Smon Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 How did He scare you? I don't get it. And it wasn't a mistake. God sent Jesus to earth to witness but the main reason was so that Jesus could die for us. He had to die for us to redeem us of our sins. Thanks to Him we are all forgiven as soon as we ask. Because Jesus was 100% perfect the ultimate sacrifice, perfect and pure it counters all our sins. He came here to die for us. So... if I kill two-thousand retarded albino children and then go to church and say "Please forgive me." I get a free ticket to heaven? ...bitchin'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samnmax221 Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 No, Because we have sinned against him we need forgivness. So Jesus was willing to come down to earth, represent mankind, and die for us. Therefore being the perfect sacrifce because He was completely sinless. Nobody is born guilty of anything Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TK-8252 Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 No, Because we have sinned against him we need forgivness. So Jesus was willing to come down to earth, represent mankind, and die for us. Therefore being the perfect sacrifce because He was completely sinless. If he was completely sinless, how the hell did he represent mankind? Shouldn't a sinner represent mankind? And why, when god created us as sinners, should we be punished for sinning? Shouldn't god be cursing himself for creating sin? Why did he create sin? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St. Jimmy Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Smon, Yes if you truly mean that you're sorry. Samnmax, What? TK8252, If a sinner represented mankind then his death wouldn't have covered all of our sins seeing as he wouldn't be the perfet sacrifice. Jesus could represent us 'cause he was a human sinless or not. God created us to praise and love Him. Now, he didn't create us as sinners born to rot in hell He created us with free wills. What good would a bunch of clones without free wills be that just bow down and worship because they know nothing else? It's not His fault YOU sin. You do that by yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Andrew Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 So... if I kill two-thousand retarded albino children and then go to church and say "Please forgive me." I get a free ticket to heaven?As long as you are truly sorry for doing it and somehow make up for it, then you will go to Heaven (assuming you didn't do any other sort of sinning ).If he was completely sinless, how the hell did he represent mankind? Shouldn't a sinner represent mankind?Let's say you break your neighbor's window. Simply apologizing wouldn't work, so you would have to pay for it. But what if it cost $1 googol to replace? Adam and Eve's sin was so great that it would be impossible for mere humans to pay off. So, the only other option would be for God to sacrifice Himself to Himself: the perfect sacrifice, like St. Jimmy said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TK-8252 Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 God created us to praise and love Him. What a big god damn ego he must have. Now, he didn't create us as sinners born to rot in hell He created us with free wills. What good would a bunch of clones without free wills be that just bow down and worship because they know nothing else? It's not His fault YOU sin. You do that by yourself. I see. So he created us to worship him BUT also gave us free will. But using said free will to say, work on Sunday, will get me sent to burn in hell forever. Ironic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St. Jimmy Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Actually, working on the sabbath (wich is more than likely Saturday btw) won't get you ETERNAL DAMNATION!!!!!!!! 'cause you can just ask for forgiveness. As for the ego thing, if you had those powers wouldn't you do something like that ? No, but really, He does deserve it. (the praise) and also He reciprocates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Andrew Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 What a big god damn ego he must have.Well, if you believe He created all of humanity, then you'd think He'd deserve it. I see. So he created us to worship him BUT also gave us free will. But using said free will to say, work on Sunday, will get me sent to burn in hell forever. Ironic. If you do it purposely so as to defy God, then it would be a sin. But working on Sundays to put food on the table wouldn't send anyone to Hell. EDIT: Dang. St. Jimmy keeps beating me to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurgan Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Not to bust in on here with your converstation and stuff (my views on the topic I presume are well known), but Skin, didn't you say in the old religion thread how you had some amazing data you were going to show on the Historicity of Jesus? PM me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samnmax221 Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Samnmax, What? I'm not going to spend my whole my whole in servitude because some naked people supposedly ate some fruit. The who point behind the Adam and Eve story is that knowledge is dangerous. God created us to praise and love Him. I much prefer living for only for myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TK-8252 Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 If you do it purposely so as to defy God, then it would be a sin. But working on Sundays to put food on the table wouldn't send anyone to Hell. "But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkinWalker Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Kurg, Man, I don't remember. I'll have to review that thread