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 Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 11:04 am
I'm not on a Christian site. (Unless you meant guild, I came to the guild because I like to know as much as I can about the vairious religions. Makes it easy to discuss some things)
There are people that make fun of other religions, but Christianity gets a lot because the people that make fun of it don't know much about the other religions. They can't make fun of Sikhism, they have no clue what it is.
In the Middle East some people get very angry when their faith is insulted, but then religion is much more dominating over there. Saudi Arabia doesn't even have a seperation between church and state, they must take it very seriously. (Too seriously I think, I don't think religion should rule a country) In the west people get annoyed when their faith is insulted, but nobody takes up arms over here.
Yes it's the fault of people for doing evil when their religion tells them not to, but we remember the bad parts. A lot of people think all terrorists are Musilms, when only a small minority are. Stereotypes are created, and unless you study the religion or know people of that religion you will believe the stereotype.
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Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 2:41 pm
Good points. I'm glad there are people like you out there, who, even though they disagree with what a certain religion believes, are still willing to put the effort into understanding it. Very admirable. At least you didn't come in here and start bashing Christians. Respect is good. 3nodding
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High-functioning Businesswoman
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Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 3:30 pm
Wind-Whisper Please note the hypocracy in our world where people are scared to death of offending Moslems, who riot, threaten, and kill if you criticize their religion in any way . ^^; Erm...not trying to offend you or anything, but I'll have to disagree with that statement. There are two major groups in Islam, the Sunni Muslims, and the Shi'ite Muslims ( I just learned that there are more groups/denominations, but those are the two that I'm somewhat familiar with ) In a nutshell, the Sunni are the peaceful keep-to-themselves Muslims ( as well as the largest group in Islam ), and they aren't the ones we usually hear about in the news. The Shi'ite Muslims are the...I guess you'd call them extremist in a way. Sort of like the bad apples in America who give Christianity in general a bad reputation in the media, the Shi'ite Muslims are the ones who give Islam a bad reputation, making the general public believe they all "want to blow you up you sneeze the wrong way" Just thought I'd clear that up. Oh, and if anything I said was wrong, anyone can feel free to correct me. And as for the actual topic... ----------------------------------------------- Deo_Machina Well, I'm an athiest. Have been since I was eleven. I had always thought that God would forgive my sins no matter what I did. But then I heard something new..there is an unforgivable sin. Apparently blaspheming against the holy spirit is the one thing that cannot be taken back. I might have already done this..I'm not sure yet. First I need to know what counts as blaspheming. Is it simply not believing? Or do I have to actively deny his existance? Or does cursing God count? I can't exactly say what blaspheming means, but I will attempt to somewhat elaborate on the forgiveness of sins part. Ho-kay. So the first thing to realize is that everyone...every single human being past and present is guilty of sin. If any Christian or whatever has ever told you otherwise, they were either in denial, or flat out lying. "For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard." - Romans 3:23 (New Living Translation ) Now, there's more to it than that, but that's pretty much the nutshell description. Like I said before, I don't exactly know how to explain the unforgivable sin, but my own interpretation ( meaning that it could be incorrect, and by no means should be taken as truth. ) is that denying God to be who He says He is, and ignoring Him. It's the rejection of His free gift of salvation/eternal life/whatever people want to call it. God is both loving and just. He loves us not because of who we are, but because of who He is. "God is love." - 1 John 4:8b Because he loves us, he doesn't want to punish us, but because He is just, He must punish sin. "He does not leave the guilty unpunished." - Exodus 34:7b For example, lets say I robbed a bank of five thousand dollars. I went in there with some cool robber weapon, took the money and left. Now, because I kind of slow, I forgot to put on my ski mask, and there were plenty of eyewitnesses, as well as a security camera that got the footage. There's no way I could lie my way out of this one, so when I'm tried in court, I plead guilty. "Y'know what judge....I'm guilty. I'm really sorry for robbing the bank. However, I didn't hurt anyone, and you already have the money back. With that in mind...can you just let me go? I promise that I'll never, ever, ever, ever, ever rob another bank if you do this for me. " Now, would the judge be just in saying this.... "Well...I guess I can do that. You're cool and stuff, and you seem honest. So yeah, go ahead, I'll even ask the officers to take you to get some take-out." ^^; That probably wouldn't go over too well, and the judge more than likely would end up getting fired. He has a standard of justice that must be satisfied. If he let me go, there wouldn't be a safe bank in the country, because other criminals would try and pull the same stunt I did. This is the same way with how God deals with sin. He has a standard of justice in which he can't, and won't excuse sin. Here's another example... There was a once a man named Garcia who lived in a communist country. He was the leader of a group of people who were trying to overthrow the dictator. One night, his lieutenant tells him