Also if have you will be convinced that Haile Selassie was God incarnate, that coffee enemas and walnuts cure cancer better than western medicine, or that the Hale Bopp comet is a spaceship that’s going to take everyone to paradise once you castrate yourself and eat some poisoned Jell-O, all of which have been truly believed by people willing to die for the conviction. THIS IS NOT A RHETORICAL QUESTION: How is faith in the “Abhramic God” [sic] different? Do you think it’s a lucky coincidence that you were born in a nation where Christianity is already rooted or do you think that if you had been born to Abdul and Khadija in a Pakistani village you’d still have been able to deduce that Christianity is the one true faith.
As did every other moral code on Earth. Do you believe people who do not honor the Sabbath or do not respect their parents should be killed? It was the penalty for violating them when the Big 10 were written after all.
Granted, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that Luke was quoting him. I really don’t believe it’s embellished since if somebody were going to make up a miraculous conversion story I think even a Pentecostal claims adjuster would have the imagination to cook up something more interesting and miraculous sounding than that.
So even taking him at his word (this being for the OP rather than Dio), you have a man who you’ve never met who’s been dead for 1950 years and who never met Jesus in the flesh claiming he passed out on a road at noontime and therefore has the ultimate word in the church. You believe that in a world where slavery (including sex slavery) was open and ubiquitous, where murder was routine, where crucifixions were not just routine (live long enough and you’ll probably get to see hundreds or even thousands of them) but popular entertainment, where incest was so common that Herod the Great had grandchildren who were also his great grandchildren as well as his great-great-grandchildren (and this was 100% legal in the eyes of the Jewish law- uncle-niece marriage, no problem), where eunuchs dressed in drag and served as priests and bathed in blood of slaughtered animals, where underground (literally underground) rites for various cults involved everything from self mutilation to group sex, where any number of gods were pictured on the currency in everyday use, where slaves could not just be raped but worked and beaten to death with complete impunity, where men fought to the death in theaters for popular entertainment, and where- again- every conceivable sexual practice was known and had names- homosexuality was the thing worth complaining about? And that this man who by his own admission never met Jesus, who seemed to know nothing of his life from the virgin birth to the Resurrection judging by his writing, and who barely got along with those who did know Jesus (including the one specifically ordained by Jesus as the ‘petra’) had the authority to speak for him to such a degree that a vague reference to effeminacy (the closest thing malakoi seems to come to incidentally is delicatus- also ‘soft’- and they were anal-sex slaves who had little choice about their livelihood or activities) should be used to outlaw and condemn homosexuality 2000 years later.
Fascinating.
Explain please, preferably without using “in my opinion” or faith or synonymous wording, the logic of this even if Jesus was indeed the Messiah.
panache, Curtis has forgotten that the burden of judgment is something that he doesn’t have to worry himself with. He mentioned the Rev. Billy Graham. Wonderful man. Even Billy believes that you don’t have to be a Christian to go to heaven.
There are Two “Great Commandments” in the Christian Tradition.
Jesus said so.
Not Paul. Not John. Not the Pope. Not Constantine. Not the Second Vatican Council.
And these two are:
1 - Love God with all of your Soul and Mind and Body
2- Love your neighbor as yourself.
ALL of the Laws and the Prophets are fulfilled therein.
Secular or religious…can anyone dispute that “loving your neighbor as yourself” would not change the entire tenor of the world?
Who Cares WHO said it?
It is the only mindset that offers peace.
For individuals. For the Planet.
C’mon.
Does anyone CARE if it was Bill Clinton or Thomas Jefferson or Rabbi Schmule or Freud or the Pope or Joseph Smith or Mohhamed or Jesus Christ or Abraham?
Really?
Loving “your neighbor” (from next door to across the world) as “yourself” is the only damn way that there will ever be peace.
Ah…but “competition” raises it’s ugly head.
Can we ever really see one another as “equals”?
Do we even want to?
How about the “greedy” or “slanderers” in the list of “sinners.”
Christ! The “greedy”??!!
American financial participants are DOOMED!! (Along with the homosexuals…)
Please Christians, can’t we agree that the greedy and the gossips and the “slanderers” are having a far greater impact on our world than homosexuals?
Can’t we? Agree on that?
The “greedy” fill our House of Representatives and our Senate and the Executive branch.
And the “Supreme Court” is not sinless.
And not just in THIS country - but in EVERY country.
Will the majority of the citizens of the world EVER commit to persons of good character to run the wheels of government and commerce, rather than the Geitners and Saudis and Paulsens and Husseins?
Good grief!
If you’re lookin’ to find the minds and hearts in ANY country who want to uplift and protect those with money and power - you can look to the counterparts in every government and every FORM of government on the planet.
Abhor it or love it…
Quit thinking that “American” or “Soviet” or “Socialist” or “Communist” or “Muslim” or “Christian” or “African” or “Democracy” or “Parlimentary” governments or sensibilities rule… IF you do, you are a pawn.
It is the GLOBAL connection of ALL people with millions and billions and trillions of dollars of wealth who are the most connected.
Not countries. Not politics. Not governments. Not “philosophies.”
It is wealth that runs the world. (As always.)
“They” run the Governments, the Militaries and the form and functioning of Every society.
Everything ‘beneath’ them is…you and I.
In whatever country and whatever form of government.
Of course for a lot of us this question is moot. If sin is an offence against god, then for those of us who do not believe in god’s existence, sin does not exist either.
We can only answer questions such as “Is homosexuality immoral” (No) or “Is homosexuality a crime” (It depends where you live)
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,”
So…you also can’t be a dude that likes figure skating or ‘abusing yourself with mankind’.
Well I am not a theologian but the Calvinist theologian will say that your salvation has been foreordained by God and thus my birth here too was predestined and the Arminian theologian will say that I have free will but that I have a much of a chance as anyone as being converted. At any rate I was born where I was and I think I am right. Also there have been plenty of staunch people of one religion converted to another, so who’s to say?
No because Jesus also stopped a stoning of an adulterer, thus He is opposed to such excessive use of the death penalty.
Every single one of the billions of religious people on Earth think that they are right. That’s why they are what they are. They can’t all be right (though there are many ways they could all be wrong) nor will they ever convince most of the others of their rectitude. Except of course by force.
So leave us alone and I’ll absolve you. My soul and its outcome is my business and I release you of any obligation and I suspect most others do as well. And I think I’m right.