Either eternal damnation is guarunteed for all sins, or it isn't. If it is, then severity is not germaine to the argument and passages referencing said severity would be suspect.
There is no argument. You may have a better understanding of eternal damnation and severity than I do. That is OK, I barely understand enough to avoid it which is enough for me. The passage isn't suspect, a child could understand that one situation could be worse for one and not as severe for another; yet both would be eternally damnable. That is simple logic. One who suffers greatest does not dimish one who suffers less- especially for all eternity. Like I said my interpretation my be wrong, but I am sure the truth of what is said is not suspect. Luke 12:43-48 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. 44Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath. 45But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken; 46The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. 47And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. 48But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.
I agree with this. I think it’s important to understand sins and laws as different things. It’s a sin even look at a woman lustfully, but that’s not against the law, in most countries anyway. Otoh, we convict people of breaking laws all the time without ever really knowing if a sin has been committed. Was the right person convicted? What was the real intent behind a certain action? Did the person have the capacity to understand what he or she was doing? Our legal systems get it wrong all the time. It’s made and enforced by fallible humans after all. It does its best to protect citizens and even the perpetrators but it is imperfect. From a Christian standpoint we are never to judge anyone else as a sinner. Romans 2 1You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? 4Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? On whether sins are equal I think it’s pretty clear from the Bible that they are, but I don't think it matters in the end because the purpose of the law is to show us that we can’t live by the law. We can't live sinless lives and we can’t justify ourselves by our own actions, so we need to turn to God, our father, like a child turns to a parent, to save us. God wants relationship, remember, and the very purpose of the law was to show us that we can’t live without him. We can't live by the law. Romans 2: 20 20Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. And when we turn to God and accept him spiritually we are no longer subject to the law at all, but this doesn’t mean that one can willfully sin. Romans 6 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. 15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. (All of Romans 6 is good on this and the first 6 or 8 chapters of Romans are very good on this topic in general. Here’s the link:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=52&chapter=6&version=31) The next obvious question is that this seems to imply that a person who was a Christian and therefore no longer subject to the law, and therefore sinless in God’s eyes, could still choose to intentionally lead a willfully sinful life and not lose their salvation. This discussion my be too far off topic but we can go further with it if anyone wants. My short answer for what I believe is that it is possible for a Christian to do this, but that it will take a huge toll on them and essentially destroy them from the inside out because they would be going against their new nature. It would be like a tree trying to deny and cut off its own fruit. There is a passage in Hebrews 6 that would have to be carefully considered in this discussion, however, but I think that when you read the entirely of Hebrews 6 and perhaps even the surrounding chapters you will, or at least I do, come the conclusions that a person can’t lose their salvation. For me that still leaves open the question of what the first part of Hebrews 6 is really talking about, so there are still some questions there for me.
I wish someone would explain this to the 98% of "christians" who do nothing but judge others day in and day out.
I am a recovering christian, who finds the aforementioned hypocrisy too inhibiting for proper spirituality. I am not proclaiming myself blameless, but it drives me nuts to hear "christians" railing on any group that does not condone to their current illogical and ignorant dogma. Moreover, the hypocrisy of it just makes me sick. It's a perverse contortion of Jesus' message of universal love. And that's all that Jesus is to me anymore. An abused philosopher. A spiritual leader whose followers have contorted his message to achieve a socio-political agenda of collectivist bigotry. Sorry for the rant. It's not aimed at you or anyone in particular. Well, maybe Pat Robertson.
But we ok to Judge them a Good Guy, Champion, Saint, Etc When you judge them positively . . no one has an issue when you point out their dirt. . . they pull this line out Rocket River
I think all sins are equal. They are all acts that would affect God, and are judged equally. I don't think any sins are more or less severe than others.
So taking the Lord's name in vain when you hit your finger with a hammer is the same thing as shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die?
keep sinning, that's what jesus died for. i'm a bit puzzled about stuff like this. Don't you eat a lot? So you sin at the buffet line?