that someone had stolen some food. Because food was in short supply, Garcia was outraged and summoned all the families, telling them that anyone caught stealing food would be publicly whipped. Not much time passed until the lieutenant came to Garcia, informing him that more food had been stolen, and they knew who it was that had stolen it. Garcia was shocked to find out that is was his own mother, which caused a pretty big problem. If Garcia whipped his elderly mom, she would probably die, but if he didn't punish her, he would lose the authority and respect of everyone as their leader. So this is what happened. Garcia pronounced the crime and the punishment. He then removed the shirt from his own back and ordered his lieutenant to whip him instead of his mother. The penalty was paid by Garcia himself. In this way Garcia's justice was satisfied, and his love for his mother was proven. This is how God chose to solve the situation with us. We are in the position of Garcia's mother, and God is like Garcia. God could neither stop loving us, nor deny His own justice. This is why Christ died on the cross, taking the punishment for our sin because of His love for us. Because he "paid" for our sin for us, we are no longer responsible for paying for them ourselves. God offers us this in the form of eternal life/salvation/whatever people want to call it. We just have to accept the gift, which is opened to anyone who asks, regardless of what we've done in the past. Take me for example, who used to always say stuff about how God isn't real, or how people are delusional for believing in this. I even told my little sister why I believed this was all just a bunch of bologna. I didn't go to church, and I didn't want to. I'm pretty sure what I did and said was a form of blaspheming, yet even I was eventually able to be forgiven. The past eight months I've spent back in church have been amazing. I've met so many awesome people, learned a bunch of cool stuff, and was able to find true happiness. My life hasn't been totally perfect, and I still go through stuff, but now that I have God in my life, I see alot more clearly. I've matured as a person, and people have noticed the change in me. God wouldn't reject a person just because they may have rejected Him in the past. ^^; If that were the case, I, as well as many other people would be in some serious trouble. I guess the blaspheming stuff comes in to play when a person continually rejects God, never acknoledging Him to be who He says He is. But yeah, what I'm trying to say is...you're never really "screwed" unless you die without making the decision to follow Christ. As long as you're alive, the opportunity to be forgiven by God is open; Jesus gave his own life to make sure that option was available for us. If you're interested in more on the subject, feel free to PM me, check out the link in my signature, stick around and talk to the other cool member-people, or all of the above. sweatdrop I've already typed...a-LOT, so I'll end here before your eyeballs explode or something.
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Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 10:15 am
So what about babies? Some of them die before knowing who Jesus is. Are they exempt? And does that apply to the people who are born with mental problems? What if I turned crazy, no longer capable of deciding if I should follow?
Can I ask what made you change your mind about God? Just curious.
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High-functioning Businesswoman
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Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:57 pm
You have some Christian sects that believe you can't be saved without being baptized (Catholics for example) and that you can't be saved unless you make the decision, and therefore babies can't be saved (and end up in Purgatory- also a Catholic belief). I'm not really of this persuasion. You can't be punished for something you don't know about. I believe that those who are mentally unable to make the choice themself are automatically saved (babies, for example), but that once they are able to make that decision they become accountable for their own actions. Those with certain mental disabilities would fall under this category as well. With some disabilities we can't exactly know a person's mental competence, but God does, and that's why, if there's a chance, we must bring the Gospel to them and let them make their own choice if possible.
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Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:49 pm
I once saw a post that blamed disabilites and such on sins commited while in the womb. eek
It wasn't on Gaia though.
What's Purgatory like?
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High-functioning Businesswoman
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Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:32 pm
My grandmother (who is a devout Catholic) said that it was something of a carwash for your soul. You go there to get cleaned up before Judgement Day, before you can enter Heaven. Only those who didn't pray enough or give enough money to the church, etc. go there. But this implies that we are saved by something other than Jesus' grace, and Jesus Himself said that it is by grace alone we are saved- not by anything we have done, are doing, or ever will do.
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Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 10:20 pm
God forgives blasphemy against Jesus and God the Father, but does not forgive blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit (as has been explained to me several times) is to reject that God is the Creator, and that the Holy Spirit can move in your life, and to do that you must believe that you can never have forgiveness for your sins and that you actually reject frgiveness for your sins, and once you commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit you never want forgiveness and if you do want forgiveness then it is not too late... that is what I remember.
