Figuring Out Religion

[doodle]

I'm curious why you put so much faith in this one book mountaineer, and such little faith in so many others. Why this book of all of those that are out there?

[Mountaineer]

I'm curious why you put so much faith in this one book mountaineer, and such little faith in so many others. Why this book of all of those that are out there?

Bible: Tells me all I need to know for eternal life.

All other books: Useful for entertainment or to learn skills on this side of heaven.

And, for what it is worth, I do not have "faith" in books, I have faith in the promises of Christ and know that He came to earth, lived, died by crucifixion, and rose again to save us from eternal damnation.  Faith comes by hearing the Word and is a gift from God.  The direction of communication in the Divine Service is from God to us.  The way you describe faith in your quote above, the direction is from you to something else. 

... Mountaineer

[Ad Orientem]

[doodle]

Lol! I really don't even know how to debate religious people anymore. They violate every logical convention that I'm familiar with right off the bat and I'm not sure how to even proceed from that point....

[doodle]

Bible: Tells me all I need to know for eternal life.

And you know this because the bible tells you so.....

[Mountaineer]

I get really concerned when I see Christians getting too attached to one of the political parties.  This article points out that our political ideologies should be secondary (in my view, a distant second). 

http://theweek.com/article/index/257983 ... ves-second

To put it more practically: To be a Christian is to believe that all political ideologies are suspect. And wrong. It doesn't mean that Christians should retreat from all political ideologies — as that would also be a political ideology, and also wrong. By all means, be a Christian liberal. Be a Christian conservative. But if you are a Christian liberal, if you are a Christian conservative, then by definition there will be tensions between your Christianity and your political ideology. It's axiomatic. And if you are a Christian first and an ideologue second, you should confront those tensions instead of papering over them.

I don't want to beat a dead horse with this comment:  This is where the LCMS doctrine of the two kingdoms is so helpful.  Kingdom of the right (God/Jesus/Holy Spirit stuff, theology, purpose is salvation), kingdom of the left (civil stuff, politics including church politics, purpose is to reduce chaos - provide order).  Helps me with knowing what exactly the issue is being dealt with is and how to move forward effectively.

... Mountaineer

[Mountaineer]

Lol! I really don't even know how to debate religious people anymore. They violate every logical convention that I'm familiar with right off the bat and I'm not sure how to even proceed from that point....

Join us!  Saddle up!  We welcome you with open arms, and, don't worry, the dragon has already been slain. 

[Mountaineer]

I just finished reading an interesting book, "What They Need to Hear".  It might be of interest to Christians and non-believers alike as it discusses miracles, history, and how to converse with a dying person about topics of importance.  It is a quick read.  The author has an interesting writing style that is entertaining as well as deep and thoughtful.  I can't imagine myself having the perseverance or guts to write 90 letters to a close relative on the subject of death.

http://www.amazon.com/What-They-Need-He ... 0758639538

"Most everyone knows a family member or friend that is not a Christian. How to reach out to these loved ones and share Christ can be a struggle. Many people don t know how to share their faith and are unsure if they are saying the right words.

"In What They Need to Hear author Klemet I Preus shares the ninety letters he wrote to his dying father-in-law, Lloyd, who was not a Christian. Thankfully the Lord worked through these letters and Lloyd became a Christian before his death. The short devotional in nature letters in this book can be used as a template for you to follow with your own Lloyd that person in your life who is questioning God and the Church."

... Mountaineer

[doodle]

Might makes right even if you believe in God....otherwise why would he punish those who don't obey him?

[doodle]

God brings justice to humanity that humanity can't always bring to itself.  Nobody permanently escapes judgement for their wrongdoings, and for that I'm thankful.  Otherwise, the many mass murderers throughout history would escape justice through the same death that awaits all of us.  But that's not the end.  What we believe in this life ultimately does matter. 

As long as you acknowledge that everything that you just wrote is all faith and conjecture. There is no verifiable proof for any of that.

[doodle]

Morality doesn't exist in the same way that gravity does. I can violate moral laws with abandon and there is no proof that anything will happen to me, yet if I violate the law of gravity and jump off a bridge I will die 100% of the time. I think this example is enough to prove the difference between a concept or idea and reality.

[Mountaineer]

Morality doesn't exist in the same way that gravity does. I can violate moral laws with abandon and there is no proof that anything will happen to me, yet if I violate the law of gravity and jump off a bridge I will die 100% of the time. I think this example is enough to prove the difference between a concept or idea and reality.

