Calling all Christians!

[ChaoofNee]

Everyone fucks up somewhere along the line, it's the 'we are constantly sinning everyday' thing that I think is outright bullshit. I've talked to christians about it (hell I even went to some discussion groups and meetings, it's something that genuinelly interests me) and some have said that there all sorts of sins and a sin is a sin, no shades of grey. Well if God is indeed perfect then he isn't a petty guy and is smart enough to realise that not holding the door for someone is not nearly as bad as murder. I just don't like this concept of accepting that I am somehow flawed and constantly doing bad things everyday because IMO I certainly do not. Not arrogance, i'm just a polite 19yo kid who wouldn't hurt a fly (literally, I just let them back outside).

I've honestly never heard of this "constant sinning" argument, though I can certainly say I don't believe it. Does mankind sin? Of course. Does mankind sin often? Sure. Does mankind do nothing but sin all day long with no hope of a charitable act? Hell no.
Still, though, there are two different kinds of sin (at least in the Catholic Church). Not quite "shades of grey," but it's more of a dark grey and a black. I just forget the terms used to describe them. You can thank my job, which loves to schedule me so I can't go to Church. Fun.

[frostwolf ex]

heh, chao, i have called off 4 times in 9 years from my job, 3 of those times were when they tried to pull that on me, they dont do that now.

anyhow, the 2 terms are venial sins and mortal sins. venials are bad, but are spur of the moment, like screaming out a NIV(name in vain, in cheesy cop wannabe lingo) so they dont fully get you in trouble.Mortal sins have to be premeditated, you have to fully understand that you are sinning, and you ahve to fully consent to it. Their deal is that they are deliberate and contain a kind of willful insult to god,in that you know whats right, and willingly do the opposite.They are the kind that put you in a state of mortal sin, in which you cant take communion(or you add a sacrilige to your list of mess ups) need to hit confession and penance, and generally should not die in this state if you are not into warm climates and disco music.


As for sidez's comment, i agree,god is definitly not a petty guy, but it goes both ways, yeah, you are not a murderer, but if you spend your life putting people down, stepping on people for your own profit,and makign sure you have more than you need(not saying that you do, illustrative purpose only), while others dont have enough, well, you have, in the greater scheme, done more net harm than a single murder. The great ills of humanity today arent the acts of great dramatic sins, but the net corruption of a thousand thousand little "harmless" sins, that added up to oppress and injure.

People here talk about the evils of racism,well,it dosent exist because a bunch of high school dropouts run around in hoods and lynch people that look different, its because a million million people have too much pride to want to put a person on the same level as themselves, so they look down on them and see them as inferior, so they dont feel bad treating them poorly. Just little sins, not murderers, at least, not directly, but tons and tons of damage.

[Adrian]

As for sidez's comment, i agree,god is definitly not a petty guy, but it goes both ways, yeah, you are not a murderer, but if you spend your life putting people down, stepping on people for your own profit,and makign sure you have more than you need(not saying that you do, illustrative purpose only), while others dont have enough, well, you have, in the greater scheme, done more net harm than a single murder. The great ills of humanity today arent the acts of great dramatic sins, but the net corruption of a thousand thousand little "harmless" sins, that added up to oppress and injure.

People here talk about the evils of racism,well,it dosent exist because a bunch of high school dropouts run around in hoods and lynch people that look different, its because a million million people have too much pride to want to put a person on the same level as themselves, so they look down on them and see them as inferior, so they dont feel bad treating them poorly. Just little sins, not murderers, at least, not directly, but tons and tons of damage.

Cool, doesn't at all sound like me. I think I agree with what you're saying but I need to give it some more thought.

[frostwolf ex]

1) Surely, it could be argued that anyone who actually rejects god is actually ignorant to his awesomeness. Doesn't this mean that we all go to heaven?

2) If god is just, then why can a person recieve eternal, unimaginably terrible punishment based on things they did in the span of 80 years or so?

3) do you believe in Evil, and if so, in what form?

Cool, i love these number questions arj
1. Depends, if you lived in the jungles and never heard of Jesus, then it is generally assumed that you can get in, or go into a condition called limbo, more on my take on that later. But most athiests have seen more than a few christians and have knowingly rejected the faith of their own free will, as such, you choose your own fate there. A brief aside though ,for those who have met some less than sterling repesentatives of Jesus' word. Its tempting to say that, "well, i had this nasty nun, or religion teacher, and he/she turned me away from the faith" as I recall you had that situation. My response is 1. Christians are called to evengalize the word correctly, they might get a particularly unpleasent welcome post life for turning people away from the faith. 2. that dosent get the "victim" off the hook though, as they still have countles resources to get a fuller and more repesentative view of christiantiy, if you didnt availyourself of these resources to make a decision as momentous as to wether you follow jesus, then again, you chose your own result.


EDIT:and dont call me shirly.

