I’m sorry, but I can no longer answer your questions without getting into this, which I consider a debate.
I did not post this to debate or to start a debate. I thought it may happen, perhaps with others which is why I orginially posted this in GD, but that wasn’t my intent. I certainly didn’t want to debate or discuss it. I simply asked a question. I now know that the way I asked it was slightly bad and should have asked it without the “saved” part…but the intent still remains. I only wanted to know who had accepted Jesus and who didn’t. I didn’t and still don’t want/wish to get into debating about it though or answering questions on it. I’m not the person at all to give you the answers anyway.
I don’t think there was anything wrong with the way you worded your question if that’s what you wanted to know.
If you wanted to know who believed in God, then you could have asked, “Who believes in God?” Even calling it “accepting Jesus” is not a neutral question, because the only people who “accept Jesus” are the ones who espouse a certain set of beliefs about what that acceptance entails and how one goes about doing the accepting; in my experience these beliefs are ascribed to by certain Baptist sects.
As many others have said, they might be very devout but “accepting Jesus” is not part of the picture, no more than have ever thought to accept oxygen as their breathing material. They just do breathe it, and some people just do believe that Jesus was the son of God and that he is in heaven waiting for them. There’s no accepting about it - it just is.
Let me give it one more try, please? Asking me “Have you accepted Jesus as your Saviour?” (and why don’t you capitalize it if you honor and love Him so?) is like asking me “Have you accepted [Mum’s name] as your mother?” Throughout my life she has been there, loving me and supporting me. I cannot remember a time in my life when I haven’t loved her, just as I can’t remember a time in my life when Jesus wasn’t part of it.
If I were to turn around now and say “I accept Christ as my Saviour”, to me that would be refuting over 30 years of Christian belief, life and action. I loved and served Christ when I was a little girl defending another little girl from bullies, just as I love and serve Christ now when I defend some people, including myself, from those who would say we’re somehow lesser or worse non-Christians because we haven’t had the same experiences. I honestly can’t point to a time in my life when my faith wasn’t an active part of it, whether that meant being an acolyte as a teenager who’d walk to church when her parents didn’t want to go or this evening when I’ve got choir practice.
Miss Bunny, thanks for your reply. That is, I’m afraid, one of my problems with that form of faith. I consider myself a pretty strong Christian. I’m certainly one of the noiser ones around here! :rolleyes: Look, here’s alink to a thread I started a couple of years ago at a time when I was honestly wondering if I was less of a Christian because I didn’t have the kind of experience **Idle Thoughts ** seems to have had. I was in a bit of a bad way at the time – I’d been laid off for several months and was going to have to look for a lower-paying job outside of my field, not to mention a host of other troubles, and this insistence that one had to be somehow “born again” or “saved” in some nebulous way did damage my faith a bit, despite those profound religious experiences I mentioned. To me, to say that one won’t go to heaven or isn’t a true Christian if one hasn’t been saved is one of the worst things you can say to someone who is a Christian because of the damage it has the potential to do.
I was a pretty wierd, lost, unconventional teenager in a small, very conventional town. Being born again was one of the few things I could have done which I didn’t do which would have made things worse. Accept Jesus as my Saviour? He knew me while I was still in my mother’s womb and loved me, awkward, unconventional, downright wierd individual that I am. It isn’t even like accepting oxygen as the stuff I breathe; it’s far more basic and essential than that. When did Christ become my Saviour? When wasn’t He?
Well, I respectfully disagree. Again, I didn’t want to know who believed in God, but rather who has accepted Jesus as their personal savior. In my opinion, and maybe just in my opinion alone, the two don’t nessecarily go hand in hand.
Well, it slipped my mind. I’m not actually all that religious. I don’t follow it, I don’t practice it, I don’t preach it. I dislike church and think it’s boring. It was just a curiousity question. snip
Sorry to snip the rest of your post. I read it, and I really enjoyed it too. I think you’re a wonderful person. But the only point I wanted to address in it was this part.
That wouldn’t be it at all. I’m not saying you didn’t accept him right from the start or that you have been wasting your time all of this time. Again, just what I’ve been taught and learned is that you actually do need to “confess with thy tongue”.
My email is hunter85014@yahoo.com
If you wish, we could talk about this in email and I can answer any questions you want and we can talk about it day and night even.
I guess it’s just different teachings. shrug We just believe different things, is all.
I can tell you all the info I know though in email if you wish. I don’t mind.
If you mean someone like, say Angua who’s a Muslim who believes in God but does not consider Christ her Saviour, then yes, you’re right. If you mean someone like me, who has probably been a Christian since before you were born, but was not “saved” in the sense you mean it (if I were, I’d capitalize it), then you’re wrong. I can assure you, sir or madam, that I am every bit as much a Christian as you are.
