What is the point of Christianity?

First off Iason I would recommend looking at what is nearly the first 2/3 of your Bible. That is what is known to Christians as the Old Testement. Mosaic law contains an estimated 613 commandments. These are commandments to those who were part of the First Covenant between God and Abraham. The Law was given through Moses and Implemented, I believe, during the Exodus.

Christians are not a part of the original covenant but rather a "New Covenant". This covenant is between God through Jesus and the Church.

This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
Hebrews 8:10 (refrencing Jerimiah 31:33)

By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. Hebrews 8:13

The law is written in the hearts and minds of Christians. It is therefore not only neccesary to repent for your sins and ask for forgiveness but also be desirous of being Christ like (i.e. Perfect). You aren't going to succeed but in your heart you wish you could.

"For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do" Romans 7:19


"For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members."
Romans 7:22-23

I disagree that God requires you to be ashamed. He wrote the law in your mind so that you know when you are doing something that breaks his laws and He wrote it in your heart so that you strive to do better. The forgiveness obtained through the sacrifice of Christ is given freely so that we may approach the lord with confidence for he remembers no more our transgressions. Without confidence in your Salvation you could never be in the presence of the Lord. Faced with his perfection your shame would be so great that you could not remain.

Originally posted by autowrench
reply to post by Iason321

 

I try to adhere to them as much as possible.

Iason, I hate to single you out again and again, and I mean no harm of hate in any way. Do you really follow the 10 thou shalt nots as laid out by Moses in the OT?

7. Thou shalt have none other gods before me.
Do you follow this law, or do you hold up a man in place of the God who gave this order? You cannot have it both way, either a man can become God, or Not.

8. Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth
Have a crucifix on your body? Cross on your Church? These are graven images and likenesses of things associated with the Christian faith.

16. Honor thy Father and thy Mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
Think about this for a second...."Honor thy father and thy mother"...if God is the Father, then who is the Mother? I know! The Goddess! Do you honor the Mother? Or do you honor a Man?
Do you really adhere to them?

I have no other Gods beside Yahweh Christ. I do not worship man, I do not worship money, I do not own a vehicle, I am poor and own not many material objects.
All is vanity, and nothing matters in this world to me aside from God Almighty.

I am wearing a rosary around my neck right now. I do not worship my rosary, I do not expect magical powers from it, it is just an inanimate object hanging around my neck and symbolizing what I believe in.

Honor thy father and thy mother is exactly what it's saying - By honor thy father, it DOES have double meaning. It means to honor your real, biological earth father, and it also means to honor thy Father who art in Heaven.
By honor thy Mother, it means to honor thy Biological earth mother.
The Holy Spirit also has femine characteristics, and technically God is without gender, so He could be my Holy Mother as well.

All of Christianity can be unwound by showin the flaws of God's Plan.

reply to post by AccusedNut


But can you do that?

Or can you just speak of it and not have any sort of substance whatsoever to the falsehoods you spread?

reply to post by AccusedNut


You can't say God's plan is flawed because you cannot view its scope and you haven't seen its completion. Also you know neither the Lord's motivations nor his goals.

reply to post by AccusedNut


God has an answer for those who think they have wisdom concerning His plan. It can be found in Job 38.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

2 Who [is] this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?

3 Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.

4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.


Basically, God says you shouldn't speak foolishness if you weren't there from the beginning because you have no idea.

Originally posted by IgnorantSpecies
What is the point of Christianity?

edit on 4-4-2012 by IgnorantSpecies because: (no reason given)

Money and control.

In that order.

Always has been.....always will be.

reply to post by micmerci


A typical response from a religious person. Gods plan states that he knows the time you are born and the time you will die. Showing that murderers and rapists are completely blameless. They are puppets acting out this plan. Tell me how that makes sense?
Also show me scientific evidence that any of what you speak exists, bible passages do not count as evidence.

Originally posted by AccusedNut
reply to post by micmerci

 

A typical response from a religious person. Gods plan states that he knows the time you are born and the time you ill die. Showing that murderers and rapists are completely blameless. They are puppets acting out this plan. Tell me how that makes sense?
Also show me scientific evidence that any of what you speak exists, bible passages do not count as evidence.

A typical response from an uninformed and ignorant person. (See, the barbs can go both ways) Your argument is skewed and invalid. In one breath you use biblical references to show that God's plan is flawed and in the very next breath you state that I cannot use scripture to defend my position. Which is it?

Originally posted by micmerci

Originally posted by AccusedNut
reply to post by micmerci

 

A typical response from a religious person. Gods plan states that he knows the time you are born and the time you ill die. Showing that murderers and rapists are completely blameless. They are puppets acting out this plan. Tell me how that makes sense?
Also show me scientific evidence that any of what you speak exists, bible passages do not count as evidence.