Who is going to be God?  There are really only two fundamental choices - man or God.  Basically, what I hear you saying is my god is science and if can't be proven by science, it does not exist.  In other words, you have become your own god.  My condolences that you have such a small god that you can understand.  I prefer a God that is so big I could not understand Him if I studied 24/7/365.  Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus.  I suggest you do some really heavy study and prove that Jesus was not resurrected; I think every scenario that man has come up with to disprove the resurrection has been disproved by evidence good enough to stand up in a court room.  Rest assured however, you will be judged, whether you choose to believe it or not, and God help you if you think you can stand on your own perfect righteousness.  Yes, I know that sounds harsh.  If I did not care about you, I'd say nothing; thus the tough love.  For those of us who do believe in the promises of Jesus, when we get to the judgement throne, I'll just say, Jesus is my advocate; He paid for all of my sins and YAHOO!  I'm in.

... Mountaineer

[doodle]

The funny thing about me is that the Christian concept of eternal life sounds like torture. I really hope that when "I" die that my soul disappears....this is more similar to the idea of liberation from the wheel of samsara.

[doodle]

If God is just he wont punish me because I'm incapable of believing in him. If he is that petty then I would prefer to be sent to hell....I really mean that. I cannot respect a God who would condemn the majority of mankind to hell because they don't accept Jesus as their savior especially when they were born into another culture that taught them a different belief system

[doodle]

These Christian ultimatums make me despise the whole religion.

[Mountaineer]

The funny thing about me is that the Christian concept of eternal life sounds like torture. I really hope that when "I" die that my soul disappears....this is more similar to the idea of liberation from the wheel of samsara.

Unfortunately, your choice is not an option.  There are only two.  Eternal joy with Jesus in a perfect world as it was intended to be before man screwed it up, or, eternal damnation.  Sorry you don't get to pick nothingness.

... Mountaineer

[Mountaineer]

If God is just he wont punish me because I'm incapable of believing in him. If he is that petty then I would prefer to be sent to hell....I really mean that. I cannot respect a God who would condemn the majority of mankind to hell because they don't accept Jesus as their savior especially when they were born into another culture that taught them a different belief system

Think of it this way, you do not accept Jesus ... you just need to not reject Him which you to this point are doing.  Faith comes by hearing the Word?  Do you go to where you have that opportunity?

... Mountaineer

[Mountaineer]

These Christian ultimatums make me despise the whole religion.

Truth hurts.  You appear to be focused on yourself and your feelings, not the promises of Jesus.  Are you big enough, open enough, caring enough, to do something about it ... to invest a few months of Sunday mornings in a truly Christian church in a Bible Study where you can ask any question you like, and hear the Word proclaimed?  Go to a church that proclaims the Word, not one that tells you how to live your life.

... Mountaineer

[doodle]

I can't continue this conversation in a civil manner. I am unable to have someone ramrod their beliefs down my throat and tell me that I am going to suffer external damnation unless I buy into their wacky set of beliefs. Your idiotic religion is why mankind will continue to slaughter each other long into the future. I hate to get emotionally involved like this, but your brand of Christianity makes me sick.

[Mountaineer]

These Christian ultimatums make me despise the whole religion.

If you decide you are "man enough" (sorry, that was the sinner in me trying to get your attention) to read something that may open your eyes and allow you to let something in to your head other than your preconceived view of Christianity, may I suggest you read "What They Need to Hear".  It might be the best $10 or $15 you ever spent.  Or, if you think it sucks, at least you will not have wasted much.

"In What They Need to Hear author Klemet I Preus shares the ninety-one letters he wrote to his dying father-in-law, Lloyd, who was not a Christian. Thankfully the Lord worked through these letters and Lloyd became a Christian before his death."

... Mountaineer

[Mountaineer]

I can't continue this conversation in a civil manner. I am unable to have someone ramrod their beliefs down my throat and tell me that I am going to suffer external damnation unless I buy into their wacky set of beliefs. Your idiotic religion is why mankind will continue to slaughter each other long into the future. I hate to get emotionally involved like this, but your brand of Christianity makes me sick.

doodle,

If you are still reading this thread, please consider my comments and try to understand the intent.

I really do care about other people (I would pull an unaware, blind, deaf person from the train tracks when I saw a train coming even if they wondered why I tackled them and threw them to the ground).

I appologize you perceive my comments as ramming my beliefs down your throat.
 
I do not perceive I am ramming - to me, I am just expressing my beliefs and opinions and sharing Christian hope.  From my perspective, I can do nothing to make you "have a bad day", I am just the stimulus; how you react is up to you and is in your control, not mine.  However, I realize that my views are not the views of everyone.  So, once again, I appologize.  It appears that for whatever reason, my comments are causing you to hate - in particular hate Christians and perhaps even hate God.

