For Christians.....a devotional

Great Debates
361

So, my “warning” about shopping as sin slides by everyone but Polycarp.

Right.

Sigh.

Where is that wall?

The millennium is three years old, any minute now. It is the stranger, who is in jail, or hungry, or thirsty, or cold and without a coat we should be watching for. Who comes unannounced, like a thief in the night? And where are those who came to us, to learn of His love? These are the lambs of God, and God gave us His word, and His love, so that we might bring that light to all we encounter.

Oh, Christ, let me never send thy child away, in scorn, in hatred, or even in ignorance. Take this millstone from my neck, oh my Lord. For I have sinned like any man, and no man is unworthy of my love. I am no judge of men. I have no sight into the souls of my brother, but I know that in each of them is Thy great heart, however hidden it might be from my sightless eyes.

For You have loved even me, oh Lord. And by this I know that no soul has fallen from your grasp, or can be hidden from your sight. Only by their own will can our brothers be lost. So, in my every word, and in my every deed, let me offer Thy love to each. The Judgement of sins I surrender to Thee, now, and forever.

Be blessed, one and all. A new Year is Here. Let us make it a year of abundant love.

Tris

362

I think that’s where you and other Evangelicals get off track. Paul is not God. Anything he said must be measured against the words of Christ. His central message was “Love God. Love Your Neighbor.”

Therefore, I think you’re missing the point when you say:

Love IS the Story. It is the sum and pinnacle of Jesus’ message. Without Love, he had no message. Without Love, there is no God.

You cannot make people listen to you by telling them they are sinners and going to hell. The fear of Hell doesn’t motivate. The only way to get through to us hard-hearted folk is to demonstrate the Power of Love through your life. To show us Christ, you must show us his Love. Show us how your life is better because of the transforming power of Love. Then, if we find God through your example, the Holy Spirit will convict us of any sins we may have. That is his job. Your job is to give us a reason to listen. We’re not children, so trying to scare us with the threat of Hell won’t work. You’ve got to make it look appealing. And I’ll be honest, if 22 years of being a Christian hasn’t made Joe_Cool any more long-suffering and kind than what he demonstrates on this board, I don’t see much reason to believe his testimony about how Christianity can transform your life.

363

No, Tris, it did not slide by me and I am reflecting upon it. Perhaps it deserves a discussion of its own.

Be blessed also as we face the new year ahead.

Homebrew

I most humbly agree. :slight_smile:

364

Especially when one is telling people they’re going to Hell for the sole reason of belonging to a particular group one refuses to learn anything about.

365

Reading through the posts, the different beliefs, the various spins, the opposing ideas, and the attempts of reconciling them. Honest labor to bring together that which is separate. As if we were created in harmony to bring peace to one another.

What if we “let go” of it all – the beliefs, the books, the teachings, the opinions, what would be left? Would it not be the basic element we all share – Love.

Happy New Year to all.

Love
Leroy

366

In fairness to His4ever, Poly, not everyone has their posts per page set up the same way. Maybe a direct link to the post would be more helpful. Use this template:


http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=0000000#post0000000

…where 0000000 is the post number. You can get the post number by hovering your mousepointer over the post’s “logged” link.

367

I couldn’t link to this and I tried typing it into my browser and that didn’t take me to the post either. Also, I don’t know what you mean by hovering your mousepointer over the post’ss loggged link. What’s the loggged link? I’m not as compture savvy as you guys.

368

Oh, for the love of Heaven!

Look, H4E. It’s not all that hard. Poly told you that the post is on page seven of this thread. On the very bottom of page seven of this thread, there is a post by vanilla. Above that is a post by vanilla. Above that post is one by Monty. Now above the post by Monty there is a lengthy post by Polycarp.

You don’t have to be savvy at all to click on the little “7” on the bottom of this page and then scroll to the bottom of the page and count up the posts I just described.

369

Hmm, I have to diagree with this a little bit. Love isn’t the whole story though it is a very large part of it, in my opinion.
Jesus also said those who confess Him before men, He will confess before the Father. And those who deny Him before men He will deny before the Father. He also talked about deception and about hell. He also said no one comes to the Father but by Him, not no one comes to the Father but by my teachings, but no one comes to the Father but by Me.

Also, I humbly disagree that without love there is no God. If no one on earth loved, God would still exist. Or are you looking at it as God being love? Which kind of love are you speaking of:

agape
eros
phileo

I don’t know if there are others.

370

Excuse me but I read that post and didn’t see anything about qualifiers in it.

371

Move over a tad, will you, Poly? I need to use that wall.

372

Oh, sufferin’ Siddhartha…

I strongly suspect I’ll only take a number for when a space at the brick wall opens up, but:

1: Esprix recommends qualifiers. (In this case, this seems to me to be akin to recommending putting on more perfume to treat bad hygiene–which is to say, something aimed at symptoms rather than causes. But whatever.)

2: His4Ever whines that negative reactions still occur even when she puts on more perfume…or rather, uses qualifiers.

3: Polycarp expresses hope that a response is forthcoming to his Mystery Post (location near the bottom of page 7 in default views, or http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/postings.php?action=getip&postid=2788230 more precisely), as he feels that it addresses more deeply why it is negative reactions are still garnered even when H4E puts on more perf…uses qualifiers.

He is not talking about qualifiers. He was speaking of the deeper roots of why negative reactions are going to occur when someone doesn’t ba…uses a witnessing technique whose “balance” tips heavily to the legalistic Dire Consequences of Angering Tash mode.

4: H4E reacts in bafflement. “I don’t see anything about perfumes!” she protests.

5: An entrepeneur makes it rich faster than a Silicon Valley Dot-Com Boom geek with access to a credulous venture capitalist, by beginning to charge a dollar a pop for access to a brick wall offering custom cranial fit.