A typical response from an uninformed and ignorant person. (See, the barbs can go both ways) Your argument is skewed and invalid. In one breath you use biblical references to show that God's plan is flawed and in the very next breath you state that I cannot use scripture to defend my position. Which is it?

Fair argument. I like the standard assertion of how I'm the ignorant one just because I don't hold the same beliefs that beliefs that you do. If I had a nickel for every time I've been called ignorant by a religious person I'd be rich. But that's beside the point. Arguing over religion is like arguing with a stop sign. You'll never get anywhere.

reply to post by Iason321

I have no other Gods beside Yahweh Christ.

Yahweh. Have you studied on Yahweh? A little knowledge for you.
The words "Jehovah" and "Yahweh" both came from the same root word. Both words are an erroneous transliteration (a transliteration is the representation of the letters of a word from one alphabet using a different alphabet).

The four Canaanite-Hebrew letters *Yodh, Heh, Waw, Heh* are correctly transliterated in Roman (Latin) letters as YHWH and erroneously transliterated as JHVH. The erroneous four letter Romanized (Latinized) version, JHVH was rendered as "JEHOVAH."
Originally, these four consonants [in YHWH] represented the four members of the Heavenly Family: Y represented El the Father; H was Asherah the Mother; W corresponded to He the Son; and H was the Daughter Anath.

Some scholars acknowledge that the Name Yahweh comes from the Cannanite Dragon God Yaw. In Exodous, Yahweh flies ahead of the Israelites to burn away impassable briars and scorpions. He marks the route by spewing smoke and fire. He is specifically described spewing fire from his mouth and smoke from his nostrils, exactly like the Dragon like Leviathan that the Bible states he "plays" with. Many biblical passages imply that Yahweh physically consumed his meat offerings unlike the "fake" gods of other cultures. The Bible is very specific that Yahweh wanted salt on his meat as well, suggesting these offerings were physically consumed and not merely burned to ashes in a fire. Yahweh occasionally "consumes" humans as well, to include two of Aaron's sons who prepared a sacrifice wrong. Moses presents Yahweh with 32 Midianite virgins after the Israelite destruction of this tribe. No more is said of them so we can only assume they were "consumed" like Aaron's sons.
In scripture, Yahweh demanded the first born of all Israelites, but the Bible says it was possible to pay him money instead, on a sliding scale, also indicating the universal Dragon love of hoarding treasure. Yahweh is described with "feathers", as depicted on most of the most ancient Dragon wings and this idea lasted until medieval times, after which Dragons became less commonly seen.

Here is a description of Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament:
"There went up a smoke out of his [Yahweh] nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it."
(Psalm 18:8, 2 Samuel 22:9)

Here is a description of the Leviathan:

"Out of his [Leviathan] nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth." (Job 41:20)

Don't you think you owe Jesus an apology? Jesus stated the Pharisees were worshipping a creature that was NOT his father. Many Christians claim Jesus meant Satan, but this does not make sense, for the Jews clearly worshipped Yahweh and clearly recognized Satan as a distinctly different creature which they definitely did not worship. Could Jesus have been referring to the Yahweh Dragon? After all he did not call to Yahweh from the cross, but to El. The first paragraphs of the Bible show these are two different entities, for El's creation story is completely different from Yahweh's, far less scientific one.

Originally posted by IgnorantSpecies
What is the point of Christianity if I can do anything I want, break any of gods rules, not even follow the bible and all I have to do in return is apologize for my sins.

Yes, that's the point right there. Forgiveness.

Originally posted by IgnorantSpecies Essentially I could kill every single person on the planet and get into heaven by just saying sorry?

No, you can't get into Heaven by just saying what you don't really believe in your heart. You have to BE sorry, not SAY you're sorry.

Originally posted by IgnorantSpecies
I mean doesnt that defeat the purpose.

Not at all, the purpose of Christ's teachings isn't to keep you from sinning in the first place. The purpose is to let you know that despite your sins, you are still loved and wanted, and that forgiveness is there for the asking.

Originally posted by IgnorantSpeciesWhy is it that you don't have to follow the bible to follow the bible?

True Christians (as opposed to those who camp out on a pew once a week) follow Christ, not the Bible, and especially not what men tell them the Bible says. The Bible is not the Word. Christ is the Word. Many people are confused on this point.

Originally posted by AccusedNut
reply to post by micmerci

 

Gods plan states that he knows the time you are born and the time you will die. Showing that murderers and rapists are completely blameless. They are puppets acting out this plan. Tell me how that makes sense?

Just because God knows what you are going to do before you do it does not mean you are blameless, or just acting out his plan. Think of it this way, if you watch the same movie 100 times then you know every single thing people are going to do in it before they do it, right? But did you force them to do those things or even influence them in any way because of your foreknowledge? No. Just because God knows what people are going to do before they do it doesn't mean they are blameless, they still made the decision to do it on their own. They had the free will to do something else, but they chose that path and he didn't interfere.

