Question for Christians (guaranteed flame-free)

Great Debates
1

(Note to moderators: I’m not sure if this should be here or in “In My Humble Opinion”)

I got involved in a discussion with a Baptist Christian in a Yahoo chat the other day. He mentioned a verse from St. John, when Jesus says “If you ask for anything in my name, I will grant it”. I then asked the age-old question–why is it that God often doesn’t answer the prayers of people who pray for help. I mentioned the Christians who begged Jesus to spare their lives in Stalinist gulags, Nazi concentration camps, and so forth. My friend responded to the effect that sometimes allowing someone to die is God’s will. I then asked him that if this is the case, how do we know that it isn’t God’s will that some believers wind up in Hell and some nonbelievers wind up in Heaven. My friend stated that this is not the case; that all believers go to Heaven. I then reminded him of that quote from St. John, and stated that sometimes God defaults on that promise. I also told him that he couldn’t say “those requests violated God’s will” as the promise there was every bit as unconditional as “believe and be saved”. He fell silent.

So, what do you think? How do you know you’re saved?

2

You don’t. If there was some way to “know” that you are saved then people would never lose their faith and become atheist. As a christan you don’t even know what heaven or hell will be like.

3

Thanks for your response, Sterra. Are you a Christian yourself? If you are, I must say that you’re the first Christian that I know of to make that statement.

If you’re not Christian, that’s okay too. :wink: But I really wanted to hear from the Christian community. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you had no business responding. It’s just that my question was specifically aimed at believers. No offense meant. :slight_smile:

4

“My kingdom is not of this world.” ~ Jesus ~

Pray for the love of God for man, for the salvation of sinners, and the courage to live your own life according to the example and principles of Jesus’ own life. That puts your prayer into the realm of His kingdom, where He is sovereign.

You cannot know if Jesus answered the prayers of those who asked him to ease the suffering of the Holocaust. Such an answer would become manifest in the spirits of those who suffered. That would include some of the Nazi’s by the way. The matter of spiritual suffering is not inconsequential it is paramount. The world is doomed, and everyone in it. What matters is what will be saved from it.

Humans do evil things. God allows us our free will, and some of us choose to become hideously evil. The salvation He offers is to those who desire His love, and the love for all His children. Not many really do, you know. Most people just want freebies, from a friend in a high place. It’s just favoritism on a divine scale. There have been just as many prayers for the destruction of enemies as for the succor of friends. If you don’t believe in prayer, it is easy to see that nothing comes of it. If you believe that your prayer is a direct conversation with the Lord of all things, have some faith that He does hear you, and knows your heart. Ask Him to answer you there. Your mind is too easy to confuse.

Tris

“I have no proof, but then, I have no doubt. I have no answers, but I have no questions either.” Me

5

Yes, I am a christan. I just don’t care much about heaven:)

6

I know that quote, thanks. :slight_smile:

That’s an interesting thought. But I’d still like to know how you KNOW you’re saved.

Your first statement makes no sense. They prayed to live, to survive. They died. God failed. Oh, you answer that in your next paragraph, I see:

You’ll excuse me if I’m still not buying it. I refer you back to my first post. I cannot accept the concept of a loving God who would watch his children burn while doing nothing to stop them. That’s a God of Love? That’s sickening.

Your post gave me some food for thought, thanks. :slight_smile:

7

Goodness. No one who believes in God dies.

I don’t think your friend quite understands what it means to ask in His name. Names mean so little these days. They are merely handles or tags, like social security numbers. In those days, they were a man’s identity. God’s own name was (and is) I AM. Your friend didn’t understand that calling out “Jesus this” or “Jesus that” is not asking for anything in His name.

In the context in which Jesus spoke, merely mouthing sounds does not a name make. If it did, you could just cry out, “In the name of Jesus, make Gaudere’s eyeballs fall out,” or “Jesus, in your name I ask that you abdicate your Godhood and let Satan win the moral battle.” Does your friend not understand this?

“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” — Jesus

To ask for something in the name of Jesus means to ask for something in your own capacity as God. This would have been obvious if you hadn’t chopped off the verse’s dependent clause, “And I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father,” and if you had included the context of the whole evening, an intimate supper with His disciples.

Never did Jesus default on His promises to his them. If He did that, He wouldn’t be God. Of all the documentation they have left us, none of it mentions any such default. He came back to them, just as He said He would. And He gave them everything they ever asked for in His name, which is Holy. He still does. And He always will.

Finally, before someone accuses me of changing meanings of words, I didn’t do it. That sort of thing happens to words over the course of two thousand years. A writer in 1895 did not mean that Parisians are homosexuals when he spoke of “Gay Paris”.

Because God’s kingdom is within you.

