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Yes, this is salvation by works, which Jesus primarily preached. Which is contrary to Paul's salvation by faith, and "not of works, lest any man should boast". Each person picks one view or the other, and rationalizes some reconciliation for the view they didn't choose.
I had similar feelings to yours until I pondered the words of our Savior in Luke 17:[7] But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat?
[8] And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?
[9] Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not.
[10] So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.
The funny thing is that humanity has, for the most part, advanced to where we have employees, not servants. I actually DO respect my employees and I DO thank them for doing the work I pay them to do. I never take them for granted.
Heck, in the above parable, they aren't even getting paid, other than maybe room and board, and aren't even free agents.
If I called my employees "unprofitable servants", I would be "servant-less" in short order! And if I encouraged them to be groveling toadies, they'd soon be telling me only what I want to hear, rather than the truth. Not a formula for success.
Two thousand years ago we understood even less than we do now about how to motivate and encourage and inspire people to work WITH us rather than FOR us. I can't believe you are seriously using the entitled, self-absorbed slave master of this parable as some sort of model for the relations between god and his children.
The funny thing is that humanity has, for the most part, advanced to where we have employees, not servants. I actually DO respect my employees and I DO thank them for doing the work I pay them to do. I never take them for granted.
Two thousand years ago we understood even less than we do now about how to motivate and encourage and inspire people to work WITH us rather than FOR us. I can't believe you are seriously using the entitled, self-absorbed slave master of this parable as some sort of model for the relations between god and his children.
Those were the exact red-
Letter words of Christ, not my words. If we
Love him with a pure love, our primary goal in life should be to do the will of our heavenly Father. In fact Jesus said in Matt ch 7 " Not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven but those who DO the will of our heavenly Father."
Those were the exact red-
Letter words of Christ, not my words. If we
Love him with a pure love, our primary goal in life should be to do the will of our heavenly Father. In fact Jesus said in Matt ch 7 " Not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven but those who DO the will of our heavenly Father."
Hi Robert M Prince. I know this conversation is between you and Mordant, but there are two things I would like to know.
Is there no such thing as a master who would allow his servants to sit, rest and eat with him? And if there is, how would Jesus then teach that works is not enough to this master?
I will make an assumption that Jesus was an effective teacher. He knew he had to start at a place that the learner can understand.
What about those masters who knew differently because of what their culture taught them? Must their lesson start at the same place as the master you quoted? I believe that Jesus did not think so.
***************************
Which brings me to another question about pure love. Are humans capable of it and can it be defined?
I have a belief that I am willing to face eternal punishment for and I do it for none other than my daughter. As I come to understand why I choose what I choose, and combine that with my limited knowledge of Jesus (all good), I can accept that I love him for his sacrifice but that is the only way I can relate to him and not through Christianity's teachings.
Those were the exact red-
Letter words of Christ, not my words. If we
Love him with a pure love, our primary goal in life should be to do the will of our heavenly Father. In fact Jesus said in Matt ch 7 " Not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven but those who DO the will of our heavenly Father."
Robert, this is not a response to my points at all. I am not shooting the messenger, I know those are the words of Christ. I am not saying "lord, lord" and if I were, I know enough about Christian dogma to know that this alone would not gain me access to god's kingdom.
As you have not responded to my actual points but resorted to an argument from authority, I have to assume that you have no actual response.
Mordant,
I believe that our Lord expects us to keep His sayings. He says in matt. 7:[26] And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
[27] And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
Paul said in Rom. 7:[6] But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
We must have that Spirit of the Holy Ghost abiding richly in our soul until we die to be able to enter into eternal life, and without that Holy Spirit keeping His sayings in and through us, we cannot meet that standard. We will have nothing of which we can boast since the Spirit of Christ is doing His will. See Heb. 10:[36] For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
Mordant,
I believe that our Lord expects us to keep His sayings.
I know this is your belief, and that it is based on sola scriptura, or more exactly, your interpretation thereof. In order for it to enter the fact-based world, though, it has to have some contact with that world. All you are doing is appealing to scripture as a basis for assertions you are making. How is this any different from, say, making an assertion that a particular product is a great deal, using the latest Sears catalog as validation for that assertion rather than, for instance, published reviews from Consumer Reports?
That is a serious and respectful question. Outside the realm of True Believers, your assertions are baseless. Therefore you must first make someone a True Believer before the basis of your assertions are accepted. That person's belief is not based on anything other than a willingness to surrender to your dogma to the exclusion of someone else's dogma. It is a standard of acceptance for ideas that exists nowhere else and would in fact be laughed off anywhere else.
I know that a thousand objections are brewing in your mind to the above statement, mostly along the lines of how it's real and substantial to those who will only submit to it. That those like myself who have submitted to it, at length and in depth, and found it wanting, never really submitted to it in the first place. I hope that you can transcend those stock denials and answer objectively and non-dogmatically why your god would bestow reason upon me and then bid me abandon it when considering his claims upon me. In a world full of holy books, conflicting ideas of god and how to live life, you have to present something other than "I assert X and my holy book agrees and all the others are invalid."
Its the servant who is served , anyway if there are no slaves in this world then how could the banker's make such a mess.
Master & slave is what this world is all about as the present generation dumps its debt on to the next.
Not enough, family value's and wholesome living? remove as well.
Slave- master that's a good one. This generation has broken the contract with the next, here's the pollution and brainwashing polluted ways.
management or owner.. is supposed to know it's the team that go go goes. You know in hockey when the team gets a chance and there is some momentum, go go go. We, score the goal.
Many just 'deplete workers assets'. Once finished they start in on the worker's family assets.
