But you're asking people who are Christians...and then disagreeing with their answers. That doesn't seem like earnest questioning to me.
I don’t disagree with you but I think at this point we need to break the term redemption down a bit and look at some finer points. I personally don’t think I know anyone who became a Christian primarily so they would go to heaven in the next life. They either became Christians because they grew up in a family where they were taught and came to understand who God is, and primarily I would say that they came to understand that God is love, or they became Christians through a pursuit of truth, and often that involved some crisis in their lives where they came to understand that the logic of the world didn’t answer the questions and problems they were dealing with, and that there was a spiritual reality to our lives as well. So I guess I would say that those situations are more about redemption in this life first and foremost. I can’t answer for God on this, but using this example I’m sure you’d prefer that your children choose to love you of their own free will and not just because you’ve force them to, if you could do such a thing. This raises the question of whether or not God has love for those who don’t choose to love him, and I believe he does, but even if he does what are the consequences of that free will choice? I’m no expert in this area but I think that separation from God is hell in itself, whether it’s in not having the understanding/enlightenment and the power, or access to the power, to deal with the crises I think we all face that go beyond worldly logic and understanding, or whether it’s just the emptiness and incompleteness that some speak of. I think hell may well be something that people choose for themselves, just as children sometimes rebel and choose a living hell for themselves in this world. I think I’m really steering away from the idea that there is an innate goodness in “Christianity”, and saying instead that there is an innate goodness in Christ, that God is goodness. What you say about Christians is absolutely true. There is nary a one of us who is Good with a capital G, not me, or Max, or Mother Teresa. No Christian is perfect, and not everyone who calls themselves a Christian is a Christian. But, when you see someone who is expressing what you can see is that innate goodness then I suggest that you ask them about it. Buy them a coffee and ask them where the drive to live that way comes from, and I’ll bet you that what most will say will be about living out of a love that lives within them that comes from their relationship with God. Don’t settle for my meagre generalization, though. The individuals actual stories are so much better and deeper and more meaningful. Seeking God is a personal, internal, journey and one that you have to be genuinely motivated for your own reasons to do. Before I became a Christian if someone would have come up to me and said, “repent or you will burn in the fires of hell,” or some equivalent line, I could have, and probably would have, blown him off in a heartbeat. I might possibly have spontaneously laughed in his face. But, as you have noted, when you see real goodness living in people and coming out of them in some of the things they do and they way they live their lives, then that catches your attention. It seems so different and foreign. You might tell yourself, “some people are just like that,” but if you talk to them usually you’ll find that that guy, or girl, wasn’t always like that. What you see is the result of an internal change. It may have happened to them at a very young age, sometimes so young they may not remember being any other way, or it could have happened to them a very old age, in which case they will have before and after memories, although the change itself can happen in different ways, but that change is what the original meaning of being “born again” refers to. I should also add that that person won’t show that all the time. Again, no one is perfect. When you sit down with that person and have a coffee with them and talk about what motivates them I have no doubt that you will hear some very inspiring things, but you will also hear them say some things you think are not quite right, or perhaps way off. None of us is a perfect representation of God. We are all on our own journey and we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and it’s your responsibility to sort the good from the bad and use the good as input for your own journey. This is also where Christian community comes in. Christians get together and learn from, and are inspired by, each others’ strengths, and help and support each other through their struggles and weaknesses, so it’s an individual journey, but we are to help each other in our individual journeys, if that makes sense. Getting back closer to your question, I think fear and guilt can be a part of this process, but they have to be your genuine feelings to motivate you to dig into their deeper meanings. Unfortunately fear and guilt have also long been used as tools by some people to manipulate and control other people, so you have to differentiate between the two. Is someone trying to make you feel guilty and/or fearful in order to manipulate you, or is something going on in your life that is revealing your own feelings of guilt, or fear, or emptiness, and thereby giving you signs that there is something here that maybe you should be looking into and exploring in deeper way? Christians generally are very happy to share their own beliefs and experiences with others, for your consideration in your own personal journey, because we feel that, even though we can’t claim to understand all aspects of it fully, the core of what we’ve discovered is true what’s happened to us as a result of discovering this is by far the most important thing that’s happened in our lives, and we want to “share the good news”, as the saying goes. But also keep in mind that where you have the coming together of groups of people, including in churches, there is an opportunity for some to manipulate and control that group to advance their own personal wealth and power. The most notorious examples of this in the church are perhaps the creation of indulgences to support the lifestyle of some of the Renaissance Popes, but there are many, many, many others over the years and many, many, many today as well. So you, the observer, have to discern which is which and separate the two, because you will encounter them both perhaps on a daily basis.
i love gandhi's quote, "i like your christ, but not your christians. your christians are so unlike your christ." contemporary christianity paints such a terrible picture of jesus. jesus was radical, loving, tolerant. the church is so different. it's really sad. imo, the evangelical church is not an accurate representation of jesus, and its sad when they masquerade as one.
With all due respect the answers I'm getting seem to contradict other things I've heard and part of why I'm asking the questions is to understand the contradictions. As I said before though these sorts of questions may never be answered rationally. That's not a criticism that's just the nature of the topic.
(thought it might be relevant to restore and reiterate the status of the Bible, as we know it, as an historical document)
man the way the church has evolved...i have no idea. i usually don't get much from going to church except anger and confusion. i go for the corporate worship.
i get annoyed when people equate that fat dude to Buddha. But that's cool. It's cause people don't know. Am I jesus fearing? Do i have a reason to be? Does he have a knife near my throat? I got no problems with jesus. What is there to fear?
man i always find a church i think is different, and then they push their political platform on me. i would really like to visit ecclesia in houston over the christmas holidays. do you know anything about that church? someone said they had heard it was a "different" kind of church, but I haven't heard anything more.