Originally posted by Taupin Desciple

Originally posted by IgnorantSpecies
What is the point of Christianity?

edit on 4-4-2012 by IgnorantSpecies because: (no reason given)

Money and control.

In that order.

Always has been.....always will be.

You're confusing "organized religion" with "Christianity". Many people think they are one and the same, but they are not. Not at all. Christ himself spoke out quite harshly about the evils of organized religion. You'd think we would have learned from that, but 2000 years later religion is as prevalent as ever.

reply to post by autowrench


That is some pretty fascinating stuff! I didn't know that about Jehovah.

It reminds me of the American Indian god Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl (Classical Nahuatl: Quetzalcohuātl [ketsaɬˈko.aːtɬ]) is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and has the meaning of "feathered serpent".[1] The worship of a feathered serpent deity is first documented in Teotihuacan in the first century BC or first century AD.[2] That period lies within the Late Preclassic to Early Classic period (400 BC–600AD) of Mesoamerican chronology, and veneration of the figure appears to have spread throughout Mesoamerica by the Late Classic (600–900 AD).[3]

In the Postclassic period (900 – 1519 AD) the worship of the feathered serpent deity was based in the primary Mexican religious center of Cholula.

The exact significance and attributes of Quetzalcoatl varied somewhat between civilizations and through history. Quetzalcoatl is one of the four sons of Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, he was often considered the god of the morning star, and his twin brother Xolotl was the evening star (Venus). As the morning star he was known by the title Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, meaning "lord of the star of the dawn." He was known as the inventor of books and the calendar, the giver of maize (corn) to mankind, and sometimes as a symbol of death and resurrection.
.

Could it be the same deity or were a race of dragon like entities inhabiting our planet. The time period is roughly the same as the biblical sightings. hmmm

Originally posted by IgnorantSpecies
What is the point of Christianity if I can do anything I want, break any of gods rules, not even follow the bible and all I have to do in return is apologize for my sins.

That's not Christianity, James says that's a "dead faith", or basically that person doesn't have saving faith in Christ.

reply to post by NOTurTypical


There are many, many Christians that would argue that point with you. Their argument would be that Christ died for everyone. It is done. To assert that some were not saved is to doubt the power of the blood of Christ. How could a mere sinner/unbeliever nullify the sacrifice and the purchase that was made, by the power of Heaven?

The doctrine of "inclusiveness."

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by NOTurTypical

 

There are many, many Christians that would argue that point with you. Their argument would be that Christ died for everyone. It is done. To assert that some were not saved is to doubt the power of the blood of Christ. How could a mere sinner/unbeliever nullify the sacrifice and the purchase that was made, by the power of Heaven?

The doctrine of "inclusiveness."

What NOTurTypical is referring to, is when people say they believe in Christ, but they do whatever they want - they mistake grace for PERMISSION; trying to fool God.

Yet actually, it is true - Christ did die for the entire world. Not just the "chosen", the ones chosen before the foundation of the Earth (Ephesians 1:4), but he died for the sins of EVERYONE. You see, I don't think it's prudent for anyone to ever say "Please, forgive me Lord of my sins" - even a new believer or someone who's been with Christ for years - why? Because everyone's sins were paid for at the Cross.

Everyone. Believers and non-believers.

Does this mean everyone will go to Heaven? No, there's still only one unforgivable sin.. blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Rejecting Christ. If you do not believe Christ died for the sins of the world, and you die in your sins - you will be judge based off your works.

And let me tell you, only one sin will keep you out of Heaven.

reply to post by Lionhearte


Nope.

And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come,"

The text clearly states that speaking against Jesus is forgivable. In otherwords, not believing in Jesus is a forgivable sin.

I can shout from the rooftops that Jesus didn't die on the cross for our sins, and really, really mean it. If i'm wrong, I'll still be forgiven.

What is the Holy Spirit? I have my own definition. If I tell you what I believe the HS to be, and tell you that I live by that belief and hold it dear to my heart, and you speak against my HS, does that mean you will not be forgiven by god, because you don't agree with me as who or what the Holy Spirit actually is?

reply to post by AccusedNut


The term ignorant does not mean "stupid" or even "wrong" nor is it meant to be an insult. It just means that one has not become informed in that particular area. My statement has nothing to do with our difference in beliefs but it has everything to do with you incorrectly stating the stipulations of God's plan. I am not even speaking of it being incorrect in light of my interpretation. Your statement does not even fit into any of the standard arguments for or against

So, I stand by my original premise that your argument is skewed and invalid. I would suggest investigating what scripture actually does say is God's plan and then come back with a stronger argument.

I debate with strict atheists here on ATS often and I am pretty sure the general consensus is that I am fair, logical, respectful. I welcome lively debate and I accept upfront that my beliefs are impossible to prove. If I could there would be no need for faith.