One Eyed Kings are Wild -- faith in God, faith in humanity

Great Debates
1

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king – but those with two eyes can see clearly” – Margurite Porete

No. My understanding of what is required for salvation comes from Jesus’s lips:

  1. No one can be saved unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
  2. No one can recieve the Spirit unless they love Jesus, which entails keeping his commandments. Vice versa, Jesus says, anyone who does not keep his commandments does not love him, and anyone who keeps his commandments loves him by definition.

I furthermore believe in Jesus’s proscribed way of identifying those who have faith in him: “Anyone who has faith in me shall do works.” And as Paul says in Romans: “You will be judged by your works.”

Many are those who rest their understanding on another phrase from Paul’s letter to those Roman Christians: “By grace, you are saved by faith.” They ignore other things he says there as well, such as: “You were at one time slaves to wrong things. But I praise God that you obeyed what your teachers taught you. And you obeyed because you wanted to obey.” Ignoring, as such, that there are teachings which these Romans were obeying, presumably Jesus’s teachings, while they themselves feel no need to obey any teachings of Jesus themselves. They talk a good talk about “love” without admitting Jesus’s teachings explain the meaning of the word, nor do they care that by not keeping Jesus’s commandments they are not loving Jesus, a person who should be highest on their list.

Keeping his teachings is not impossible. In fact, Jesus’s yoke is an easy yoke though people like to pretend otherwise. Nor do I believe, as Opus1 tried to argue, that the Gospel is confusing as to what his teachings are. Obviously, Jesus was a man, and he kept his own teachings.

I didn’t lose my faith in God until I lost my faith in humanity. There are enough people who have access to the Gospel’s and do not keep Jesus’s teachings that I doubt I can be of any service to anyone. I have few misgivings about using my gifts to persue worldly gain while leaving the blind masses to their own fate.

I thought at first they were fools. Then I thought they were weak and lazy. But now I know they are blind – blind drunk off some potion I don’t understand.

If any prophet ever found me and asked me to repent, I would. But I lack the will to go it alone.

In the meantime, I’ll lend my “talent at interest” to who ever will listen. It is good news. If they listen, so much they better for them. And if they come back for me once they have reached the land of freedom, then perhaps I’ll be saved after all.

So, Polycarp – what do you want to argue about?

2

Er, not really wanting to get involved in this but unable to help myself.

It sounds like you’re saying, “Well, I’ve lost my faith, but I’m gonna go ahead and preach the Gospel to anyone who cares to listen.” Is that it?

3

Exactly. Nothing wrong with defending the gospel and for the sake of the gospel, considering I’m not selfishly trying to make a buck off the deal like so many others out there! And after all, those few with faith in Jesus are probably not here to defend themselves, or if they are they sure do keep quiet.

Luke 18:

[quote]
2 [Jesus] said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man;
3 and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Vindicate me against my adversary.’
4 For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor regard man,
5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.’”
6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says.
7 And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?
8 I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

[quote]

4

Just to make sure I understood you, Joel . . . you lost faith in humanity because so many people have access to the Gospels and still do not follow Christ?

5

I would likely be amoung the last who would say I am a good or perfect Christian- but I CERTAINLY do NOT “keep quiet”.

Speak for yourself, please.

6

That, in and of itself, would not bother me. I am bothered by the lying and the hypocrisy or the sheer majority of those who claim to believe in Jesus but, quite obviously, do not. It is horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

7

If you have faith in Jesus, as you claim, do you keep his teachings? And if so, which ones?

8

Y’know, Joel, I may be looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, but I see humaneness in humanity, and a desire to be all that they can be, a willingness to do good from unselfish motives – maybe not explicitly Christian ones, because we have done one horrible job of depicting His will – but humanitarian, humanistic ones. And some of the outspoken atheists I know are among the ones doing just that. YMMV, but I see them as the people of whom Jesus was speaking in the parable of the two sons:

I’m much happier with what you’re saying here than the misunderstanding I had of where you were coming from, and have no particular point to argue.

Although if you’re talking one-eyed kings in a religious context, somebody is gonna bring up Odin. :smiley:

9

So, if you agree that God’s will is for people to keep Jesus’s teachings, I do not know of many atheists who have “repented and taken the right path.” Nor would I expect them to, to be honest. I don’t want to sidetrack this into another debate regarding secular morality. But, still, show me these atheists you know who are keeping Jesus’s teachings.

10

I accept Him as my Savior- that is all that is truly nessesary.

11

:rolleyes:

So, although you are not born of Spirit, you think you can still be saved? Even though Jesus said otherwise? Or do you think Jesus was lying when he said you had to keep his commandments to recieve the Spirit?

