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Locked on 04/24/2022 5:40:39 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Childishness |
Posted on 03/06/2022 11:16:06 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
A man commits a serious crime, then he gets released. He has "paid his debt to society". But wait a minute, he's only ready for the half-way house. He's unlikely to get a prestigious job in his new prison suit coat, or any job at all; he has civil impediments, he can't vote or hold certain offices. His crime was serious enough that he won't be presumed to have been completely rehabilitated until he performs a notable service to society, or at least spends many years on the straight and narrow, so that his crime can be truly overlooked or forgotten.
In Catholic faith, your "debt to society" is paid by Jesus Christ on Calvary. It's called "eternal punishment", without Christ it keeps you from going to heaven. Supposing that you do take advantage of His sacrifice, you're truly sorry, have a firm purpose of amendment, if you relapse, you go again for forgiveness (to the Sacrament of Confession).
But your sin leaves a strong trace at another layer of impurity called "temporal punishment due to sin", like the civil impediments facing the half-way house prisoner. Because "nothing impure can enter heaven", there is a place or a state, a condition of purification to render you fit for heaven after Christ has finally saved you from hell. The Catholic Church calls it purgatory.
(Where is it in the bible? Where is the word Trinity in the bible? Where does it say that you only need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Many valid principles aren't stated explicitly in the bible, but it does say to "hold fast to the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter", because much of the Gospel wasn't written down, as Jesus only wrote in the sand, the majority of the Gospel was taught from word to ear to people who couldn't afford expensive books, the exceptions were what tended to get written down. But the implication that there is a purgatory, is contained in the bible--see the comments.)
The ex-con can receive a pardon or commutation of his probation from a Governor, if he performs some heroic deed, saving numerous lives, or, like Chuck Colson, performs a long-lasting, valuable community service helping numerous people who can't help themselves.
In the Catholic Church there are 2 ways for the residual, temporal effects due to sin to be expiated: suffering in this life, or after life, undergoing purifying suffering along with other people who will finally be saved, but have to suffer for long without the vision of God--that is what causes them their pain.
Their suffering isn't meritorious enough to grant their release, the saints in heaven and those on earth suffering and practicing virtue can pray for the suffering souls in purgatory. In no way is their release by slow transfer of suffering or practice of virtue, "buying heaven". It's a long, excruciating process.
How the misunderstanding arose that Catholics think they can buy their way into heaven, is involved with history more than 500 years old. For a millennium of Christendom between roughly 410 and 1410, there was a Medieval civilization with harmony between faith and government.
Many small farmers would cluster around the manor house of a military lord who would protect them, in exchange for a certain fixed obligation of labor and agricultural produce. In most cases, those "serfs" had much more leisure than factory workers of the industrial revolution; there were a large number of holy days without work, and except for planting and harvesting, there were long stretches of idle time.
Another large sector of the economy surrounded monasteries, where the monks developed most of the farming practices that stabilized the serfs and their manorial lords. The monks who worked those monastic lands were sworn to poverty, so that monasteries built up large accumulations of economic value over decades and centuries of labor.
At the beginning, when lands were being cleared and put into production there weren't prominent town fairs ruled by merchants and bankers. Money wasn't used for sustenance, not even much barter occurred, life was mostly agrarian.
Charity was woven into the economy of monasteries. It was estimated that you only need travel 12 miles in medieval England between monasteries, where you could get a meal and minimal lodging for free, based on need. And the charity was also spiritual, including the ancient Catholic principle of prayer for the dead, which is biblical. (See "prayer for the dead" in the original King James Bible in the comment.)
There were foundations and benefices for praying for the dead, that allowed a person of means to support monasteries' charitable works, and in proportional response the monks would pray for the souls of the donors.
It happened at the close of the middle ages, that militarily strong nobles cast their eyes on the labor value accumulated by the poverty-sworn monks of the monasteries, which those nobles perceived as monetary wealth, especially where gold and jewels had been donated by the devout to adorn churches.
(Protestant writer William Cobbett wrote in his 1824 "A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland", an anecdote, that an incredibly valuable, hand illustrated bible was stripped of it's bejeweled, gold cover, the much more valuable hand-illumined manuscript, thrown in the mud and trampled by horses hooves by raiders suppressing the monasteries in Henry VIII's England.)
