Problem with Christianity

reply to post by windword

Jesus was tempted, therefore he sinned.

Temptations were presented to him, which is not the same as him considering carrying out a natural propensity to sin.

Jesus said that he wasn't "good,"

He asked the person why he said what he did, but did not deny it.

reply to post by BELIEVERpriest

But, the penalty of sin is death.

This is more of your Free Grace cult rhetoric showing through where you are grasping at the most obscure fragments that you can find while ignoring the main themes of the Bible.
Romans 6:7
because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
(2011 NIV)
1 Cor. 15
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
(2011 NIV)
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
1 John 5:17
all unrighteousness is sin, but there is sin not resulting in death.
(NetBible)
Anyway, the point being that you are making this story in Genesis out as an argument for this version of salvation theory that you apparently have been indoctrinated in.
When Genesis was written, death had already been a long accepted fact of life and people did not need to be convinced of its inevitability.
The emphasis is on the disobedience of the command from The Lord and how it was given in the most severe form possible, and after it was disobeyed, the threat is basically forgotten about, other than the possibility of immortality being taken away by the posting of the guardian of Eden.

We are all born sinners, so we are born with dead spirits. If this was not the case, then Jesus would not have said that you have to be born again.

People are born with natural spirits, which will result in sin. It could be argued that Jesus had a sort of "unnatural" spirit when he was born as a human, since we know that he did not sin. Dying is also "natural" whether we sin or (at least hypothetically) not, that is just how the world naturally works. To have a chance at being resurrected into another body, to go on living as a human being, that takes something that comes from beyond the natural world. That is something from God, a new spirit that dwells in us to motivate us to not sin, which is the same spirit that will raise us from the dead (Paul tells us under inspiration).

reply to post by BELIEVERpriest

Further more, look at the last resurrection aka the second death. These people are condemned to hell. How can they die a second time? Spiritual death results in separation from God, therefore the second death of the last resurrection is eternal separation from God.

Daniel 12:2
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.
(2011 NIV)
I think that you are confused because of a term in Revelation that really doesn't have to do with two judgments. Where it comes from id this part where those who are killed as martyrs for the faith are brought up to heaven and given positions as judges. Once all the seats are filled, then the judgment begins and the dead are brought forth. Those people are judged on a record of their deeds and they are not all automatically condemned.
There are not two general resurrections, one for the good, and then one for the bad, otherwise it wouldn't hardly be fair, or there would have had to have been some sort of judgment thaty we are not told about.
Well, there is one we are told about symbolically, where you have the beast killing people for not taking the mark, those people metaphorically already passed their judgment and conveniently are made available to become judges.

reply to post by windword


How much integrity is sufficient?

reply to post by jmdewey60


Free grace cult? So do you believe you have to work for heaven? Can salvation be lost?

reply to post by BELIEVERpriest


I never said Jesus wasn't the way, he certainly is, but not in the way you believe. His lessons are what matter, not his death.

reply to post by BELIEVERpriest

Free grace cult? So do you believe you have to work for heaven? Can salvation be lost?

These questions are based on man-made theories.
Try asking these questions using actual Bible verses and see if you can do it?

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by windword

 

Jesus was tempted, therefore he sinned.

Temptations were presented to him, which is not the same as him considering carrying out a natural propensity to sin.

I would argue that the temptations that were presented were designed/tailored toward his weaknesses, or the qualities that needed to be tempered before he began his ministry.

Jesus said that he wasn't "good,"

He asked the person why he said what he did, but did not deny it.

You are very thoughtful and patient man, but, I have to disagree with you Jmdewey. Jesus said that there is no one that is good, except God. I take that as a denial, and I have to admit, that when someone calls me good, which has happened, I agree. I am a good person, but Jesus didn't agree.

Originally posted by BELIEVERpriest
reply to post by windword

 

How much integrity is sufficient?

Matthew 18:21-35

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.

reply to post by windword

Jesus said that there is no one that is good, except God. I take that as a denial, and I have to admit, that when someone calls me good, which has happened, I agree. I am a good person, but Jesus didn't agree.

The gospels are not straight history.
The things put in there are there, not to make an accurate record of Jesus' life as a biography for the sake of the curious, but in order to teach specific lessons.
If this was a history, and the man stood corrected for being presumptuous, you would have the man saying, "Oops, sorry about that. OK how is this? Teacher, who is close to being pretty good, in a relative sort of way".

Alright, the above is in support of my earlier post where I was saying that the story was a sort of parable. Now I have a commentary on Mark by Adela Yarbro Collins that is a comprehensive type commentary on one of the three gospels that the story shows up in. The commentary type books that I have on the other gospels are more specialized where they look at certain aspect of them, so to look at something like this, I would refer to the Mark commentary. She has a lot of information on the subject and what jumps out right away is that if the man wanted to argue with Jesus, he could, from the Talmud, where Moses is called "good".
One could say that the Talmud did not exist at the time of Jesus, but it was based on things people were writing or teaching at that time.
Taking that into consideration, it could be that Jesus was arguing that he was more authoritative than Moses, if you were to take the side that Jesus was actually divine in some sort of way, whether he was specifically the person we consider "God" or not.

