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Member (Idle past 5981 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Who's More Moral? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5877 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
Derash... yeah that was it...
I understand completely PD. Purpledawn:It is a shame you don't feel a pure heart is possible. Mt 5:8"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. But you are taking one verse out of the whole context. The pure in heart are those who are honest. Even about their impurity. And that is the only thing that makes us bend our knee. I don't mind you calling my interpretation a sermon and yours reality. I won't knock you for prophecying also. But I will call it false. Not by my own standards, because I have no such rights, but by God's Word. Now let's put that verse into perspective... Who is pure in heart? Mr 10:18"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone. Lu 18:19 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone. Ro 3:11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God That is very interesting to me.... The only way to find God is for Him to reveal Himself. And when He does we crucify Him. Ps 14:3 All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. So when we take all of these verses into a larger picture and not pick and choose that which does not threaten us, what is the picture that emerges? How do we reconcile Mt 5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God? It is very easy... you take His words in context. Let's look at His whole sermon in Mt 5 (if a sermon doesn't offend you...) Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Notice that the poor in spirit, not the rich and confident are blessed. Notice that the downtrodden and sad are rich because they recognize their depravity. but those who own their goodness and are strong. those who think they are good (God), are too wealthy to lower themselves and bend their knee to He who actually owned Goodness because he is God. Do you recognize Him? No... for He is your enemy. Your competitor... And Paul speaking to Christians reminded them: Col 1:21Once you were alienated from God and were His enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. Ro 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. Jas 4:4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. The pure heart is the repentant heart PD... it is justified not by works, but by faith in the purity of God. God will run to us if we just be honest about that. He will show Himself. Luke 15:18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' 20 So he got up and went to his father. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. 21 "The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' 22 "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate. But if we hold our 'good name' among those of the world in relative terms, at the expense of 'real' incarnate and absolute goodness Himself... then we must trample His name to keep ourselves lifted high. Only in recognition of sin can we become pure. For without that, there is no purity in us. It is not our sin that sends us to hell, nor God's will. But our sesire to remain hidden behind fig leaves, so that no-one will know what it is we have done. It is a charade... a pretend goodness, that leaves no room for going back and correcting mistaken basics. It is condemnation to the status quo... Being anti-God, or anti-truth is not just some anti-christ figure who will come, so much as it is you and me before we are reborn from the attitude and spirit of opposition and rebellion. 2Th 2:4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5877 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
Ringo:
This thread isn't about your preferences. It's about how your morality performs, and possibly about how to improve that performance. Performance? Based on what assumed means, and what assumed ends Ringo? what are you assuming needs to be accomplished?And what are the motives for believing that??? You try to seperate that which inseperable. You create a false dichotomy with smoke and mirrors. Do you do it on purpose, or are you a blind man? You cannot seperate the football field from the land that transcends it. And you cannot seperate the land from the planet, or the planet from the sun etc... No Kansas = no field... What I wonder about is... what is more evil?The man who knows admits what his ends and means truely are? Or the one who pretends not to hear and see his own desperate and wicked soul? The only reason I even continue this charade, is because I believe you are in some way ignorant. If not you, perhaps Kuresu, or Pd, or whoever. I have a hard time believing that any man is overtly and consciously evil and intentionally deceptive... because God has given light to every man. you all know what is right. No one has to tell you. And even if you don't expect it from yourself, you expect it from others. And such realitites unmask the most clever hypocrite. Maybe you are angry because I am not better at my own duplicity. Maybe I'm not that smart. Well, then I thank God for not giving me any more brains or capacity than I have. Because I was barely able to give it all up. Had I actually 'been somebody' in this sick world, I might have never seen my own blindness. Total psychopaths may be more common today, but I do not believe in them. I refuse to accept their existence. I will operate as though they do care, lest I stop caring myself. There is Aldous Huxley to consider, even if PD wishes there was not. I don't need your confession in order to know your real intent.
"I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning--the Christian meaning, they insisted--of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever." (Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, 1937) I'll tell you that the quote above is not more moral simply because of it's frankness. Admitting motive with the intent of continuing to do so is not repentance. It's not an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, it is an acknowledgement of not really caring which you have also done when pressed to the limit.