Dude, Amen with all of what you said there. You're definitely one with lots of wisdom and knowledge of Christ. God bless you man.
ecclesia was exactly what i was thinking. an old college buddy of mine, chris seay, is lead pastor and started the church. what little i know of you from this board leads me to believe you would love it. you absolutely need to check it out and let me know what you think!
I think the most interesting thing that you say here is "where they came to understand that the logic of the world didn’t answer the questions and problems they were dealing with, and that there was a spiritual reality to our lives as well." which I think gets to the heart of why we need religion in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong here but I think what you're saying is the act of faith is redemption already in the here and now versus the metaphysical concept of Heaven. I think I understand what you’re saying in terms of Hell being a self-imposed position of the individual. That through the rejection of God an individual is then in a Hell like mentality in the here and now and the question of whether or not Hell, or Heaven, exist isn’t as important. That actually would be closer to a Buddhist understanding of the concept of suffering as it is a product of one’s own mentality. The question I have though is about the nature of God. Is that if God is all powerful, all knowing and all loving then God knows already if we will reject or accept him so our free will is irrelevant to his love. God already knows what choice we will make so shouldn’t an all loving God love regardless of that choice? I apologize if you, MadMax or other Christians find this as challenging or annoying and I don’t expect you to answer on behalf of God. I’m trying to understand from a Christian perspective how does the free choice of belief relate to the idea of an all powerful, all knowing and all loving God. Again this may be a question that can never be answered fully. Understand and can appreciate that you can’t generalize how people come to Christianity. My question might have more to do with how do you engage in prosetlyzation on a mass scale and probably has more to do with how a church would systematically get the message out rather than going through individuals. I agree that everything should be judged with a critical eye and religion most of all. As I’ve often said faith isn’t rational but at the same time faith isn’t totally divorced from rationality. Why does one choose one religion versus another often involves a mixture of things both rational and irrational. I think its an excellent and fair point that Christians are all different but the only way to understand why one should or should not be a Christian is to look at it on the individual level but that applies to people in all religions. At the same time though Christianity is an organized and doctrinal religion. So perhaps its my own intellectual curiosity in politics and philosophy to question and debate the political (in terms of understand mass movements of people and not just in the narrow Religious Right of the US) and philosophical doctrine. Again I want to stress that I’m not doing this with an agenda to discredit or defame Christianity. I can understand how my questions and responses could be considered as such and if so I apologize for any misunderstanding.
As a person coming from the east, and have loon been under the infulence of confunism, daoism, and buddhism, my understanding of Bible is that it surely has a great, very deep philosophy within though I am still not sure a personal God truely exist. To become a christian is learning to be thankful to the creator for this beautiful world, and to view life as a part of a long journey not just a one-way ticket to totally death, so that believers won't be too shortsighted and think money, power, sex or other worldly things are what we should spend whole life go after instead of becoming a righteous person with a heart full of love. IMO, to fear God is certainly not what a christian should do. God is all loving, even if you made mistakes, you should fell guilty and ashamed because you let him down, but not afraid of his punishment. And I also believe God doesn't give punishment at all. People bring punishment to themselves as a result of their own behaviors. It's the Karma which I do believe. All things come back. In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. And heaven and hell exist in people's mind. Living happy and peacefully is living in heaven, otherwise in hell. God wants to help you get to heaven by loving other people, he doesn't send people to hell, people drive themselves there if they are too selfish. To give people the free will to choose is a sign of God's holy truely great love. It's just like a father wants his son to live a good and healthy life but he will not be a control freak and train his son to be a robot without independent thinking and choice-making. To appreciate his efforts, to willingly embrace him, not just to obey his law, is what God expects the best of from human. In one word, Chrisitanity is all about LOVE. There should be no place for fear. Just my approach to the Bible from a easten background, should be partly right partly wrong, thanks for your patience
I could be wrong I could be right I could be wrong I could be wrong I could be right I could be black I could be white I could be right I could be wrong I could be white I could be black Your time has come Your second skin The cost so high The gain so low Walk through the valley The written word is a lie May the road rise with you May the road rise with you May the road rise with you I could be wrong I could be right I could be wrong I could be right I could be wrong I could be right I could be wrong I could be right could be black I could be white I could be right I could be wrong I could be black I could be white They put a hot wire to my head Cos of the things I did and said They made these feelings go away Model citizen in every way May the road rise with you May the road rise with you May the road rise with you Anger is an energy Anger is an energy Anger is an energy May the road rise with you May the road rise with you May the road rise with you Anger is an energy Anger is an energy Anger is an energy I could be wrong I could be right I could be wrong I could be right I could be wrong I could be right I could be black I could be white I could be right I could be wrong I could be black I could be white Your time has come your second skin Cost so high the gain so low Walk through the valley The written word is a lie May the road rise with you May the road rise with you May the road rise with you I could be wrong I could be right I could be wrong They put a hot wire to my head Cos of the things I did and said They made these feelings go away A model citizen in every way Your time has come your second skin Cost so high the gain so low May the road rise with you May the road rise with you May the road rise with you Anger is an energy Anger is an energy Anger is an energy Anger is an energy Anger is an energy (repeat)