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Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:40 am
Most of Christianity doesn't agree with the Catholics. While all Christians believe they should do good works,Catholics believe that they NEED to do good works in order to be "good enough." (and you can't do that in life,then other people can do it for you after you're dead and waiting in Purgatory.) The other denominations believe that once you accept Christ,then you're "perfect" in the eyes of God.
(Most denominations also believe Purgatory's a farce cooked up to earn money for the Catholic church.)
If a person has never had the opportunity to hear and truly comprehend the truth about God,then yes,they would be exempt.
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Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 12:20 pm
Deo_Machina So what about babies? Some of them die before knowing who Jesus is. Are they exempt? And does that apply to the people who are born with mental problems? What if I turned crazy, no longer capable of deciding if I should follow? Can I ask what made you change your mind about God? Just curious. ^^; Wow, these are some fun questions. Weeeell...let me put it this way. As I said earlier, God is a just God. When we keep that in mind, would it be just to have a baby that died, who never even had the opportunity or capability to decide on it's own to follow Christ and accept His gift of salvation to have to go to hell? Or how about someone who was mentally handicapped, and just couldn't understand? Or, let's take it a step further...a person born in like, Timbuktu ( random question, but where exactly is Timbuktu? ), who just never hears about Jesus due to where they live? There's probably some other stuff that comes into play, but the thing is this: you don't know what you don't know. If you didn't know about Jesus, or couldn't know about Jesus, it wouldn't be just to be judged according to that. It's like me missing a church meeting ( or any meeting, for that matter ) because no one ever mentioned it to me. I would've gone if I were given the information. No one can blame me even if it was some uber-important mandatory meeting, because I was never told about it, so I can't be held accountable. There is a scripture ( aka Bible ) verse that talks about how God judges according to a person's knowledge or something...ahhh, I can't remember exactly, but it has to deal with accountability and the like. I do know, however, that people in authority ( pastors, church leaders, etc. ) will be judged more harshly than those who didn't know as much. (I'm not sure of the verse, though ) They're held accountable because they know the information. Like, using the church meeting example. Let's say I was informed about the meeting a week in advance, and told that it was an uber-important mandatory meeting. If I were to miss the meeting now, I can be held accountable because I knew how important the meeting was, yet didn't show up. ------ So yeah...it's been a while, and I apologize for taking forever to respond... ^^; I'm not done answering everything, but I wanted to get this up to let you know that I'm in the process and whatnot. I'll edit and repost the last of the response in a few. ------ Part 2: What changed my mind about God? Hmmm...I guess I'll just share my story as to how I became a Christian. It all kind of began with my dog dying. Yeah, a dead dog. That wasn't a typo. Anyways...my dog dies, and as childish as it might sound, I was pretty depressed. It was my first pet, and I was really attached to him, so when he died, it was kind of a shock. I'd never lost anything ( living ) close to me before. ( hmmm...there were dead fish, but you really can't get that close to a fish... ) Well, in the midst of my painguish ( pain + anguish = painguish ), my friend decided to invite me to this skateboarding thing that was going on at a nearby church in order to get my mind off of Blue ( that was the dog's name ). At first I didn't want to, but eventually my friend convinced me to go. So there I was at a church, hanging out with my friends as we watched a bunch of different skateboarders and bmx rider...dudes perform. Ironically enough, I ended up seeing a dog that reminded me of my dearly departed Blue. My eyes watered up a bit, but I didn't let my emotions get the best of me. Well, as I'm watching the bmx guys do these stunts, they suddenly stop, and begin talking about how God has got them to where they are and how great He is. So what did I do? Of course, I cried and confessed Jesus Christ to be my lord and savior that day....oh, wait...that's not right... Here's what I said: "This is stupid. The guy does some cool trick, stops, and begins to preach about God ( I said God in a mocking tone ). It doesn't even fit the atmosphere, just keep doing the tricks and shut up about that other stuff." Now, that's not exactly what I said, since I don't remember completely, but it was along those lines. I was totally ignoring everything, and I didn't want to hear what these guys had to say about God. Actually, the entire time I was there, none of that stuff seeped in. Every time somebody went into "preacher mode" I went into "Ignore the boring dude" mode. So why in the world did I even mention this event? You might ask. Well, I'll tell you why. That night, a band by the name of Red Effect played. I really liked their performance, even though the lyrics were all about God. I got into the habit of not paying attention to the lyrics after a while, and just began to enjoy the music. It was also my first time hearing a band perform live, so it was pretty cool for