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Forget John Knox. The Lord Jesus got to be steaming about this. Anyhow, it would be great if clergy were gay in the original sense, before homosexuals hijacked the word.

“Sin no more” is rendered in some alternates as “stop sinning” or “leave your life of sin.” Without the power of the Spirit willingly let into the life that can’t even begin, and nobody on earth gets it perfect (and mature Christians do not wallow in despair about the imperfection). Anyhow that isn’t consummated until arrival in glory. I see the Roman Catholic distinction between venal and mortal sin to be an artificial system. All sins fall into one of the categories that the Roman Catholics list mortal sins in; it turns out to be only an arbitrary subjective level of severity, how much of the immediate conscious will was put into the sin. I don’t answer to a “mortal sin committee” — I answer to Jesus whose response upon confession is always “forgiven.” Every single solitary time!

Thanks for the interesting commentary, I have only a few minutes. What could the dead man "just brought to life" do? Well in theory if virtually never in practice, commit suicide? You could say that the Lord will never bring life to the doorstep of a dead man who would do that, I suppose, and then we get into the labyrinthine conundrum of a God who can read will in logical advance (if not in earthly time sequence advance) but not fix that will. But I'm thinking there could be cases like that and it's what Jesus meant as, at least, the most tragic cases of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

Anyhow I can tell you what it was like when I got saved and I do not need a Calvinism committee to tell me oh, I received it the wrong way.

That seems too often the Roman Catholic approach in practice, whether that’s in theory too I am not privy to enough to say. Teach um some platitudes; don’t face them with a decision to accept the Lord, that’s too too PROTESTANT! (Many Roman Catholics DO come to personal faith though, and there’s not a one they have declared sainted that hasn’t, to my knowledge.)

This sounds bats, unless it’s an exaggeration of surveys showing a reproducible lower distribution of the mental qualities in question among the Hispanics that they tested. In which case it seems a yawnworthy tempest in a teapot. Kind of like the furor that “The Bell Curve” provoked.

I’m torn on this. If there’s a law requiring it, Yale shouldn’t have fudged, period. But shouldn’t this be a matter for public police reports. Why anyone would complain of being a victim of such a crime to campus police and NOT to the city police too is beyond my immediate understanding.

If one is sincere, one can beg the Lord to conquer one’s closed heart. He will follow through, often with astonishing grace.

Christianity is hard for unbelievers to swallow. That’s not news... anyhow looks like our RM decided that the jag of unbelief (I was trying to present truth in love, but only got question begging and quibbles) had gone far enough for the Lady. I wish the Lady the best, but she needs her spiritual eyes opened before she can accept it. She, like me at one point except even worse, is tied to the present world as with boat chains and belittles the rest of us for not sharing that earth tied view.

You have a point about unforgiveness resulting in a lot of heartache; yet it seems to me that Christians with the deepest, cleanest sincere faith don’t get significantly less colds or flus than atheists do. Still, it bothers them less because they are living in a generous stream of grace. Also forgiveness presupposes grace to forgive. When one is all hung up on oneself or the world, there isn’t much if any of that.

Once more you don’t provide any explanation other than some kind of vague foggy “rebellion” for why changing times would evolve new “rights” instead of extinguishing them or letting them pop up only briefly.

It’s Christianity that brought them. You have your heels dug in to scoffing. And with that, Matt 7:6. Good night.

And if I slew your son for you murdering they’d count me crazy. This is clever nit picking.

I’m following on to the next stage of logic. It’s much like the evolution question, actually... how do you get enough arrival of the fittest to even feed survival of the fittest? And why should the structure of a random world even be suited to channeling the fittest in a, well, fit direction to keep from losing it too?

Trucks say Peterbilt... I say Godbuilt.

So what leads you to believe that even “enough” is for the good? How do you even get an idea of good? It’s all blind sprawl with nothing to orient it up or down, to you.

And it’s silly to say would Jesus be a socialist or a Democrat or a Republican or whatever category we know today. Maybe an independent, non union carpenter? This is God on a special mission. If you meet God, prepare to have all your categories, and your mind itself, blown. In a good way. You’ll have met the Master of Heaven and Earth.

You apparently have a faith that all “rebellion” is in the direction of good. Like what took Russia from the Czars to godless Communism, maybe?

John 3:16 is enough of a door to salvation for a whole lot of people. The rest (as a Jewish sage once put it) is commentary....

“Lady,” who changed the times?

Where are these freethinkers coming up with their improved moralities for, in your view, Christianity to adopt?

God forgave David for that little plot to off Uriah. He could have easily sent a priest with a sword. As it turned out David did suffer, but didn’t die for it.

