“Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.”
― John Burroughs, Studies in Nature and Literature
Month: August 2012
Yeah I said that.
Luke 10:29-37 (emphasis added by me)
…so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A GAY man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A CHRISTIAN priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a (BORN AGAIN BELIEVER) Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But an ATHEIST, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the GAY man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Categories
Masquerade
Yeah, that’s right. This is what I saw going around in a forum where a christian could not speak his mind because his atheist audience would not let him speak since they believed that a person being “religious” can not “freely” think as well.
This reminded me of the classic “No true Scotsman fallacy”.
Alice: All Scotsmen enjoy haggis.
Bob: My uncle is a Scotsman, and he doesn’t like haggis!
Alice: Well, all true Scotsmen like haggis.
(the above example was taken from Wikipedia)
So there it is, if a person is really a free thinker, he can’t be religious, because all true free thinkers are non-religious? I wonder how true that claim is? And the problem is it all depends on the definition of the term “free thinker” and that varies. But I admit its a good line to have your opponent shut up because now you are attacking him rather than his argument. Its mean but with enough people around to chant behind you, you can get the job done and have your opponent quit trying to explain.
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:1-5
That is, perhaps one of the most misconstrued messages of Christ in my opinion. Fallacious use of the former is so common and so ordinary that it is hard to describe it. You may have heard it too a lot of times. Things like, you have no right to say it to me, you are hypocrite, you do not fully walk the Christian life and you blame me. These and a huge variety of other sentences that carry the same message, You have no right to stop me because you are also imperfect and (insert any bad thing here you know about the person pointing out your fault). You can not stop me because you have a plank in your eye as well, mister.
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This is sad, please remember her in your prayers, Christians in Pakistan are being persecuted…
“Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering”. Hebrews 13:3
She needs your support and your prayers.
Hi guys,
Rachel, I am going to put down your responses (Here) and go through them, the same way you did.
I want to establish a pattern of thinking. I find it offensive that you would add homosexual to the list of people who have committed horrendous acts against humanity. For the sake of entertaining your ideology I will continue, but some friends of mine who I dearly adore are homosexuals, and I would call them better people then most “christians.”
It is superficial to say that one can change their heart after committing one of the most horrific acts abusing humanity. So lets assume there is a god, and he is as you are beginning to describe. He knows the hearts and deeds and intentions of his followers and those who “stray.” Now we have to assume he is not guilty (god) of having created man ill and then, under penalty of hell and suffering, forced him to spend his life repenting for his sickness. That way we can free god from being part of the collective guilt for having created sin. Now assume that everyone is a sinner, not just your list, but all of humanity. Well then we have to assume either there are levels of sickness or all sicknesses are equal.
Hmm, my intention was to point out the imperfection, not the acts itself. But about homosexuals, well I have two cousins, who are closet gays, and they come to me for help in our family, so don’t go assuming that I hate homosexuals, I do not.
Why would God be guilty, if you do not know, the text doesn’t say he made man sick, so no point there IMO. I am not saying that someone who committed the most horrific acts in human history can change his heart. He can’t; and they do not, they become so hard in their wrong character that they simply never admit they are wrong.
Hi Rachel, If I may inject my own perspective here, I am going to address some of the points you made here https://johnadavid.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/will-god-not-accept-us-in-his-kingdom-if-we-sin-as-christians/#comment-72,
I am going to break it down. It is going to be a long post. I think we should go step by step. Lets define what we are addressing. In this post, I am talking about sin, the average joe, Hitler and forgiveness. How God treats sinners and the things related to it. Next we’ll move to confession, repentance, being sorry and being saved. I think the below should be enough to be digested first, through and through and then we will proceed forward. I would appreciate if you can keep your thoughts to the points I have discussed, we will get on with the others a little later.
I am not asking you to to accept theism as truth but namely that what are your thoughts on the following?
- Is any thought new to you? in the sense that you can treat something in a new light perhaps?
- In your opinion would it make sense, up-till the point that I have discussed; and what will be your objections to any logical explanations below?
What I am NOT looking for is:
- emotional appeals to what seems unjust by any non-theistic perspective
- hasty conclusions.
- A one liner which says “I dont believe in your sky daddy so all of this is crap.” OR God is a hypocrite because he let murderers in his place but not gays. ;). Please I am well aware of these and I can tell right now, and further down in the post I’ll demonstrate why it is wrong. That this is more assumption on misinformation, faulty logic and less exploring; if you explore more and assume less you would not accuse me of something I do not hold to.
Categories
Can you hear me now?
Brilliant post from http://growingwiserblog.com/, I highly recommend reading it.
This post is for Christians only.
This question was raised to me a while back and I posted this here to share with you what I think and more so what Christ taught us, because the guy who asked this question was troubled and confused regarding his salvation.
To start I think it is a vague question, a wrong question to some extent, because it doesn’t define the extent of the meaning of the words “God”, “sin” and “Christians”. Many people can have a lot of different views and definitions of these words which may or may not form a cohesive frame of logic.
To start with, God wants to save all but remember he is holy and he wants his people to be holy as well. So at the end, what counts the most is what is in your heart. If you enjoy your sin, God will know that, if you fight your sin and fail or succeed, God will acknowledge that too. Yes, we all sin, but I think we are derailed when we think Christ compromises on our sins. He doesn’t, that is the only reason he came all the way down to earth and died a horrible death so that we could be free of sin. He wants to abolish the sinful nature in us and though sin we may, it is paramount to know what is working in us. If it is the spirit of God and nature of God then we are assured that we can overcome our weaknesses and God saves us from our sins. But if it is the sinful nature that rules us and we are lip-Christians, then we need to seriously look into our spiritual life and the void which only Christ can fill.
The Critical Eye 