If you think that people like my85car are bad, you should check out the founders of protestantism.
Martin Luther believed that one of the joys of heaven would be to watch sinners burn in hell.(The Bible is pretty clear on this, with the story of the rich guy begging the poor guy for water.)
Calvin believed that there was nothing, repeat nothing, anyone could do to merit salvation. Prior to creation God marked out a few of us miserable sinners for heaven, and condemned the rest to hell. He thought free will was an illusion, and we went to hell because that’s where we’re supposed to go. This actually clears up alot of the problems with Chinese, babies etc. They don’t get a chance for heaven because that’s the way God set the game up.
Compared to these bastards, the fundies on this board look like the souls of reason
“Woohoo! Look at grampa burn! I told him he should accept Jesus, but he was stuck in that old Jewish system. Now he’s paying! Scream all you want, grampa, I’m just up here laughing!”
Actually, Satan, I believe alot of the tenents of southern Baptists (I’m guessing that is what most of the more virulent fundies on the board are; either that or a splinter group) came from the european anabaptists, who were persecuted by both Lutherans and Calvinists. (For a supposed religion of love, christians have spent an awful lot of time killing each other over minor points.) This is why there so many in the states, where our secular founding fathers wisely promoted religious toleration.
The anabaptists rejected infant baptism, hoding that no infant could knowingly accept Jesus. (I don’t know what they thought happened to children that died in infancy.) Thus the adult immersion baptisms that we associate with Southern Baptism.
Larry Borgia, the story of the rich guy begging the poor guy for water which you alluded to in an earlier post was not told to illustrate that those in heaven would be able to taunt those in hell.
The purpose of the story, as I understand it, is to make people understand that, once a person has died and is already in eternal condemnation, there is nothing anyone can do, not even offering a drop of water as succor. Therefore, the moral is, saving people’s souls is something that should be engaged in while on this earth.
Also, another point of the story is that the man who went to heaven was a beggar on earth, and was entreated by the rich man in hell outside whose gate he sat eating scraps thrown out for the dogs. Hence, another moral, that earthly position is no guarantee of your place in the afterlife.
I’m sure the story of the rich man and the beggar has many interpretations, including the ones you mentioned.
The fact is, however, Luther did believe that watching the torments of the Damned would be one of heaven’s pleasures, as did many other early protestants, including mass-murderer Oliver Cromwell.
To be fair, I don’t know that Luther or anyone else actually used this Bible story has justification for this particular belief. I’m just saying that it may be where they got the belief from, since in the story the torments of the damned are clearly apparent to the saved.
Fair enough. I don’t doubt that Luther and many others did/do interpret it that way, or use the illustration for the end to which you alluded.
I still think the main point of Jesus telling the story was the one I was always taught, and presented in my earlier post. I think the rest of Jesus’s teachings, as well as the Pauline epistles reinforce it.
But your point is well taken. I can’t disagree with you.
Maybe I should post this in a new thread, but I thought I might as well post it here:
Can any of the Christians here explain the logic behind the Christian scheme of salvation to me? Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Why couldn’t God have just decided to (for example) forgive us without a sacrifice?
Let me say that usually when I ask this question, I get a recitation of John 3:16 (in one case, I got a very, very long recitation of the entire story of Jesus’ life…) I want to be very clear that I already know that Jesus was “a perfect sacrifice” so that “our sins might we washed away with his blood.” I also know that this was necessary because “it is impossible for any sin, no matter how tiny, to exist in the presence of God.” What I want to know is:
What is “sin”, and why can it not exist in the presence of God? Isn’t God supposed to be all-powerful? Is it that sin cannot be in the presence of God, or is it that sin may not be in the presence of God?
How can “sin” be “washed away”? Is it some sort of substance that adheres to a person’s soul? (This is a serious question. “Sin” is always defined as an action until people try to explain the scheme of salvation, at which point is becomes a substance which came into the world, which can be washed away, which cannot be permitted into the presence of God, etc.)
Why can’t God just make sin poof disappear? Why did he have to kill someone first?
How is it just for God to punish people so out of proportion to the actual wrongs committed? Why does God have to have only two outcomes in the afterlife, rather than having several which are graduated according to the sins and virtues which are to be rewarded and punished?
Why is one’s disposition in the afterlife determined by one’s opinion on a matter of historical fact?
If sin cannot exist in the presence of God, then are people in heaven free to sin? What happens if they do? Can someone in heaven reject Christ?
Let me say, first off, that obviously not all the questions here will apply to all Christians, but I think #1-3 are broadly applicable. Let me also say that these aren’t “annoy the Sunday School teacher” questions, and I am seriously interested in hearing the answers. Here’s one more, now that I think of it:
If God told you what you were going to eat for breakfast tomorrow, would you be free to eat something else? (This is a simplified version of Newcomb’s paradox, FWIW. If you think about it, this is arguably closely tied to #6. If “once a Christian, always a Christian,” then once you are in heaven, you can’t reject Jesus, because that would mean that you were in heaven despite never being a Christian.)