Carrying this over to what governments in gentile society ought to do is an area that the bible does not touch on very much. My read for what it is worth is that capital punishment is permissible and expected to be normative for certain crimes, but not an absolute in-every-case requirement. Others differ and this gets into gnatty areas that are beyond my scope. The country would do well to have a mass remembering of God and that would weigh almost infinitely more than details of civil discipline.

Alright so you are a puzzle. You’re like a cat that says it’s white but you are half black. I won’t bother arguing. I wish you well if this is the actual Jesus — explanations are secondary, relationships with God primary. Otherwise I have to warn you. Have a good night.

You are pointing up things that are largely irrelevant. Confess it frankly, you won’t accept the idea of a God that asks different people to express faith in different outward manners at different times. And that, just “because.” You’ve already dug in your heels and won’t undig them. You’re basically hung up on “list of works” righteousness rather than works displaying faith and being a means of exercising faith.

Ultimately I don’t lean on any explanation, however. The scriptures are true to the extent they go, and attempting to extend them via our limited understanding is fraught with risk. We might or might not get a right answer. Any explanation is at best a crude, crude analogy whose actual implementation is in a domain that only God can see the gnatty details of. We have paradoxes. We do not have self contradictions. I’m saved, I thank the Lord for bringing me the opportunity (whether or not He forced it on me, and it sure did not feel forced, only very very very inviting). Let us get on with glorifying the Lord forever, together.

If you want responsibility, you got it Lady...

You are caviling at the elementary school level.

And so you can delve into labyrinths if you want. Some capability of accepting or denying spiritual flow exists in humans. You might as well ask why humans can do anything spiritual at all, even sin?

At any case, the original sin was not just a toggle operation but resulted in God removing the voltage... for a time. Of course that’s dead. The switch can flip in vain. Now God brings the voltage back. Will we say yes or no to enabling the path that God provided for it to flow. I say we can say yes or no, but to me a yes was virtually obvious. Pressing death/life analogies too far... with that same old demon you rail at, “human reason”... pushes them outside of their area of usefulness.

I think your attempts led you into an abyss because you inadvertently idolized the explanations rather than using them as analogies that were useful as far as they could go but never were the real thing. I got the real thing. The Spirit approached my heart and illustrated what He was about by giving me joy focused on Him. I assented; it was all the easier since it was what I had hoped and prayed for and yet I didn’t know details of what it would be like till it happened. The spiritual current is now flowing. What, me turn the switch off now? Are you crazy?!?

Call me Pelagian or semi Pelagian or green Martianian or whatever you want. I don’t care.

Only a God could come up with you, but a devil could pervert you.

The claim is explicit: God made people in His spiritual image. There is no “frabozz” motive of God that is foreign to humans and would only be sensible to purple Martians.

It’s kind of like talking about whether the light switch can generate a current through it. No it can’t. But it can permit the current to flow.

Really, modern electrical theory is a pretty good explanation of the principle, though if pipes and valves had existed in olden days they would have sufficed too. The presence of the spirit at the heart is like electric potential i.e. voltage. The travel through which is saving faith is like electric current. I think it’s awesome how new analogies arise with new technologies, which of course themselves are revealed to mankind by God... Turn Your Radio On anyone? Eph. 6 would probably have included a walkie talkie illustration for praying if it had existed in Paul’s day.

I do not wish to get into these technicalities.

It’s kind of like talking about whether the light switch can generate a current through it. No it can’t. But it can permit the current to flow.

Lord I believe; please help my unbelief.
I have so closely felt You there in hours of joy or grief.
But now where is Your light? It seems stolen by a thief.
Lord I believe; please help my unbelief.

Lord I have loved You so in months and years gone by.
Yet my spirit has grown dull; I can hardly even sigh.
What is happening to my soul? Would You show the reason why?
Lord I have loved You so in months and years gone by.

Lord, Your holy word says that You never fade or change.
You have said these worldwide sufferings should not be held as strange.
You have promised your saving presence for as long as life remains.
Lord, Your holy word says that You never fade or change.

Lord, I give myself to You again this trying hour.
I know you are preparing me to receive Your wondrous power.
No more trace of evil, though the enemy tries to scour.
Lord, I give myself to You again this trying hour.

Lord, I weep for joy again at the long awaited sight
Of your face that smiles upon my soul; once more I see the Light.
Visions dear of angels pure and saints in heaven bright;
Lord, I weep for joy again at the long awaited sight.

(C) 2013 HiTech RedNeck

Go elsewhere to scoff would you. Thanks.

You partly perceive a necessity in the situation. God sometimes says “wait.” Quite often entry into salvation will be accompanied by a very tangible burst of God-directed joy. That makes sense, because there has to be something to say yes to. But what may follow (and did follow in my own case) is not intense bliss ever after on earth, but a rough road where it raises the question whether that encounter was for naught, while God is watching the person show proof that he believed by pursuing a repeat encounter. So yes God can withhold, but if the sincerity is there, the withholding will only be temporary.

