Christianism : sin in peace?

Great Debates
1

Well…this could have been a general question, but I post it here, since I’m pretty sure it will be strongly argued.

Though christian beliefs empathize the concept of sins, it seems to me they appear to mainly give a good excuse to sin with a peaceful mind.

I mean : catholicism works on the “washing machine” principle. You made wrong deeds, you confess (and regret) them, and everything is all right with the great guy up there, whose opinion is the only one which import.

I’m not at all familiar with protestant, reformed, etc…churches, and I used to believe that in these religion, what you do is an issue between you and god. It seemed to me fairer and more “right” from the moral point of view, since you can’t avoid a retribution just by participating in the appropriate ritual.

But now, from what I read on the american boards, it seems that I was totally wrong. People seem to write : what you do isn’t really important. If you believe in Christ, you’ll be saved, period.

So, it seems that in both cases, sins (and sins often include wrongs done to someone else, which is much more important from my atheist point of view) don’t import. In other words you can do pretty much what you want (up to murdering, raping, etc…). As long as you confess/believe that Christ is your savior, you’ll be fine, and be granted an happy life forever (and some even believe that your victims will burn in hell if they didn’t confess/believe that Christ is their savior).

So, here’s my question : is there a christian faith or church which do teach that you can’t get rid of your sins/ wrong doings? In other words which don’t give an easy way to avoid retribution for your sins, which teach that you’ll someday have to account for them (and possibly also that your limited number of sins/good actions will be rewarded)?
A church which would send all the non believers to hell but also the believers who didn’t at all lived following god’s commands would do the trick.

I guess that it is more or less what a lot of moderately religious people expect : the evils guys will be punished, the goods guys rewarded, and so everything will be fine. But is there any christian church which actually supports this expectation?

2

Well, one of the big objections from some Protestants to Catholicism is that you don’t “escape.” The whole notion of Purgatory is that there is a necessity to accept some consequences for one’s actions. (And the RCC does not teach that everyone not a Catholic–or even everyone not a Christian–is going to hell.)

I am not arguing that the RCC satisfies all the things you are asking about or that the Protestants are in error or have no response to your point. I am simply clarifying a couple points regarding RCC teachings.

3

I wouldn’t think so; the whole point of Jesus dying on the cross was to provide a method of mankind absolving sins, from Original Sin for those inclined to believe in it to cheating on your wife and gambling (not bingo, of course).

The phenomenon you mention (sin, confession, sin) would have to be unique-- obviously-- only to the faith(s) that practice confession; AFAIK only Catholics perform this. All others require that the sinner petition Jesus directly through prayer.

The difference? Negligible IMO. Though they all seem to “stress” not taking God’s/Jesus’s love and forgiveness for granted, I find it to be a common stereotype to place upon Christians; I have no idea how accurate of a stereotype it is: from the Christians I know personally it doesn’t really apply. But if previous debates have taught me anything it is that my anecdotal experiences can’t be applied to the population. This is indeed a double-edged sword.

Now, my understanding of what exactly constitutes a sin in Christianity is very weak since, apart from the Ten Commandments, the OT’s provisions were essentially overturned by Christ. And from my cursory glances through the NT I don’t see that Jesus described many sins so much as made commandments (not capitalized;)) for living.

Polycarp? Jodi?

4

And you do have to do your pennance.
Peace,
mangeorge

5

This is a scandalously incomplete answer to the question, I’m afraid, but…

Read the book of Romans.

Paul spends a lot of time hashing this stuff out. If you want The Straight Dope, you should take it from him, not me. Or anyone else.

I guess the gravamen of the aswer is: Christianly speaking, salvation is only through Jesus Christ. There is nothing – before or after the fact – that we do to merit salvation. Christ is all.

To attach some nametags to things:

The tendency to de-emphasize the pursuit of holy living – since sins are covered by Christ’s blood eternally – is referred to by theologians as “antinomianism”; “lawlessness”.

The tendency to over-emphasize the pursuit of holy living – out of the fear that salvation might be lost – is referred to as “neonomianism”; “new law.”

In some respects, the history of Christian theology can be viewed as a pendulum swinging between these two poles.

Roman Catholics could be characterized (mis-characterized) as falling under the neonomian rubric, for example, since Catholicism does not – as I understand it – accept the notion of eternal assurance, with regard to salvation.

Reformed/protestant types, on the other hand, sometimes tend toward antinomianism, in that they generally accept the notion that those who have been saved cannot lose their salvation.

Even within protestantism, Calvinists (antinomian) and Arminians (neonomian) exhibit some tendencies to split along these same fault lines.

Of couse, this all represents a massive generalization, but that gives you the general direction of things.

Hope that helps.

