Jesus questions.

Great Debates
21

Yes, most people fear the unknown and it might be a comfort to believe in God and an afterlife to reduce some of that fear. Granted, religious leaders have sometimes used the church and people’s beliefs in un-Christian ways. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that God doesn’t exist.

You seem to imply that the only security that Christians get from their beliefs is that everyone else (or a large number of people) believe the same. You keep referring to a fear of the unknown. The only unknown I can think of off the top of my head is what happens to us after death. Will I be judged? If I am judged, will I be judged favorably or unfavorably? If that were the only purpose of organized religion then I think that they would have come up with some easier requirements, they would get a lot more followers. In general (and I’m sure someone could nitpick this to death) Christian beliefs deal mostly with leading a ‘good’ life. Don’t kill, lie, cheat, or steal. Treat others with respect. Help those less fortunate than yourself. Actively work to make the world a better place. To me that sounds reasonable but sometimes incredibly hard to do in real life.

Your view is quite pessimistic. To think that the reason religious leaders condemn suicide is that it would undermine their position is extremely cynical. A human life has incredible potential. And I’m talking ordinary people here. Hasn’t a smile or a kind word from someone brightened your day? Maybe it caused you do something kind for someone else later on? We are given this life and we leave a legacy as a result of how we touch other lives.

I’ve lost three cousins to suicide. If ‘making it a sin’ could have kept them alive then I’m all for it. Their grief and pain were transitory. Their situation would have gotten better. Suicide is the ultimate ‘I quit!’, and when you quit it will never get better.

I hope you don’t take any of this as a flame or assume that this is meant to be derogatory in any way. There are some religious leaders that abuse their power, some that preach one thing and do another. There are some members of organized religion that seem strident and/or obnoxious. That may influence your attitude but it doesn’t necessarily invalidate their belief system.

22

Sure he never said that, but he never said it was OK either. He said to follow him. Since he didn’t kill himself, a follower of his should not either. Jesus does call upon his followers to hate their lives in this world for his sake – not for the sake of throwing it away.

Not to restart the 30 years war, but if you can repent after you die, why be a good person while you live? Yeah, love, but with the devil being as strong as he is and the fears he can lord over us and our weak nature as souls, it doesn’t hurt to have that extra motivation. FWIW.

23

That’s not really a good argument; apparently JC never had sex, masturbated (not as a perfect Jew, anyhow), ate pork, drove a car, painted a picture, wrote a poem, etc., etc. If you say if Jesus didn’t do X then no one should do X, our lives end up exceedingly limited. Your argument that it hurts others and therefore is not “loving your neighbor as yourself” is stronger, although I personally would not demand that a terminally ill person suffering terribly should cling to a miserable life they desire to escape simply to spare cousin Joe a little unhappiness. YMMV.

24

Off the top of my head:
[li]Out of love for God[/li][li]Out of love for your fellow man[/li][li]Out of self-respect[/li][li]Out of a desire to keep the Law[/li][li]Out of a desire to keep the law[/li][li]Out of a desire to keep the Law that you have written for yourself[/li][li]Out of a desire to be loved[/li][li]Out of a desire to be respected and emulated[/li][li]Out of a desire to give a good example to your children[/li][li]Out of a desire to come as close as you can to the perfection you aspire to but will never achieve under your own power, trusting in whatever gods you believe in to help you the rest of the way (faith, in other words)[/li]
Am I missing anybody’s motivation? Feel free to add it; I didn’t do a thorough analysis.

In related issues, how do you keep mildew at bay? I mean, it must get pretty damp under that bridge.

25

**CandyBoi wrote:

There is no god, its merly a figure brought up by human minds to cope with the unknowen and control mass groups for there own ends.**

Now, here come’s the nitpick: please refrain from using statements such as: There is no god.

How do you know there isn’t? Have you searched each and every part of the Universe and OUTSIDE the Universe for a being that has the attributes attributed to the Gods and not found one? Until you’ve done so, you cannot conclusively say; There is no God.