Amen brother, amen. Although as much as it may seem that way sometimes, I think the 98% figure is a bit on the high side. Legalism is a huge problem in many Christian churches today, however. (I haven’t read this link trough but it seems to be giving a decent explanation at first glance anyway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(theology) ) Legalism and judgmentalism are easy things for a person so slip into, unfortunately, and even more unfortunately I think there large portions of some denominations that have slipped into it. From a personal standpoint the danger zone for me is when I start to get angry and frustrated with a given situation, especially if it’s something that has gone on a long time. Take the Iraq war for example. At times it would be very easy for me to say that Donald Rumsfeld must be an evil man, for example. While it is true that I can’t conceive of how anyone who is not evil could do the kinds of things he has done, that doesn’t mean that I have the right to judge him personally like that, and it doesn’t even mean I’m correct in that assessment. I don’t know him or his human frailties that may have given him blind spots that allowed him to do these things. Especially if he’s only a nominal Christian and isn’t a spiritually transformed Christian, he, like all humans, is capable of making some horrendous mistakes. Those of us who can remember our lives before we were Christians can remember the kinds of things we used rationalize as being justified, and from that maybe one can understand how some of these terrible decisions could have been made through conscious motives that we probably wouldn’t classify as evil. (The word evil quickly becomes problematic in these discussions, doesn’t it?) This doesn’t mean that what he’s done is right, let me be very clear to add. And as Christians I very much think we should discern what is right and wrong in the world around us and act accordingly, whether it be staying away from certain people or groups and associating with others, or speaking to public policy and the actions of people like Rumsfeld, but that’s not the same as judging someone. God is the only one who can judge a person. We are too fallible in our perceptions and understandings, and we should never try to elevate ourselves to God’s level and pretend that we are fit to judge one of God’s creations. Just to repeat an earlier point, this is not the same as enforcing laws. Ours laws are created by some authority in our societies to help a society function and to keep order and to protect people in the society as much as possible, and even to protect perpetrators by removing them from society so they can’t hurt other or themselves anymore, and getting them help for their problems if possible or just separating them from society permanently in some cases if that is the only solution to the problem. Our laws cover all kind of things that wouldn’t be sins if they the given society hadn’t created laws against them, and our laws and their enforcement are often flawed, so judging a person as good or evil can’t be a part of that system, or it shouldn’t be anyway because it can’t be done by mere moral men. River Rocket, I’m not quite sure I’m following your question. If you could expand a little bit I could try to give you a more complete answer, on how I understand the issue anyway. Strictly speaking we shouldn’t call anyone truly good either, right? We’re all sinners, after all. Christ himself said: Luke 18: 19 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone.”
I hear you, but if you look around I think you will find churches that are much more faithful to the word of God and that mostly operate by Godly principles. No church is perfect just as no human is perfect, but some are a great deal better than others. You hear a lot about the bad extremists because they get a lot of press, and indeed they tend to work the media a lot, but that’s not all there is to Christianity. I hope you understand that. Remember that corruption in the church goes back all to the time of Christ, and before. And remember that some of Christ’s harshest words were used on the Pharisees. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt 23;&version=31; So don’t let someone else’s failings affect your relationship with God. Your relationship with him is a personal one, and that’s the one that counts. It’s a helpful thing to find a good church where you can be part of a mutually supportive community that does a good job of living by the word of God, but it may take you a while to find that church, and don’t forget that that is of secondary importance to your personal spiritual relationship with God. It’s an aid to that relationship, but not a substitute for it and it doesn’t define your relationship with God. Your relationship with God is just between you and him. Don’t let other distractions get in the way. I’m speaking from experience on this one.
Before God or before the courts? Don’t forget to look at the flip side of that equation as well. Consider the actions of the groups who are angry and outraged by homosexuality, for example, but who are very tolerant of things like materialism and judgmentalism, and worse, in their own communities. What would be the point of trying to rank sin anyway? What good would come from doing that? Is it really done to say that some sins are worse than others, or is it done to say that some are not as bad? Do people do it to try to convince themselves, and perhaps others, that their own sins aren’t as bad as other peoples’, perhaps?
I agree that to God, all sins are sins (the same). A debt that can't be repaid is a debt that can't be repaid no matter if it's $1,000,000,000,000 or $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Humans are judging the amount and that's why we see sins differently. The good news is all can be forgiven no matter what the sin for those who believe.
Thanks for the Quote. It was more about how people Use the Bible Manipulate it to their ends They often use the 'Don't Judge Me' ideal to do all kinds of things and 'get away with it' I have a strong sense of Justice. . or at least i think so Rocket River
I think this is an interesting conversation because our posts reflect our own judgement that we would view someone's murder worse than his lie. I believe the bible viewpoint is more about a man's self reflection in that he should view his lie in the same light as another man's murder because they are both against God's will for us. In fact if you view your own "small" sins as the same as what in our minds is the worse sin than you will be less likely to sin. Right now I don't have time to find the verse, but if I recall correctly the bible states that we as Christian should judge our fellow Christians to a degree that we tell them if they are openly sinning. We live life in the same godly realm they do so we are responsible for them.
Judging others is wrong. All sin is wrong. Jesus is the Savior of the world. John 3:16-21 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
Exactly. I won't ever go to church again. Organized religion is not spiritual; it's diametrically opposed to you finding god, religion wants to tell you what god is. I don't know what god is, I'm not even sure I believe in her. But I damn sure know I'll never make peace with that in a building full of people.