6: Drastic cheerfully forks over a dollar and gets in line.

373

7: Drastic pauses in line to note that the URL in pont #3 is malformed due to not being edited to tack the relevant postid to Libertarian’s provided schema.

374

Drastic, while you’re busy hitting your head, here’s the link: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=2788230#post2788230

375

8: lel firmly gains the right to proclaim “SCORE!” by fixing the link. :slight_smile:

376

Okay, I think I have a glimmer of what you’re saying. Love is very important. I also deem truth to be important. I attempt to tell what I believe to be true in love. I don’t always succeed. But no matter how loving or gently you say something, everyone isn’t going to agree with it or accept it. Should we be people pleasers or God pleasers?

Anyway, thanks Polycarp for trying to explain to me. I know you and everyone else thinks I should use a witnessing method that is more in keeping with yours but…that’s all, not getting in to that again right now.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

377

And a Happy New Year to you, dear, and to all the folks who have waded through this thread.

Yes, I believe God’s truth to be most important. But the point I’m trying to make is that we have the direct instructions of the Incarnate God the Son as to what to do and how to behave toward other people, with an eye to demonstrating to them why they ought to be following Him as we do.

And they focus on showing His love.

Not on calling their intention to His proscriptions against particular acts and deeds. Not on awaking them to their sinfulness.

“And the second is like unto [the first], ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’”

“A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another. As I have loved you, so should you love one another.”

“By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, that you love one another.”

I cannot express in words that will go onto this message board how much I love CJ and Lib. and Edlyn and Joe Cool and Jersey Diamond and Scottischer and RTFirefly and his wife and Iampunha and virtually everybody else you can scrape up as folks I have come to know through this board (and that’s a sampling, so if I didn’t name you, please don’t be offended).

But, dear His4Ever, is it so difficult to understand that what you’ve had to say doesn’t show love to most of us? I know it’s there – if I had not already recognized it, Joe Cool’s numerous posts in your defense would have said that you see people heading for cliffs like the sheep in CJ’s metaphor (if they’re not His sheep in one metaphorical usage, they’re “sheep without a shepherd” in another metaphor I expect you will recognize) and you’re warning them that they’re gonna fall and hurt or kill themselves.

But almost nobody can see the love behind your warnings.

And that is, more than anything, because you aren’t showing it.

Besides which, there are a lot of schools of thought about how to interpret and apply Scripture to one’s daily life. You believe firmly in one – but people whose love for the Lord and allegiance to Him is as strong as yours believe quite as firmly in others. And in their mind they (we) are not “watering down Scripture” – rather, we’re doing as Christ commanded – putting the important and priority things first. Any debates about whether a gay sex act between committed partners, or the purchase of non-necessities, or eating a cheeseburger, or failing to wear a hat in church, or anything else you can scrape out of a Scriptural prohibition, are applicable to people, is secondary to that turning to Him in love and having Him make you into a new creation.

As I type this, I’m looking out the window, and on our front lawn appeared a bluebird. In American popular culture, the bluebird has come to symbolize hope for a brighter and happier future. And in that coincidental appearance of a small songbird I see God’s saying to me that 2003 is going to be a brighter and happier time for all of us. May it be so for each of you who read this!

378

I wonder if more souls become lost because they are sure that they are right, or because they are actually wrong.

His4, you don’t know the truth. The bible is not the truth. Jesus is the truth, and you cannot know all of His mind and heart, and His mind and heart are only a part of what He is. What you know is a very tiny bit of what you hope is a correct understanding of an accurate report of someone else’s opinion of what is truth.

That’s a risky thing to pin all your hopes on, and it is an absolutely unreliable thing to tell other people to risk their souls over.

Why not just let God be God, and you can be a forgiven sinner? It’s not a big part in the play, and usually it doesn’t even have lines, but it’s one you can play with great sincerity.

You don’t know the truth.

You don’t know the truth.

Don’t forget that, it’s important.

You can be saved by the truth. But you cannot know it. You can be loved and made immortal and brought into bliss for all eternity, by the truth. But you don’t know the truth. And if you tell other people that you do, and that you speak the truth in God’s place, you are risking their souls. In the case of your own soul, it isn’t a risk, it’s a guarantee. Better to go look for millstones, than to start teaching people how to be sinless, like you, and guarantee their own way into heaven.

You know, I went through this whole needing to be right thing with some atheists here, a while back, and after a while, they understood it. I am astounded to find that Christians think they have to be right. Being right is a bad deal. Being forgiven is a great deal.

Save me a spot at the wall.

Tris

379

Poly and Trisk, I still disagree with some of the things you’re saying, **but[/] I clearly see the love and caring with which you share it. I think I’ll take a break from this thread. Just getting kind of drained from trying to explain myself. I’ll read you guys’ posts for awhile. Won’t necessarily agree, of course. :slight_smile:

380

Yet there is the possibility that even one will come to be a new creation in Christ because they became convinced that they were sinful and need to repent. The goal both for those who are called to convict people of sin and for those who are called to love others unconditionally is to lead others to Christ. Perhaps there are situations where convicting people of sin is more effective in leading people to Christ and other situations where loving people is more effective in leading people to Christ. On these boards, it appears that unconditional love is more likely to lead people to Christ, but perhaps there are other places where more are being led to Christ because they are being convinced that they are sinful.

To some God has given the gift of being able to love unconditionally, and to others God has given the gift of being able to convict others of sin. We may properly say that one approach is usually more effective in a given situation, but I don’t understand how it could always be preferable to unconditionally love instead of convicting people of sin.

I don’t know the truth and I don’t know love. I just hope that God works by love and by convicting people of sin.