–B

6

I think that some of the predestination sects such as Puritanism and Calvinism are sort of like this. They believe that it is already determined before your birth where you’re headed when you die. If you’re going to Hell, you’ll do bad things. Of course, you could go to Hell even if you don’t, because everyone has little sins, and those might be enough. IANA Puritan or Calvinist, however, so I could be wrong about what they believe.

7

Careful there, Protesilaus. You’re poking at one of the biggest sores of christianity. I’ve never seen a christian truly consider predestination without getting confused and/or annoyed. I never bring it up.
“This is something beyond our understanding”
Peace,
mangeorge

8

Depends on which flavor of Christianity you’re discussing. The theology is by no means uniform across the spectrum of Christian denominations. Some lean towards a complete “saved by grace regardless of what you did” and some lean towards “you’d better have made recompense, punk.”

That’s an extreme oversimplification and thus wrong view of the doctrine of confession. See next comment below.

You left out: “You also make restitution to the aggrieved.” You see, some outfits (such as the RCC) expect you to be sincere in your confession of sins and that you’ll go out and not only do the penance but make it right with the person against whom you sinned.

Again, that depends on the flavor of Christianity you’re discussing. Some protestant groups lean towards authoritarianism and others towards individual action.

A few minor points:
[ul][li]Fair and unfair are subjective.[/li][li]Right and wrong are subjective.[/li][li]Moral and immoral are subjective.[/ul][/li]
That being said, some folks believe, and believe sincerely that the “appropriate ritual” is the action which they must perform to accept responsibility for their wrong actions.

There’s also the whole issue of: “Why should there be retribution anyway?” I’m given to understand that traditionally, Judaism does not believe in divine retribution in an afterlife–or an afterlife for that matter. Of course, that last depends on the flavor of Judaism we’re discussing.

See my comments above.

Please don’t confuse Jack Chick with Christianity in general.

I’d say the Roman Catholics and the Latter-day Saints expect you to accept responsibility for your sins in this life and also to face the consequences later on (consequences being different for those churces).

Again, please don’t confuse Jack Chick with Christianity in general.

Depends on the flavor of Christianity.

Probably. After all, ol’ Chick seems to be a church-goer.

9

Oh, yeah. There’s also the LDS concept of “fore-ordination.” That basically means, IIUC, that in the pre-existence you’re ordained to whatever good office you’re supposed to be doing on Earth and if you end up being born into the LDS church or joining it and you also end up being ordained to that self-same good office, you’re on the path you’re supposed to be on. But there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually do that. It’s sort of a “here’s the keys just in case you happen to be in town” sort of idea.

10

yahh… the christians are pretty big on forgiveness (they say).

Apparently you can kill, rape, and do lines of coke off the Pope’s belly, then turn around, ask Jesus to forgive you and BOOM! next thing you know it leads to this:

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0801/molester.html

11

At the risk of overexplaining the obvious, Dr Goo Fee’s link is a satire site. (I mention this only because I have inferred that clairobscur is not native to the U.S. and I am not sure that s/he has encountered any other Landover references in the few weeks that s/he has been here.)

12

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0801/molester.html

Please please please please please tell me that site is a satire, and not actually representative of the sitebuilder’s beliefs…
(I expect there are people who think that way, but, jeeezus!)

13

[channelling Gilda Radner]never mind[/channelling Gilda Radner]. Thanks TomnDeb

14

Gee, Qad, you haven’t stumbled on that site before? It’s a trip, isn’t it?

15

I guess I did do that thing that makes an ASS out of U and ME…

I assumed that the satire was obvious, but I will offer disclaimers in the future.

a hijack…

This isn’t the place for it, but maybe one of you could tell me how I can make my WWW links read whatever I want (for example check out THIS page-- with the THIS being a link) rather than spell out the entire web address…

thanks…

16

That is what I have seen of christanity in general on the SDMB. Well not the burn in hell part. Just that the thing that matters is not what you do, its what you believe.

The best way to see if a site is satire or not is by looking at what kind of tee-shirts they sell:)

17

Uhh, in my church it’s like this:

When Jesus saves you, you’re going to heaven. Nothing can stop that.
However, if you do sin rape, murder, etc., there will still be consequences on earth.

18

Unfortunately, the page at landoverbaptist does have a basis in fact: molesting children is not grounds for excommunication.

19

Doctor Goo Fee, enter the url this way

{url=“http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0801/molester.html”}Landover Baptist Church (Satire){/url}

But change all the braces { } to square brackets [ ], and replace “Landover Baptist Church (Satire)” with the text of your choice.

20

Thanks, Doctor Goo Fee for asking. And Tom, for the answer. :slight_smile:
Peace,
mangeorge