A question about Christian beliefs.

Great Debates
1

In this thread, I asked a question that has bothered me for a while:

I really should have started a different thread to ask that question, as I would really appreciate some explanation. I do not mean this as an attack on Christians in general, in fact most Christians I know don’t worship a god of hate.

I honestly believe that this particular brand of circular faith (It’s good/bad because God says so) has driven more people from the church than anything else, ever. I know that for a while after losing my faith, it was this very aspect that made me very bitter toward religion, and I am just now beginning to regain some respect for religious thought. [sub]Primarily due to reading the posts of Polycarp and having met a few of his breed of Christian in real life.[/sub]

2

I’ll start by stating dogmatically (or is it axiomatically) that there is nothing that is observably harmless.:smack:

3

For me there is a sense of consistency. That is, in general, we all recognize the validity of prohibitions against certain things as having societal value (no lying, cheating, stealing, sleeping with your neighbor’s spouse, etc.).

So, as I read through the Jewish Bible and read ethical law that makes a lot of sense, I tend to believe that the ones I don’t understand have a reason that I just fail to perceive. To use the F-word, I have faith that God has a good reason. Since most of the laws are laws for which I can posit reasonableness, I presume that the others also have reasons.

Then, too, there is the desire to posit a law’s existence as having consistency with the character of God, the favorite of which is love. If God loves me, then his forbidding me to do something is for my own good … much like not-touching a hot stove. Again, it is an issue of faith.

For any particular action labelled sin that appears to have no obvious consequences, I leave judgement in God’s hands. (Or for that matter, even ones with obvious consequences are out-of-bounds unless I have established a relationship of trust with a particular person that might need to hear me.)

Tinker

Leaves to go find flame-retardant suit

4

Cool, Tinker, I like your explanation, it sounds like that works for you.

Navigator, the thread linked was referring to homosexuality specifically. In what possible way is loving someone harmful?

In the OP, when I described circular faith I should have mentioned the binary nature of good/evil as being what really bothers me. Every Christian I know believes that “all sins are equal in God’s eyes.” I can’t believe that a compassionate God would punish me for loving another man in the exact same way he would punish Charles Manson.

Some personal information that may explain where I’m coming from: I was raised as a Southern Baptist, but quit going to church regularly at age 12. I went through a period in high school of being interested in other religions- I made Catholic and Jewish friends take me with them to church. I went through a brief period of being a “militant athiest”. I consider myself to be “weak athiest”, I don’t believe in no creator but I do believe that man-made religions are false.

5

FWIW, I don’t think you could find consistent scriptural support for that statement.

Especially if you believe that God is just… within that definition there is a requirement for ‘levels’ of punishment.

Posing another question… define loving another man.

As a lifelong heterosexual, I have loved many men, I’ve yet to have sex with any of them.

Additionally, as a lifelong heterosexual, I have loved many women, and had sex with a few of them, of those relationship that occured outside of marriage, I’ve found (hindsight being 20/20) that there was damage incurred in both sides of the relationship. (some good lessons learned on both sides as well.)

Peace.

6

Navigator
:TMI alert: I am bisexual, but have a very low sex drive. I can count the number of sexual partners in my life on one hand (plus a few fingers depending on your definition of sex). Only one of those was a negative situation in the end (yes, it was a guy).

As far as the punishment thing goes, I agree with you that a just God would have levels of punishment, but most Christians I know believe that there is heaven and hell- that’s it. You are saved or not.
I have actually heard some Christians say that a murderer has a better chance of being saved than a homosexual, because homosexuality is an “ongoing sin”- a murderer can repent and sin no more, but what can you do when the essence of your being is “sinful”. I am not talking about the act of homosexual sex, but simply being attracted to the “wrong” person. The person who I heard say this was not a Fred Phelps type bigot, in fact he was a decent intelligent person who’s beliefs I dissagree with strongly.

