My Beliefs- GDR

But the whole thing of dying for my sins means what? Didn't He die for the sins of the world, including Tangle, Onifre etc?Also the death and resurrection was about establishing His Kingdom. Remember He told us to pray "the Kingdom come on Earth as in Heaven". Wasn't He resurrected when He was as the opening act of the resurrection of all creation? Once again you simply bring Christianity down to be all about "me" and my salvation. Frankly it is such a shallow view of the Christian faith.

You may not spend a lot of time thinking about it consciously but everyone does think about it at one level or another. Everyone likes to think that they contribute something to the world that gives their life meaning. It might be through their kids, their job their volunteer work etc. In all of these various ways we look to give our life meaning in a way that has lasting relevance. I may disagree with what others believe but I wouldn't label it twaddle. When there are large numbers of people who believe something over long periods of time then it is likely based on something real. In the case of Karma one of the aspects of it is that we reap what we sow. If our desires and our actions are based on what is good for others then that goodness will in turn be returned to us. It is essentially saying that a life based on the golden rule will ultimately be positive for the individual which has parallels in Christianity. That is the reason I have trouble just simply saying to Faith that Jesus died for my sins which is really just a way of dumbing down a much greater reality into something that we can put into our mental box and say - OK that's taken care of. I also don't believe that it is all based on our actions. IMHO it is based on what it is that motivates in life. Are we generally selfishly or unselfishly motivated?I don't agree that my faith takes away the pain in life although I would agree that it does help deal with it, but I do believe specifically that it does answer the question of unfairness in this life. I do believe in an ultimate fair and perfect justice.I've used this example before but I'll use it again. Twenty-two years ago a little boy named Michael Dunahee disappeared from a playground near where I live. There has been no trace of him since.Whoever abducted him was never found. There has been no justice for the abductor, for Michael or for the family. Everyone would like to see some justice in this case but it is pretty certain that there won't be any in this life time. However even if the perpetrator had been apprehended we still couldn't have brought about perfect justice. Michael would likely have suffered abuse and death, the family would still be living a life-time of grief and the perpetrator would be in prison for life whether or not he had been abused as a child, had some mental illness or whatever.Most of not all humans yearn for justice in this life and the fact that we have this yearning is an indication that such justice actually exists. Certainly it doesn't prove it but the fact that it is such a deep desire and the fact that we implement justice to the degree that we are able is again an indication that there is something more than just what we can do in this life. The fact that we can differentiate between meaningful and meaningless is again an indication that there actually is meaning to life IMHO.

Well exactly we create our own meaning here on earth - not dreaming about some fanciful meaning once dead. No it's not. That's just wishful thinking. The list of what everyone believed but was wrong is almost endless - flat earth, young earth, immutability of species, earth centre of universe, cause of disease, thunder and lightening, witches, pixies, spells .... it just goes on and on.We're only just beginning to find out how wrong we are on almost everything. Just more wishful thinking. The only justice that we have any chance of getting is what we ourselves create. Hoping for justice in the afterlife is why we invent the afterlife. We can't bear to think that life is as unfair as it is.But it is. I just watched a fox take a blackbird whilst its female partner looked on and squawked in distress. It was tragic, but it's nature - it's how it works and we're a part of it.All your blessed beliefs are doing is trying to reconcile the hard parts of our life with what you want it to be, but can't make it so. You'd be better off spending your time and concern making our lives here better, than fantasising about a better life after death.

