirit of He, and raised back to eternal life through the price He paid. When people refer to Christianity as a religion it makes me angry, because it's not about religion and dogma, but about faith. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian. Giving your life over to God, and letting Him live through you is what makes you a Christian.

 

"Imperfection can't dwell with Perfection for eternity, without a price."

Unless God came through your roof and told you that personally, it's only a guess as to how He works.

Personally, I'm surprised at how often I hear the word "can't" in conjunction with God.

 

God is holy. There is something He can't do, and that is to allow a part of Him to remain imperfect. To do that would make Him imperfect.



If your child did something wrong, would it be right for you to let it slide? To say, "Well, that's okay, I forgive you." No, you'd punish him so that he would not make the same mistake.

 

Yes, but your version of punishment disallows the possiblity of not making the mistake again, doesn't it. Eternal death.

 

Punish him infinitely for a finite crime? No. What good does that do? And for all this talk about how perfection and imperfection can't coexist, it would seem that they already do; if God is perfect, and His presence is here on earth, then He's been doing it since the dawn of man.

 

I agree.

See, JM, you yourself said that you would punish a child to show it the error of its ways, and to hopefully teach it not to do it again.

But that's the polar opposite of the God's love you're trying to convince us of. Don't you think it's funny that you seem to be more forgiving and loving towards your hypothetical child then you think Jesus is?

Or have you never considered the possiblity of the bible being un-true? I've never once seen you on these boards consider it might not be.

 

Eternal death, or hell, could be like prison. If you had 4 kids, and one continually made the same mistake, influencing the others to make that mistake that could lead to death, you wouldn't allow that one child to stay with you, but send him off to prison. It would be better for you to loose one, two, even three kids and keep one than to lose them all.


As for God living with imperfection here, He does it in the form of the Holy Spirit (which is significant, though I can't explain why). The thing is, one day all evil will be destroyed. Imperfection cannot coexist with God for eternity and it won't. Soon it will be only Perfection.

 

Prison and death aren't necessarily the same thing. Not every one who goes to jail gets a life sentence or the death penalty.

 

201, you don't yet understand the depth of parental love--and I hope someday you will. No true, loving parent would part from a child for eternity, punish a child for eternity.

"Imperfection cannot coexist with God for eternity."

Why not?

 

But that doesn't mean He can let them into heaven.

What do you mean? Of course he can let them into Heaven. It?s his prerogative, isn?t it? Or does someone else decide for God? ?No God, sorry. I know you liked Einstein and Bohr, and sure they were great people, but they didn?t believe in your Son. They?re going to have to spend the rest of eternity burning in Hell.?


If your child did something wrong, would it be right for you to let it slide? To say, "Well, that's okay, I forgive you." No, you'd punish him so that he would not make the same mistake.

(reply) Yes, but your version of punishment disallows the possibility of not making the mistake again, doesn't it. Eternal death.

Not only that, but if believing in Jesus is the only way to get into Heaven, he?s doing a pretty poor job getting the message out. By your standards, fully two-thirds of the worlds population is going to Hell.

Thomas needed to see Jesus? hands in order to believe that it really was Jesus. This guy is supposedly one of Jesus? own Disciples, a man who had seen Jesus perform miracles. And even he needed proof. If Thomas needed proof, what more clue would a God supposedly as wise as YHWH need to suspect that the mere story of Jesus wasn?t enough to convince everyone? If God was to give a single recognizable and quantifiable sign that he existed and that Jesus was the only way to Heaven, you?d be seeing mass conversions around the world, as people embraced the truth.

In my opinion, there are three possibilities. God either:
1) Does not care that 4 billion people are Hell-bound. See my comment about Thomas above.
2) Does care, but lacks the power to reach them. In which case he?s not omnipotent. It?s a slightly more reassuring idea than 1 (as it preserves the idea of a benevolent deity), but only slightly.
3) Doesn?t really care whether or not we worship Jesus, just as long as we live our lives in the best way we possibly can (a core principle behind every single major world religion).

 

Another aspect of the prison analogy is that the death penalty is usually reserved for vilolent crime. But your anlogy includes non violent crime as well, and the most non-violent crime of all: thinking. Everyone who thinks the wrong way gets the death penalty. That wouldn't work in the U.S. at least.

Edit-great points, Gandolf. I didn't consider thomas' doubting, though i like his gospel more than the others.

 

"Prison and death aren't necessarily the same thing. Not every one who goes to jail gets a life sentence or the death penalty."


Okay, then I'll use the street explaination.


You tell your child not to go out in the road, because they might get hit by a car. He keeps going out in the street, and after awhile, your other children start to follow. Are you going to allow that first kid to remain in your home, influencing your other kids to do something that might result in death? I doubt it. Like I said, hell is not something eternal punishment that God created for man to make them think about all they did in this life. It's what naturally follows sin, and that's why God came down and took part in that punishment, and then defeated it by rising again. He wouldn't go through something like that after creating it to punish. Death folows sin. That's why we need Jesus.

 

I heard that analogy from my family, but it was about a dog running into the street. Or a cat.

