I’m pretty sure there’s a stairway.
(You’re welcome for the earworm).
25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26"What is written in the Law?" he replied. “How do you read it?”
27He answered: " ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’"
28"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
(Luke 10:25-28)
Further along in this story, Jesus is asked to define “neighbor” and he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which a hated Samaritan (bitter enemies of the Jews at the time) shows himself to be more worthy of the title by his actions (showing mercy and compassion) than the priest and the Levite do by their ethnic and religious identities (this was a more radical idea to Jesus’ audience, for whom tribal identity was paramount, than it sounds like to us).
There is also the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. “whatever you do for the least among you, you do for me.”
So Jesus is pretty clear about what it takes, and specific belief does not enter into it.
Well, except for this-
" ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’
“The Lord your God” in question being YHWH.
Only if that requires belief, which that particular quote alone doesn’t seem to specify.
That’s one of the reasons I cited the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Jesus defined loving God as loving “the least among you.”
If God wanted all people to be saved,why did Jesus say He spoke in parables so that some would not understand, lest they understood and be saved?
Sounds like God didn’t want some to be saved or Jesus would have made his message clear to everyone.
Yes I did write the Council of Trent, but I meant Nicaea,thanks for correcting me!I did know that it was in the 300+ that was Constatine’s time.
Constantine was responsible for setting a standard for Christian beliefs when he had the Bishops of Rome and the Orthodox meet and form the creed. Many books were discarded as not being inspired, but that doesn’t mean any writings were inspired.
I personally believe all that is written is the word of humans, and humans decide what is God’s word or what is claimed to be inspired,or holy. It is a matter of what human you believe in. To me a supreme being would not need slaves, servants or anything as he would have no needs being complete in Him , her, or it self.
The writings have been written and translated so much over the centuries and so much conflicting translations that it is nothing to worry about, like Aesop’s fables the storys have some good to tell. No original writings exist so we have no way of knowing for sure what anyone really said,just trust and believe in the translators.
Oh by the way, Dan Browns books are not considered history, just fiction!
Haven’t you read the bible 24 times? Isn’t that what you told me? Why would you not remember that? Isn’t in Matt 7:21ish?
Wow, a lot of ignorance in this thread about pretty well established orthodox (but by no means universal) Christian thought.
You’re close, but wrong. The Bible says that Jesus is the only way to heaven:
Most Christian traditions believe and teach that knowing and placing one’s faith in Jesus is the a sure ticket to salvation. However, God is Just, and does not condemn people who have never heard of Jesus. The apostle Paul went on to say that certain things about God can be known in Nature or in ourselves, and we are judged by God according to how we respond to what God has revealed to us.
In C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, there is a character who is not a Narnian and does not belive in the Christ-character Aslan. He worships a false God, Tash. But in the book he is saved because, as Aslan tells us, everything he worshipped in Tash was actually Aslan, only the man did not recognize his true identity.
So why do Christians evangelize? Well, the first reason is that is was the last command of Jesus. Also because Christians believe that people are better off in the here-and-now the more they know about Jesus. It’s not all about what happens when you die, it’s just as much about reconciled with God today.
ETA: To answer your question “Is there any other way to get to heaven?” Most Christian traditions would say 1) No, it is not possible to get to heaven apart from Jesus, but 2) It is not necessarily required to know that Jesus is the way God has saved humanity.
Most Christian theologians would say “We know who is saved (those who have placed their faith in Jesus). We really don’t know who hasn’t been saved, but we trust God to be that judge and not us.”
What makes this so difficult?
Creed =/= canon - the Council of Nicea set a common creed, which involves how the books in the canon are interpreted; it did not address the canon, which was more-or-less set by the early 200s (cite to a better wikipedia article than the one I looked at earlier, which goes into [del]considerable[/del] mind-numbing detail about the “more-or-less” above).
Not to sidetrack or derail, but if he refuses to respect your wishes in YOUR home, why do you put up with it?
Seems like a good illustration of the difference between “simple” and “easy”.
One aspect of a ‘god’ is the ability to create reality. The person has been given free will to chose his own god. When someone who chooses a god that is not the Lord God, that god gets to define reality for that person, which includes the ability to hide certain things from the believer of this lesser god. It is God allowing the gods to be gods, or else they wouldn’t be gods.
The person has to open their heart to the Love of the Father in order to start hearing and seeing the things of God.
Parables allow a association between their situation and the story, hopefully they will start seeing the patterns if they are starting to open themselves. It’s easier to here a story about a servant then to be told you are a servant when that person can’t see how he is serving anyone.
If you liked this sentence, you may also enjoy: “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
I kind of like the Pratchett idea - shoot em before they can do any harm.
Predestination? If it’s predestination, your fate is already decided.
Acts vs faith? One says faith is all, another says faith must be accompanied by acts, another says acts matter more.
Vengeful God? Forgiving God? Right church? Wrong church? Everyone has a chance at salvation? Only 300 (or is it 3000?) will be saved?
It all sounds too much like it depends on which idividual or religion you listen to, what their “agenda” is, where they got their ideas from, and what they cherry picked or disarded along the way.
Basically, if you cherry pick the right things for yourself, you could either be saved no matter what, or damned no matter what.
I’ve never figured out if you think that these ‘gods’ already existed before they were believed in, or whether the belief actually creates the ‘gods’ ex nihilo. Either way it’s quite odd; I mean, seriously, there was always a flying spaghetti monster floating around, adjusting global warming in inverse proportion to the number of pirates around? Or, when somebody started believing in this nutty thing, was the FSM created and was history retroactively altered so that the FSM had been manipulating pirates all along, when it hadn’t been around and doing so, um, before?
And in either case, if I invented a god that can get me into heaven without your God’s permission, wouldn’t that be just as good as if I invented your God and then got into heaven by doing things his more difficult way?
Quite.
Nonetheless, sufficient.
It would have been so much easier if God had waited until the year 2000 to send Jesus…then he could have had a blog.