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Lighthouse Church?
No thanks.
I find that religion doesn't quite fit my hedonistic lifestyle.
I've seen those lunatic Druids at Stonehenge on the Soltice. That aint for me.
Training for ordination with the Metropolitan Community Churches.
In short, yes, because we have all sinned at one point in our lives. Everyone has fallen short of God's glory.
It's my belief that Christ took our due punishment upon the cross.
From my understanding God sees us in two ways:
1) as sinners worthy of judgment and punishment.
2) as righteous (only achievable through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross).
You know that it is wrong to take things that don't belong to you (theft). You know that it is wrong to kill someone for no reason. You know that it is wrong to treat your parents badly. You know that it is wrong to sleep with your friend's spouse. I could go on...
The thing is, that we are all guilty of sinning against a Holy God, so we are disconnected from Him. Due to God's righteousness, we must be holy, as He is Holy and because we are all sinners, a price had to be paid (hence the sufferings of Christ).
I have said this before but this is what i do not understand and can't accept-
You can be a really evil person doing nothing but harm to people all your life but as long as you repent in your final hours you are on your way to a better place, how can that be right?
Like me you can try to live your life as a good caring person, always put others first, be tolerant of diffrent ways of life always look out for those who need a little help etc (all good christian traits i would have thought)
But because i do not worship every day and the fact that my lifestyle is seen as a sin i have been told in no uncertain terms that i am going to burn with all the other sinners, well thats just screwy!!!!
Being a Christian is more than just trying to be a good person (we call it walking in the Spirit) - being a Christian is about having faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross (as an atonement for sin). You must be born again. A person can't be born again and continue like they were before. Even if you were the most immoral person on earth, if before your death you repent (turn away and regret) and accept that Christ died and rose again so that you could be forgiven - you shall be saved from everlasting destruction.
The Lord has put eternity in our hearts.
Not if you're a Catholic like me you won't.
You should be a politician, you have a natural talent for not answering a question !
It's a zealot thing. Why answer a question when you can preach?
I wonder if he knows how magnets work? :chin:
Thunderstruck: Praise God for the reformation. I was raised a Roman Catholic, but after the Lord changed my heart - I finally found Christ. As much as the Roman Catholic church wants to pretend, salvation is not through any organisation or sacraments or priest - the Scriptures clearly say "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." - Ephesians 2: 8-9.
The local priest works on the seventh day. Oops
If YOU found Christ, then he couldn't have known you were missing.
So ... did YOU find HIM or did HE find YOU?
They had some strange customs...
And some beautiful buildings...
But at the end of it all, I couldn't help thinking it's fundamentally the same idea...
But where does "plain common decency" come from? Our equivalents in the animal kingdom don't share the same morals- they frequently mate with their young, or eat their young, or kill each other. What makes us different?
God gave us free will, he gave us the choice to follow His path and he gave us the choice to follow another path. What we do with our free will is a matter for us and for God.
Firstly, why do you care? If you don't believe in God why do you care what Christian teaching says will happen to you? If He doesn't exist then it won't happen, surely?
As for the rest of your post, I'm not sure what you're trying to argue.
If someone has badly behaved all their life and repents on their deathbed, the Lord will still judge whether their penance is genuine or not. If they feel genuine sorrow and remorse at what they've done, and willingly return to God, then He will welcome them with open arms. He is willing to forgive our sins and our mistakes, big or small, if we genuinely appreciate what we have done and genuinely want to return to His family. If you don't want to return to His family then you won't be welcomed into His family.
Jesus taught us, however, our actions are far more important than our piety. His parable of the Good Samaritan shows that more than anything, bearing in mind who left the dying man in the road and what the Jewish opinion of the Samaritan people was. If we hold God in our hearts and worship him we will be admitted into His Kingdom, and the most important part of that is how we act towards the lowliest people of all. But if you don't hold Him in your heart then you won't be admitted.
People who do not believe in God will be permanently separated from Him and His Kingdom. Makes sense, surely?
Most child abuse happens in the family and people kill each other all the time. So that's two out of three of your animal lack of morals that are shared by humans. And I did once see an interview with a tribe who would kill and eat humans as revenge. So that's three for three.
But which animals do you imagine mate with their young? Practically every animal (mammal, certainly) has an instinct against that, because it risks genetic defects. Practically every mammal also has an instinct against cannibalism too, because it risks disease. Which isn't to say it doesn't happen when things get extremely desperate.
But of course all of this is somewhat irrelevant, because even if non of this scientific evidence existed, the idea that we don't know the answer, therefore you can just make up whatever you want is ludicrous. If science doesn't know, then religion certainly doesn't.
Personally, I have no issue with what Christian teaching claims in the sense that it's not true. However, I'll still point out when something is held up as an example of morality (which Christianity, God and the Bible frequently are) when it fails at even the most basic points. The idea that Hitler could get into heaven, yet Einstein could end up with an eternity of suffering, based purely on their willingness to grovel to an omnipotent dictator, is about as far away from morality as it's possible to be.
Beyond that, we're getting into the tiresome and tedious debate about whether religious people are right or whether atheists are right, which never ends well. You always end up with some ignorant shit-for-brains wheeling in with some gash about Pastafarianism.
I know what I believe. You know what you believe. Richard Dawkins hasn't convinced me that I'm wrong so I doubt any of his deluded followers will.