We are encouraged to be ready in season and out of season to reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. IITim 4:2. I am reproving you, rebuking you right now. That God may or may not grant you eyes to see and ears to hear is up to Him. The words may be used or may not be used.
Which is to say, that you're commanded to be ready to do something that has absolutely no impact? That God commands you to perform empty actions as a mere sign of obedience?
I trust you are not relying upon a group of ceremonies and enrollment on an Italian membership list to be "certainty" for your eternal destination...are you?
I'm rolling my eyes... no Catholic trusts in rituals, as though mere external actions can effect a conversion of the heart and a turning toward Him in repentance to have our sins forgiven. Many, many previous answers by fellow Catholics have made it clear that we rely solely upon the unmerited favor of Our Lord who calls us out of His goodness to respond to Him in obedience for the salvation of our souls. What sort of God "wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:4) but then decides - positively wills vs. permits - that there will be some who have absolutely no chance of being saved? What a strange, capricious God - it almost reminds me of the false god of Islam, who is a slave-master rather than the loving Father described to us in sacred scripture.
And what sort of God would make a covenant that was MORE restrictive than the one it replaces? What sort of God would determine that all male children had the right to be members of the household of God through the ritual observance of circumcision, and then, while seemingly broadening the covenant to worldwide scope, suddenly reveal that there were some who would never, by His will, be permitted to taste the fruits of that covenant?
That is what I say when I speak to those asking...and you asked. Thus, I am evangelizing you right now. Does this ring true? Perhaps you are among the elect and will abandon the paganized, ritualistic, sacerdotalism and ceremony of Rome and return to the simple fellowship with other believers.
But again, your words will have no impact either way, right? If I'm set aside to one day repent and see the gospel as you describe it (a twisted, cruel, capricious gospel at that), then you're wasting your words evangelizing at all. You're merely robotically going about your pre-programmed duty, bouncing words off of myself and my fellow Catholics who may or may not be pre-programmed to join you in your strange version of heaven in which some are predestined to hell before ever having the chance to understand, repent, accept, love and obey Our Lord.
To folks like you (and I've encountered TONS of folks like you since going public with my conversion), it doesn't matter that I've been able to rid myself of sins that I'd been committing my entire life, or that I'm more devoted to the reading of sacred scripture and daily prayer, or that I'm more committed to serving my fellow Christians through teaching and pro-life ministry, than I ever was before I left evangelical Protestantism. I don't believe in the monstrous, anti-Biblical concept of double-predestination, or the foundational error of sola scriptura on which you base your twisted view of God and salvation history, and thus I'm probably condemned. And there's nothing I can do about it, and nothing you can do about it, and nothing anyone else can do about it.
And we're the ones who have something to escape? Please.
Well, it does not feel robotic to address the errors of your thinking. I simply echo Paul's words that, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If you wish to view this as strange, that is what you have been given.
"To folks like you (and I've encountered TONS of folks like you since going public with my conversion), it doesn't matter that I've been able to rid myself of sins that I'd been committing my entire life, or that I'm more devoted to the reading of sacred scripture and daily prayer, or that I'm more committed to serving my fellow Christians through teaching and pro-life ministry, than I ever was before I left evangelical Protestantism. I don't believe in the monstrous, anti-Biblical concept of double-predestination, or the foundational error of sola scriptura on which you base your twisted view of God and salvation history, and thus I'm probably condemned. And there's nothing I can do about it, and nothing you can do about it, and nothing anyone else can do about it."
Well, God can do something about...if He chooses. The question is not what you may like, but what the truth of the Scriptures actually sets out. If Paul's remarks about being held in the hands of God, and not yourself or an organization, make you uncomfortable it cannot be helped...at least by me.
You have made a few remarks about the "strangeness" of my perspective(s), but this beyond the pale. If you think that this ritual (circumcision) is what made a person a Jew, rather than the descendancy from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, then you, my FRiend, need to re-read the text. The sign did not make them Jews or part of His household. Their birth was the thing which made them Jews. And, notice they had no say in that birth, either.
Later, when Paul notes that the true Israel (the universal family of God, the assembly belonging to the First Born) is not the physical family of Israel, but those who have been rescued. And it does not depend on the man who runs (acts) or the man who wills (chooses), but upon God who has mercy. And He will have mercy on some and harden some. Romans 9. Hmmm.
It is incredibly sad that they keep repeating lies and expect us to believe anything they say.
That's one of the vilest of that group -- the sad thing is that they have no real belief except that they hate us. Nothing else. No love for Christ, nothing.