Jesus and his sacrifice is Satan’s test of man’s morality.

Sigh. I too am sorry I tried to explain things to YOU. I make that mistake a lot. Oh well.You know what's really odd is that for two millennia Christianity has attracted followers because of its revolutionary gentleness and peaceableness, so well known as to be common knowledge until this recent generation decided to accuse it of the opposite. Funny so many were "broken" by it, according to you, but it's quite odd that it had a completely different reputation until recently. Including the absolutely lovely and merciful God of the Old Testament. Yes.Strange.Oh well.Come soon Lord. I'm not the only one of Yours who is stressed over trying to stick it out any longer.

You aren't the martyr here Faith.You are the one supporting the killing.

Sigh.The Accuser of the Brethren is really hard at work these days.Moral Indignation is a powerful weapon, even without a shred of justification, maybe stronger for its lack of justification. Political Correctness is just another version of the same attitude. Good for evil, evil for good. Come soon Lord.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Now you know that is simply not true Faith and just another example of Christian dishonesty and propaganda. Christianity was primarily spread by the sword and secondarily spread by power and wealth. Gentleness and peacefulness played little or no part in the growth of Christianity in anything but the mind of the dishonest.

During the Crusades you could make a case for your claim. But not in the first three centuries, when Christians were powerless, poor, and persecuted. Yet Christianity grew very rapidly during this time. "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church."

Apparently the only case you'd recognize would be capitulation. I believe the answer that I regard the Bible as God's word provides all the valid points there could possibly be. If you won't accept that as a "great case" there's nothing I could possibly say that you would accept. It's the essential difference between our points of view. The Bible as God's word is something unbelievers can't entertain seriously I suppose. I'm not entirely sure why not since it should be possible to apply normal imagination to the claim without having to agree with it. Well, you are consistent in that of course, but it seems to me it should be obvious that this is the source of all the "frustration" in those "desperate" attempts to get me "to come to terms with reality." I did spend about forty-five years in that "reality" already, before recognizing the truth of Christianity, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone from insisting with all the certainty of their narrow frame of reference that I return to what I rejected as false. "In the same way" is the problem. I rejected all other religions when I came to realize that the Bible is the truth. I also think the Bible is so patently obviously the truth and the others so patently obviously a bunch of fabrications it's astonishing to me that anyone can believe them. Even you with all the advantage you had in a believing family, and some training in theology, can't even seem to make such distinctions. That's a very common but superficial assessment, the usual false moral equivalence. There are all sorts of "religions" that are "as important" to some people without even qualifying as a religion. There are followers of Heinlein for instance who quote just about nobody else. Or Ayn Rand. Some Marxists have the same zealous commitment. Or what about our gnostic member who originated this thread? Perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to find that you yourself have allegiances with that degree of commitment.Why is it that a Christian is never given the credit for having come to a recognition, an understanding, as the basis for belief? A RATIONAL understanding. You'd think forty-five years without God, steeped in all the assumptions of atheism, secularism, modernism and postmodernism, ought to give me some credibility as competent to make a rational assessment. But no, alas, no, make such an assessment and you become some other kind of creature entirely that is incomprehensible to those who remain in the assumptions of "reality" so-called. It's just incomprehensible to me that you wouldn't know that if the Bible is God's word there is no argument that could possibly be formulated against it. You reduce my frame of reference to your particular moral objection to it and castigate me for my logical position that puts God's sovereignty above all such objections. You seem unable to grasp the logical context. You actually think that any particular objection could be sufficient to determine that the Bible is NOT God's word? If it's God's word there are reasonable explanations for any objection you can come up with. I've given some already but you have a padlock on your mind so that you continue to put your objections above God. There's no getting through such a barrier unless God intervenes. From my point of view I was freed from a prison of lies and confusions when I became a believer. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Hi Faith,Thank you for the explanation, and I appreciate the attempt at compliance, but that brings us to something else that has been mentioned before: providing quotes of what you're replying to. If your message had quoted that portion of Aussie's message about firewood I might have understood that all of your reply applied to the gathering of firewood, but Aussie's Message 239 included a couple long paragraphs and a couple different subtopics, and so did your Message 58.One thing that might be discouraging you from quoting, and something also mentioned before, is that your style of quoting is comparatively labor intensive. If you just put a message in peek mode you can copy an entire section of nested quotes and paste it into a [qs] section with no effort. Your current approach requires that you separate all the quotes from different people into their own new [qs] sections, which is signficantly more work, and it is also confusing since your style inverts all the indentation from the original.Just so I'm clear, if there were a message from someone named Petrov that contained this: When quoted in another message it should look like this. Notice that the indentation and quoting precisely follows the original: But when you quote it it comes out looking like this, indented completely backwards to the original, which must require much additional effort: So if you just put a message in peek mode and copy the text, quoting should become much easier.--Percy

