quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Another one of my sticking points about Christianity. If someone has had no information about God, they cannot reject God's teaching, so they cannot sin.
This statement is only valid for some branches of Christianity and some definitions of sin. It is not even remotely close to what I believe.
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: It seems to me like he commented on the part of your post he was most interested in.
How do you normally converse?
My last comment only makes sense to even me in light of everything else I said in the post. Typically if I was going to ignore a chunk of post and comment on a part I would use the "quotation" function.
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Sorry to burden you with having to converse with us children then.
I personally fail to see how I am not an adult in character or behavior, but children often do.
For goodness sakes. That is not what I was saying at all. I said the gospel has the same intended effect on people that adulthood has on children.
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posted
Semantics. You can't control which parts of your posts people are interested in talking about. Since he's not the only one who found that sentence strange, maybe it wasn't what you intended to say. Or maybe it was.
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posted
Perhaps I misread you then. It seemed to me that you were claiming that people who don't believe what you do are children and not to be held responsible to the same set of standards that adults like yourself are.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Perhaps I misread you then. It seemed to me that you were claiming that people who don't believe what you do are children and not to be held responsible to the same set of standards that adults like yourself are.
People who do not know about the gospel are not held to the same standards that those who do know about it are.
Just as children are not held to the same standards as adults.
edit: In retrospect I can see that I was not very clear on this point, I made a quick edit. Sorry for the confusion.
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posted
If I remember correctly from my Christian education, the thought process goes something like this:
All people can naturally understand morality. It makes sense to any rational adult that doing harm to others or ones self should be avoided. All the rules provided in the Bible are obvious ones, except the particularities of faith. Nobody could be expected to show reverence to a God he does not know exists, or fast on a particular day he is not aware is considered holy.
To expect someone to abide by rules which they do not know, and at the same time which they could never come to on their own would be nonsensical or foolish. To punish someone for the same would be unjust or wicked. Since God is not nonsensical, foolish, unjust or wicked, it follows that people who do not know the Gospel are only held to standards of morality, and are not required to follow the rules and regulations expected of those who know better.
This all seems to make perfect sense. It WOULD be cruel to punish someone for a rule that they have no way of knowing and no expectation of ever even guessing at.
This starts to seem odd though, when people who do know the rules are told to share these rules with others. True, the Christians don't look at it that way, but to an outsider, I imagine it can look exactly like that. Suddenly they are saddled, against their will, with the responsibility to believe things they have never considered, follow a new list of rules and regulations - many of which may make no sense whatsoever to them - and if they do not, they will suffer for their failure, or at worst, be damned to eternal hell.
If non-Christians are spiritually Children, this would be similar to giving them a mountain of radioactive material. There exists within it the possibility to do great good, but the immediate danger to themselves and others is fantastic.
Worse, they could indeed become adults, and now armed with this powerful matter, could turn it into a weapon. Just think, had I never had so much Christian education, I would not now be making this argument.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: So, you weren't talking about the behavior or maturity of the people involved?
....I don't think so.
Merely pointing out that the gospel to me is a good thing universaly speaking, just like adulthood. Doesn't mean adulthood occurs without people getting mad at it.
edit: Mighty Cow:
quote:This starts to seem odd though, when people who do know the rules are told to share these rules with others. True, the Christians don't look at it that way, but to an outsider, I imagine it can look exactly like that. Suddenly they are saddled, against their will, with the responsibility to believe things they have never considered, follow a new list of rules and regulations - many of which may make no sense whatsoever to them - and if they do not, they will suffer for their failure, or at worst, be damned to eternal hell.
It takes alot more then me just telling them, "God expects you to rest on the Sunday," for them to then be bound to sabbath observance. They have to physically observe the Sabbath, see its effects, and know from God its a commandment before its something worth condemning.
They could be SLIGHTLY faulted for refusing to listen if they dismiss the gospel without good reason. I can think of MANY good reasons.
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posted
Lots of demonstrably good things in the Gospels, too. Going beyond just refraining from harming each other.
And I think there is too much attention paid to rewards and punishments in the hereafter. The Gospel is, for me, about how I should live now and the blessings that are mine now.
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posted
It seems to me that the unknowable stuff, such as the state of the hereafter, is where the Bible really gets going. When it gets right down to it, how much of what's in the Bible is really exclusive? The Jesus stuff, the legal stuff, and the afterlife stuff seems most obvious.
Most of it, anyone should be able to appreciate or figure out on their own. Do good things and don't hurt people: check. Enjoy life: check. Take care of people around you: check. The blessings and how you can should live now seem mostly obvious.
In fact, it seems to me that nobody should need to be taught about God, as it should be self evident. Everybody knows that trees grow from the ground, you need to breathe to live, things fall downward, and so on. These things are clear from observation and living life.
What blessings are there, that anyone cannot appreciate? Certainly children and mentally disabled people can feel God's love, and can participate in a community, and can be cared for and care for others, even if they have no real understanding of the Bible.
It seems a cruel burden to put on anyone, to expose them to damnation when they already have access to nearly all the good things life has to offer. Certainly God doesn't require human intervention to manifest in someone's life.
If someone follows the belief that learning about God and the requirements of the church makes them responsible to follow those teachings, it seems to me horribly irresponsible to do so. Teaching a person about faith and the wages of sin may do them some finite amount of good, but it exposes them to infinite sorrow and suffering! That's a sucker bet if I ever heard one.
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posted
Why should it be exclusive? Certainly Jesus was saying a lot of things that had been said before. Things we often need to hear, nonetheless. Even the love your enemies wasn't entirely new. Radical then as now, but not unheard of.
And I think it is self-evident as well. My bottom-line theology hasn't fundamentally altered since I was a child.
I think that its lack of exclusivity, its commonality with the great teachings of many traditions, makes me more inclined to believe its truth.
And I really wish you weren't so worried about hell. For some of us "hell" is a condition we choose ourselves rather than punishment doled out to us.
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Is it much harder to be an adult then a child? Sure is! Do many adults wish they could be children again? Sure are! I personally enjoy the empowerment that comes with being an adult, and I think life is qualitatively better as an adult compared to when I was a child.
(tangent)
I think it is considerably easier to be an adult than a kid.
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I don't have qualms with allowing God to assist me with his infinite wisdom. [/QB]
You have absolutely no proof that your god has any wisdom at all, much less 'infinite' wisdom, whatever that means. (How you get an infinite amount of something that can't be quantised is beyond me.)
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I've been reading the gospels a lot lately. I hadn't realized how much the contradict each other in terms of sequences of fairly important events. I can definitely see where a Muslim or a Jew could think Christians need a lot of zeal just to stand by their own scriptures. I kind of wish I had my Jehovah's witness friends to tease about it. Well, not really. There were a lot of holes I failed to poke in them that I could have at the time, but I didn't ever get adversarial with them because then I would have been left to my own wits.
I haven't sorted out the spiritual child/adult thing. It's a paradox. I become a child of God by acknowledging him as my father. In exercising this truth I have become, in many respects, free. We must be born again.
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quote:I think it is considerably easier to be an adult than a kid.
I will third that. I understand in theory how being a kid is easier, but that theory does not hold true to my own experiences.
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posted
I guess it depends on whether one's mental and emotional ages are in sync with one's physical and social opportunities.
But maybe the whole concept of spiritual maturation is being taken a bit too literally. Maybe we're like embryonic marsupials, whose growth is not inevitable. Well, certainly mental and emotional growth are like that.
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