We have laboured to overcome that sense of shrinking, that desire to conceal, which either Nature herself of the tradition of almost all mankind has attached to cowardice, unchastity, falsehood, and envy. We are told to 'get things out into the open', not for the sake of self-humiliation, but on the grounds that these 'things' are very natural and we need not be ashamed of them. (C.S. Lewis ' The Problem of Pain / Chapter 4 Human Wickedness / pgs 48-50) But unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame, must be the only true one; and even Pagan society has usually recognised 'shamelessness' as the nadir of the soul. In trying to extirpate shame we have broken down one of the ramparts of the human spirit, madly exulting in the work as the Trajans exulted when they broke their walls and pulled the Horse into Troy. I do not know that there is anything to be done but to set about the rebuilding as soon as we can. It is mad work to remove hypocrisy by removing the temptation to hypocrcrisy: the 'frankness' of people sunk below shame is a very cheap frankness." Even secular psychologists agree in rare moments of honesty, much to your disadvantage Ringo:
"For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free in this sense, that is, to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost . In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics, themselves, we find ourselves asking: Who am I, what is my deepest destiny, what does living mean?" (Hobart Mowrer, "Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils," American Psychologist, 15 (1960): 301-304) This is a joke... It is not even debatable. What drives us to Christ is not love, but surrender brought about by the inescapable pain of reality encroaching. It is God finding us, and us finally (like Jacob) admitting who we really are. Someone wrote: "Intense is the agony, when the eye begins to see, when the ear begins to hear, when the pulse begins to pound; when the soul feels it's flesh... and when the flesh feels it's chains." And only one man holds the keys to unbind us.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Rob writes: what are you assuming needs to be accomplished? I am assuming nothing. Need is irrelevant. The performance of a morality system depends only on what is perceived as "good". So, do you have anything at all to say about the topic? Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation. Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5981 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
Ok, gotta flag you down again!
Btw, all the print on my page is coming up tiny, anyone else?
Ringo writes: So, do you have anything at all to say about the topic It is abundantly clear that Rob feels a God-based morality is superior. Since this is what I asked in the OP, I suppose it is quite on topic.
I am assuming nothing. Need is irrelevant. The performance of a morality system depends only on what is perceived as "good Now, if anyone can even begin to question 'who's more moral?' or 'performance', it would be relevent to find out what the goal is. Otherwise, we have my morality being better for me, yours for you, Ross Perot's for him, and Danny Bonaduce's for him. Then we have a Chinese morality, and a bronze-age morality, one for show-biz and one for cowgirls. Personal morality is good, but without some sort of industry performance standards, you are comparing preferences. I can debate for hours the physical attractions of the family husband collection. But in order to find the best husband for me, I have to find out how he performs not only FOR ME, but in way of what needs to be done in reality. What needs to be done for simple survival. There's that word again. So far, I see that religion can be a short-cut to the goal, or a dead-end.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
I think you have accidently clicked ctrl (or something) and rolled the scroll wheel. Mine is reassigned so that doesn't happen to me but I've done it before.
There is some feature to shrink and enlarge text but I've only ever accidently stumbled over it.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
anastasia writes: Btw, all the print on my page is coming up tiny, anyone else? Everything normal here. Say three hail Marys and call me in the morning.
It is abundantly clear that Rob feels a God-based morality is superior. Since this is what I asked in the OP, I suppose it is quite on topic. I don't see how "Opinion, Preach, Preach, Preach" addresses the topic.
Otherwise, we have my morality being better for me, yours for you, Ross Perot's for him, and Danny Bonaduce's for him. Then we have a Chinese morality, and a bronze-age morality, one for show-biz and one for cowgirls. Exactly.
Personal morality is good, but without some sort of industry performance standards, you are comparing preferences. It's not about preferences at all. It's about how one's performance is perceived by one's peers. There are no standards because every situation requires a different performance. I can body-check in a hockey game but not in a cafeteria line.
But in order to find the best husband for me, I have to find out how he performs not only FOR ME, but in way of what needs to be done in reality. That's what I'm saying. It's not about your preference and it's not about an iron-clad set of standards. It's about how he performs in real-life situations. Since you can't always anticipate the goals, your expectations have to be flexible. Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation. Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC
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ICANT Member Posts: 6769 From: SSC Joined: Member Rating: 1.6 |
Rob writes: Who is pure in heart? purpledawn msg71 writes: It is a shame you don't feel a pure heart is possible. I would need to know what you are refering to when you say heart. But I just checked and that muscle in my chest that pumps blood through the rest of the body was still there and operating properly. So if you mean a person can have a pure body I would agree as I believe Enoch, Elisha and Jesus qualify. The first two because God took them to heaven without dying and the second because he died so I could have a perfect body someday. If you are refering to the soul, anyone can have one by receiving Jesus Christ as their saviour. If you are talking about the MIND that is a long way off. This is the part that causes us to do the moral things we are talking about we analyze information and make choices as to what we think is good and bad. As I have said I have Atheist friends, who would give me the shirt off their back if I needed it or anything else they had and the feeling is mutual. I have so called Christian friends that are the most self centered inconsiderate people on the face of the earth. I also have Christian friends that I would not want to be without as I know they would be a friend indeed. So Atheist or so called Christian who is the most moral? I would have to say that it depends on the person and the values they have chosen to live their life by. Edited by ICANT, : wrong word substituted on for of
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5981 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
NosyNed writes: There is some feature to shrink and enlarge text but I've only ever accidently stumbled over Thanks Ned. I noticed a few things at once but I believe they are all related. Didn't know on who's end it was, and the folks in chat sometimes play tricks. (I think) Anyway, I blame the cat.