I am having a hard time understanding the wisdom behind such a statement.
Can you name an example of anything where "yearning" has been an indication that something has actually existed?To me, yearning always seems to result in humans inventing something.
Yearn for a smooth ride? Invent a wheel.
Yearn for easy access to fire? Invent a match.
Yearn for fast travel? Invent airplanes.There are sometimes desire for things to exist that come along with other indications.
Like Tiktaalik... there were indications that it could be found in a certain location... then there was yearning that would be found there... then it was searched for, and found.
But in this sort of situation, any yearning was never an indication of the existence of Tiktaalik... it was the evidence that was an indication.Maybe a few things from Sci-Fi? Like Black Holes? Were they "yearned for" by writers before any indication of their actual existence?
Even so... did this yearning ever indicate that Black Holes actually existed? I don't think so.There is an unending list of things that are yearned for that do not exist.It seems to me that yearning for something is pretty much irrelevant to any indication that such a thing may or may not exist.
It's also sort of a "common sense" theme as well, isn't it?
"Wish in one hand and shit in the other..." is a phrase I've heard a lot of growing up.Your statement just seems so counter-intuitive to me, I was wondering if you might be able to explain why you think it is valid? I would think that "the fact we implement justice to the degree that we are able" would be an indication that there is nothing else implementing any justice. If something else was going to implement justice... why would we need to do it as well?We do it because if we don't, then nothing will happen.
The only things that happen... are those that we do ourselves. This is not an indication that something else exists... this is actually evidence that nothing else exists.I'm just wondering about the thought-process that would cross these wires in the mind.

The point I was making that Christian belief spread rapidly in spite of having never gained any military or political power. It wasn't just the middle class. There were wealthier patrons and Paul himself wouldn't have been considered poor or lower class in Judean society. Yes, that is my point. Our understanding of the nature of God evolved over time. As God continued to speak through people's hearts, minds and imaginations our understanding of His nature collectively became more focused. I can't be sure but I am convinced, just as you can't be sure I'm wrong but you seem convinced that I am.

The Bible is evidence that we can accept or reject. The fact that you and I exist and that we can have this conversation is evidence. The evidence isn't black and white and sure it is easy just to throw up our hands and so we can't know, but that seems like a cop-out. Science keeps advancing into the unknown and IMHO so does our understanding of God. No question. Faith and I completely disagree on the nature of God and yet we both call ourselves Christian. There is ambiguity which in my view is what we should expect of a god who wants us to freely choose to love unselfishly. Absolutely. I would be suspicious if the "Golden Rule" was unique to Christianity. The fact that it exists throughout all cultures is what I would expect if God does truly speak into the hearts of all mankind. It all boils down again to the question of the resurrection. As Paul says, if Jesus was not resurrected then his and my beliefs are a waste of time. If however, Jesus was resurrected then we have to look at what we have recorded of what He said and did and apply that to the ancient scriptures and to the world we experience.As I have said numerous times I don't believe that what the authors inerrantly recorded the words of God. I do believe that we can in the context of the entire NT understand what Jesus wanted us to know and through that we can gain understanding of what is actually from God speaking through the hearts, minds and imaginations of the OT authors, and for that matter the NT authors.This is not to say that I or anyone else has a perfect understanding, but I believe that we can understand enough of what God wants us to know to move forward in the faith, but that we should never stop trying to gain a better understanding.Actually it is my belief that in the last few decades our understanding has really increased with the the availability of so much information through new discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls but even more so through the availability of so much information on the computer. (Thanks be to science.) Christian scholarship now has a better understanding of the ancient languages and more material to draw from than ever before and our understanding of the political and social natures of those cultures has advanced as well with the additional information.

I don't disagree. We should focus on what our lives can mean in the here and now and the future life will be what it will be. Sure. Our knowledge keeps advancing. People have always believed in a god or gods. Over the 1000's of years our understanding of the nature of God and what it means in our lives has continued to evolve in all cultures. I believe it will continue to evolve as we continue to learn and as God continues to speak into our hearts, minds and imaginations. Sure I want there to be an ultimate perfect justice. Whether or not we believe that there will be I would imagine that virtually everyone wishes there were such a thing. Just because we want something to be true doesn't mean that it isn't. My only point I made before is that the fact that we know we can't bring about perfect justice ourselves but continue to strive for it is something of an indication that the real thing does exist. It's a philosophical argument for which there is no empirical evidence.However, as I said earlier I don't disagree that our focus should be that we continue to work towards making this world a more just world for all.

They don't at all. Quite a lot of people like to lead a criminal life and really don't want to believe in final justice. If people actually DID believe in ultimate justice, there would be no crime. It's a pure fantasy and most people know it - as you say, 'in their hearts'. (Which is a silly phrase really isn't it?) Pretty much everything about that sentence is weird. This is really infuriating and frustrating. What you're saying is pure wishful thinking - it has no support from anything. It's like a child wishing that fairies existed because they want them too.

