Posted on 06/18/2014 11:58:15 AM PDT by lilyramone
Jesus Christ did not believe in tolerance and peace, but the punishment of evil doers and evil people. I never accepted the modern perception of Christianity, as a sort of peace loving religion. Christ Himself said: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. –Matthew 10:34 Christ is “The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.” (Psalm 24:8) The Divine Law strikes, and the heretics scatter, like wolves without a head. Now is the hour of darkness, now is the hour of the savages and their leader the wicked one, “given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them” (Revelation 13:7)
(Excerpt) Read more at shoebat.com ...
so no wars ever? and the American Revolution was sin, right?
You misunderstood.
I noted YOUR OPINION of the existence and actions of an angry God.
So as far as I'm concerned, the only subject you addressed was the state of your own mind.
I understood perfectly. Your dismissive tone represents the denial of God’s absolute authority over every dot and tittle of yours and everyone’s life. That is what this thread is about.
Matthew 22:36-40 reads, “Teacher, which is the GREATEST commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘LOVE the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘LOVE your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
So tell me, what do you think Jesus meant by "love"?
All I'm hearing you say is that it means to preach hellfire for any evidence of sin.
Okay, I got that. But is that it? Is that the sum total of what you are saying Jesus meant by "love"?
That's it?
Then how does the speck in the eye versus the log in the eye come into play, and the forgiveness and compassion and mercy?
Or do they all get based on "learning" to abandon gentleness, and "finding" the courage to constantly tell everyone they are going to hell for their lack of perfect sinlessness, because that - alone - is the only REAL meaning Jesus taught for the idea of "loving" each other.
I'm perfectly serious. Go ahead, teach me. Explain why I need to abandon all my other ways of understanding what Jesus meant by love, for the sole interpretation of the "courage" to pound on the idea of hellfire for any trace of sin.
Because I'm not seeing that level of utter rejection of all tenderness in Jesus's meaning, and I don't see any lack of humility in it, either. All I see is savagery, and the creation of a monstrous world of abject terror and constant threats of damnation in the name of "true" love - and anything "less" harsh as being a "rejection of the truth".
Is that what you mean? Is that what you are saying Jesus actually meant by the word "love"? Do I understand you correctly? Please explain.
Sadly you have no understanding of the absolute nature of God or of the perfection of Christ. Jesus was murdered by the sin of the world in which we are all complicit. Each of us has a hand in his cricifixion.
God’s perfection and sinlessness is so absolute he cannot see us with any sin. This is precisely what hiding in the cleft of the Rock is about. We literally hide in Christ, allowing Him to cover our sins so that His Father will not see them.
We are utterly and absolutely lost and damned without Christ at the heart of our lives. God does not look beyond sin. If He did He would not have needed to send his Son, Christ to provide the means of salvation.
Sin blinds Gods’s eyes to us. In our sinful state we cannot enter into His presence. Even the tiniest sin condemns us to eternal death. Only by being washed in the blood of the Lamb do we have any hope of eternal peace and love with God.
Looking for sweetness and light in this fallen world is a fool’s errand. There are none among us, not one, worthy of salvation except by atonement, sacrifice and surrender to Christ. Jesus said we must die to our selves to be born into His life.
Yes, you have been taught poorly. God is not a saintly grandfather who overlooks our sin. He is the Lord of the universe and we are but specs of dust in His creation. Surrender yourself to God before it is too late.
We are utterly and absolutely lost and damned without Christ at the heart of our lives. God does not look beyond sin. If He did He would not have needed to send his Son, Christ to provide the means of salvation. Sin blinds Gods’s eyes to us. In our sinful state we cannot enter into His presence. Even the tiniest sin condemns us to eternal death. Only by being washed in the blood of the Lamb do we have any hope of eternal peace and love with God.
Looking for sweetness and light in this fallen world is a fool’s errand. There are none among us, not one, worthy of salvation except by atonement, sacrifice and surrender to Christ. Jesus said we must die to our selves to be born into His life.
Yes, you have been taught poorly. God is not a saintly grandfather who overlooks our sin. He is the Lord of the universe and we are but specs of dust in His creation. Surrender yourself to God before it is too late.
I'm sorry, but what I'm hearing from you is what I call madness.
God is love.
May you someday experience that love, and find peace.
You have set yourself up as my judge, a role for which you are wholly unprepared.
My preparation is beyond your wildest dreams.