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5877 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
So Atheist or so called Christian who is the most moral? I would have to say that it depends on the person and the values they have chosen to live their life by. I agree! Ravi Zacharius put it this way to a skeptic when answering his question:
No Christian can say an atheist cannot be good. He can only point out that as an atheist, there is no rationally compelling reason to be good. (paraphrased from Ravi Live at the Roxy / Audio CD) The fact is, if we simply look at history, what do we see? Who is it that embodies the moral character better than anyone else? Was it not Pilot who said of Jesus, "I find no fault in this man' The thief on the cross beside Him said: "41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong." 42 Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 43 Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23) There is your pureness of heart. It is finally admitting who Christ is, and who we are in spite of the shame, rather than pretending that we have been wrongly persecuted.
The persecution complex, and the insistance of innocence given (in utter denial) by those who advocate 'wrongheaded lifestyles' is psychotic intellectually, and demonic spiritually. It matters not whether it is in defense of a simple lie, or in defense of murder and hatred. What man would the atheists hold up as a pillor of virtue? Perhaps Joseph Stalin, who was coarse and resistant to the bitter end. And as Svetlana Stalin (Joseph's daughter) told Malcomb Muggeridge, "The last thing my father did, was after acting like he was warding off wolves, he half sat up in bed, clinched his fist toward the heavens, and then died." (paraphrased) Some folks will never admit that their name is Jacob. And as such never see who they really are, and cannot see God. Edited by Rob, : No reason given.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3485 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
Again a lot of words to show that I am correct in saying that a pure heart is possible.
Unfortunately nothing on topic I can continue to address. "Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz
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ICANT Member Posts: 6769 From: SSC Joined: Member Rating: 1.6 |
Ringo writes: And Jesus agreed. Whether or not you get to heaven depends on your performance in this world: Ringo these are scriptures you quote, can you be specific and point out the one or ones that say you have to do any of these things to get to heaven. I included the preceding 3 verses for clarification of what was being said.
quote: quote: I do not see where these verses have anything to do with doing good things in order to go to heaven. He was just telling His sheep things that they did not even realize they had done.
quote: This verse says if you believe your are not condemned, if you do not you are condemned already.
quote: These verse's say you are saved by grace not by your works. So you saying that Christians are doing good works to get to heaven is a misrepresentation of the facts. I do good works because I choose to do them, because it is the right thing to do. I hope you do the same. Now I will agree that there are many religions that do teach that you have to do good works to go to heaven.
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5877 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
It's your story PD. You can tell it like you want...
Preach it sister! http://EvC Forum: Who's More Moral? -->EvC Forum: Who's More Moral?
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5981 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
Ringo writes: I don't see how "Opinion, Preach, Preach, Preach" addresses the topic Well, {Rob if you are reading this too} it's not that I mind a few choice quotes...or verses or what have you. But I do find that I respond less and less to Rob because one, the over-preaching obfuscates whatever point that WAS on topic...and well, he never responds to me anyway.
It's not about preferences at all. It's about how one's performance is perceived by one's peers. There are no standards because every situation requires a different performance. I can body-check in a hockey game but not in a cafeteria We agree that morality must be flexible. I think anyone with half a brain and some reading comprehension would have to agree as well. We agree that there are different accepted standards in ice hockey and elsewhere, and even morals in the hockey game. Some checks are good, some bad. Some are gray area where only the player knows if he meant to get the other guy in the ER. But these peers that you speak of have no business judging if there is no 'real' standard to morality. If I judge my sister's men there must be a standard 'real' thing which is desirable for men to have. There are a few...care for offspring, responsibility, dependability. What I want to ask is whether you see morality as a preference for football over hockey, or something made up of those things which will be vital till kingdom come? Actually I am sure I don't need to ask you this exactly, but peer review is just not something that I find all that valuable. Hm. Who are our peers? Those in our church? Those in our neighborhood? Those who are in society in general? This gets into critical thinking. My 'peers' may agree with me, but that doesn't mean I am behaving morally. So you see there needs to be a real standard of morality.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5981 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
ICANT writes: Now I will agree that there are many religions that do teach that you have to do good works to go to heaven Do you have to be moral to get to heaven? If yes, then how much of morality is 'faith in Jesus'? I contend that you most certainly have to be moral to get to heaven, and that faith without works is no faith at all. You know this, it's in the Bible. NOne of us have excuse for no works. You wouldn't dream of no works. Therefore you know that they are needed. Not just wanted.
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DrJones* Member Posts: 2290 From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
all the print on my page is coming up tiny
If you're using IE go to:View->Text size-> medium (or whatever) In IE 7 there is a zoom option on the lower right hand corner of the window as well. Just a monkey in a long line of kings. If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! *not an actual doctor
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