Many Christians Lack Responsibility

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1) If our own righteousness is "as filthy rags" and we are expected to "Let Go And Let God", does that imply that we are abdicating our personal responsibility by allowing God to fix things?

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"Let Go And Let God" is not Biblical. 'Work out your faith in fear and trembling' is, though. Christianity is always a partnership, a dynamic, 'interactive' one, and the Christian always has the option to opt out.There is no Christianity until and unless there is realisation and confession that all one's fancied goodness is false and really only self-interest.

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2) If we believe that Satan is alive and well on planet Earth, does that serve as a cop out? In other words, if we say that the world is in a mess due to Original Sin and figure that nothing will ever really improve until Jesus comes back, is that an abdication of our responsibility as members of the human race?

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'Original Sin' is the invention of a cult, another concept not found in the Bible. But it is true that all but Christ commit evil deeds, and need to accept the forgiveness of Christ. Knowing that they have a 'clean slate', they are given the confidence and gratitude to live lives of love for others for the sake of Christ.'How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!' Heb 9:14 NIV'We love because he first loved us.' 1 Jn 4:19 NIVNow if all were to do this (and it is mankind's duty to do so) it would be a very different world indeed. In fact, if just those who celebrate next 'Christmas' were to do as Christ requires from that time, the world would be unrecognisable in 2010. It is not a question of waiting until Jesus returns. Waiting is precisely what will earn his eternal wrath. The world is supposed to be a much better place than it is, and those who do not seek to make it so in Christ's way will regret their failure.

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I would expect those people who have accepted Jesus Christ to actually be empowered to live better than those who do not or have not

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Why would this be expected?

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Because many of us believe that when you accept Jesus Christ you become empowered with the Holy Spirit and it is the Spirit working through you that makes the difference.

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So if a person does not show 'the difference', does it mean that the Holy Spirit has failed?

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No, it usually means that they didn't truly accept the Holy Spirit in the first place.

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That option is hardly applicable to the poster concerned, who wrote:'Many Christians are still very willfully selfish, materialistic, and unwilling to turn the other cheek. What does this say about the influence of the Holy Spirit?'

'I'm well aware that he knows better than that.'Why is 'that' not a valid argument?

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If Angus, a Glaswegian, who puts sugar on his porridge, is proposed as a counter-example to the claim No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge, the ‘No true Scotsman’ fallacy would run as follows:

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(1) Angus puts sugar on his porridge.
(2) No (true) Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
Therefore:
(3) Angus is not a (true) Scotsman.
Therefore:
(4) Angus is not a counter-example to the claim that no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

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This fallacy is a form of circular argument, with an existing belief being assumed to be true in order to dismiss any apparent counter-examples to it. The existing belief thus becomes unfalsifiable.

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There are no doubt in Glasgow and elsewhere many Scotsmen who put sugar on porridge. There are possibly those, even of their own families, who look on this practice with disdain, and who regard it as un-Scottish; but they could not make serious claim that these maverick practitioners are not truly Scottish. There would be documentary evidence to prove their claims foolish, were they to do so.Unless, of course, the perhaps jocular comment that a Scotsman who puts sugar on porridge is not a true Scotsman is taken seriously, as right and valid, but in a subtler way. If certain Scots should refuse to treat another as a true Scot on the basis of eating habits, then for those people, the 'no true Scotsman' rule would be no fallacy. It would be reality, and could lead to disinheritance and ostracism of sugar users.A more likely, and apposite comparison might be that no true Scotsman could belong to a certain clan that had made secret treaties with the English- and that was indeed a claim made, and made vehemently, in past times. But even then, the 'traitors' had birth certificates etc. to prove their claim to Scottishness.There is no legal document that proves anyone a Christian, as there is for nationality or other statuses. So Christian status may indeed be said to be dependent not on documentary evidence, but on behaviour, and this places definition of membership of this faith into the same category as the view that eating behaviour defines a Scotsman, or, more seriously, that loyalty to Scotland defines a Scotsman.In view of the fact that some who call themselves Christians decline fellowship with those describing themselves as Christians whose behaviour is considered to be disloyal to Christianity, the 'no true Scotsman fallacy' would itself appear to be fallacious.The difficulty presented by the original post is that it is claimed that all who call themselves Christians have the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit seems to be only selectively holy, a view that I, at least, have not come across before.

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So someone who describes themselves as Christian and genuinely believes themselves to have accepted Jesus as their saviour, would cease to be Christian if they did something immoral?

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That is not the criterion used by those mentioned. The criterion is more to do with attitude. A person holding the view, for instance, that stealing is acceptable would be deemed to be be unchristian, as would a person who habitually stole, and regarded Christianity wrongly, even if stealing was regarded as immoral by that person.

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If yes, do some of those Christians behave immorally? Yes or no?

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That would depend on one's definition of a Christian. If one defines a Christian as someone who self-identifies as a Christian, then history shows an abundance of the most immoral people as Christian, from the European medieval hierarchy whose behaviour was scandalous enough to stimulate the Reformation, to corrupt educational institutions, to televangelists, or even the Nazi experience, when Nazis supported certain species of people called Christian, while persecuting others called Christian. But one quite ignorant of history, though not of alleged churches, may conclude from personal experience that Christians are among the very worst people alive, and a good many have done exactly that. One could then decide that Christianity is pure invention, invention used by the worst people. But, whether gained from one perspective or another, this view makes the subject of Christianity unlikely as a genuine religion, and barely worth discussion as one such. Most of us are aware, from wider reading and from social contacts, that the infamies of history and the locally objectionable do not represent the whole truth about Christianity, which is why it is generally treated as a genuine religion.One may at the opposite extreme suppose that Christianity, though widely claimed as personal belief, is rarely actually present, if present at all. This would be on the basis that 'handsome is as handsome does', and that Christianity rightly claims to produce that which is handsome; and those many who claim to follow the 'theory', but do not produce desirable results, have not actually applied the theory.The original poster seems to have squared the circle by supposing that all who self-identify as Christians are Christians, and thus of legitimate religion, even holy, irrespective of their behaviour, which would make discussion (if not language itself) rather pointless, if morality as a product of belief counts for anything.

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I have no idea what you're talking about.

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Any reader who finds anything hard to understand is welcome to ask for assistance.

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Because many of us believe that when you accept Jesus Christ you become empowered with the Holy Spirit and it is the Spirit working through you that makes the difference.

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So if a person does not show 'the difference', does it mean that the Holy Spirit has failed?And if a person with the Holy Spirit fails to answer a question, is that because the Holy Spirit doesn't know what He's talking about, or because He didn't notice the question?

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Because many of us believe that when you accept Jesus Christ you become empowered with the Holy Spirit and it is the Spirit working through you that makes the difference.

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So if a person does not show 'the difference', does it mean that the Holy Spirit has failed?And if a person with the Holy Spirit fails to answer a question, is that because the Holy Spirit doesn't know what He's talking about, or because He didn't notice the question?