Using the phrase the way you do implies that you have evidence that there isn’t a God (or Gods). Please be more precise in your speech.

End of my nitpick.

26

Similarily, you should refrain from saying “there is no Santa Claus”, “there is no perfect governmental system” or “there is no Chocolatebunnyland.” Have you searched each and every part of the Universe and OUTSIDE the Universe for a being/government/land that has the attributes attributed to Santa Claus, a perfect governmental system, Chocolatebunnyland, et al and not found one?

Using such phrases implies that you have evidence that such things do not exist. Please be more precise in your speech. :slight_smile:

27

Candiboi quoth:

You’ve already had the SDMB grammar lesson over in the Pit, so I’ll refrain other than pointing out that if you want to communicate ideas, it helps immensely if others can get the point you’re trying to make, and that calls for a vocabulary in common. Spelling/typo errors simply show a lack of caring for others, and that doesn’t sound like your attitude other than in your “I’ll-write-it-the-way-I-feel-like” stylistics. But what the heck is “therost”?

In this and your first paragraph, you seem to be ascribing to all Christians, or at least to organized Christianity, the perpretration of a myth for two reasons: insecurity, and assimilation into a lemming-like group. You seem to imply a third: the all-too-human tendency to desire power over a group of others.

You’re entirely right as regards some people, the “religion politicians” Libertarian is so inclined to flame, while remaining devoutly Christian himself. And as a Christian, I’d have to agree as regards them. But throughout history, there have been people who have experienced some phenomenon which has caused them to believe in this Something beyond and greater than themselves, and to connect it, usually for excellent reasons, with the Christian God. I will grant you that the evidence for His existence is somewhat less than probative – it’s anecdotal, or contained in documents that other people regard as of doubtful historicity, or in miracles that might be urban legends, and so on.

I guess the point I am shooting for is that, whatever nefarious ideas people on power trips may be playing using the idea of Christianity, there are sincere people, many of whom are rational thinkers open to new ideas, who are convinced that there is a God who loves them and that he had a great deal to do with the events surrounding the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth nearly twenty centuries ago.

I’m not necessarily urging on you that you accept that belief system on what must seem insufficient evidence, just that you adjust your world view to allow for sincere people as well as manipulative demagogues or misguided, insecure goofballs holding the Christian belief.

Well, yeah, people hate and fear what they don’t understand. What else is new?

It made sense, once I got past some of your strangeness of typing. (Sorry to pick on that; I studied to be an English teacher at one time, and sometimes it comes out.)

CandiBoi, are you the sort of person who dreams of going down in Legends? Do you have a RL nickname that plays off your screen name? Did you recently have a car accident? I ask these personal questions because I am checking out an insight that may or may not have been vouchsafed to me by the God you don’t think exists. I hope you won’t mind answering.

28

[nitpick of nitpick]

Freyr…

I believe that CandiBoi also used the phrase MHO at the end of his post. This would mean that his post was his opinion, not a statement of fact based on hard evidence. Please be more precise in your reading.

[/nitpick of nitpick]

29

OK, outside of a few desires that might actually be vain, I think I covered that. But God would hardly be just if someone could disobey his will their whole lives and repent afterwards. Perhaps his mercy extends beyond this life – we won’t know until we are dead – but if God is completely merciful he is completely unjust and I find evidence of that lacking in scripture, the beliefs of the apostolic churches, and the requirements of love and reason.

If have found the justice of God usually keeps the faithful from camping under bridges for extended periods. Occasional camping trips are par for the course. If you live in the moment, you discover all sufferings are transitory anyway and can thus become immune to them. The purgation of the unfaithful are God’s way of trying to bring them closer to him.

30

Jesus did not specifically forbid suicide, but He did forbid murder.

Committing suicide because you are sad cannot be justified unless it is also OK to murder depressed people. Taking a life unlawfully is murder; suicide is self murder.

And no, martyrdom and suicide are different.

