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Many folks in the forum believe their religion is better. It is that simple.
I disagree. I believe most folks on this forum believe their religion is better than the other guy's. Otherwise they wouldn't have chosen it. And, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with that. I can't imagine that anyone who posts here doesn't sincerely believe that the path they are on is the right one.
What I don't get is what excuse that gives anyone to treat the rest of us like crap. (Here's where some will undoubtedly jump in and insist that they aren't the guilty parties, that the only people they treat like crap are the "false, pseudo Christian cultists who deserve it."
Because what you're really encountering is egotism and spiritual vanity. Some poster finds a verse out of Matthew or Acts and thinks he's got it down, committing the sin of hubris. So then they go after those faiths that don't confirm with Their View Of Everything. They crave being right rather than acting the way Christ would have us behave.
To me, that's why everybody loves to go after the Catholics on this forum. Hey, I don't agree with Catholicism. There's a lot in Catholicism that, to me, runs counter to how I understand Christ's teachings. But do I think that Catholics are going to roast in Hell or be denied salvation? Heck no. And, to be honest with you, I fully expect to learn in the next life that I got a thing or two wrong in my quest for understanding.
There's an old joke that goes like this: A Catholic, an Episcopalian, and a Greek Orthodox are all killed in a car crash. They come to the Pearly Gates and are welcomed by Peter. He walks them through the Kingdom of Heaven, where everyone is feasting and singing God's praises. But one of them looks down one street and notices a curtain drawn across the road. He points over at the curtain and asks Peter, "What's behind that curtain." To which Peter laughs and says, "Those are the Southern Baptist. They think they're the only ones here."
The point of the joke is this: Nobody really knows. I don't. You don't. Hell, for all we know, the only people who come even close to following Christ are the Mennonites. But given that an essential Christian quality is humility, any attitude that doesn't embrace the possibility that someone else could be right and you could be wrong is really counter to everything that Christ and Paul talked about. Instead, delight in the knowledge that we are all for Christ in a sinful world and, while we offer our devotion in a host of ways, we still are essentially doing the same thing.
After all, Paul warns us in Romans to not worry about what another congregation is doing or not doing. Only worry about what you are doing.
Nicely put! Wish more people could be a little more accepting.
Reading, comprehending and knowing when to apply scriptural principle are not synonymous. And I suspect that some have yet to understand that and how faulty inclinations of the heart can influence our behavior. But we can overcome weak flesh. Brotherly love is the identifying mark of genuine Christians. As we grow spiritually, we learn to express love more fully. The apostle Paul prayed that the love of his fellow Christians would "abound yet more and more." And the apostle John showed that our love should be self-sacrificing when he wrote: "By this we have come to know love, because [the Son of God] surrendered his soul for us; and we are under obligation to surrender our souls for our brothers." (1 John 3:16; John 15:12,13) Would you actually give your life for a fellow believer? While most situations do not require that, to what extent do we go out of our way to help them, even when it is not convenient? God’s Word urges us: "In brotherly love have tender affection for one another." We all feel that way toward some people. But could we learn to feel such fondness for even those of different faith? The Bible also says: "The end of all things has drawn close. . . . Above all things, have intense love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins."—1 Peter 4:7,8. And of course, as long as we are imperfect, it wont be easy to overlook some differences. Nevertheless, our actually applying the counsel that the Bible contains will give evidence of our sincere desire to please God. Doing so will also enrich the quality of our love toward others.
So, you don't accept the divinity of Jesus 100% or the concept of heaven 100%?
Oops, strawmen are not allowed!
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I don't care to convert anyone to a belief in Satan. What does get me are absolute statements like "God does not exist" or "Satan does not exist."
How does one know? If one appeals to the logic of science one can neither prove nor disprove their existence.
Your point about absolutism is well taken. At this point I believe in God because of the concept of Ex nihilo creation. No one knows what caused the Big Bang and that could be God. Monseigneur Georges Lemaître, a Jesuit Priest and famous physicist is with me on this one.