and see if I can remember what it was. I've been busy, busy, busy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurgan Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Skin, Typical! You probably have the meaning of life lying around too, lost in a pile of unfinished projects! Hey, I feel your pain; I'm totally disorganized! My apartment needs to be cleansed from top to bottom I swear... Okay, off to bed for me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halo_92 Posted August 9, 2006 Author Share Posted August 9, 2006 Okay, off to bed for me! i know what u mean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RC-1162 Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 you know, there's something ive been wondering all this while. many christians i know say that God is more powerful than Satan. if true, why doesnt God just pwn Satan and restore a sin-free society? Typical! You probably have the meaning of life lying around too, lost in a pile of unfinished projects! well, it's 42. i thought you knew that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St. Jimmy Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 "But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns." But the whole reason God made the sabbath His holy day is 1. So we have a day that we can dedicate to the LORD and 2. For US! He wants us to rest on that day becaude He knows it's good for us! He made us, He knows everything about us and He know that we should rest on the last day of the week. That is why He commanded us to keep the seventh day holy. Also RC, If He were to just get rid of satan and sin with him then, like I was saying earlier, it would defeat the whole purpose of God having created us with our free wills. However, In Heaven there will be no sin and no satan. We will have fought the final battle and God will have (easily) triumphed over satan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Question then: Do you do no work from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown as prescribed in the Commandments... or do you do what most Christians do, and observe Sunday midnight to midnight (which is technically the FIRST day of the week.) I believe that this is important. Keeping the Sabbath IS one of the 10 Commandments. And the exact way that you are supposed to keep it is laid out in very specific detail. And I believe, if I am remembering correctly, that there is language there to observe it this way "... for all time." So that means that the vast majority of Christians are breaking one of the Commandments each and every week. Somebody changed it at some point. Which makes me very curious... Who, exactly, has the authority to decide to override one of the 10 Commandments? I won't even get into the point that God clearly outlined all the Holy days that he wants people to observe and use for worship... and that most of these days are now ignored by Christians in favor of holidays (Christmas, Easter, Halloween...) that (as Skin so deftly pointed out) are pagan celebrations in origin. This is an aspect of modern Christianity that I've never been able to quite come to grips with. Was God just wasting his breath on these commandments, or do humans have the power to belay orders of His that are inconvenient for us? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joetheeskimo Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Somebody changed it at some point. Which makes me very curious... Who, exactly, has the authority to decide to override one of the 10 Commandments? Jesus does. But I don't actually know where along the way it changed from Saturday to Sunday, but since Sunday is the day Christians worship, it's the day we rest on. If we worshipped on Saturday like Jews, that would be our Sabbath. I won't even get into the point that God clearly outlined all the Holy days that he wants people to observe and use for worship... and that most of these days are now ignored by Christians in favor of holidays (Christmas, Easter, Halloween...) that (as Skin so deftly pointed out) are pagan celebrations in origin. This is an aspect of modern Christianity that I've never been able to quite come to grips with. Was God just wasting his breath on these commandments, or do humans have the power to belay orders of His that are inconvenient for us? One of the things that sets Christians very much apart from Jews is that we believe when Jesus came, he changed many people's ideas of what the law said. For example - the Jews are told, in order to divorce your wife you must give her a certificate of divorce. But - Matthew 19:8 - "Jesus said, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But this was not the way from the beginning. I tell you than anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, commits aldultery." In this way, he changed many Old Testament rules that God had set down for the Israelites - and one of the things he always denounced in the Jewish teachers of the law was that they were too legalistic - they followed every single word in the Old Testament and actaed all high-and-mighty as a result. So much of the laws you read in hte Old Testament have changed since the beginning of Christianity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Well, that's the explanation I always get, but the whole thing seems a little redundant to me: To make one set of laws that are eternal and everlasting... then to re-write the entire thing a couple of thousand years later with a whole new set of eternal, everlasting laws. But my point is that the Sabbath command is the only one of the 10 Commandments that Christians state isn't to be obeyed in both the letter and spirit of the law. Just the spirit of the law... You don't hear too many Christians saying that we don't need to worry about adultery (if anything, your own example shows a much