Posted on 04/13/2012 5:50:52 AM PDT by NYer
>>It doesnt really matter what faith as long as you accept Christ.<<
Amen!
If anyone truly believes this story, they cannot possibly think that God will look at a Catholic who said a rosary every day, or a Pentecostal who speaks in tongues, or an Evangelical living their lives according to “Left Behind” and say anything less than, “Good job faithful servant.”
I suck. God truly hates me. He wants to squash me like a grape.
On 7 Jan 2008 I emerged from a 3-day chemically induced coma following a coronary bypass graft procedure which went terribly wrong. The vessel from my first procedure a quarter century earlier had adhered to my sternum, and when they cracked my chest, sploosh, blood everywhere, and the team had to develop a Plan B on the fly. It worked, but only just. As they were bringing me back, I was in terrible pain because the nurses were pulling tubes out of my throat. At that moment, I was convinced that I was on my way to hell. I had gone to confession a couple of months earlier and figured that it didn’t work and I was doomed for eternity. Eventually I figured out that I was alive and saw my family at the foot of my bed in ICU. If I hadn’t been a believer before, that incident would certainly have made me one. Deo Gratias!
>>We must also exhort and reprove others, but always in charity.<<
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not going to let my human frailty get in the way of leading by example. No one said that we should be hiding the truth and not instructing others, but my religion is my religion. Someone telling another person HOW to worship God is not part of it.
The near occasion of sin should be the concentration. We are supposed to teach about that. Not whether we say a rosary, meet in a storefront or read Harry Potter. That is simply human ego talking.
As long as we're being snarky, "pretty vestments" and all . . . .
I’m such a sinner myself and I only hope that I can meet Christ’s expectations.
Christ died for sinners like us - for all our sins past, present and future - we are washed clean by his death and resurrection. When asked, the Holy Spirit empowers us to do the things of God. Christ commandments are to love God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. Sometimes I find loving my neighbor as myself a struggle during these Godless times. But, each day is new and reaffirming our commitment to do as Christ wants can be renewed. We are children of the living God and if a sinful father can love his children, think how much more Christ loves us.
Just ask Him.
I did. I asked God to be happy and with Him.
Right then, a bush burst into a fire, but the fire didn't consume the bush. I heard a loud rumbling, and the clouds parted, and the light shone down upon me. I heard a booming voice say, "I AM YOUR GOD, THE FATHER, THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, AND I CREATED YOU. And, it turns out, creating you was a huge mistake. You suck. I don't like you at all. In answer to your question: No, you cannot be with me. No, you won't be happy. You kinda remind me of a diseased lemur, only without the cuteness. I was thinking of squashing you like a grape, but it's more fun to poke you and watch you squirm."
Sometimes God has to smack us upside the head to teach us that we aren’t Him.
Beautiful example of God’s Grace every time I read it.
Thx Thx.
If God really wanted to squish you like a grape, he’d have already done it. Interesting you feel that way, though. Why do you suppose that is?
On this we must agree to disagree.
Does Christ care about how we believe in Him? Does he care wether we add a few extra lines to the Lord prayer or if we attend Mass or services?
The Lord gave us a clear text on how to live. It is up to each and everyone on how we read and interpret his words.
But I am not a scholar of such things.
Enjoyed this story...thanks for posting. Many blessings.
Well, He would have, but I keep dodging a few centimeters to the left every single time. It's gotten close, lemmee tellya!!!
Interesting you feel that way, though. Why do you suppose that is?
Actually, I don't. But it's good performance art. :)
-—Someone telling another person HOW to worship God is not part of it.-—
What if my worship of God includes instructing others? Aren’t you instructing me?
Regardless, I wasn’t speaking about forcing my faith on others. I was speaking of moral truth, in addition to intellectual truth. Moral truth is simply the natural law, written on the human heart, which is accessible to everyone.
The natural law, right and wrong, cannot not be known, which is why Scripture tells us to exhort and reprove one another. We must do so prudently.
Remember that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference.
Similarly, we are obligated to evangelize prudently. But in contrast to moral truths, the truths of faith may not be known or understood. Since faith is a gift, the truths of faith can only be presented.
I think Christ does care how we believe in him. Think about it. He sent the Holy Spirit to the first believers so they could record his ministry in words. Why? So that all future generations of believers would have those words, and through them the memory of what he said and did. Why go to all that trouble if the words are not important? It makes no sense. And in those words he teaches many things, some that are still hard to accept. He also warned of false Christs, people who would come later and pervert the truth. These false prophets are known by their fruit, and they have no future with God, other than to wait for judgment.
So you see, unless one is trying to be a false prophet, it is not up to everybody to cast their own private filter over the teaching of Christ, picking and choosing what they like, and ignoring the rest. When he teaches for example that God’s design for marriage consists of a man and a woman in permanent union, he implies that God did NOT design the alternatives to that arrangement conceived by the warped mind of sinful humans. Or by affirming the authority of the commandments, he rejects idolatry, lying, stealing, adultery, coveteousness (aka greed), etc. Most importantly, by establishing faith in him as the sole basis for human redemption, he excludes all alternative schemes for human salvation.
Furthermore, he, in his own words, taught that to reject him as the Son was to reject the Father. If his words mean anything at all, they mean that a) we cannot look to our own man-made religious divisions as the source of our salvation, and b) neither can we just make stuff up about him and hope for the best. God is not mocked. What we sow we will reap. If we sow a foolish unwillingness to learn and obey his words, we will reap self-deception, error, and harm to ourselves and others. If we sow an earnest desire to know and obey him and the doctrine he gave us in his words, then we will know truth, and that truth will free us, and we will be that tree that bears good fruit.
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