7

grendel, thanks for the level conversation…

perhaps I’m getting into another session of TMI…

I’ve spent two of the last three weeks with a business associate that is a homosexual in a commited relationship. Probably more monogamous (sp?) than a majority of evangelical Christians…

I’ve also got a history of dealing with desire and lust in an unrightseous manner. Basically, with pornography. Which has severely damaged my past relationships, and endangered my marriage. (which through the grace of God, and the hardwork of my spouse and I is continuously improving)…

So, I speak with a little bit of authority that people that ongoing sin is a barrier to salvation are all wet… Salvation has almost nothing to do with behavior, and almost everything to do with where your heart is…

If you see that you are apart from God, as a result from your actions, Jesus sacrifice is all that is needed to restore that broken relationship.

Once that relationship is restored, one can start working on this ‘ongoing’ or as Polycarp likes to say, besetting sin problem.

And this decent intelligent person, might want to spend some time thinking how often he might lie, cheat, over indulge… to see if perhaps he might have some besetting sins, that God might want to work with him to bring him to obedience.

We might be tripping into various other doctrinal stances that go beyond you first query… so I’ll stop pontificating…

For your question: Is something good or bad because God says so?

Yes… always… who is your God?

8

Don’t know it’s name, or even if it exists, but I like to think it is fair and loving.

9

—I have loved many women, and had sex with a few of them, of those relationship that occured outside of marriage, I’ve found (hindsight being 20/20) that there was damage incurred in both sides of the relationship.—

This doesn’t seem like a very enlightening comparison, however, as some people’s marriages are severely damaging as well, sometimes far more so than more causal relationships. How can we conclude that sex out of wedlock is more dangerous, as far as relationships go, if we only look at the occasional bad ends of one, and ignore the occasional bad ends of the other?

And, more fundamentally, if every sort of relationship, whether marriage or causal, bears both some risk of ending badly and some rewards, why is it wrong, exactly, to choose one of the other, knowing the risk and rewards?

—I’ve also got a history of dealing with desire and lust in an unrightseous manner. Basically, with pornography. Which has severely damaged my past relationships, and endangered my marriage.—

Why do you blame pornography, as opposed to your particular actions that casued the damge?

—For your question: Is something good or bad because God says so? Yes… always… who is your God?—

Do you really mean that as BECAUSE God says so, or rather do you mean that God is himself/herself/itself good, and is simply being honest about what it knows is good? The first just doesn’t seem justifiable in any way shape or form to me: the second makes sense, but the first premise itself seems unprovable.

But what if it is good to lie about what is good? Since we don’t know what is good prior to being told, we can’t know that it is not.

10

Like Polycarp, I’m Episcopalian which means our denomination is based on, among other things, “the three-legged stool of the Bible, reason, and tradition.” In other words, our denomination is at least supposed to require thinking.

Grendel, the reason I’m rather inclined to agree with “all sins are equal in God’s eyes” is that it means none of us is perfect, and none of us has the right to condemn another person. I’d be willing to bet every person on this board has done something they considered immoral, wrong, or just plain incredibly stupid. As far as I’m concerned none of us are getting into heaven on our own merits, but that’s where faith in Christ specifically comes in handy.

In this world, of course there are degrees of sin. A few years ago, when I mercilessly beat down a co-worker with words, that was, in the eyes of the world, a lesser sin than if I’d done it with my fists. Either way, I broke a fundamental tenet of my beliefs and you’d better believed I repented of it! Yes, there’s a difference between Charles Manson and most of us on these boards (I hope!). However, the essays in the current edition book of daily devotionals I read were written by a man serving time in prison for killing a man. Based on what I’ve read, he does sincerely repent of that and other sins, while acknowledging there is no way to repair what he did. I’m not inclined to like or trust people in jail, but this man, I think, might have become a genuinely good man. Like me, I get the feeling he’s a practicing Christian in that, if we keep it up long enough, we might just get it right.

Where I can’t help you is, in my book, homosexuality is no more inherently a sin than heterosexuality. There is love which sustains, and love which destroys, just as there is sex which sustains and sex which destroys. I’m very much against adultery, on the other hand, two of my closest and dearest friends have an open marriage. This is fine with me because I know the reasons behind it, there is no deception in it, and it is used to sustain and nurture the love they share.

Like I said, I may the wrong person to ask. I’m not a Fundamentalist, and I don’t like generalizations. Like you, the God I worship is loving and fair. We can choose to separate ourselves from Him, and even I’ll admit it can be more comfortable that way at times. In my experience, though choosing to move closer can be much more helpful, much healthier, and a lot more interesting [sigh!].