31

If you suicide that means you don’t want to live, therefore god will probably just let you die a spiritual death too.

32

Polycarp replied to CandiBoi:

Yeah! How could you leave out the fourth reason – namely, that God is just a misplaced father figure? :wink:

(Or the fifth – according to Wilhelm Reich’s book The Murder of Christ, Jesus represents the loss of primal, natural feelings that occurred in all of us when we were little kids, said loss coming about as a result of, um, potty-training or being told not to touch yourself or something.)

33

I see a bit of a problem with these conceptions of suicide. Consider the following situations each with “I” having intentionality to suicide:

<sophistry>
I intentionally put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. Clear case of suicide. Sinful. No problem.

I walk into a den full of hungry wolves. Get eaten alive. Intent was there, but I didn’t actually do the killing. It was the wolves sinful act to eat me. Then again, you could say it was still suicide. The wolves were a mechanistic system the same way the gun was. Whether I pull a trigger or walk into a death machine, it doesn’t matter. Intent and follow-through are present. Just as sinful.

I walk into a Black Panthers meeting in full Klansman regalia and start preaching on the inferiority of blacks. I get beaten to death. Is it suicide? You can’t rightly take the route of the last situation and view the Panthers as a mechanistic system without viewing me as one. Intent to suicide is still there. That’s the only reason I did this. However, the follow-through is gone. I didn’t actually do the killing. By spreading out the intent and the act itself, did I just save myself some sin-points?
</sophistry>

34

GNobody, there is such a thing as suicide by proxy. If you put youself in a suituation that you know will result in certain death, it is either sacrifice if you are doing it for a nobler purpose, or suicide if you do it out of a death wish. There are situations IRL that the police call “Suicide by cop”, where an obviously distraught person does an action, such as pointing a gun in full view at a group of police, that leaves the police no choice but to shoot. I believe that no sin-points are saved by committing a suicide without a purpose of sacrifice.

35

“Do unto others…”, Cousin Joe should want to save you the apin, and be happy for you. But that does not mean you have to live to make others happy, but just put yourself in their shoes. Clearly, someone in great pain, who is dying anyway, is commiting no sin (at least not in my book) by shortening that amount of pain. Of course, it would be good if you 'got all your affairs in order", and made your peace with God, and asked His forgiveness, before.

The folks who are 'sinning" thru suicide are the young folks who are simply depressed, the Dad who lost his job, etc. But they can all be forgiven.

jmullany: But what is the purpose of hell if you can NOT repent? We beleive in a merciful God- surely He will be merciful after death, also. Now, some are so evil, that they will NOT repent, and thus they will be in hell forever- but that is THEIR choice. But someone who has made a horrible mistake, but died unrepentant, He must give them a “2nd chance”.

36

I don’t really want to start a thread for it, and there seems to several well-versed religious folk here, so here it goes…

Why do people pray over a corpse? The ‘say a prayer for the soul of the dear departed’ thing. My understanding, or misunderstanding as the case may be, is that once you die you are judged. That if you die while not being saved, well, then you’re not going to enjoy the afterlife very much.

Can a prayer from loved ones or preists or what-not have any effect on your final disposition. Or do these prayers serve only to make the living feel better. Or is there another possibility that I have not considered.

37

There were supposed to be several question marks in that last paragraph. My bad.

38

spooje I don’t think, if you will listen at a service their praying so much for the departed but for the living. You can’t change whatever life the decessed lived, you can only change your own. Some religions may pray for the dead, but I think most of the ones I have attended are for the living. JMHO

39

The purpose of hell is a just punishment for turning away from God in this life. God is merciful but also just.

But, give me a break. Who, would it be possible for them to repent, would just spend an eternity in hell rather than repent?

What the RCC teaches make plain good sense to me:

And elsewhere:

From the fall of the angels:

40

okay. screw rocks or big holes.

It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels’ sin unforgivable

the real question to ask is, “Can God make an angel so evil that not even he can love it?”, and the answer appears to be yes.