The Tension of Faith

Yes, we know you think Christians should be able to choose which secular laws they follow. Matthew 5:39. Yes, this is what you believe on faith. My views of sin are a combination of outside influences and what I feel inside. If God is love and permeates the universe, then since sin is in the universe, obviously God can coexist with sin. Since God is obviously coexisting with sin, it cannot be the reason for His judgments against sin. This is what you believe on faith. Thanks for your concern. I'm fine. If repenting means hating I don't want any part of it. You don't seem to realize what a horrible advertisement for Christianity you are. Politicians of integrity don't seek to lock up their political opponents. I know that living a Godly life means loving your fellow man. Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World is available as an audiobook from OverDrive, which works through your local library and is free - click the link that starts this sentence.--Percy

Years of study is not the yardstick. Many have spent many more years than you studying views different from your own. By your yardstick they don't have to consider your views, either.But faith isn't about intolerance. True faith should make us more tolerant, not less. Being secure in your on faith means wishing other people the best in finding their own path to God, rather than coercing them into accepting your God. You interpret God's revelation in the Bible one way, others interpret it another, yet others don't believe the Bible is God's revelation at all. Everyone has to find the views that work best for them. True faith is much more than just following a set of rules someone else provides about what to believe. Evangelicalism doesn't have all the characteristics of a cult, but it has plenty. Beliefs are exalted above the beliefs of all other groups. Questioning and doubt are discouraged. There's a great deal of detail about what to believe. An us versus them attitude is encouraged. There's a brainwashed quality to believers. Yours is not the only path to God. You keep setting yourself up as God. I grant that Phat's beliefs sometimes give the impression of having a kind of flaccid quality, but it seems to me that he's struggling with conflicts between what be believes, what he thinks he should believe, and who he is. My own personal feedback to him would be that the Christian God is no more real than Zeus or Thor, but I don't think that's what he feels inside, and I don't think it would work for him. The real end days are billions of years off. I think most people see precisely the opposite. Evangelicals seem unwilling to compromise or be accepting enough of other views to sell wedding cakes to anyone. Matthew 7:1.--Percy

Well, let's be clear about it. I don't just deny sin, deny the Fall, deny Hell, deny God, etc. I don't believe much of anything you believe. I particularly don't believe in telling other people what to believe.And I especially don't think many reading this thread would see your judgmental theology as possessing much love. Your religion casts shadows of The Handmaid's Tale.--Percy

Ah, I see, you weren't being judgmental when you said we'll be sorry on judgment day. You weren't being judgmental when you said gays should be discriminated against. You weren't being judgmental when you called Islam a murderous religion. Well, thank God for that! I guess it's safe to talk about my molestation of little girls, my inappropriate office banter, and my jaywalking. Yes, and we all know what happens when a nation incurs God's wrath, especially in all caps. He calls in Joshua to murder all the men, women and children. I think your rationalizations are tying you into a bunch of rhetorical knots. Your statements of judgment and hate have become too obvious to ignore, they're so emphatic and repetitive. So you've said nothing about hating anything, but you do hate this, that and the other thing. More Queen of Hearts stuff. Couldn't prove it by what you've just said in your message.--Percy

No need for me to reply, I think PaulK already said it all in Message 1455.--Percy

Yes, I know what you were saying, and I explained why it was wrong. Others have put even more years into studying their theologies, and if the number of years spent in study is the yardstick by which the truth of a theology is measured, then your theology loses.You never answered the question of how you know you're not the one being manipulated by Satan.--Percy

And yet if your gay neighbor tried to get married you'd turn on him in a second. You love a book, not people. Allowing women to have control over their own bodies and make their own choices in life is love. They're in refugee camps because countries in Europe and the US deny them immigration. Their plight has parallels to that of the Jews in the years leading up to WWII. You're the Mikey of Life.--Percy

I'll answer all your replies in this post.Replying to your Message 1463: So when this friend with bad eyesight needed help picking out a wedding cake, you'd be there for him? Defining love as telling other people what to do is what is insane. Ah, yes, I can just feel the love. Glad you're not the judgmental type. The Life cereal "Mikey hates everything" commercials from a half century ago. That's why I called you the Mikey of Life.Moving on to your Message 1464: How would you know whether you've been communing with the great deceiver?Moving on to your Message 1466: Well, if it isn't true then it must be made up or wrong or mistaken or something along those lines. You have faith that your theology is true, not evidence.Moving on to your Message 1467: Interesting indeed. In a May, 2017, Newsweek article Stephen Hawking was quoted as follows:

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Although the chance of disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years, Hawking told the Oxford University Union in November.