To me, I perceive you are very intolerant of hearing a view that differs from yours.  I am intrigued by people who are intolerant, especially of Christianity, and wonder why?  Is it because of fear - fear that there just might be more than a shred of truth in what they are hearing and the consequences of unbelief are so horrible they do everything in their power to put it out of their mind?  Is it something else?  Is it intolerance of people who have different thought processes, different backgrounds, different "whatevers"? 

My responses to you tend to be harsh and include a lot of "Law" (e.g. God says this is what is going to happen if you don't repent, etc.)  Law is useful to get people to see the error of their ways so they are ready to hear the "Gospel" (good news).  From my perspective, if one does not come to the conclusion they are imperfect sinners and cannot possibly on their own do what God requires of them, they will not ever really understand why they are so desperately in need of a savior. 

Rebelling against God is completely normal and is a characteristic of every human (except Jesus) that has walked the earth since that first rebellion brought death into the world. 

Desert tends to be much kinder in his responses.  He is showing the Gospel to you.  The Gospel is the good news that Christ came to earth, lived, died and rose again to pay for your sins and those who believe His promises are forgiven.

And, for something to consider about your ending comment about people slaughtering each other because of religion: Have you considered that it is not religion that is the cause of bad things happening but mans failing to adhere to the tenants of the Christian religion that is the cause?  In other words, it is not God's fault, it is completely on our shoulders - we are the ones who have and do screw up.  Just as a law of 25 miles per hour in a school zone is not bad - the problem is when man rebels, thinks he knows more than the persons who made the law of 25 mph, takes matters into his own hand and drives 50 mph, runs over a kid and ends up in court.  Would he tell the judge the 25 mph speed limit was the reason he killed the kid, or would he fess up and say it was his own rebellion to the law that was the problem? 

I, like Desert, do understand this all probably sounds very ridiculous (it did to me for a long time).  My hope is that somehow between hearing Law and hearing Gospel, you give some priority to learning more about Christianity, preferably from the source documents and from those who have a lot of training in helping people hear the Word, and not just forming your opinion from imperfect sinner nut cases like me. 


... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

Mountaineer & Desert,

I come at this with none of the anger that doodle and Bill Maher might feel towards all religions.  I have a very HB'esque version of Objectivity to my moral structure.  Which means it would be just stupid and petty for me to get angry at Christians for not "getting it" or whatever.

But one thing I don't accept is this false dichotomy between "God" being god or "man" being god.  We all have to trust our feelings and senses to some degree.  We all have to use our ability to interpret the world around us to establish "reality."  Sure, there may very well be something MUCH more large and complex going on, and we're simply staring at one level of reality without realizing the bigger picture.  I think the development of quantum physics proves out one level of this.  Perhaps there is much, much more.

But to establish a position on what all that is means that you either have to make it up, or trust some FEELING you have about the ultimate reality.  So you are basically trusting yourself as an accurate interpreter of not only God's presence, but a lot of little details about how things work in that unproven reality, and what God wants from us. 

So an agnostic looks at things he doesn't know and says "I don't know, but I'll look to science, logic, and observation as my tools to come up with good ideas."

A Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc looks at things he doesn't know and says "I have this FEELING that I call faith that tells me not only that God exists, but allows me to, either through Him or through some guy I listen to every so often, a bunch of details about who He is, who His son was, and what rules for behavior he has set up that I should follow, and how I get to a happy afterlife."

Who is really putting too much faith in themselves?  Who is really putting too much faith in man?

Either way, we are both putting our faith in men.  Religious folks put their faith in 1) religious leaders/interpreters/writers of the good book, and 2) their feeling of the "presence" of God.  Agnostics put their faith on repeatable, observable, empirical evidence, and the fact that their limited senses are interpreting reality correctly, especially when it lines up with the science.  There is far less "faith" involved, though, with empirical observation. 

Obviously, we could all be in the Matrix, or we are living in a world constructed by God's unlimited power, or we are all just multiple personalities occupying the mind of a lunatic in a mental institute.  But if you are telling us all that one of those things are true, what senses or evidence are you using?  How do you know that YOU are correctly interpreting reality?  Other than empirical evidence, the only thing that can lead you to an answer is 1) a story/assertion, and 2) a feeling that this assertion is correct... That feeling is called "faith," but it is a feeling you feel as a human being, and you're judging yourself as a correct interpreter of reality based on ONE FEELING.  That same FEELING leads others to very different conclusions about this ultimate "reality."

I'm asserting that religious folks put far more faith in themselves and man than (most) agnostics do.