2. because they chose wether to be with God or not. My take is, everyone goes to heaven, but wether its good or bad is up to the person. Analogy time,lets say that you and i both get tickets to a Tool concert, you love them, they give me a brain tumor, both of us would be at the same situation, but for one of us, it would be a reward, for one a punishment. Similarly, if you lived your life in such a way that geing in the full and radient love of God as a final, ultimate reward,then heaven would rock. If youl ived your life attached to carnal pleasure and made yoruself entirely attached to drugs, sex, cigs, etc.. then eternally sitting at some new age light show without a body, listening to people(ok, sensing the joy of noncorpreal manifestations of individual human consciousness) you consider boring in ecstacy would be a maddening torture.

Thats where i go on the limbo topic. Cats beleive that if you are unbaptized but essentially clean of sin, you enter a state of "limbo" not fully heaven, but not remotely hell. I use the analogy here to a childwith severe mental retardation in a toy store, He doesnt actually understand what is going on fully, but is amused by the bright colors and novel shapes. Similarly, if you were too young to learn who Jesus and Mary were, but were good,all you know is that you are in a nice place with these nice things that are nice to you. Heaven'ish, but without the cognition of the magnitude of how happy you should be.

3. i beleive fully in the existence of evil in this world,and the form..polka music. I beleive in evil, and furthermore, i see a lot of it, both in the world and myself,and it often causes me to get more than a little discouraged. To me evil is like the distortion you get when you filter a sound through a broken speaker. And good is the pure sound. We can feel and know what God wants for us, but our physical needs and wants naturally push us towards excess, so we corrupt the purity of what we should do with our own mutations of what we want. thats why most religions prescribe temperance of desire, dont eat too much, dont want too many possessions, dont want too much power, because they lead to sin and then suffering and the dark side of the force. so evil is the perversion of good. The allegory is pretty much spelled out in the story of the fall of Lucifer, Angels are the embodiment of the power of the word of god, but a beautiful word wished to create its own meaning, so it corrupted 1/3 of the other words(angels) and made them demons, corrupted words of god, perversions of truth and true function.

ok this post is a bit too deep, now to hit fight club and do fart jokes.

[arjue]

thanks dudes. I hope I didn't come off as an anti-religious person or anything, I seriously was curious about that stuff.

[Jester]

For Sidez, yeah I'm not up on the constant sinning thing either, I've always gone to non-denominational or biblical fundementalist churches so certain church constructs aren't something I'm familiar with. The constant sinning thing I'll tell you isn't from a biblical basis.

To arjue, no problem, Hope I cleared something up a little and didn't sound like some "holier-than-thou" jerk at the same time.

[frostwolf ex]

arj, no prob at all, like i said, i like your questions,they are all numerical and stuff.

[Captain Vegetable]

The Church was designed as a social club for fellowship amongst believers, not the Christian equivalant of Jewish Temple.

HUZZAH!

I don't believe I've ever met someone with this opinion without having spoken to them, at length, about it. Good to see I'm not the only one who can see it.

For Sidez, yeah I'm not up on the constant sinning thing either...

Neither am I, however it's not a question of "how often," but of "at all."

If you sin once, just once in your entire life, then you are in need of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness offered therein. And everyone sins once. Everyone.

Also we are humans, and as such strive against the things of God. Our spirits hate Him. We are children of wrath. Man's heart is wickedness. Thus it stands to reason that we sin, and sin often, as it's definition is not a "bad" action, but an action which is taken outside the will of God. What's more, the Bible says we will all be judged according to our own offended concience. Every time you act and offend your concience, you've sinned.

Maybe not every day, all day long. But once a day? Is that really so hard to believe? I'm not saying it's set in stone, but it's a lot more easy to believe we sin at least once a day then to believe everyone does nothing wrong during any given day.

To say all of a man's actions (a man who doesn't believe, mind you) are "evil" simply because he doesn't believe is a joke. However, I do believe that if it were not for God and His mercies, all of this man's actions would be evil.

Chew on that for a bit.

thanks dudes. I hope I didn't come off as an anti-religious person or anything, I seriously was curious about that stuff.

Not at all man.

[GohanX]

Here's some food for thought.

Who are we to determine what is and is not a sin? Can we really distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad?

Often, a sense of right and wrong is developed as a learned behavior. There have been cultures where killing a man isn't considered bad, but if you lie, you have stained your honor and are therefore the most despicable of creatures. Now that I think about it, modern military disciplines are like that. Meanwhile, here in the USA, Murder is generally considered the worst thing you can do (with the possible exception of rape) but lying is commonplace. You lie, I lie, the government lies. No big deal.

Personally, I don't think that we can really tell. There are laws that tell you what is good and bad, there are religious beliefs that tell you what is wrong and right, but to me the only real way I am ever capable of knowing the difference is to listen to God talking to me.

[RoleTroll]

1. Whether Hitler actually repented is not the point. Gene Simmons' point is that a person who lives a life of pure evil and converts to Christianity five minutes before death goes to heaven, while a truly moral Jew (or Buddhist, etc.) will go to Hell despite living a life of good actions. It's a valid point.

2. About "always sinning" -- if a man lusts after a woman, he has already committed adultery in his heart. So, we're all pretty much sinning all the time. A person who commits one sin is just as guilty as a person who commits them all.