8

My personal take on this is that, simply put, you don’t. Trying to distill it to the barest essentials, you place your faith in God, you honor ye olde great commandments (“thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind,” and “love thy neighbor as thyself”). Of course, depending on your denomination, you’ll have different beliefs on what it takes to be saved, but I think that covers the bases. You accept that you’ll be saved on faith; you can’t prove it.

How, though, is that any different from accepting that the sun won’t go supernova tomorrow? There’s no proof it won’t, after all. Science suggests that it won’t, of course, but why place faith in science? My point is that if one requires proof for everything, one won’t believe much anything.

I disagree. I think that first statement makes eminent sense. The only life that matters is the life of the soul. The body is just a shell; what happens to it shouldn’t really matter.

This is, of course, an age old question often called the “Problem of Evil.” I can’t really answer it at all adequately; my knowledge of the philosophy of religion is minimal at best, but there are many books that deal with it. I know C. S. Lewis wrote about this at some length, but I don’t remember the source. (I know, appealing to someone else is lame, but he does give an interesting perspective.)

I would, however, point out that one of the central ideas of Christian philosophy is free will, as mentioned, and God won’t interfere with our will. Earthly suffering is not important, in some sense, because it’s the spirit that matters. Indeed, Catholics believe, IIRC, that martyrs are automatically assumed into heaven, implying that suffering for your faith is actually a GOOD thing. Physical or emotional suffering is unpleasant, but not, perhaps, all together evil; some would even argue that suffering brings you CLOSER to God (I believe this is Lewis’ thesis, although it’s been six years or so since I read whatever book of his it was that dealt with this, and it’s not an active interest of mine, so I could be wrong).

9

g8guy,

I don’t think suffering for your faith is what is good for you, but rather having faith is good for you and suffering does not change that. It does take great faith to stand up to the horrors that the world can send to cause suffering. The suffering is not what makes you closer to the Lord, but rather turning from the temptation of abandoning faith, and renewing ones faith with prayer.

Father Pacelli,

I have no doubt that the Lord loves me. I have no proof, nor any evidence that would mean anything to you. But I have had overwhelming proof given to me, and the personal presence in my life of the spirit of the Lord. I experience that presence whenever I stop looking at my self, and look to Him. If I was true to the faith in my heart in all that I did, and thought, and wanted in life, I am sure that my least need would be obtained without care. But I am weak, and greedy, and seek vain things. I even pray for them. The Lord loves me, and as I would not give my child candy for every meal, neither does He grant my every vain desire.

In the final analysis everything upon the earth is petty much ephemeral. That man suffers is true. The source of that suffering is mortal and the nature of our sorrow mortal as well. But the spark within us that can pass beyond this world is what matters. With God, that spark shall grow into a being fit to join with angels, and God Himself. Without Him it will perish, and be lost forever.

I know because Jesus told me. He told me Himself, in person. He lives in my heart, and if you make room in your own heart He will come there too.

Tris

“So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians, chapter 13: verse 13

10

That quote? :slight_smile: If it is, he’s got it wrong to begin with. Asking for, say, a ham sandwich isn’t going to glorify God so it isn’t forthcoming.

Oh, and do I know I’m saved? I hope so, but I’m not taking bets.

11

Quite right. I have a horrible tendency to be exceedingly lazy about clarifying important details like that. What I should have said is that there’s a school of philosophy that says that suffering gives you the opportunity of growing closer to God. I seem to recall not entirely buying Lewis’ argument as he stated it, but that last sentence of yours I should agree with whole-heartedly.

12

We were always told that “You know that you know that you know” that you’re saved. This meant pushing on in prayer and not letting go of God until the spiritual realities of His Kingdom had such tangible presence in your life that there was no longer any point worrying about proving it in a way that would convince an unregenerate mind. Note that the closest I have got to this is accepting what Jesus says and then getting on with it. The first thing we can be sure of is that He is Good. The second is that walking with Him is not going to make sense from a human point-of-view: that there’s a way which makes far more sense, and which is yet hidden from our natural eyes.
Doesn’t He ever just come to you and hug you? :slight_smile:

13

Libertarian:

So, you’re saying that “And I will do whatever (you ask so that the Son may bring glory to the Father”) is the proper parsing? While that makes sense, the parsing “(And I will do whatever you ask) so that the Son may bring glory to the Father” is equally sensible. Seems like if God is so great, He should have been able to come up with a less ambiguous way of putting it. Morever, as far as I can see, you are saying that what this means is that God will do whatever we want, as long as it is according to His will. In others, He’ll do what we ask, but only if He was going to do it anyway. So the point is…?

You really think that belief in God is the same as the belief that the sun won’t go supernova? Do you think that every statement is as likely as every other, or just these two?

14

No no no. Certainly there are some statements that are just true (i.e. statements in mathematics, assuming one phrases them to make it clear that the validity depends on an axiom), but in most cases, all we can say is that something is likely to be true.