CJ

11

You should have quizzed your Catholic pals more and you would have discovered that there are lots of Christians who do NOT believe that all sins are equal in the eyes of God–not in the sense that I believe you mean.

A “mortal sin”–say, murder–is not the same as being mean to your sister when you’re ten, though both acts may be sinful. At least that’s how this Catholic recalls his catechism. I was taught that no sin was too large for God’s forgiveness if the sinner repented, even murder. But if you never really sought forgiveness for the sin of pulling your sister’s pigtails when you were ten, if you had never repented of that tendency for petty cruelty, that wouldn’t necessarily send you off to warmer climates after you die.

While Catholics also believe in heaven and hell (and purgatory, which is a temporary state) and nothing else after death, it is not a state of being sinless that gets you into heaven. If that were the case, no one would make it. And ultimately, it is the act of abandoning God that loses one’s place in heaven. It is that implication in any sinful act that offends God, that makes the act wrong. And who knows exactly what process results in a real rejection of God for a given person? Well, that person and God.

Could a homosexual, even one who believed his ongoing acts were sinful, still be earnestly struggling to seek union with God? Might God still be pleased with this effort, even if He recognizes this child as a sinner? Sure. Are there other acts that are, without repentance, simply not consistent with a desire to seek union with God? Yep, probably. My Church teaches that a person who dies in the latter state will go to Hell, which is in its essence, a total and final separation from God, with the implications of that state fully realized by the sinner.

Anyway, there are lots of Christians who do believe in “degrees of sin.” Am I misunderstanding your point?

12

But if there is only one punishment for all sins, eternal Hell(no matter how you define Hell), then it really doesn’t matter if you believe in “degrees of sin”, does it?
Small question: If we are to strive to be as “God-like” as possible, would Christians support having the same punishment for all crimes?

13

I’m sorry that it wasn’t enlightening…

The assumption that grnedel made was that there existed things that were ‘observably harmless’… your statement that there are risks taken in all relationships also counters that argument, so thank you for making my point.

It isn’t that relationships aren’t good, it is just that the consequences of those relationships aren’t manifest at the time of the relationship or at the end of the relationship.

Again, I apologize for the wording of my post, pornography isn’t to blame, my problems with desire and lust, are my problems. Pornography was an outlet for those problems, had pornography not existed I’d have found some other outlet for my problems.

The problems are mine… they manifest as an addiction to pornography.

zat better?

No, I meant that whether one is a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or even a Humanist, they follow some kind of ‘god’. And what they follow, and what they deem as good or bad, will flow from what they see as ‘god’.

Before the Humanists gang up on me and say ‘we follow no god’… think about it friends… You have a set of moral codes that are followed based on what you deem as good and proper and avoiding those things that are wrong or cause harm to other people. That moral code isn’t written anywhere… they are following their own ideas and moral code… and within that is the same ‘sin’ spectrum that a deist might have.

I’m sure I mucked that up too…

Peace.

14

It isn’t the sins that are equal; it is the harm that sin does that is equal. Sin turns your heart away from the Lord. Alone, without Him, you cannot live forever. You die. The same relentless entropy that destroys all things destroys your soul. And the Lord weeps at this loss of a soul much beloved.

Everyone sins. It is not true that everyone sins as much, or as little as everyone else does. Equality is not an important thing, when every soul is unique, and all are motes set in the infinite glory of the soul of God. Jesus is the human expression of the love of God. Salvation is greater than sin. Any sin. The sins you love, and the sins you hate are nothing, if compared with the infinite love of the Lord.

Turning this joyous news into a contest of who is less righteous than who is a self aggrandizing delusion. Hating sinners is a sin, too, but folks don’t like to talk about that one as much. Makes it hard to set yourself above them, I suppose. But looking down upon those whom the Lord has made will keep your eyes averted from the Glory of His love. Dangerous choice, it seems to me.