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Seems a rather strange thing for him to say, given that life has existed on this planet for billions of years and survived scores of disasters. Anyway, the end days I was referring to was when our Sun becomes a red giant and incinerates the Earth, estimated to happen about 5 billion years from now.Gee, your Message 1465 is empty - nothing to say in reply to my Message 1459?--Percy

You're ignoring the question. How would you know whether you or anyone else had been communing with the great deceiver?And you left a whole lot up in the air:

• Would you help your gay friend with bad eyesight pick out a wedding cake?
• Is it really love that causes you to label the entire religion of Islam murderous? Are you sure you're not judgmental?
• Theologies don't have evidence. They're all based on faith, on what people want to believe. No one can claim, "I've studied more years, therefore mine is true."
• Declarations such as you've made like, (sic) "I know my theology is true," are statements of faith, not fact.

--Percy

Well, what do you know, a formerly null message suddenly pops up with text with not so much as an AbE. Well, you're nothing if not consistent. No it doesn't, but even if it did, what is a religion but a group of persons who you are labeling murderous. That's pretty personal. You sure are resourceful at finding excuses for your expressions of hate. Really? You never said anything about discriminating against gays. Then how do you explain this is from your Message 1351: Seems like you have some pretty strong feelings about your right to discriminate against gays. But you really work at it. No, you judge Muslims personally. To you they're followers of a murderous ideology and therefore unfit to enter our country. That's a pretty personal judgment.I don't understand why you keep denying the obvious. You have lots of rules people have to follow before they're acceptable to you, and until they follow your rules you judge them unworthy and deserving of whatever consequences you decide should be doled out.--Percy

If you want to discuss the flood then I suggest you resume participation in one of the many flood threads you abandoned. "The Flood" deposits as a sea transgressive/regressive sequence ("Walther's Law") would be a good one. You have 76 unanswered messages.--Percy

Then look at your doctrine. It's causing you to hate whole classes and religions of people, and to support a crass, crude, lying, divisive miserable-excuse-for-a-human-being president. Most people find you the most hateful person on this entire board. Your doctrine labels you the most unChristian person here. Look inside yourself and let the hate go. Then the deceiver will be defeated, and you'll be able to perform these expressions of love:

• Help your gay friend with bad eyesight pick out a wedding cake.
• Welcome refugees to this country regardless of religion.
• Co-exist peacefully and acceptingly with many different theologies.
• See everyone as a human being deserving of your love and indifferent to their religion, if any.

What you've done is let your mistaken version of Christianity close you off from all but a small segment of humanity. That's not what Jesus wanted.--Percy

There used to be a group called the Jesus Seminar that attempted to identify which of Jesus' actions and words described in the gospels were actually true. They tended to reject Jesus' most hateful and vengeful words as unauthentic, such as this passage that Faith likes to quote:

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Matt 23:33-35 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.

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They say it represents a time before the fall of Jeruaslem when Jewish synagogues were beginning to excommunicate Christian members, and Christians retaliated by heaping scorn on their Jewish rivals. This process only worsened after Jerusalem's fall.But Faith latches onto to these unlikely Jesus passages and uses them as excuses for her own hateful attitudes. I don't believe in Satan, but there are many who are divisive forces in our society who want only to sow discord and dissension because they fear anyone who isn't like themselves, and the want the power to force their views on others.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I don't prefer any Christian "interpretational system", but of course the Jesus Seminar comes closer to my views because they don't take the Bible literally. But they take it much more literally than I do. For instance, they think Jesus was a real person.The reason I think your Christian views mistaken is because they cause you to view so much of the human race in dark and even sinister terms when the primary message of Christianity is to love our fellow man. That message emerges unambiguously when you examine the words of Jesus that the Jesus Seminar has judged genuine, and all your justifications for vipers and vengeance just melt away. Your studies have built you a house of hate, and that's not the message of Christianity--Percy

Jesus as originally conceived never said Matthew 23:33-35. Obviously in the early years of Christianity as various evangelists attempted to influence the course of Christian belief, Jesus was the voice of authority, and what better way to persuade than to put their own message in Jesus' mouth. It is for some reason very appealing to you that people who don't repent will be punished. No, I'm not saying it isn't traditional evangelicalism, but your emphasis on these hate portions of evangelicalism is not how most evangelicals would characterize their religion. I think if you had the same conversation with evangelicals that you're having with us here that they'd respond, "Your views are out of balance. You stress too much the venom and not enough the love and compassion."For an example of how you differ from most other evangelicals I offer your response to when I said we should "follow our hearts." Instead of taking the clear meaning you found a hateful Biblical passage that called the heart "deceitful above all things." I think your views are unbalanced toward the hateful. I think the Biblical passages that you stress so often are a reflection of who you are. If by "traditional belief system" you mean traditional plain old Christianity that you can find in any Methodist or Congregational church, then from what I've experienced they seem to be spreading Jesus' message of love.If by "traditional belief system" you mean the evangelical belief system, then I think it's an exclusive, xenophobic religion and that to the extent they promote those attitudes instead of love and inclusivity that they are wrong.--Percy