I’ll be “confessing” with my tongue in choir practice in half an hour. Please, don’t you understand that by distinguishing between “Saved” and “Christian” you have the potential do very real damage to our faith? Don’t you understand that it is this very thing which has driven people from Christianity?
No doubt. I never said or thought that you weren’t.
I’m just saying that what I believe and was taught was that being a Christian and accepting Jesus as your savior are not the same thing. You could be a perfectly good Christian. I have no doubt that you are. I believe that you’ve been that way all your life and go to church and trust in him and all that. I believe, too, that you have accepted Jesus a long time ago as your savior. I’m just telling you what I leanred is all.
We differ in opinion. You are probably a great Christian and I am, in no way, better than you or more Christiany than you… If there really is such a word,…or more accepted by Jesus than you. It’s just the things I learned all my life were different apparently.
Does that mean I’m right? Not at all. It’s just what we grew up to think, and in the end, believe.
Well, I don’t see how. Sorry that I offended you, as it seems I have. I didn’t mean to. We just have different belief systems. But I will be bowing out of our convo now. I’ll keep reading the thread though.
Again, I’m sorry if I caused you any offense. No hard feelings.
One of my friends in grade school got locked in the basement by his parents and was fed a starvation diet of bread and water until he received “the baptism of the holy spirit”.
To answer the question - Nope. I’m not even totally sure whether I believe that there’s some sort of higher power or not. Should I decide that I do believe in God (or Goddess, or many Gods, or what have you), at that point I might start casting about for a religion. Even then, I kind of doubt I’ll wind up returning to Christianity, and it’s really really unlikely that I’ll be the sort of born-again person who gets “saved.” I can believe in a lot of things, but I don’t think I can believe in a God who’ll condemn you to Hell for not saying the magic words.
Reading through this thread has convinced me beyond any doubt what a right choice it was for me to run far, far, far away as I could from this whole “salvation” nonsense.
I grew up with it.
I used to believe it.
I got over it.
And if there were a God to be thanked, I would thank him(it/her).
I’m trying to learn to follow Jesus. Saved or not, I don’t know, that’s up to Him. Frankly, I wish there was less loaded terminology, as saved reminds me of my teenage and early adult lives, being witnessed to time after time for hours on end.
Yes, I’ve accepted Jesus as my Saviour. (I’m with CJ on the “u.”)
But along with so many in this thread, I feel the terminology is loaded with negative overtones. “Have you accepted Jesus as your Saviour?” It’s something the crazy lady next to me on the bus would say. Not my Neighbor who loves me.
Whenever I come across obvious Evangelicals in the workplace, I always picture their resume as including the line “Have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal saviour.” There’s something about the phrase that isn’t Biblical, isn’t common to our common faith.
Ah well, I know next to nothing. But watch people for their deeds, not so much their words, is all I can say.
I hate to butt in on such a sensitive topic but someone can be a “christian” and a non believer. I was “christianed” as a baby, as was the tradtion (in the 60’s). So in any census of the time I would have been called a christian. One of my parents was never a christian (he was/is an atheist), I was not bought up as a christian and chose not to be a christian as an adult. I’m sure someone somewhere counts me as a christian because I was christianed though.
The child wasn’t christianed and that wasn’t even for any religous reason. Being christened is as much about tradition as it is religion (well in my family anyway) but I was christened as a Anglican and I married someone christianed as a Catholic. Neither of us were fussed with the others rigmarole so the child is unchristained.
I like to consider myself and the child as equally unsaved but I’m sure somewhere governmental/census wise I am counted as christian.
I didn’t say that what you really wanted to know is who believed in God. I said that IF that’s what you wanted to know, then your wording of “Who has accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour” was a loaded question and slanted toward persons who belong to the same regligious sect/denomination/group as you do.
You are absolutely right; the two do NOT go hand in hand, according to the beliefs of your own religious organization. They are two separate events. But for the great majority of other religions, they are NOT two separate events.
I think what you really wanted to know is, “Who belongs to the same religious group I do, Church X, and who believes in the tenets of salvation as taught by Church X?” If you are not aware that most other religions do not classify “accepting Jesus Christ as one’s personal Saviour” and that the only road to salvation and heaven is by making a conscience decision to do so, then you might want to read up on comparative religion. It might be very illuminating to you.
Again, I didn’t want to know who believed in God, but rather who has accepted Jesus as their personal savior. In my opinion, and maybe just in my opinion alone, the two don’t nessecarily go hand in hand.
I didn’t mean to. We just have different belief systems. But I will be bowing out of our convo now. I’ll keep reading the thread though.