Our Lord is God, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is sinless. So is His mother. Before you object,
God makes exceptions. Mary is one of them, she would carry God inside her. Genesis 3:15 shows they
were both sinless plus God the Father's first words for Mary in the greeting from Archangel Gabriel. Adulterous
King Jame's fellas changed "Hail, full of grace" to "highly favored one."

The Father's words were "Hail, full of grace." which means full of God. Grace, is God's presence.

Back to Genesis.

Gen 3:15 “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall crush your head, and you shall strike at His heel.”

In this verse God addresses Satan. The Seed here is Christ. The Woman is His Mother, that is, Mary. Thus Satan has perfect enmity with Christ and with His Mother. The Catholic Church has interpreted this as indicating the sinlessness of Christ and Mary. If either actually committed sin, then they would NOt be at enmity with Satan but actually a cooperator with Satan at times.

reply to post by colbe

In this verse God addresses Satan. The Seed here is Christ.

The Lord in Genesis 3:15 was addressing the serpent.
You find an apparent allusion to that verse in Romans 16, where it says that "The God of peace will quickly crush Satan under your feet" which is an eschatological statement which arguably was not written by Paul, and was a later addition by a scribe, since it does not fit with what Paul was talking about, which was accepting other people as Christians who don't necessarily believe exactly like you do. My guess is that this particular scribe did not like that idea, and wanted to go out and kill "heretics".
Revelation 12:17 says that the dragon went off to wage war against the "remnant of her seed" which seems to be a reference to the idea of "the seed" in Genesis 3:15.
Revelation 13:3 talks about a deadly wound to one of the heads of the beast, which may seem like a reference to the order given in Genesis 3:15. But it could also be a reference to Isaiah 27 in the Greek version, of taking a sword to the dragon.

My point here is to show that the New Testament doesn't really directly expound on Genesis 3:15, so anyone bringing up a theory as to how this verse has some special significance to Christians, are basically on their own.
The actual point by the writer of Genesis was that the serpent was degraded from someone who people would like, to someone who people are in a state of perpetual enmity with.

Originally posted by Astrocyte
I personally believe there is a God. My belief is philosophically conceived and outfitted with theological wrappings. As I look at the so called abrahamic faiths, I am struck by the strangeness of christianity.

I typed in google "God is good". The results showed pages and images touting this idea. Now, when I wrote this, I had the simple idea in mind "God is good....because?" because that is what my reason commands me to believe. God is good because humans need God to be good, and, as an existential fact of existence, that's a pretty powerful idea.

What did some of my Google results give as a reason for God's goodness? he died on the cross for our sins. I can't help but gasp and roll my eyes as I read that. First, it's a non sequitur. Second, the statement God is good, can be framed and understood without recourse to religious myth.

Both Judaism and Islam can be appreciated at a simplistic and fundamental level without confounding the basic issue; the texts which project meaning for these religions can be interpreted to support a straightforward theology that considers the question of how God relates with man. But christianity jumps the gun, and skips the grandest question of all. It commits a basic error in logic: don't make unnecessary assumptions.

When I say God is good, I and every other thinking person deserves to consider the question in a philosophical manner. For me, the whole spiel about God incarnating into a man and dying for our sins is just philosophically incoherent - if it's taken literally, that is. If accepted as a metaphor for a spiritual theology, It is similar to the notions easterners have of krishna or Buddha. But if taken absolutely literally, it just lampoons the fact that everyone of us are doing our dammed best to live a meaningful life; no one has any inkling of the complete truth, and if one of us did, I suppose God might be a bit of a masochist, enjoying to see his own creations fight it out amongst themselves until that one true religion he implanted trumps the duds.

Surely, there must come a time where mankind maturely understands God as a reality, something that cannot be limited or embodied in story form as undertaking special missions for a specific group. Each people on this planet has handed down insights about reality; the truer ones survive the test of time, and eventually spread. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism are faiths that have stood that test; each have preferred perspectives that touch upon existential and metaphysical truths. But none should be so conceited to think that only they are right, and the others incorrigbly wrong. Rather, the fact is, we all came to the divine by different paths; and our evolution involves understanding that, and getting on with life aware of that beautiful spirit which guides us towards the good.

Hindus and Buddhists appreciate the metaphors of their sacred texts; Jews and Muslims, for the most part, relate to God as a unified reality which underlies all existence, unhampered by anything else; Christians, unfortunately, have Jesus as a focal point; they speak of him, both in the sense of a man, who did all those things we read of in the gospels, and as God himself. The ambivalence of this narrative creates confusion for the masses of believers who begin to speak of a historical figure in metaphysical terms, not really recognizing the superficiality of that obvious blunder in category.

While i am by no means attacking a Christian's ability to live an ethical life, I am completely bewildered by their acceptance of a dogma that is so patently overkill.

So the key word here is the word philosophy which you of course conceived in your head as you state (of which you didnt even care to explain in any detail), which is something the Bible expressly warns believers about.

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. - Colossians 2:8

You fail to explain exactly how the core tenents of Christianity are "patently overkill" and how it "jumps the gun" and makes "assumptions" on how we relate to God. If you are expecting a satisfactory response from any Bible believing Christian then you should at least have the common courtesy to provide a detailed satisfactory post worth responsing to so that you don't come off as just another one of the dozens on this website, rather they be atheist, new age, ancient astronauts, evolutionsists, with all of the same types of half baked, ill informed , and most importantly, philosophical accusations against Christianity.