But on a different subject, what need have I to judge you? You repeatedly assert that you reject God's love in the name of God's love. That you reject Jesus's compassion in the name of Jesus's compassion. That you scorn tenderness and mercy and forgiveness amongst human beings as a gross misunderstanding of what Jesus taught. And that God can't even see us because of the utter blackness of our sins, and that our lives are best spent in constant awareness of needing to hide in cracks in utter shame for existing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what you are saying, repeatedly, is the teaching that Jesus brought?
So what need do I have to judge you - in the sense that you mean? How could I damn you any worse, if I wanted to damn you (which I don't). What possible level of hideousness and self-hatred could I force upon you, than that which you already force upon yourself?
Unless, of course, you mean by "judge" that I refuse to damn you, or myself, or anyone, and refuse to see you, or myself, or anyone as the abject specimen of revulsion that you insist we actually are. That instead I strive to see as our very essence, the divine love of our Creator. That I see Jesus AS God seeing us in our sin, and loving us in our sin, and healing us in our sin, and bringing us back to Him in joy and celebration, because He never, ever forgot us or stopped loving us.
If that's what you mean by judging you, yes indeed I do judge you in that way.
And there is absolutely nothing you can do to ever stop me.
Oh and one more thing. If what I believe means I'm going to hell, then I look forward to it.
And if what you claim is true is true - is actually the nature of God - then I will be glad and grateful to go to hell and never, ever meet such a monster.
Are we clear now?
You have muddied my words far beyond recognition. No we are not clear, at least not with each other. You have judged me wrongly again and again. There is no love and no compassion in your words, only hatred and condemnation.
Jesus Christ did not believe in tolerance and peace, but the punishment of evil doers and evil people.
In listening to RC Sproul lately he explains that God is a just God. Justice is something he must give because of His very nature. We should all know what we deserve in terms of justice. We can DEMAND justice if we want, but the news is not good, we are guilty.
Mercy is NOT something He has to give. He will have mercy on who he will have mercy. As the lesson in Job, God is God and we are not. We cannot demand mercy. Problems arise we think we can demand or deserve mercy.
As for those who think God is love. Yes he is but he is also JUST and must deliver justice.
Jonathan Edwards would appear to be the most common reference, not Calvin?
http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/je-sinners.htm
The concept of a just God is not something our ears like to hear. But the other way of looking at it is that NONE would be saved without Gods mercy.
God is love.
If we are saved by God, what are we saved from?
Then I apologize for misrepresenting you, because all I hear in your words are hatred and condemnation. To my knowledge, I have literally repeated back to you what you wrote, what I hear you not only saying, but insisting upon.
To me, you were very clear and consistant. I disagree with it, but I did not feel confused over what you were saying, since you kept repeating it.
But perhaps you can clear something up that will help me. Where, in your understanding, does "love" come into play? What is the love Jesus was talking about? Because I know what I think it means, and I can't see it anywhere in what you are claiming to be His true teachings. So where is it?
All I can answer with is my personal understanding. I speak for no one else.
But for me, your question is answered in its definitions. Once I accept God as infinite in every way - in existence, in consciousness, in the bliss of love - then I also have to accept that nothing exists outside of God.
The logic is extremely simple - if something can exist outside of God, then God is not infinite, because there would be a place where God isn't. So with that definition, I have to accept that all of Creation is manifesting inside of God. Or, put another way, all of Creation IS God, manifesting AS Creation.
Which means that God is also manifesting as each one of us.
People think that that means we are actually superheroes, or megalomaniacs, or psychotics, or whatever. I think they haven't thought it through carefully enough. My analogy is a ray of shining sunlight. The farther away that ray gets from the sun, the smaller and more narrow it gets, and the larger the darkness around it. In fact, it becomes defined by its narrowness and distance, and the "shape" that creates of it. To say, therefore, that that ray of sunlight IS the sun is, on the one hand, literally correct, because that's what it is made of. But it's identity AS a ray of sunlight is created by it's distance AWAY from the sun.
I think human beings are like that too. Our "souls" are the ray of sunlight that we think of as ourselves, but "up" and closer to the sun of God. We live lives of our personal human identities at the very tip of that ray of sunlight. And the choices in our lives either lead us farther away from the sun, or stop our fleeing and lead us back towards the sun. But it doesn't change what we actually are, and what we're made of. And saints and spiritual masters have said repeatedly that the closer they have experienced God, the LESS they have experienced wha they thought of as "themselves" - while at the same time being able to experience the bliss and love and consciousness and eternity of God.