Now lets look at Satan. I agree, with you the CC says it has no body. It is described as a spirit by the Catechism:
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395 The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit,
Now, lets define the word spirit:
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spir·it
ˈ
noun
1. the nonphysical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.
"we seek a harmony between body and spirit"
2. those qualities regarded as forming the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period.
Please carefully look at the definition of spirit and you will see that Satan simply represents the evil within all of us. No need to have fear!
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Because the price paid in being wrong in your paranoia of the stranger, is far smaller than the price of being wrong in your naive assumption all will be riding off in the strangers car.
I am not worried about being wrong because God is simply too powerful. God is everything and God occupies the space of the entire universe. If God is everything there is no room for Satan. That would be like assuming matter and anti-matter can coexist in the same place. From a metaphysical point of view Satan cannot exist if God is all mighty.
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This is a definition of hell and I'm well aware of it as it's one of the more popular beliefs by fundamentalist Protestants. I'm not entirely sure but I think it's Evangelical Protestants of the Calvinists (The Puritans that came to the U.S. were Calvinists) stream of theology that are harbingers of the conception of hell as being only a state of being absent from God.
The definition was given to me by a Jesuit Priest.
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Actually, someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I think St. Thomas Aquinas stated that all angels in the universe combined could fit on the tip of a pin.
Saint Thomas Aquinas was awesome. He set out to prove the existence of God and succeeded (see his five proofs). If he had been a Protestant he would have quoted the Bible.
That statement about the tip of a pin is fascinating. That is very close to a spirit, maybe the Angels have the size of the Planck length. I agree with Aquinas!
So, you don't accept the divinity of Jesus 100% or the concept of heaven 100%?
This is a definition of hell and I'm well aware of it as it's one of the more popular beliefs by fundamentalist Protestants. I'm not entirely sure but I think it's Evangelical Protestants of the Calvinists (The Puritans that came to the U.S. were Calvinists) stream of theology that are harbingers of the conception of hell as being only a state of being absent from God.
Fundamental Protestants believe Hell is a physical place where those who are apart from God spend eternity. Yes, it is full of demons. Yes, it is Satan's domain. There are numerous Bible references to Hell.
The Puritans were a Protestant splinter group from The Church of England who followed the teachings of John Calvin and were known as Calvinists.
Puritans were not evangelical. Look at this quote,
“A puritan is such a one,” the London lawyer John Manningham wrote in 1602, “as loves God with all his soul, but hates his neighbour with all his heart.” Anyone who took a stricter line on the demands of scripture than the person speaking could be labelled a Puritan.
The Puritan movement died out because it was simply too difficult to live.
It's not a strawman as it was a question, as well as the fact you stated you don't believe in anything 100%.
So, I asked, if you don't accept the divinity of Jesus 100% or the concept of heaven 100%?
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Your point about absolutism is well taken. At this point I believe in God because of the concept of Ex nihilo creation. No one knows what caused the Big Bang and that could be God. Monseigneur Georges Lemaître, a Jesuit Priest and famous physicist is with me on this one.
I have no problem with the Big Bang.
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Now lets look at Satan. I agree, with you the CC says it has no body. It is described as a spirit by the Catechism:
Now, lets define the word spirit:
Please carefully look at the definition of spirit and you will see that Satan simply represents the evil within all of us. No need to have fear!
That's not what the Catholic Church teaches about Satan and I would reference Catholic theology as to what it's theological jargon of "spirit" means. Professions and academic disciplines have their own jargon.
Also, dictionaries do not tell what things are intrinsically, dictionaries provide the common usages of words.
There is nothing persuasive to me that suggests Satan was meant as a metaphor for our internal evils. First of all, evil would have to be defined, secondly, personal sins are mention enough, "Go and sin no more," Jesus told the woman he saved from being stoned. Our struggles with sin has already been ascertained through the conception of Original Sin as well as the conception of Christ's death on the Cross for our sins. Referring to our struggles with sin as Satan would simply seem redundant and excessive exaggeration.
