I'm trying: a stairway to heaven?

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Matthew 5:48. KJV.

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23

What I'm wondering is if "trying to try" is equivalent to trying.

I got one of them concordances. Is the rule that we have to stick to the words of Jesus?

What occurred to me was that "trying" might be rather hard to pin down. How do you know if you are really trying?Authority figure: The problem with you is, you're just not trying.Boy: I know, but I'm trying to try. I just can't try.Is the boy trying?Say you're on the job and you're doing your "best," and yet you know you could have done a little more that day if you had just tried. Are you trying?

Keep this in mind, NWR, the next time you catch me off topic. I'm trying to try to try not to get off topic, but I can't seem to try to try.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 11-10-2005 02:50 PM

And then it continues:

What does this mean? Presumably, it means that with God's help all things are possible. But without God's help?:It is impossible for men--or any rate the rich man--to be saved on his own. It is impossible for the man to be perfect--without God's help."Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that works within you." Who's doing the work here, you or God?

According to the passage quoted above, you are not going to stick the camel through the needle without God's help."Be ye therefore perfect"--with God's help.justification by faith--God does it.
justification by works--we do it.Both views are supportable Biblically.But if by "faith," we mean that a certain doctrine has to be believed in order to be saved, this makes no sense. There is nothing particularly virtuous about believing some doctrine. (in this way, I agree with Jar).Well, it's a little more complicated that that. There is such a thing as intellectual integrity, which I think is a virtue. But integrity means sincerity plus open-mindedness plus the courage to withstand the opinions of others. So if your belief in a doctrine possessed integrity, this would be a possibly saving virtue, but this would be so even if the doctrine turned out to be false. One might be an atheist with integrity.The problem with the "just try" doctrine, however, lies in the vague delineation of what it means to "try." I suppose God knows your heart and so knows if you are really trying or not, but I'm concerned with our knowledge of our own heart. Do we know if we are really trying or not? I'm not sure that we do. In that case we are walking this perpetual tightrope, just as bad as the Calvinists who are searching about for "evidence" of being a member of the Elect. (Am I sincere in my belief? Well, yes. Oh, but am I really sincere? Really truly? Maybe I'm just fooling myself, etc.)I'm trying, but am I really, truly trying?, etc. Maybe I'm just fooling myself.ed: changed subtitleThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 11-10-2005 07:37 PMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 11-10-2005 08:21 PM