Is Christ cruel? (For member Schrafinator)

I concede, Percy. Your logic is invincible.

No, because they would be deceived, as that wouldn't be God telling them that.

Many many reasons a person can only know by knowing the Bible well and believing it.

Not to be religions, no, but to be true they do, as they are all false. Christianity is not a religion, strictly speaking, it is simply the truth God gave to humanity. Uh huh, but you are comparing apples and oranges. Truth can't coexist with contradictions as violins may work nicely with flutes. I'm sorry my arguments are not persuasive. I don't recall claiming that my concern was any kind of proof of legitimacy. I hope you have the opportunity to rethink the evidence some day.

And I'm used to the kind of blind debunkery I get from you and others here too, so I guess we're even.

Far as I know I haven't said one thing different at any point. I explain various things to you and you take them to mean something I didn't intend, but I can't help that. Christianity is THE truth and it is the salvation of humanity by the death of the Son of God to all who believe. There is no other truth, there is no other way to be saved. Far as I know I have never said or implied anything else.The analogy of the violin is a bogus analogy and I'm amazed you would continue to try to defend it. Truth is not a mechanical thing.There is plenty of evidence for the truths of Christianity but you make a big deal about the mysterious parts.

A religion is a human-originated teaching about God which is false because it is corrupted by our fallen nature. Christianity is God-originated, the fulfillment of 2000 years of God's own initiatives to reach sin-blinded humanity with the truth about Himself and His way of salvation.{EDIT: Judaism is no longer Old Testament religion, but has degenerated into man-originated traditions, but Old Testament revelation is the truth of God.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-02-2005 11:22 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 06-02-2005 11:23 AM

Just for the record, when I suggested that one could make an effort to believe, I didn't mean believe some nebulous thing you just make up about God, I meant believe something specific: believe, for instance, something specific that Jesus said; believe what is written in some part of the Bible. Belief, according to the Bible, is a matter of taking a person at his/her word, not doing some kind of mental acrobatics without props or a net.

Actually, as I suggested earlier on this topic, the whole idea of belief as necessary to salvation is pretty exclusively a Biblical concept. I don't know that Mohammed even made any statements that are a matter of belief. The Koran is mostly a set of instructions to obey, not propositions to believe -- "believe in the Last Day" is the only exhortation to belief that I can think of, and it's not an exhortation to take somebody at his word, just a general exhortation to believe in a concept.Jesus, on the other hand -- and in fact the Bible as a whole -- make statements of a revelatory nature very frequently, matters that one is explicitly invited to believe on his/their authority. In fact you are exhorted to belief in many places in the Bible: Put "believe" into the Concordance search line at Bible Search and Study Tools - Blue Letter Bible -- that will show many exhortations to believe what God said, or Moses said, or many others said, and certainly what Jesus and his disciples say. Jesus says that not believing His disciples is not believing Him. Always the emphasis is on believing persons {edit: believing what people say}, taking them at their word. Quite the opposite of what so many here at EvC do with the word of God.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-03-2005 10:51 AM

For heaven's sake, the topic is belief. I listed the exhortations to belief to demonstrate how important it is in the Bible. You can't draw any conclusions whatever about obedience from that! This is a non sequitur. You are free to follow anybody you like, but the point is that being called to believe what God's representatives have to say is a Biblical thing. That is not what we are discussing. We are discussing the particular importance of BELIEVING as such, and I've shown that this is peculiarly a BIBLICAL emphasis.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-03-2005 10:59 AM

I wasn't talking about the whole thread, just the latest topic about whether a person can choose to believe, and that leads to the question of the importance of belief. OK. Yes, you have to accept the person's authority and obey what he says, and belief in the person's authority is involved to that point, but belief as such is not the key to salvation anywhere but in the Bible. Jesus says "I am the way, the truth and the life, nobody comes to the Father except by Me" and that is a proposition strictly to be believed, not obeyed -- the way to God is through Jesus Christ. John says (3:16) that eternal life will be given to those who believe on the Son of God, a proposition strictly to be believed. Thomas wouldn't believe what the other disciples said about Jesus' not being in the tomb but being risen -- Jesus showed himself to Thomas but made it clear that believing what the disciples had told him would have been the better thing to do. In a sense that is true. But it is still also true that you don't find much in the way of actual propositions that you are asked to believe anywhere but in the Bible. Other religions simply ask the basic acceptance of their authority and then they tell you what to do, not to believe. In the sense I've shown, I believe that is not the case.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-03-2005 11:28 AM

I was suggesting that Schrafinator could simply read what Jesus says or one of the gospel writers says and simply believe it -- something perhaps that is not easy to believe for her but also not too hard. Did he talk to the devil in the desert? Did he turn water into wine? Did he raise the dead? Is he God? These are statements of fact that can only be believed because they cannot be proved.But here's something from the Koran: Sure you have to believe that this is the will of God, but it is a call to action, not to belief. There's little in the Koran one could suggest to Schrafinator that she try to believe as it's mostly instructions to action.That is all I was trying to demonstrate.{EDIT: But yes you are right that even with the Koran you have to believe that Allah is God and that everything he commands is right.}This message has been edited by Faith, 06-03-2005 11:46 AM

Fine. I give up. I simply wanted Schrafinator to see that there are explicit statements in the Bible that one is called to believe on the authority of Jesus or the disciples. She can try the same experiment with the Koran if there's anything similar.

Yes, it could still be impossible to choose to believe no matter what, but I wanted to clarify that it's not like asking somebody to believe an abstract concept, it's asking somebody to believe WHAT SOMEBODY SAYS about something THAT HAPPENED that you can't know anything about otherwise. I guess this is back to the issue of trusting a witness. Jesus Christ seems to me to be eminently trustworthy and so do all his disciples, so it's going to come down not to whether you can believe a particular thing they say, but whether you believe what *they* tell you because of their trustworthiness. If you let a particular thing they say decide for you whether or not they are believable honest human beings, oh well.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-03-2005 05:08 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 06-03-2005 05:09 PM

As I understand it, none of them said anything that requires you to believe them about THINGS THAT HAPPENED. They are just doing the usual teaching about principles with nothing depending on actual events. Believing what people said about what HAPPENED is the Bible's emphasis.{Except for the Book of Mormon of course (which takes off from the Bible anyway) which purports to be a history -- except that as I recall it doesn't exhort anyone to believe anything that happened there either, it's all just humdrum events, nothing that pertains to salvation.{EDIT: Yes, who you find to be trustworthy is the point, but again you are not asked to believe anything UNTO SALVATION about EVENTS in the Koran. Checkmate said this quite emphatically as a matter of fact, said it's just instruction, on a thread about eyewitness reports a while back.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-03-2005 07:16 PM