stricter definition of the spirit of the law than the letter...) murder, lying, taking the Lord's name in vain, etc... The Sabbath command has always seemed to me to be the only one of the 10 where it seems OK to ignore the letter of the law in favor of the spirit. (Well, since it's possible that a Crucifix might be defined as a graven image, maybe that one too...) Since Jesus and all the apostles were devout Jews, we can only imagine that they always kept the Jewish (seventh-day) Sabbath. And if it was good enough for them... My deep suspicion is that the day Christians were to worship on was changed much, much later, by a law of man, rather than God. Probably to differentiate themselves from Jews during a time of persecution... and/or to convert a group of non-Christians who already worshipped on that day. I don't think God would have placed so much emphasis on that particular command if he had meant to overturn it a few years down the road. To state otherwise is to imply that there was no plan in place, and He's just making the whole thing up as He goes along. That doesn't feel right to me either... It's just something I think about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Christians observe the Sabbath on Sunday because that is the day Jesus rose from the dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St. Jimmy Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 ^That's not why we have sabbath Moeller. We don't know the exact day that God had in mind for us when He was talking about the sabbath, (if you ask me it's Saturday) But we do know that he wanted us to consistetly have a full day of rest and prayer. Most Christians do this on Sunday 'cause they figure 'Oh, well we've already gone to church we'll just dedicate the rest of the day to the LORD.'. They can do what they want but I think you're supposed to have a day set aside for God as well as go to church on Sunday. Really, it's not that hard. Alot of Christians just ignore this rule because they're busy on Saturday or they just can't be bothered to obey this commandment. It's wierd, and they should be treating it with as much respect as the other commandments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurgan Posted August 10, 2006 Share Posted August 10, 2006 Well the Old Testament (or the "Covenant with Moses," the Hebrew Bible, if you prefer, since it is only the "Old Testament" to Christians though this is common parlance to most Americans) indicates that the "seventh day" is the "Sabbath" (day of rest) for the Hebrew people/Israelites/Jews, so that would be Saturday. Reckoning of the day begins at sundown on Friday to sundown Saturday. The reason Christians began to worship specifically on the first day of the week (which would be Sunday) is because of the early belief that Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday, making it "the Lord's Day." According to historical evidence, many Christians (and Jesus' followers of "The Way" before they were called "Christians") continued to worship on Saturday as well, considering the majority of the early disciples were Jews, and this was the traditional Sabbath. The movement eventually become dominated by Gentile converts and then generations of people who were raised Christian, so the Sabbath keeping eventually faded out. There is also tradition going back to Jesus about the Sabbath as not something strictly kept, since Jesus proclaimed it was lawful to "do good" on the Sabbath (as the Pharisees agreed in principle). He declared that since God could work miracles and good works on the Sabbath through him, it was okay for his followers to do so as well and that the "Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." The "spirit of the law" according to the traditional words of Jesus was that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Many followers interpreted this as, yes, you continue to keep the Sabbath, but you don't neglect doing good works or helping people on that day (rather than avoiding "all work," period and haggling over what constitutes "work"), while others interpreted to mean that setting aside the seventh day as special really was no longer important for Christians (Paul the apostle writes in his letter to the Romans 14:5-6 "One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.") Today many denominations (if they are large or active enough) do provide services on more than just Sunday, but traditionally Sunday is the day people go to services (and Saturday is thought of as more of a "backup" if you are going to miss out on Sunday, such as people who have to work that day). It's traditional, much like having worship services in the morning, rather than in the evening or night (many churches offer services at these times as well). There are a few churches designated "Sabbartarian" (that is "Sabbath Keeping") such as the Seventh Day Adventists, who generally believe that it was always meant to be Saturday and this was never "changed" and so no Christian has the authority to avoid Saturday worship as the true day of observance, etc. This is a minority view within Christianity and really didn't gain strength until the 19th century, but still. To put things into perspective, most Christians don't take the "10 commandments" hyper literally anyway, since if they did, they'd have a few things to wonder about, like what exactly does it mean to put other gods "before" the God of Israel (does that mean you can acknowledge other gods, so long as you don't consider them more powerful than God or you can think they exist but don't worship them? Or just don't place actual idols in front of God?), or "bearing false witness" does that apply to all lying or only false testimony in a court of law against somebody who lives near to you? Does forbidding adultery mean it's okay to sleep with your neighbor