We care because God cares. We love because He loved us first. We care about sin because we do not wish to displease Him but to please Him.
What you believe that our beliefs are is a gross distortion. We are not robots, but we did need His direct intervention or we would not have come. Nobody would.
With the belief system that you have laid out, I could come and say how could anyone call salvation unmerited? How could anyone boast only in God but not in themselves even MORE than God? And, if one ounce of our "righteousness" merited even the least bit of God's salvific favor, what kind of a brute beast is he for sending His own Son to die for us if we could "have the potential" of doing salvific works for ourselves.
Kolo. I see very little difference substantively with a lot of the teaching on this thread and the teaching of Islam. In both systems, in the the end, it is dependent upon man meriting, through good works, God's favor - and even in that dying breath, noone has assurance that God has saved them and that they are heading to heaven. Rather, they hope that their goodness was good enough.
"We are not robots, but we did need His direct intervention or we would not have come. Nobody would."
What have I misunderstood? Of course you needed His direct intervention. The elect got that when they were "elected". I find it hard to say that the damned need His direct intervention, at least in a subjective sense. Who subjectively needs to be created so as to simply spend an eternity in torment? But I agree that from an objective standpoint, the damned didn't create themselves and certainly their damnation is on account of God in your system.
"With the belief system that you have laid out, I could come and say how could anyone call salvation unmerited? How could anyone boast only in God but not in themselves even MORE than God? And, if one ounce of our "righteousness" merited even the least bit of God's salvific favor, what kind of a brute beast is he for sending His own Son to die for us if we could "have the potential" of doing salvific works for ourselves."
How so? The elect in your system have absolutely nothing to do with their election. It is 100% of God before all ages. Under such circumstances of course they have nothing to boast about, but if they do boast, they are still the elect, they can no more do anything to become "unelect" than the could to become elect, unless being the elect they don't boast, right? And the damned are still damned by God from all eternity. So again, why read scripture? It has nothing to teach the elect because they need no teaching and teaching will profit the damned nothing.
"Kolo. I see very little difference substantively with a lot of the teaching on this thread and the teaching of Islam."
Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing.
"In both systems, in the the end, it is dependent upon man meriting, through good works, God's favor -...."
Well that certainly isn't Orthodoxy, as I have explained many, many times.
"...and even in that dying breath, noone has assurance that God has saved them and that they are heading to heaven."
That is subjectively Orthodox. We are all sinners and hopefully trust in God's mercy.
"Rather, they hope that their goodness was good enough."
Change the word "goodness" to "similitude to Christ" and that's both subjectively and objectively Orthodox. And in Orthodoxy, living according to the scriptures does have meaning.
I might add that I do get a kick out of Western Christians presuming to lecture the Orthodox, or any Eastern Christian for that matter, about Mohammedanism. We have, shall we say, rather more experience with it up close and personal than you guys do.