The sun is quite unlikely to go supernova, and we say that with high confidence because we BELIEVE in our physical models, which tell us it won’t. But we can’t ever PROVE that our models of the universe are correct; in fact, we know that they are, at best, incomplete. In essence, what we do in physics is to give a set of mathematical equations which seem to predict what we actually observe, along with some explanation for why those equations should be right. Their validity rests on their internal consistency and their explanatory power.

Unfortunately, we sometimes come across things we can’t explain, and sometimes we discover new phenomona (remember how it was thought, near the end of the 19th century, that all of physics was essentially solved?). Perhaps one of those things we haven’t come across yet and thus haven’t incorporated into our understanding is a factor that will have the sun do something really really odd. Do I expect this? No. Do I acknowledge it as a possibilty? I have to, else I’m not being rational.

My point is that pretty much everything we think we KNOW is actually just a belief because we CAN’T prove it, and that if you demand strict proof of something before you accept it, you’ll therefore accept virtually nothing. We thus accept things as true based on evidence and reason. How much evidence you require before you accept something as true is up to you, but I think people often delude themselves in claiming to know something is true.

So yes, belief in God is like belief that the sun won’t go supernova, because they’re both BELIEF. You may think one is more likely to be true than the other, but I highly doubt you can prove either to be true with complete certainty. Nevertheless, if you wish to claim that science is infallible and that we scientists have discovered all there is to discover, well… Good luck to you.

15

You’re missing the important point of likelihood here, and the consequences it has on our actions. Do we believe the sun will go supernova tomorrow? No. So we go about our business. The likelihood of its exploding appears to be extremely small. Could we be wrong? Sure. But just because there’s a possibility, it doesn’t mean I’m going to ACT as though it were going to explode, and then not pay my electric bill and go loot the city or something.

So of course we might not have learned enough about physics to discover that the sun really IS going to explode. But that tiny margin doesn’t change my behavior.

IMO, looking at the evidence, a more accurate analogy would not be that a belief in God is like a belief that the sun won’t go supernova tomorrow, but rather that a belief in God is like a belief that the sun WILL go supernova tomorrow.

Slather on that sunscreen.

16

I have to disagree. It’s not that I’m missing the point of likelihood at all; I wouldn’t be doing graduate studies in physics if I thought the sun is going to explode! To act as if the sun is going to go nova would be in my opinion, utterly idiotic, because it’s very very unlikely to happen. But to say that it can’t happen is also foolish.

If you go back to the beginning of the thread, you’ll see that I used this analogy only to say that of course you can’t ever know that someone is saved! I fully appreciate that some things are far more likely to be true than others, and we act (assuming we’re rational) according to what we believe to be true. But for the most part, we can’t prove that what we believe to be true is, in fact, actually true. We can only say that it’s likely to be so (and some things are obviously more likely than others). I’m answering the OP by saying that we can’t really know that we’re saved, because it’s one of those many many things that we has to be accepted on belief (a matter of faith, you might say). A Christian might believe that it’s very very likely he or she is saved, but that doesn’t mean he or she can prove it, and hence, it’s not known. Maybe it would have helped if I’d just said it this way: You can’t know you’re saved because you can’t know much anything, you can only believe. Does that clarify my position?

(BTW, I’m rather surprised at how difficult it is for people to realize that what I’m saying is that a belief, no matter how likely, is still only a belief until it’s proven to be true. It’s not that hard of a concept, is it?)

17

The truth is always likely. Knowing the truth introduces a level of uncertainty.

But faith are proof are antithetical. The search for either begins with the abandonment of the other. Both these endeavors are exercises in human experience, one of spirit, one of intellect.

Tris

" It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching." ~ Saint Francis Of Assisi ~

18

Or you could say faith and proof are antithetical, thereby being both concise, and understandable.

19

I’m assuming you accept the divinity of the whole Bible. Billy Graham was just on TV and he was talking about this specifically. When you turn your life to Christ you get your name written in the Book of Life that’s in Revelations. You get washed in Jesus’ blood. The devil, who is in front of God constantly accusing you, is silenced by the Lord’s Blood. This is a very strong (and not accidental) parallel to the story of the Passover. The Jews in Egypt who washed their doorways with the blood of a sacrificial lamb were spared the death of their firstborn sons. When you “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself,” (Luke 10:27), you receive eternal life through Jesus Christ’s Blood.

Needless to say, action is louder than words. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and the Priests for knowing and teaching the truth yet living their life differently. Faith is active not passive.

20

I think that this has particularily been affirmed to me in the last year-and-a-half of my life. And while I was reflecting on this, Tris, I recalled some of the little children who shared Children’s Mercy Hospital with us and how they, as children, simply knew and understood this without question.

I really miss spending time with them.

Father Pacelli

How do I know? Because He answered me long ago and since then I have never needed to ask.