On Aug 10, 2006, at 8:29 PM, Charlie Coleman wrote:
In terms of being 'saved' and going to heaven, just doing good works will not cut it. Accepting that Christ died and rose from the dead to be the sacrifice for our sins is the key to salvation.
Am I correct in inferring then that if you do not accept that premise, then everything else is moot? IOW, that is a fundamental requirement for the 'good' afterlife?
And then, of course, everyone who was raised in non-Christian cultures can forget about heaven, too?
And are there variations permitted in this acceptance? IOW, are Lutherans and Catholics and Southern Baptists all OK? Does one need to be an evangelical? Or are Presbyterians allowed in, too? I'm not asking to be humorous; I really want to understand this POV you are setting forth.
I realize this view is not popular in today's terms of "hey, let everyone do their own thing, what is true for you may not be true for me...." But I believe in an ultimate Truth. As a rough analogy, consider gravity. If my daughter falls out of our tree from 30 feet up, she's going to get hurt pretty bad. That is a "truth." But I don't like that. That's just horrible. Millions of people are injured and die because of gravity. It's so horrible, I'll refuse to believe in it. So, now when my daughter falls, will she still be hurt? What I'm trying to get at, is there a spiritual Truth (if there is anything spiritual at all). We may not like it and it may offend our sensibilities, but it will not change what the Truth is.
I think I understand what you're trying to say, but IMO once you try to illustrate faith by comparing it to something that can be tested empirically, you weaken your argument. Gravity has been observed and understood (at least its effects, not its causes) by nearly every creature that lived. Plants understand gravity, and grow very differently in response to zero-G environments. So saying you don't like something as fundamental as gravity implies that your personal belief is on the same level of common understanding as gravity.
As an aside, do you realize that gravity is a Theory in science, just like Evolution by Natural Selection? It has much less experimental backing than evolution, as gravity is the sole discrepancy between General and Special Relativity. It is the one force that cannot be explained adequately by current models in physics, and is the most hotly debated topic in science. Yet I've yet to see one single religious group work against the teaching of gravity in schools. Every time I've run into a so-called 'scientist' who claims that evolution should not be taught, he/she cannot explain gravity, nor can they explain why they aren't forcing schools to put stickers in books about the uncertainty and disagreement in the scientific community about gravity.
Anyways, that's another topic. My main reason for exploring this is that I can understand that people have different POVs on why they should live their lives a certain way; what I can't understand is why others feel so strongly that only their interpretation could possibly be correct. I've always said that it's like climbing a mountain: that path we take depends on where we start from. So while we're all taking different routes, we're all heading to the same eventual goal. That's very different than your dismissive "let everyone do their own thing", which implies that those not climbing the mountain are equivalent to those who are. I certainly don't feel that everyone should be allowed to or even encouraged to "do their own thing"; to me, climbing that mountain is something everyone should be doing. I simply don't feel that they have to follow the same path upwards as I choose.
-- Ed Leafe -- http://leafe.com -- http://dabodev.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