Tris

“The Way of Heaven is to benefit others and not to injure.
The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.” ~ Lao-tzu ~

15

I think I understand what you mean when you talk about a “humanist god”, but I must say there is a big difference.
I, as well as most humanists I would assume, base my ethical system on logical, observable things. For example, on the subject of gay marriage, I have heard some Christians say that allowing it would harm traditional marriage- no, it wouldn’t.
While I wouldn’t apply it to all Christians, or religious people in general, I have heard it said that ethics is doing what is right no matter what anyone says, religion is doing what someone says no matter what is right. I would certainly apply that to the biblical innerancy doctrine of some of the hardline churches- what worries me is that those churches are becoming the majority (at least here in the bible belt).

16

Fair enough grendel…

Do you think that my assumptions about a ‘humanist god’ are at least as misinformed as yours might be on religion or inerrancy?

Peace.

17

On religion in general, yes. On inerrancy, not so much. As I said I was raised in the Southern Baptist church, I quit going to church before the conservative takeover really hit but I’ve read about actions the SBC has taken and I’ve spoken to baptists since then. There has been a drastic change from each believer interpreting the bible themself to preachers telling them what the bible means. I’m sure you have met Christians who are fanatical about the King James version, seen the bumperstickers “if it ain’t King James it ain’t bible”, etc… They put so much weight on one particular interpretation, rather than the underlying message.

18

—The assumption that grnedel made was that there existed things that were ‘observably harmless’… your statement that there are risks taken in all relationships also counters that argument, so thank you for making my point.—

Your welcome. However, I wouldn’t be too glad of the revelation, because such an admission also leads directly to the point that it is rather silly to talk about things being “sins” just because they have the potential to end in harm. With this estimation, marrying someone could be either more or less sinful than engaging in out of wedlock sex: but it could never be non-sinful. Perhaps this is what you believe, but I find that sort of moral formulation to be self-refuting.

—Again, I apologize for the wording of my post, pornography isn’t to blame, my problems with desire and lust, are my problems.—

Now the same question has to be asked: why blame desire and lust, as opposed to how YOU chose to exercise these things?

—No, I meant that whether one is a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or even a Humanist, they follow some kind of ‘god’. And what they follow, and what they deem as good or bad, will flow from what they see as ‘god’.—

Eh? What is “good” should not be flowing from any particular being (how would it be a morality, then?): it is based on values. To say that these values come from the God you think is good begs the question of what you think is good in the first place (why you picked that particular vision of what a good God would be).

19

It certainly matters, if Hell hinges on the degree of the sin (not the simple existence of sin). That’s exactly my point: all sins do NOT result in Hell. I was just trying to provide the perspective of one Christian in response to the OP who contended otherwise.

And it is the same crime in every instance that results in this punishment: a rejection of God has as its consequence the loss of real union with Him. Period. The fact that this rejection can take many forms doesn’t change its essence.

And, to emphasize a point I made earlier, I don’t pretend to comprehend others’ souls and the vastness of God’s understanding. I never assume that my puny perceptions can grasp if someone is damned or not. For all we know, Hell is completely empty. I leave the judgment to Him. Again, my participation in this thread was simply in response to the assertion that all Christians believe that all sins are equal in God’s eyes. That’s not true.

20

—It certainly matters, if Hell hinges on the degree of the sin (not the simple existence of sin).—

I think that most Christians think that sin has a very different relation to hell than is commonly appreciated.

As I understand it, it goes like this: everyone sins, Christian or not. This means you’re going to hell. But, there is a way to gain redemption: this is to accept Christ (whatever that really means, it also includes accepting that you sin, and need Christ’s help), and hencewith at least care about doing your best to not sin. You’re going to sin anyway, no question, but now you will be living your life with Christ helping you.

For those that believe homosexuality is a sin, they don’t believe that you sleep with a same-sex person, you go to hell. They believe that you accept that what you did is sinful, want Christ’s forgiveness and his help in not doing it again. If you keep doing it, that’s still not really a sign that you’re going to hell either, but it could well mean that you didn’t really accept Christ, because you certainly don’t seem to care that you are sinning, and you don’t seem all that sincere in wanting forgiveness.

So, as I understand, most Christians do not believe that just a list of bad acts can tell anyone whether someone is going to hell. What matters is whether they have sincerely accepted Christ into their lives. You probably can’t tell just by looking, which is why most Christians don’t really believe that they can ever be judges of who is going to hell unless a person pretty obviously dosn’t accept Christ.