Okay, Faith. "If' the Bible is God's word. In my particular field, I'm responsible for educating adult students from all over the world. I've been doing this for almost a decade and have been involved in the training of a couple thousand students, from around 50 or 60 countries. Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, you name it. On more than one occasion, although I try to avoid it, students have approached me and talked about their religious views. Very, very beautiful and sincere Muslims have spoken to me about being guided by God, and it reminded me so much of beautiful, sincere Christians being led by the Lord.I'll never forget talking to a young, sincere Hindu from India. He was telling me about his many Gods. His eyes were shining, and his face was bright and smiling as he told me several times, "They're real Rob, they are so real!" All I could do was smile back at him as I recognized the familiar Joy of the Lord on his face. It was really the Joy of the Lord...just a different Lord than yours.It doesn't occur to these people that Jesus is the Son of God on the Throne of the Universe, just like you never think to take their views seriously. And you all have the same reasons to believe...ancient text telling fantastical stories and an inner peace that makes you "Just know" that your personal God is the only true one. All of you have "Evidences" that prove to you that your religion is true. To an outside observer, the evidence is flimsy at best. You are just like everybody else. Your religion only seems special to you because it is yours. Have a freaking heart, Faith. Please do not refer to the slaughter of children and babies as "My particular moral objection." That is heartless and cold beyond comprehension.Can I remind you that you are using ancient religious texts in an attempt to justify the slaughter of innocent children! You are saying publicly and repeatedly that it is sometimes alright to hack wide-eyed and screaming children to death with long, sharp knives.ISIS also uses ancient religious texts to justify the killing of children, and they also say it publicly. Can you really see no resemblance?I do not believe for a second you would ever intentionally hurt anyone, but you are consenting to it, and calling it good. The casual brutality of your words has just rocked me back on my heels.

But don't you see the huge difference between these cases? ISIS promotes using their ancient text as a model for current-day behavior. They promote murder, killing, and genocide today.The biblical case is very different. I do not see Faith arguing for present-day genocide. I know of no orthodox Christian group which argues for such a thing. The commands for genocide were restricted to a particular time, place, and situation, and are not normative for today.

How killing babies was ever good?

You can make that distinction, but however accurate, you totally miss the point, which is that according to Faith, we should not even question the morality of the ancient killing.And of course Faith judges not just ISIS, but all Muslims on the basis of what she thinks is in the Koran which kinda removes even the distinction you are trying to make here.

I see people from two religions currently justifying the murder of children. ISIS is saying that it's good today and Faith is saying it was good not all that long ago when you think about it. Very little difference, the difference of a few years. What difference does the passage of time make when you are killing children? In both cases a child has died. Of course not, our secular governments de-fanged the dominant religion of the West a long time ago. We don't let Christians persecute anymore. Events like the Salem Witch Trials left a bad taste in our mouth, so we stopped silly Christians from hurting people who were different from them.Unfortunately further East the governments have been unable to bridle the power of the religious fanatics and so ISIS can do what it does. Dude. Please don't YOU start defending genocide and the slaughter of children like Faith does. When is it EVER the right time, place and situation for genocide? If you had been in that time, place and situation, would you kill children? Faith refused to answer.

If you were Abraham, and God told you to sacrifice your only son on top of a mountain, would you obey God or would you refuse?

Christianity has gone through a lot of ups and downs. It's incontestable that it's beginnings were very meek, however, once Constantine came to power was the beginning of Christianity turning rather ugly (Dark Ages, Inquisition, The Crusades, etc). One those days came to a close, there have been many sects within Christianity that have tried to embody the original spirit of Jesus' overall ethos.In today's time, at least in America, there has been a coalescing of Americana militarism and Christianity that is blurring the lines. This brand of Christianity is a lot like the Hasmoneans which found that warring patriotism was God's highest calling. This
flies in the face of Jesus' teachings.

Ummm.... No. I would refuse. What about you?