me. Now...fast forward towards the end of my 10th grade year. ( I had gone to the skating thing during the middle of my 9th grade year ) I'm walking through the halls of my beloved* school ( *note the sarcasm ), and I see this printer sized sheet of paper on the wall. In a nutshell, it was a flyer for a concert being held at the school in about two or so days. Right, so what's the big deal? Remember that skating thing I went to back in 9th grade with my friend? and that particular band that I really liked and hadn't heard again since then? Yeah, the Red Effect was playing at my school, and it was a free concert!!! Lyke, ohmygawsh... So I stop, re-read the paper, and get all excited. I totally have to go to this thing, since the Red Effect is going to be there. I write the information down, call my friend ( the same one that invited me to the skating thing ) and invite her to come, since I didn't want to go alone. Fast forward two days to the day ( ^^; kind of weird wording there... ) of the concert. I'm there, and I have an awesome time with my friend. So, the moment comes again...some guy comes up and begins to talk about God. So I hear what the guy has to say. I cry, go up to the front of the auditorium and accept Jesus Christ to be my lord and savior...oh, just kidding. Here's what actually happens: I'm sitting there actually listening, instead of tuning out. This dude is telling his story of how God changed his life. It's all pretty interesting, but for the sake of time, I won't go into detail. He gets to this point of asking everyone whether or not...y'know, they've accepted God's gift of eternal life. So I'm sitting there, my hearts pounding, wondering if I should go up to the front. What the guy said had really made sense to me. Only one thing stops me. My friend I was hanging out with. I was afraid of what she'd think of me, so I didn't go up. Ironically enough, we ended up having this deep discussion about God out by the bus parking lot of my school, and found out that she also wanted to go up front, yet was afraid of what I might think. Well, she sort of inspires me to check out the Christian club that had sponsored the concert, so I decide to see what these people were all about. -------------------------------- ...and I'll stop right here. I'm going to update again in a few, but I've chosen to take a break. I apologize in advance for my bad grammar. I'm not really writing for perfection, so I'm not being too strict about my style as I recall "events from the past!" spooky sounding, eh?
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Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 11:44 pm
Deo_Machina Well, I'm an athiest. Have been since I was eleven. I had always thought that God would forgive my sins no matter what I did. But then I heard something new..there is an unforgivable sin. Apparently blaspheming against the holy spirit is the one thing that cannot be taken back. I might have already done this..I'm not sure yet. First I need to know what counts as blaspheming. Is it simply not believing? Or do I have to actively deny his existance? Or does cursing God count? There is no such thing as the unforgivable sin, God will love you no matter what you do or say, God will always take you no matter what I don't know where you heard that but God always loves and always forgives, for it is by his Grace and Salvation we have been saved not by works we do. It is never too late to give your life up to God, if you really want to follow God then do it, it is never too late
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 5:47 pm
Luke 12:10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
There you have it.
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High-functioning Businesswoman
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Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 6:14 pm
Dude...Who cares?
All the cool people are going to Hell. We'll have all the best musicians, all the greatest comedians, and everybody who knows how to have a good time. After the first few minutes of burning our nerve cells will have burned off completely and we won't feel anything anymore. Then it'll be an eternal party! I'll bring the chips!
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Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 7:44 pm
You totally copy and pasted yourself. xd Not that it matters; I just recognized those few sentences.
And really, Hell won't be a party. No nerve cells because you won't have your physical body. It'll be spiritual torture, which is much worse.
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High-functioning Businesswoman
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Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 10:41 pm
Fushigi na Butterfly You totally copy and pasted yourself. xd Not that it matters; I just recognized those few sentences.
And really, Hell won't be a party. No nerve cells because you won't have your physical body. It'll be spiritual torture, which is much worse. I didn't completely copy/paste. I typed that, I just maintain my view of Hell as a standing joke. xd No nerve cells? I won't feel anything, then. Spiritual torture? Please, support your claim. I can support my vision of Hell as a fiery place with a lot of "nashing of teeth" going on, what about your "spiritual torture"? (I'm sure it's in there. Isn't there something about not being close to God being torture enough or something? I think it's in the New Testament, predictably. I don't think I'd mind that too much, really. It's better than submitting to that jerk.)
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