I'd spank the kid. I wouldn't disown him.

That would be funny, though. "Mother who's child keeps running into the street donates him to a foster home-wait, kills him. Family shocked, horrified."

 

"Are you going to allow that first kid to remain in your home, influencing your other kids to do something that might result in death?"

Depends. Do I have the power to watch over him constantly, and correct him?

The Biblical God has no problems directly influencing humans--he repeatedly compels Pharaoh to keep the Jews in bondage (just as an excuse to throw more plagues, but that's a whole other can of worms).

I'll tell you one thing I wouldn't do, and that's stand there and let him die.

"Death folows sin."

Once again, unless you have some direct line to God that the rest of humanity doesn't, you don't know that. For all you or any one of us knows, it's just something early Christians made up to keep their followers in line.

 

You know, most likely the kid would be sent off to military school. Like the kid in malcom in the middle. He drove his mother crazy, but she never killed him.

 

Geist- Well, you go ahead and do a sin, any sin, over and over and I bet you won't live that long. By death I meant both physical as well as spiritual.



Ok, Cydonia. Good point. I guess I explained it wrong. With sin, death always follows it. In this street, the car always comes when you go out in to the street.


Besides all that, maybe God just wants to show His holiness. Maybe He did predestine things, just to show to us that He is God, and we're man.

But you, Cydonia, and you, Darth Geist, are of different religions. And both of you are arguing mine. In fact, I bet all religions are agaisnt the God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. I guess that says something.


BTW, I'm not angry here, nor am I trying to offend. If I say something that offends anyone, you may offend me.

 

Yes, it says you can't handle having your beliefs questioned. I am of no religion.

If you're going to bring up analogies that sound ridiculous, you're saying i'm some kind of satanist for pointing it out? You are making references to things that cause physical death. But you refuse to acknowledge that you include thinking a different way in there as well. Thought crimes. You are linking thinking and violent, reckeless acts as the same thing.

Edit-no, i'm not trying to offend either. But you are arguing against other belief systems just like i am arguing against yours. There is "persecution" on both sides.

 

Tempers seem to be rising a bit, but if I may:

Sin in no way equals death in the physical world. Innocent babies die all the time, while Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden are old and grey. Life isn't fair; bad things happen to good people, and vice versa, and they knew that as far back as the writing of the book of Job.

"In fact, I bet all religions are agaisnt the God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims"

No. Most are indifferent to Christianity, and in fact, many accept it as a piece of the truth--which is more of an honor than you might think. What I myself am opposed to, for both practical and personal reasons, is the idea that any person or group knows so much about God that He favors them above all others.

I've shaken hands with God as many times as anyone else (zero), but one thing I do believe about Him is that He doesn't want us fighting over who He loves more, or who knows Him the best. That's how holy wars get started.

 

I pretty much agree. I have nothing against God. Because in my view, we are talking about the same God.

The problem with making real world analaogies is that we react to them the way we would in the real world. With reason. (at least we try.) And my reason says, "ok, you're saying for me to think i'm that god, what would i do?" And i wouldn't do anything your god would do in this role playing game. Does that say something? I wouldn't kill all my children because they disagreed with me. If i said i'm the world's greatest dad, and they disagreed, i'm not going to murder them.

I don't know what happens when we die. I don't even begin to assume i have the slightest clue.

 

Ok. Let's consider it this way. The parent tells the child, "You have two choices. You can either obey me, or you can disobey me. If you disobey me, I will punish you by doing X." Now if the child disobeys, with full knowledge of the consequences, the parent is under an obligation to do X, whatever X happens to be.

God told Adam, "You either obey Me, or you disobey me. You disobey Me, and you are separated from me forever, dead spiritually." Adam chose to disobey God.

 

Again, as a human i wouldn't react that way. More often a parent will at the worst say "you're dead to me, i don't have a son,etc." (unless you're Marvin Gaye's dad.)

But even after that, the child has the chance to continue their life, fall in love, have kids, dance, etc.

The parent doesn't actually murder their children. (again, unless you're marvin gaye's dad.)

 

Exactly, NRI.


Cydonia, if we are talking about the same God, then why do we disagree? Jesus said that a kingdom devided among itself cannot stand. I agree with that.


Edit: Again, I don't believe God kills. I think He allows us to make choices, when we sin, we condemn ourselves. Christ brings us back to God. God doesn't take our lives for sinning, we do through that sin. God is the Saviour.

 

Ok. Let's consider it this way. The parent tells the child, "You have two choices. You can either obey me, or you can disobey me. If you disobey me, I will punish you by doing X." Now if the child disobeys, with full knowledge of the consequences, the parent is under an obligation to do X, whatever X happens to be.

But this child has other parents. It?s more as if someone else?s parents are telling him to do something, something that directly contradicts something his own parents have told him. Do you blame the child for taking the words of his own parents over those of some kid he barely knows?

 

Hey, I'm all for cooperation. Maybe we should all just celebrate what we share, and respect our differences.

 

No, God is the only "parent" mankind has.