Comment on What did people think dinosaur bones were before we officially recognised dinosaurs?

• Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  God is not a vengeful rules lawyer who’s looking for any excuse he possibly can find to punish every single human being that doesn’t do everything exactly the way a book written 2,000 years ago says it should have been done.

  You’re partially correct. God is perfectly Just and perfectly Merciful. So God punishes those who are unrepentant, and forgives those who are. Because of this Mercy, God became Man and suffered the punishment for sin in man’s place. That’s God’s mercy. However, those who avoid it are still punished.

  You try and demean what you claim to be your own scripture as a Christian to “a book written 2,000 years ago”. In fact- you’re constricting morality to knowledge of this book. Morality is engrained and known in man. “You shall not kill” “You shall not steal” have been universal laws throughout societies, even “Do unto others as you would want done unto you”. If you’re constricting morality to knowledge of the Book, you’re actually arguing that other religions and those without cannot be moral or act morally. That’s not true, everyone knows the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. The Bible, God’s law, is a concrete guiding light. The fact is, all have sinned regardless, so following 99% of it or 50% of it makes no difference whether or not they have access to a Bible (as many didn’t for centuries). The Bible is an infallible record of this law, so when society strays like it has throughout centuries, such as committing atrocities such as slavery, genocides, war, and abortion, the Bible still stands there with an unchanged and an uncompromising record of God’s law, right and wrong, that we can judge by.

  I have been through all of your objections in my own personal walk, and I’m making the choices that feel the most divinely inspired to me.

  That’s dealing with subjective, corruptible and fallible feelings. Not infallible facts.

  The greatest rule is love, and against love there is no law. And if I choose to love my neighbor and accept them the way they are, and my faith says that it is okay for them to be who they are, God’s not going to punish them for being the person who he made them to be based off of their life experiences, then I’m going to stick with that regardless of what a book says.

  Matthew 22:37-40

  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

  The great and first commandment is to love God. So that includes following His law and His commands. This law applies to everyone, including your neighbour. The second is to love your neighbour. To lie to your neighbour about what God has revealed to you and their need for salvation, to hide that from them is violence. God said to love your neighbour. God is Love- and affirming what God has commanded against or failing to alert someone to their need of salvation is violence against your neighbour. Is it love to let someone remain hungry, thirsty and dying, devoid of their senses to the point they do not even realise their pain. Meanwhile you have plenty of food and water and tell them “I respect and affirm your hunger and thirst, and that you don’t want any food or water” and not insist on sharing your bounty with them? Then what greater hatred would it be to not alert someone of their sin and eternal destiny and need for Salvation?

  Regardless of what a book says

  When you said “the greatest rule is love”, that’s from the same book I am referring to. I could just the same dismiss your argument saying “well I’m going to tell everyone they’re horrible regardless of what a book says!” This “book” is the Christian scripture that all Christians have to follow- divinely inspired by The Holy Spirit and written by those who knew Jesus most. To demean it and disregard it is to depart from the Christian faith.

  Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.

  If I was wrong to the point I would be eternally damned, I would want someone to share the Gospel with me. In fact, it’s why I carry a large amount of respect to Muslims and Mormons who try and evangelise to me, despite them being wrong.

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  • bizarroland@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    If God would send you to hell forever because you didn’t worship him, because you were raised in a life where the Christian God was not the default religion, then he is an evil god and not worthy of being worshiped.

    You might as well worship Cthulhu at that point, because he’s condemning, you know, what, 70% of every human that’s ever lived? to hell. forever.

    The majority is not Christian and never has been Christian. Christianity has always been a very small portion of the population.

    Even right now, world over, only about 20% of the world is Christian.

    By the way evangelicals teach you, that means that four out of five people alive on this planet are going to hell by default. That is six billion souls that god is condemning to hell for not following the preachings of one specific book, the way you’re saying it.

    That’s why I said you cannot rely on just the book. You have to actually put the work in and think logically from your best approximation of the viewpoint of a kind and loving God that created us with intentional purpose.

    Don’t try to save the people that already have a religion. Try to save the people that are in need of salvation because they are erring in their life. They are sinning in their ways. They are doing wrong to themselves and to other people.

    Love not fear.

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    • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If God would send you to hell forever because you didn’t worship him, because you were raised in a life where the Christian God was not the default religion,

      God punishes sin. Everyone knows the difference between right and wrong, yet they deliberately do wrong. The punishment for sin is death and it separates us from God. It’s got nothing to do with where you’re from.

      he is an evil god and not worthy of being worshiped.

      By what standard? Since we’re both Christians, can you find a reference that supports your argument from our agreed-upon infallible scripture?

      I can argue my position because of what is written in Romans 9:14-29

      What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’” “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” And as Isaiah predicted, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.”

      The majority is not Christian and never has been Christian. Christianity has always been a very small portion of the population.

      Even right now, world over, only about 20% of the world is Christian.

      By the way evangelicals teach you, that means that four out of five people alive on this planet are going to hell by default. That is six billion souls that god is condemning to hell for not following the preachings of one specific book, the way you’re saying it.

      I guess Jesus is an Evangelical, then.

      Matthew 7:13-14

      “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

      That’s why I said you cannot rely on just the book. You have to actually put the work in

      That’s a scary thought - how could we know that we are working hard enough? How could we have assurance that we’ll be saved?

      Don’t try to save the people that already have a religion. Try to save the people that are in need of salvation because they are erring in their life. They are sinning in their ways. They are doing wrong to themselves and to other people.

      We all are erring in life. We all need salvation. Only Jesus can grant that.

      Love not fear.

      Proverbs 9:10

      The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

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