So I don't see a problem there, because the closer we get to God, the less of our personal ego - literally defined BY our distance AWAY from God - simply vanishes. And so I believe that's why Jesus taught that one had to give up the world in order to be saved. Because "the world" is what we experience way out at the tip of the ray of sunshine, while also travelling ever farther away from the sun. While God is experienced when we - literally - move away from that, back towards the sun.
That's also why I believe Jesus taught to beware people who claim to be God. God CAN come AS God in a ray of sunlight, and Jesus is proof of that (yes I know that my metaphor breaks down here, but God tends to break metaphors, so it's not my fault). I believe that God has done this many times, not just in the person of Jesus. Most Christians believe that God did it once, for all time, in the person of Jesus. Fine, I understand the disagreement and I'm not arguing about it here. All I'm saying is that God can do such a thing, and it's different than us being out here as rays of sunlight. Because WE are trying to get AWAY from God, while when God does it, He's NOT trying to get away from Himself.
Why are we trying to get away? Depends on who you ask. The negative reasons, based on sin, are well known. Interestingly, however, there is an Eastern teaching that God's nature is to shine, and shining makes rays of sunlight that have to be reminded who they are, so they can return to their experience of God. So in that sense the word "sin" goes back to its original meaning of "missing the mark" in archery. In other words we are "sinning" not because we are bad, but because we are ignorant, and we need to turn around.
THEREFORE AND IN CONCLUSION, someone who is "saved," to me, is someone who has, for whatever reason and inwhatever way (but I believe always, somehow through Grace), realized they are going "in the wrong direction," and have "turned around."
And yes, I am well aware of how many people don't agree with this explanation, and who at this moment are revving up their Bible fingers. But you asked me, and that's my answer. No one elses.
Of course, I'm right though.
(That's a joke. Lighten up, sunshine. LOL!)
Preach it!
You equate love with sentiment. Love is the highest discipline, the source of Godliness and the most intense of works. The price of love is absolute sacrifice, surrendering oneself with no attempt to find oneself worthy of any good. Only God is love just as only God is good. There is no love and no goodness outside Him. If you wish to have the love of God you must surrender every aspect of your life to Him. I get none of that from your understanding of love.
What do you mean by sentiment?
In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus teaches "‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
So how do you explain Jesus including the second greatest commandment wit the first - loving our neighbors as ourselves?
I understand that your criteria for loving God "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" is based on the condition of "surrendering oneself with no attempt to find oneself worthy of any good." Funny Jesus didn't mention self-abasement in His description. And I am absolutely positive that my love for God doesn't measure up to your requirements - my only, constant prayer is that somehow, someway, God accepts the feebleness and cowardice of my love for Him as adequate, and doesn't hold me to your exalted, perfect standards.
But what about the other part? What part does self-abasement play in loving our neighbor as ourselves? Is that "just" sentiment? Is it trivial? Jesus plainly did not portray it as trivial. He said "ALL the law and the prophets hang on these TWO commandments." So according to your requirements, how is that to be done, how are we to love one another and not make it merely "sentimental"?
Jesus taught we must die to ourselves to be reborn in Him. The flesh must be mortified for the soul to flourish. Feeble is not enough for in your feeble interests you still pride yourself on your own abilities. No ability will suffice. Nothing you can do can make you worthy of God’s love.
We are, each of us, sinners, condemned by our sin however paltry. We are saved only by the sacrifice of Christ who died as atonement for our sin. It is in His death and His resurrection that we have any hope.
Do not pray that somehow God will find you worthy. He can not. We are all sinners in the hands of a God who cannot abide sin. Only through surrendering our will and our lives to Christ can we be saved from our sin. He loved us so much He sent His only Son to be a sacrifice for us. That is the love of God.
We are, each of us, sinners, condemned by our sin however paltry. We are saved only by the sacrifice of Christ who died as atonement for our sin. It is in His death and His resurrection that we have any hope.
Do not pray that somehow God will find you worthy. He can not. We are all sinners in the hands of a God who cannot abide sin. Only through surrendering our will and our lives to Christ can we be saved from our sin. He loved us so much He sent His only Son to be a sacrifice for us. That is the love of God.
You didn't answer the question. It's very simple - given what you are saying about love, then what did Jesus mean by "love your neighbor as yourself"?
He meant love your neighbor as yourself. That is, do not put yourself above another. And I say do not put yourself below another for none of us is more worthy. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. Once you have received the precious gift of salvation share it with each one you meet.
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