( everybody knows when they are being either appreciated or used like a piece of sht and will mostly never say. The historian's are going to have an easy job kicking this thing around.
Last edited by alexcanter; 01-09-2014 at 11:51 AM..
Christianity came about and thrived in a world that was used to serving lords and masters - most of the time blindly and without much choice. In those days, that's what people wanted because, frankly, they didn't know any other way to live. Thus they swore allegience to various kings, emperors, feudal lords, and priests and they did so gladly. Freedom is not an easy thing to have; the choices can be overwhelming. Some folks like to have all of their decisions made for them because it is so much easier than making your own - and being responsible for them.
It is no wonder then why a dogma of servitude was so widely accepted. The master-slave relationship was very commonplace even if the populace was not technically enslaved.
In the modern world, however, that has changed. More people than ever before are experiencing true freedom. Democracy is the most common form of government; kings and emperors and feudal lords have gone the way of the dinosaur. Today we choose who to work for, and we work for money that we choose how to spend. If we don't like our employer, we are free to find somewhere else to work. We can choose where to live; we choose when, who, and if we marry; we choose when to have children and how many; we choose how to dress, how to style our hair, and a hundred other personal traits; and the list goes on and on.
The idea of eternal servitude has become less and less popular now; once freedom is obtained in the mortal world, few wish to give it up in the afterlife. It stands to reason that this is one of many reasons why religiosity is declining all over the world.
America stands alone as the only industrialized nation still held in thrall by ancient belief systems; it has the same religiosity found primarily in Third World nations - nations with very little science and education, I might add. It has always mystified me why a culture so bent on freedom and individual liberty would be so enamored of a dictatorial God.
The result of this dogma, however, is a condition of love without respect. Therefore, the notion of divine love exhibited by God and Jesus is as hollow as a rotted tree. It is quite obvious that God does not respect humanity and never will. If we go by the Old Testament, God does not even respect humans as living, sentient creatures - our lives have no intrinsic value which is why God thinks nothing of butchering people willy-nilly for even the most minor offenses.
I simply fail to see any real good coming from the Christian view of God and the afterlife - so little, in fact, that even the nature of God's love seems pale, like sunlight in the dead of winter. Even if the love exists, respect even for our very existence does not exist, and compassion for us is based solely on whether or not we worship, adore, love, and serve this God with blind and unquestioning obedience.
In some ways, the Christian version of the afterlife reminds me of those immortal words written in iron above the gates of Auschwitz: "Work will set you free."
How misleading those words were - and how misleading Heaven is to all of the believers, a place with joyless love devoid of any true affection. Just work and serve and do as your told.
I happen to believe that belief in Jesus Christ Is the only way for us to be admitted into Heaven. It should be our prime goal in life to do the will of Jesus and His Father.
Christianity came about and thrived in a world that was used to serving lords and masters - most of the time blindly and without much choice. In those days, that's what people wanted because, frankly, they didn't know any other way to live. Thus they swore allegience to various kings, emperors, feudal lords, and priests and they did so gladly. Freedom is not an easy thing to have; the choices can be overwhelming. Some folks like to have all of their decisions made for them because it is so much easier than making your own - and being responsible for them.
It is no wonder then why a dogma of servitude was so widely accepted. The master-slave relationship was very commonplace even if the populace was not technically enslaved.
In the modern world, however, that has changed. More people than ever before are experiencing true freedom. Democracy is the most common form of government; kings and emperors and feudal lords have gone the way of the dinosaur. Today we choose who to work for, and we work for money that we choose how to spend. If we don't like our employer, we are free to find somewhere else to work. We can choose where to live; we choose when, who, and if we marry; we choose when to have children and how many; we choose how to dress, how to style our hair, and a hundred other personal traits; and the list goes on and on.
The idea of eternal servitude has become less and less popular now; once freedom is obtained in the mortal world, few wish to give it up in the afterlife. It stands to reason that this is one of many reasons why religiosity is declining all over the world.
America stands alone as the only industrialized nation still held in thrall by ancient belief systems; it has the same religiosity found primarily in Third World nations - nations with very little science and education, I might add. It has always mystified me why a culture so bent on freedom and individual liberty would be so enamored of a dictatorial God.
The result of this dogma, however, is a condition of love without respect. Therefore, the notion of divine love exhibited by God and Jesus is as hollow as a rotted tree. It is quite obvious that God does not respect humanity and never will. If we go by the Old Testament, God does not even respect humans as living, sentient creatures - our lives have no intrinsic value which is why God thinks nothing of butchering people willy-nilly for even the most minor offenses.
I simply fail to see any real good coming from the Christian view of God and the afterlife - so little, in fact, that even the nature of God's love seems pale, like sunlight in the dead of winter. Even if the love exists, respect even for our very existence does not exist, and compassion for us is based solely on whether or not we worship, adore, love, and serve this God with blind and unquestioning obedience.
In some ways, the Christian version of the afterlife reminds me of those immortal words written in iron above the gates of Auschwitz: "Work will set you free."
How misleading those words were - and how misleading Heaven is to all of the believers, a place with joyless love devoid of any true affection. Just work and serve and do as your told.
Your criticisms are warranted for the OT God of the Jews and your comment about Auschwitz is particularly cogent. But just because the mainstream Christianity rejected Christ's God for the God of the Jews is no reason to paint Christ's God of love with the same brush. Christ's God of love is unconditional and accepting as Christ was. Christ smote no one and endured horrendous scourging and crucifixion while still loving even His torturers and murderers. Any resemblance to the Jewish War God is non-existent.
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