12

That is quite possibly the most selfish religious view I have ever heard of.

13

Just wanna point out to Daniel~ that as the King James version has it, “faith without works is dead”. It’s not enough just to believe–you gotta get off your duff and prove it.

In the NIV, it’s “faith…not accompanied by action, is dead.”:

14

All of Christ’s teachings? You know better than that, Joel. I’ve never met a Christian like that.

But I can think of plenty of atheists who believe in peace, turning the other cheek, and the golden rule.

15

I’m an atheist. From my point of view, I would say I don’t keep Jesus’s teachings because (a) how are we supposed to know what he taught? and (b) it’s not hard to improve on the teachings traditionally attributed to him.

As regards (a), I personally find it odd that anyone thinks they have a reasonably good idea what, if anything, JC actually said or believed. It’s very hard to achieve consensus regarding what happened in Dallas on Nov 22 1963, despite numerous witnesses (some still living), colour film, audio recordings, all the facilities of the mass media and surely the most investigated set of facts in history. So it seems to me the words used by some guy in and around Judea 2000 years ago, none of which were recorded or preserved at the time, none of which were written up until some 60-70 years after his alleged death, and none of which come to us except after numerous translations, re-translations and assorted conflicting interpretations by different churches, must be something of a moot point at best.

As regards (b), I could list any number of improvements, as I see them. For one thing, I don’t need the promise of a reward in ‘heaven’, or the threat of punishment in ‘hell’, to construct a personal and social set of ethics within which I can exercise my choice to do good. For another, if disturbed people come to me for help, I wouldn’t take their problems out on nearby swine. For another, I could find ways to protest about money-lenders that didn’t involve violence, damage to other people’s property, losing my rag and generally acting like a delinquent teenager with too much testosterone.

Oh, and I keep my promises.

16

Wow, what a line of reasoning from insufficient grounds! On what basis do you hold that Daniel is “not born of Spirit”? Or that he does not keep Jesus’ commandments?

He made a simple assertion of the essentials of faith. And said that was “all that is truly necessary.” He did not delimit his faith and his doings to that, but tried to draw a minimum.

If you were my boss, and a nervous sort, and called to determine if deadlines were being met, and I told you that I had mailed out your estimated tax statement yesterday, the only thing with an immediate deadline, you would not therefore immediately assume that was the only thing I had done, but rather that I had met the sole task with a deadline which had passed and was working on material with a later deadline.

Daniel asserted that was the one thing necessary. He is more or less supported by Paul in this. To understand Jesus’ words as being contrary to it would require a detailed analysis of faith vs. works and a series of presumptions as to what accepting Jesus as savior means to Daniel that might not be borne out by his own attitudes.

It is this sort of nitpickery that turns people off to Christianity. If you offer me a million dollars to be your personal servant, I must accept in order to earn the million. At that point a contract has been undertaken, a covenant reached. It is to be presumed that I will then fulfill the duties expected of your personal servant, in keeping with the contract. And that you will equip me with that which I need to fulfill the role adequately (a letter of agency, perhaps; by this I draw the parallel to the giving of the Spirit).

Daniel said he had accepted the contract. He did not say either party was remiss in fulfilling it. That was your assumption.

17

What do you mean? That you don’t get out much?

I don’t think you can point to any that really believe in loving their enemies or doing unto others as other do unto them. A handful of them might claim to without warping the meanings of these phrases, but even then their actions do not actually support their views. But, I’m no good at understanding the convolutions of secular morality.

I mean no offense – I just wonder sometimes if people can see the reality of the consequences of their actions.

18

I didn’t make any such assertion, I merely asked a question. If I am suspicious, it is only because he seemed to avoid answering my first question which was rather plain and direct.

Well, Jesus did say that not everyone who called him their Lord and Savior would in fact be saved. So, who exactly do you think those people are? Or do you think Jesus was wrong here as well?

What turns me off more than anything is hypocrisy.

Which of Jesus’s commandments do you believe is not possible to keep without having the Spirit first? Not that such a theory would negate the plain language of Jesus:

Then he should be able to plainly say which commandments he keeps without being evasive. A son of the light shouldn’t be afraid to come into the light, right?

19

jmullany: there is only One who is qualified to judge my faith- and you are not Him.

DDG- I do appreciate the wisdom of JC’s brother, James- but he is not the Word.

John5:24 “Verily, Verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come unto condemnation…”

John12:47 “…I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”

20

“Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

Ahem! That is a tad out of context. John 5:

And continues:

Yet surely, these people heard Jesus’s word and believed in God, yet why do they not have life?

Egads! Could you at least pretend not to take this out of context by quoting a complete sentence?
John 12:44-50