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I am not worried about being wrong because God is simply too powerful. God is everything and God occupies the space of the entire universe. If God is everything there is no room for Satan. That would be like assuming matter and anti-matter can coexist in the same place. From a metaphysical point of view Satan cannot exist if God is all mighty.
Your comments are illogical and purely emotionally based and products of your own desire.
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The definition was given to me by a Jesuit Priest.
Does not matter. The root of that conception of hell neither originates with Jesuits or Catholics but with a stream of fundamentalist Evangelical Protestants.
At any rate, I've said all I have to say on this, with you. As stated, I'm not out to convert anyone to a belief in Satan. I'm sure many will meet him soon enough. Though, they will have wished they took his existence more seriously when they had the chance to in this short life.
Fundamental Protestants believe Hell is a physical place where those who are apart from God spend eternity. Yes, it is full of demons. Yes, it is Satan's domain. There are numerous Bible references to Hell.
The Puritans were a Protestant splinter group from The Church of England who followed the teachings of John Calvin and were known as Calvinists.
Puritans were not evangelical. Look at this quote,
“A puritan is such a one,” the London lawyer John Manningham wrote in 1602, “as loves God with all his soul, but hates his neighbour with all his heart.” Anyone who took a stricter line on the demands of scripture than the person speaking could be labelled a Puritan.
The Puritan movement died out because it was simply too difficult to live.
Maybe you are right about the difference between those. I just know I had several Protestants--not liberal ones either--telling me in the past hell is simply a place absent of God, and that Catholicism in the Middle Ages invented the whole hell with fire and soul being tormented by demons thing.
I'm not sure what steam of Protestantism they were from though.
Why can't we Christians just accept each other's faiths.............
I've read way to many threads in here where a poster of one Christian faith has jumped down the throat of another Christian poster of a different faith. Why is there so much hatred between our faiths? We all have one major and most important thing in common. We believe that Jesus Christ is our savior and reedemer. why must we all bicker so much among ourselves about our differences in getting to Christ? Doesn't seem very "Christian" to me.
Want to know why Christianity looks like an idiotic clown-car of bickering children?? As long as we have people who think like the response to my post as follows:
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Originally Posted by godofthunder9010
The debate rages on about what does or does not disqualify one from being a "real Christian." That too is an ever evolving concept. Catholicism has radically evolved on this issue over the years.
Three "cardinal truths" that I cannot reconstruct for the life of me from the teachings of the prophets, Christ and the apostles: 1.) Ex Nihilo creation (which not all denominations take an absolutist stance on), 2.) the formalized Catholic Trinity and 3.) the closed scriptural canon. I simply cannot find any of these things being taught. Not at all.
Does my disbelief in the latter two condemn me? Does it make me a non-Christian? If not, what "cardinal truths" would condemn me if I failed to accept them?
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Originally Posted by twin.spin
The second does because that is whom God is. To believe otherwise is to believe in a false god.
The third reason why the canon is closed is because of false teachers. A closed canon makes God's Word absolute truth ... which open canon advocates need to be exempt from in order to justify their falsehoods and existence.
We can always expect Christianity to be a disunified bickering mess. To make matters worse, the closed canon and the "Trinity or burn in hell for eternity" Christian Gestapo line is mutually contradictory. The existing canon cannot establish the formalized Catholic Trinity as the only possible viewpoint based upon scripture alone. One much rely on post-Biblical "revelation." The same is true of the canon of scripture: The Bible doesn't select it's own canon. Both of these things happened hundreds of years after that last apostle was dead and gone. Truth be told, for these two absolutist viewpoints to be as absolute as such folk want them to be, two of the most important revelations happened hundreds of years after the Bible was written. Only God himself has the authority to make things not found in scripture be prerequisites for salvation. Only God himself gets to say that God isn't talking to humankind anymore.
Folks of the "Trinity or burn in hell forever" mindset will never allow unity. They're too busy damning others to hell for not thinking the same way they do -- and that regarding an infinite being that the human mind cannot even hope to comprehend. As long as we have such Nazi-esque absolutism on extra-Biblical speculative doctrines, there can never be unity.
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