[doodle]

Thank you Moda for making this argument. I am unfortunately (after many years) still unable to engage in these conversations without flying of the handle. There is something in me that just cannot tolerate being condemned by to eternal hellfire by another person because I don't happen to "feel" the same faith that someone else does or subscribe to the same set of beliefs about God and the universe. The fact that they use the Bible to justify the veracity of what the Bible says just makes the conversation all the more circular and infuriating for me.

[Mountaineer]

moda,

Believe it or not, I agree with much of what you say and heartily respect your right to see things from your perspective.  Probably my main disagreements center around your use of "feeling" (or emotion?) and your discounting of the concept of obtaining knowledge by revelation, possibly because you can't taste, smell, touch or otherwise prove it.  Christianity is not about feeling.  Said another way, picture a vertical axis going from the bottom up with the labels "body", "mind", "heart", and "spirit".  It seems your worldview only encompases the first three.  I also endorse those three, I just add a fourth description of what we are capable of - a way of obtaining knowledge - revelation - that is beyond what I can do with my hands, feel, or think about.  By revelation, I do not mean that I hear "voices or spirits" telling me something (if I did it would likely be from the evil spirits); I mean I consider revelation because of what God has chosen to reveal to us in His Word by His Word.  The horizontal axis is increasing knowledge with the left end origin low and the right end high or more knowledge.  The graph then has a 45 degree vector running from the origin outward.  Thus, one gains more knowledge (and hopefully converts that into understanding) as one proceeds outward on the vector (upward on the vertical axis and to the right on the horizontal).

And, maybe it is only symantics, but I do not have faith in man, including faith in myself; most confessional Christians (not the progressives) that I know have almost zero faith in man and see man as an utterly corrupt, sinful being, that were it not for Christ, would be doomed to eternal damnation; just read the newspaper, or read the current Israel vs. Hamas thread, for proof that on this side of heaven we are that way.  Pretty much everytime in history we have depended on man to solve fundamental big problems, there is almost always a bigger problem just around the corner waiting to snare us, trick us, and deceive us into thinking next time will be different.  We seem to do OK for a while, maybe even a few hundred years, then calamity rears its ugly head once more.  I have faith in the promises of Jesus and since faith is a gift (Jesus is both the source and the object of the faith) that comes from hearing the Word proclaimed, those who do not have ears to hear will likely never understand.  Thus, I can totally understand why you might reject the idea that man's fallen nature is to be his own god, but I think if you examine events, yourself, and others carefully using your belief in science and observation, you might discover that in our culture's quest for entertainment, pleasure, a bigger house, a faster car, a greener environment, healthier bodies, etc. etc. etc. you will see a whole lot of examples of "man wants to be his own god, or trust in himself instead of the Lord".  I do perceive that you are a seeker of truth; one of these days we will find out the real "truth".  Until then, may the peace of God be with you (whether you believe it or not)  .

... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

Mountaineer,

I don't mean "feeling" as an emotion per se.  Revelation is an observation of a perceived potential reality that only you experience.  Of course, others may experience something similar at a different time (or the same time), but it is still something that has to work through your confidence in your ability to interpret reality.  You are assuming your revelation isn't just a hallucination.  You're assuming it is God.  And while I don't discount that there COULD be knowledge obtained through revelation, if I "communicate" with God, and I assume it is real, I am assuming my ability to correctly interpret reality.  There are billions of people on this earth that believe that they have had a similar revelation at some point, and that their interpretation is correct.

I can understand how you would think that "revelation" would be fundamentally different than any other sort of sense of reality that we might have (just as I think of it as just another "feeling"), but you must recognize the amount of faith you must have in yourself to claim that the message that you interpreted in your revelation REQUIRED that you interpret it correctly.  It also requires that billions upon billions of other people, in varying degrees, experienced something that they think FELT similar, but wasn't a "real revelation," it was just group think, wishful thinking, tribe mentality, the devil, etc, etc, etc. 

Your revelation, whether it's an emotion, a feeling, or a deep connection to God, is obviously one of the most important things you've ever experienced in your life, so I'm not trying to say that it is NECESSARILY fundamentally no different than when I stubbed my toe or smell roses or hear good music, because IF there is a God, AND he chose to reveal himself to you via revelation, this is truly miraculous.  But it STILL necessitates that you believe in your ability to interpret reality via what you call a revelation, and everything outside you in observable "physical reality" is showing us that billions of people had a VERY different revelation than you did.  So you have to have a LOT of faith in your ability to interpret reality.

Perhaps what people interpret as revelation is simply some sort of hallucination.  Do you think that is possible?