Anyhow, your situation poses a challenge. It’s clearly a bummer. It would be a bummer to me. But it has highlighted a spiritual need. Do you really think that God’s best wish for you is to end in ennui and despair? I don’t think it is. That’s the Evil One’s wish.

Anyhow... what we call sins here are the outward showing of a situation of spirit called “sin.” How bad or not it looks from the outside isn’t the issue. It’s not like adding up brownie points or demerits. It’s a symptom of separation from God. It needn’t be pea soup barfing dramatic to be the wrong (rebel against God) spirit, and all the wrong spirits are going to be sent to hell in the end.

Well, in a way it would be like telling the proverbial fish about kinds of water. The first thing the fish will ask is “what’s water”? (You are probably familiar with the adage that the last thing a fish notices about its environment is water.) But it matters to the fish if it’s being told it should swim to the ocean and avoid that stream which heads to the sewer pipe.

He might actually be doing “right” things (as much as prevenient response is concerned) and still not quite have reached the peace, that doesn’t mean he is not pointed in an appropriate direction.

Yes; God leaves plenty of room for our efforts... in fact accepting the Holy Spirit always results in doing SOMETHING... with the giant caveat that our efforts have to be centered around the Holy Spirit to be blessed. Works, once faith is exercised, aren’t a matter of whether, they are only a matter of how much.

I do not envy the present position of those who are suffering near totally paralyzed in wheelchairs. But that too is a challenge of exercising faith. My challenge isn’t their challenge. I have seen different woes. But I also understand more and more in my heart how God can work the most grueling experiences for my good.

Well, Jesus Christ can come to you right where you are. He’s not that far away. A million light years are but an infinitesimal space to God. But God is focused on you right where you are, right now. God brought you to read Free Republic and this thread right now. This isn’t an accident. We are all glad to pray for the Spirit to approach you, but only you can say yes when the Spirit does approach you. You aren’t a “hunk of biomass” to Him. You are a soul and a spirit, who happens to have a decaying body right now. That soul and spirit will go somewhere when that body dies, and where it goes depends on the kind of spiritual wind you are riding. God also says He loved the world, and last I checked you were part of the world.

God is not shy to announce His presence to doubters and skeptics, if they are sincere about asking out to Him for enough proof to take hold of. God probably won’t stick a whole encyclopedia of proof in your lap at first, but if you are sincere in asking, you WILL see something.

Hey, we want the best for you, we are not here to damn you. We urge and warn you that you need to get off the devil’s wind and onto God’s if you don’t want to end up in spiritual utter destruction.

I believe Lady is talking about manners of expressing a faith walk. That differed through history, which is one of the marquee dispy tenets, but most non dispy Christians agree with this more or less as well, modulo certain details.

...a spiritual view upon the matter will tell you that variations in expected practices are an organic part of the story.

You belong to the Church of the Begged Question... since you are idee-fixed on the notion that spiritual stuff is of human invention, you are never willing to look outward in spirit. Self fulfilling prophecy.

This is so often how God works. Satan sets a horrible destructive bomb and forlorn pieces are left scattered all over. Then God ranges out even wider than the pieces and gathers them into something new and better.

We keep bearing y’all witness that a God of peace and joy is out there, but this is also a God of rough roads. We do not sugar coat scripture or faith. We’re explaining what faith does and that it’s exercised through a spiritual sense. Faith in this sense is about going after something your spirit has perceived, and ultimately in partaking in that something. I’m not here to damn, because Jesus didn’t come here 2000 years ago to damn either! (Damning will come later, but as long as God is not in a hurry to do it neither am I.)

But what is your polyester point. That seems more frivolous and if you are only going to throw up a polyester shield, why talk about this at all? We are discussing implementation issues here.

...this is not the only viewpoint for treating the issue, but it’s quite powerful in that it allows just about everything the modern scientists are telling us and STILL says that you’re asking Humpty Dumpty to climb up the wall and reassemble himself. Materialism is quite a ludicrous god.

If you can get beyond the pettiness of polyester mindedness, ONE treatment of the universe uniqueness issue is found at Hugh Ross’s old earth creationism site http://www.reasons.org.

And... what point is there in discussing THIS detail to someone who is dug in about polyester/cotton blends being a sin?

Ah, do you really want to address these issues? Or do you want to cling to the “relic” notion?

God took you off the devil’s wind and set you on the threshold of His spirit. You still said yes at that point, though you doubtless would have also said if asked what kind of idiot would ever say no to that kind of joy! Because you COULD have blown off the Holy Spirit had you chosen to, saying ah, you had a brain fusion or something else to explain what happen.