At 09:24 PM 8/10/2006 -0400, Ed Leafe 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?
Moot in regards to going to heaven? Basically yes.
And then, of course, everyone who was raised in non-Christian
cultures can forget about heaven, too?
I don't know. It doesn't seem fair to me. But again, salvation is between
God and each person. I don't know how God personally deals with those who
have never heard the Christian message.
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.
It doesn't matter what denomination you are. Like I was saying before, the
works are not what saves you. The 'label' is not what saves you. It's
whether or not you've decided to accept God's Grace. But if a person
rejects the message then I don't believe they're going to Heaven. Not all
denominations teach the same message of course. Again, it would seem unfair
to condemn someone just because they never heard the Truth their whole
life. But as I say above, I don't know what God does in those cases.
My primary Christian responsibilities for the rest of my life is to help
spread the word of the Gospel, stand up for what I believe is good and
right, and study God's Word (and I'm currently not doing any of those
things very well). But it's a bad idea for me to try and "convert" anyone -
that's not my job. The Holy Spirit is who convicts and converts the
individual. If people tell me they don't want to believe what I'm saying
it's no big deal. I don't get upset because of that and then try to beat
someone down to 'make' them believe. We're just supposed to 'dust off our
sandals' and move on.
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
...
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
...
I had to find some common ground. Since you don't believe in God, and I
think you don't believe in anything spiritual, I didn't think you'd
understand why I believe Spiritual Truth may seem "unfair" in our opinion.
So I picked gravity because the effects of gravity are universally observed
(as you note). The point was, I believe there is a spiritual Truth. It may
be unsettling, and seem unfair, but it's something we can't change. In
other words, all non-Christians going to Hell sounds incredibly harsh and
unfair, but if that is the Truth, there's nothing we can do about it. The
only thing I have to offer to soften that up is that salvation, being a
Christian, is something between God and each person. "Christian" does not
mean Baptist, Catholic, Luthern, whatever. Can a Muslim be a Christian? I
belive so, but if they are, they would most likely have a very difficult
time in their day-to-day religious practices (since the teachings of the
Bible and the Koran/Shariah differ so much). This is 1 area where works do
play a role: if you see a Muslim, Hindu, or Catholic constantly doing
things that are contrary to the Christian teachings of the Bible, it'd be
reasonable to doubt whether or not they're actually a Christian. As an
example, I believe Kris has met several non-Christian "Christians".
As an aside, do you realize that gravity is a Theory in science,
just like Evolution by Natural Selection? It has much less
...
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'
...
Hmm. This is digressing fast. Are you saying the empirical evidence that
Evolution exists is greater than the empirical evidence that gravity
exists? I don't think I'd agree with that. Otherwise we'd be seeing species
evolving into other species pretty often and the fossil record would be
very clear. But probably the main reason Evolution gets a lot of opposition
is because many of it's staunchest supporters try to use it to 'disprove'
the existence of God. Or something like that. I suppose if "believers" in
gravity were to take that and they try to imply that there is no God
because gravity exists, well, then the same level of scrutiny would be
brought to bear.
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
...
Well, we'll probably continue to have a tough time really understanding
each other because we come from opposite ends of the spectrum: God doesn't
exist, God does exist. Like others have pointed out, when you start from
'first truths' that are so far apart it's tough to make sense of each
other's opinions.
-Charlie
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