I think that the kind of yearning that I am talking about is not the same as what you are talking about in the examples that you use. I think everyone has a yearning to be loved and maybe that yearning will be fulfilled and maybe it won’t, and even if it is all love is individualistic and so when we get love it may not be at all what we expected. It isn’t as simple as wanting to go faster so we invent airplanes.Nobody can see love, hatred or any idea for that matter. We can scan the brain and see what changes they are in the brain as a result of our thoughts and emotions and we can see the results our thoughts, desires and emotions in our actions. The biggest part of who we are you can’t put under a microscope and observe it.So we individually have our desires not just for ourselves but for the world we experience. Those desires are largely shaped by our own culture. If however we look at human history we can see certain desires that are common to all cultures aside from our physical desires. One of these is that we do want to see justice done. There is generally speaking a collective desire for justice. Certainly as individuals we ignore that desire when it comes to our own self-interest which is one of the reasons that the desire does at some level exist in all of us.So the question is why does that yearning or desire for justice exist at all? If our world is simply materialistic then we can assume that the desire is simply culturally driven but when we consider how tribal humans are, IMHO that doesn’t seem likely. It seems likely to me, that this collective yearning for justice comes from something beyond ourselves and if that is the case then it seems reasonable to me to believe that ultimately perfect justice will be done whatever that looks like.There is no perfect answer to your question so that is probably the best I can do.

I agree that there are many that don't believe in ultimate justice and I think that there are very few of us, certainly including myself, that don't want justice for ourselves. That isn't the same question as to whether or not there exists a collective desire for justice. Why? A few years ago our dog went missing in the woods. I wanted him to be ok and he was. I can understand your frustration but I believe that there is more to this world that what there can be proven empirically. I guess the best I can do is ask you to look at my previous post which was to Stile.

duplicate.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The usual Reformed understanding is very clear that He only died for those who belong to Him, but what that means is those who believe in Him. If you want to say He died for everybody, they still can't benefit from it if they don't believe. The message is "Repent and BELIEVE." The Kingdom of God is to be made up of regenerated people, that is, those who believe and have been born again and received the Holy Spirit. There can't be a Kingdom of God made up of people who aren't fit for the Kingdom of God, we have to be changed and that comes through faith in His death for our sins. That is so strange, every time you say it I'm practically speechless with amazement at such an idea. No, it's all about creating a new world, a new people, a new kingdom, restoring humanity to our Edenic condition or better, so that we can be truly a God-ruled people. Adam and Eve lost their God-ruled original condition, their relationship with God, when they sinned/disobeyed God, and bequeathed to their descendants an inability to love or obey God, fallenness or the "sin nature." We're all born in original sin, in "the flesh," into "enmity with God" as scripture describes it. For the Kingdom of God to come we must be restored to the Edenic condition and that can't happen unless our sin nature is dealt with and that is dealt with by Jesus' death to pay for our sin, the reversal of original sin, which we receive only by faith. We are changed one by one and brought into individual relationship with God. I don't get this notion that this makes it "all about me."

That "dogmatic" post of yours. (But of course much else besides)And by the way you were a bit too dogmatic about your definition of "dogma":Here's the online Merriam-Webster: Which is of course how I was using the word. Yes, words DO have meanings, in this case a meaning you dogmatically defined away.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So, what is it I believe that I don't have evidence for?

Repent means that we are to turn from selfishness to desiring to be unselfish so that we find joy in the joy of others and suffer with the suffering of others. It is not only Christians that repent in that fashion as Paul tells us in Romans 2.The the question is believe what. It is the belief that we are to strive to live unselfishly and actually put it into practice. The Kingdom of God is made up of those who follow Christ in this world which does not mean that those who don't acknowledge Christ as King are going to hell. That is an entirely different debate. You make the whole point about Christianity to be about personal salvation. When you do that the goal in becoming a Christian is to get eternal life and avoid hell. It becomes all about the individual. People are saved now because they have a job to do at a cost. They are save to be servants to creation just as Christ came not to be served but to serve. Yes, if one truly gives him or herself over to that sacrificial love that we see in Jesus then they are made right with God but that isn't the point of it all. The point of it all is to be agents having seeing His will done and His Kingdom coming on Earth as in Heaven.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.