as long as neither of you is married to somebody else at the time? Does 'not coveting your neighbor's wife' mean it only applies to men? Does "keep Holy the name of the Lord/do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" refer to misuse of the tetragrammaton used as a magical incantation, false oaths invoking the "Lord's Name," or forbid simple "profanity"? (or only that which involves references to deity?) Does it apply to Jesus' name also? Etc. And so on and so forth. Christians generally say that they "follow the Bible" but that doesn't mean the same thing to all of them. Traditionally, it is believed that Jesus re-ratified certain points of the Mosaic law (Law of Moses, in the Old Testament, primarily in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, that is the "Books of the Law" the Torah/Pentateuch), reinterpreted others (reading them "spiritually") and abrogated the rest all as part of the "New Covenant". Even though these words are still in Christian Bibles, they are not considered necessary to be followed by Christians today. That's why you don't typically see Christians stoning people for working on the Sabbath or cursing one's parents, keeping kosher food laws, etc. Even modern Jews don't keep these commandments hyper-literally, but instead refer to the interpretations of the later sages and Rabbis who inspired, contributed to and compiled the "Oral Torah" in the Talmud (including the commentaries on the Law, and the commentaries on those commentaries). There is a popular (but misleading) notion among many people today that Saturday was the Sabbath until Emperor Constantine changed it to Sunday (presumably because he was still a pagan at the time, and pagans worshipped the Sun God on Sunday) in the 4th century, and thus nobody need pay attention to this "new worship day" (this seems to be the argument used by many Sabbartarians as well). I think this was bolstered by the Da Vinci Code as well. There's evidence in the early Christian writings that Jesus' followers did worship on Sunday from very early on, and Saturday began to fade out as a dual special day of worship among non-Jewish converts to the new religion. For example by the 3rd century of the Common Era, the Christian movement was not seen by outsiders as a Jewish sect but as its own cult. This helps explain the persecution of Christians (the Romans considered "old" religions to be good, but new religions to be "superstition" and thus dangerous and spurious... this is why even though the Jews were thought of as weird for denying the Roman pantheon, they at least could claim they had been around a long time, plus they were so stubborn in their beliefs they were welcome to them, so the thinking went, but the Christians were some strange johnny-come-latelys that suddenly were rejecting the gods and just yesterday they were pagans doing everything like everyone else) and the move towards defining their own boundaries. Christians and non-Christian Jews were in tension with one another for a long time, but the "break" between them is debated among scholars. There seems to be a growing understanding that this "schism" was much more gradual in many places than previously thought (in other words, Jesus' followers were not all expelled from the synagogue during Jesus' own lifetime as often implied in Bible readings). The cultural situation is much more complex than that. Anyway, I've rambled on enough, many of you probably already knew that but I thought I'd toss that out to people that were interested. Daniel Boyarin and George Nickelsburg are two modern scholars of Early Christianity and Judaism who have written several books on the topic which helped me understand the complexities of the issue, and could provide a good introduction for others as well. See also Paula Fredricksen and James Dunn for new perspectives on the apostle Paul and the debate. Geza Vermes has also written extensively on the teachings of Jesus from a Jewish perspective and in Jewish context (the Historical Jesus is of course not one monolithic theory but a set of varying theories, and his provides a good example on the topic). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joetheeskimo Posted August 10, 2006 Share Posted August 10, 2006 Eh...are you a Christian, or just really, really informed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slornie Posted August 10, 2006 Share Posted August 10, 2006 im a Christian... i believe in God... but i also accept other religions... i think that they are all facets of the same God... and that the differences in religion are no more than people's individual way of worship and recognition... in my opinion... the bible is not so much a book of rules... but a book of case studies and guidelines as to how we should live our lives... so what that they may not be historically accurate or do not fit into our defined concept or realism... history is written by the victors... therefore that is not neccessarily accurate... it is all dependant on points of view... if we did not have religion... our society would be minimal and lifeless... without christianity there would not be christmas or easter... without religion there would be fewer charities... religion provides a moral basis for us to live our lives... it does not matter whether people believe that there is one God... or whether they only eat certain foods... or worship in a certain way... the important thing is that they believe and trust and have faith... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joetheeskimo Posted August 10, 2006 Share Posted August 10, 2006 May I ask why you end every sentence with ... ? I kind of think the label "Christian" doesn't fit, based on your description of your beliefs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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