Hey! You stole my line!
I said the exact same thing in this thread.
(sorry, I don’t know how to link to a specific post; it’s about halfway down.)
Repent, you sinner!
What’s that eighth commandment? Thou shalt not…steal?
Feh, I was looking forward to a Jack Chick-style anti-Catholic rant about indulgences and whatnot. What a let-down.
As I understand it, God has providence, meaning God is “outside” time. Therefore, although we live our lives in a linear - then, next, after - sort of way, God does not. In one nanosecond God sees our whole lives, from the point we live to the point we die.
It’s hard to visualise, but I imagine all our lives being strips along a sort of long, ribbon time strip of time, some running in parallel, some long gone before others start. God is outside that ribbon, and just sees the whole thing.
So if God judges us, it is on some measure or pattern of our lives, not a load of pre-planned “sin/forgiveness” stunts we humans may pull.
**Rutabegger wrote:
What is it about religion that convinces so many people that it’s OK to do evil as long as they are sure to confess and ask for forgiveness afterwards? WTF! What is this about? **
Probably the same thing that makes Atheists rail about religion when what they mean is Christianity. You seem to use the two interchangably.
Not all religioins have this thing about sin and forgiveness. So in the future, please specify which religion you’re ranting about!
Actually I’d say it’s even more specific than that. The Catholic church seems a lot more inclined to forgive than its Protestant counterpart(s). In my personal, European, lapsed-Catholic experience.
Prostestant churches don’t have confessionals, do they?
There ya go. It’s alright though, the OP is quite forgiven.
Ok, this really bothered me, too (as a non-Christian) and my mother (as a Christian). I had seen the general lax attitude about deceit and the Bible-thumping, and it grated me, but then “V” actually spelled it out: she knew it was wrong, she was profiting from it, and she expected God to forgive her without actually making amends or not taking her ill-gotten gains.
It’s sad that this actually rates pretty low on the abuse-of-religion scale. I’m sorry: IT IS NOT OK TO PROFIT FROM MISDEEDS AND STILL SAY “SORRY”. All the spontaneous prayers and "God is great!"s in the world do not change the fact that you are a hypocritical liar who is, at best, profiting from what your religion states is sin and, at worst, someone who is absolutely unrepentant but still expects to be forgiven.
Forgive the irony, but Jesus fucking Christ, people like this make me angry.