A new religion growing up around this seizure of monastic lands and valuables, that sought to discredit the Catholic Church, spread the black legend that the "sale of indulgences" was abusive. But this was very exceptional. Today the stipend of a Mass said for the dead is $10.
Indeed, Seven. And we KNOW God’s word is the truth.
Truth placemarker
Well, SDAism has always been EGW’s personal little cult.
Probably explains the obsession with the sins of evangelical leaders that a bunch of them have too; they project their own cult of personality onto the Christian faith.
—> Well, SDAism has always been EGW’s personal little cult.
Bro, you misspelled SADism.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all this was motivated out of a desire to hurt someone, true.
I suspect it is self-flagellation.
That others aren't alsotrying to earn their own self-righteousness torques them.
And leads them to try to hurt out of... what, envy?
If they cared about our souls, they would have encouraged us in obedience instead of going REEEEEEEEEEE about a difference in theology.
Or praising them for their shallow psuedo-obedience for that matter.
-> And leads them to try to hurt out of... what, envy?
“Yet it was a concern because of the false brothers
secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy on
our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus,
in order to enslave us”
I think the Apostle Paul summarized the approach
and goals of all religionists in Falseworld very
succinctly.
Amen
-> And leads them to try to hurt out of... what, envy?
“Yet it was a concern because of the false brothers
secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy on
our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus,
in order to enslave us”
“I think the Apostle Paul summarized the approach
and goals of all religionists in Falseworld very
succinctly.”
I believe they know they’re in a cult but don’t want to cut loose of it. So, they stay angry. Go to bed angry, get up angry. Heck, I would too if I had to try to defend what’s been posted here about EGW’s plagiarisms, going to a planet with seven (?) moons, and meeting sinless people that COULD sin but are so much better than Adam and Eve that they don’t sin at all. In direct contradiction, of course, of what the Bible says about man’s condition, and saying the word of God is wrong. It’s blasphemous because it means that Jesus was NOT the only sinless one to ever live. In the end, they have to claim they love God on the one hand but believe things that are contrary to the Bible on the other. It would be enough to make a person a little crazy.
It’s kind of like the evolutionists who are wont to say that Earth was seeded by aliens. Richard Dawkins comes to mind. You put the theory outside of what man can discover or see for himself. Pure BS, of course, but … a sucker’s born every minute.
OSAS, pre trib rapture place maker. 😃😀
What I don’t quite understand, is that if a bunch of people, are telling cult members, whatever cult they belong to, that they are in a cult, why aren’t they moved to investigate why? They may choose to remain in their cult, but at least they should try to figure out why we say it. How many actually do investigate? Maybe one out of a thousand? The rest don’t.
When I was a Catholic, that is exactly what I thought. I don’t quite understand why I believed in evolution, even when I was a Catholic. I cannot explain it.
Do you remember passing by a gazillion ape-to-man posters as a child?
No one has to say anything at all about evolution if a child is exposed to them often enough.
Not that I can remember. It seems to me, I may have seen it on TV, or maybe my Catholic dad believed in evolution too. It’s been so many years, I just don’t remember for sure. I just don’t think anyone, with two functioning brain cells, can ever believe in evolution.
—> why aren’t they moved to investigate why?
That presumes they are seeking truth, instead of fighting to hold their (cultic) life experience together
—-> Maybe one out of a thousand? The rest don’t.
Maybe 1 in 10,000
Not very good odds, is it? In my Catholic high school class, of 100, 3 of us were looking for the truth. As far as I know, the other 97 were not. Many of them that I still keep track of, are NOT looking for the truth.
I agree with you, brother. Evolution is the most ridiculous thing I think I’ve ever heard of. I actually tried several times in my life to think it through and try to force myself, for the sake of argument, to believe it. Then I tried to follow out that train of thought. Didn’t work ever, though, because there has to be an Originating Source for life no matter if we were supposedly (that is, stupidly) seeded by aliens or eventually turned into what we are now by an amoeba floundering around to make it out of the slime. That makes no sense either ‘cuz why would the dang amoeba want to leave the only environment it has ever known. Answer? To grow an eye. But how did it know about eyes and how did it get the whole thing of improving itself going? It was just a lil dumbarse amoeba. LOL. I’m laughing at myself and the ridiculousness of my post.
And to think that people really believe such things. (Kinda makes me feel a bit smart, so I’m - in some small way - thankful for them!)
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