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 Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2

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Warrefok
Entheos
Warrefok


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Number of posts : 1056
Age : 75
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Registration date : 2007-10-18

Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 Empty
PostSubject: Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2   Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 EmptyThu Jan 31, 2008 6:12 pm

An almighty God decided he was either bored or lonely so he creates a universe of immense size to
house one small, third-rate planet where he can create beings whose purpose is to make him feel
better by loving and adoring him.

Since God needed to be sure his created people would only love him because they chose to love
him, he gave humans the free choice not to believe him. Unfortunately, the very first human chose
to ignore this God, and this God got all pissed and put a curse on the little planet and all its future
inhabitants. In fact, he even created a scenario where after the first human chose to disobey, all
subsequent humans would be born automatically bound for hell unless they accepted God's bizarre
get-out-of-hell-free option. Rather than simply give humans the option to die and no longer exist,
this God decided he would forever burn the skin off of those who didn't choose to love and adore
him.

Thus this God, in his infinite love, informed his created people that they need to either love and
adore him or they'll go to the hell he created, which basically negates the idea of giving people free
will. After all, most humans will make choices they would not otherwise make when someone is
holding a gun to their head.

Of course, this God, knowing everything that will happen in the future, foresees that more than 95%
of the people he creates (without asking us if we wanted to be created) will either not be well
enough informed to get out of hell or will simply reject the idea of a need for Christian salvation. But
the Christian God, knowing this in advance, still decided to create these humans even though he
knew he'd end up torturing billions of them in an endless lake of fire, all so he could have a handful
of the faithful to give him love and adoration.

Not yet satisfied, this God decides to create his get-out-of-hell-free card by killing his own creation
or by killing his own son. First he has his followers kill and burn animals because he really got off
smelling the burning blood. Then he turned his son into one of his creation so he could have him
beaten and killed with his blood flowing everywhere. And to top it off, he also said that those who
love and adore him should then either symbolically or literally eat the human flesh and drink the
human blood of his son in order to fully love and adore this God.

This God really loves spilling blood and then making people drink it.

Finally, this God decided to tell his created people of this plan through a cryptic and hard to
interpret set of books and then relied on his created people to join together to decide which of
those books really came from this God and which ones did not. They couldn't do it based on
evidence, however, so they just basically guessed. Because this God didn't decide to make it clear
to all humans just how to get their get-out-of-hell-free card, this God allowed the obvious confusion
to lead to thousands of different interpretations of this set of books, meaning many who think they
have found God's get-out-of-hell-free card actually will still be tossed into the lake of fire by this
loving God.

Oh, and to make it even worse, this God decides to be mute most of the time, and instead asks
those who love and adore him to be his spokespeople, thus allowing all kinds of strange things to be
said in his name.

Amen, and pass the plate.

BTW: Everything I listed here is biblically supported and exists in all major Christian doctrines.
Most, however, make it a little more palatable and flowery.

Christianity in a nutshell By Elroy
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PostSubject: THe CRUEL GOD   Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 EmptyThu Jan 31, 2008 10:27 pm

Why was the ancient God so “cruel”?


Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 Goldbar1
Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 0
Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 0
Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 Mensunwater

The
following conversation is fictitious as presented here, but it is based
on many actual conversations and exchanges in which I have participated
over the years. “Arnie's” responses would represent my own under
similar circumstances.
Arnie: How's it going, Joe? Where do things stand in your spiritual search since we last talked?

Joe:
Well, some things seem to be coming together for me, Arnie. But others…
gee, I don't know. there are other issues that I just can't seem to
resolve.
Arnie: You know, Joe, I respect your insistence on maintaining intellectual integrity in your search for truth. God doesn't want you to close down your mind in order to accept Christ. But on the other hand, you don't have to have every answer to every question in place before you acknowledge Christianity as being true, or before you commit yourself to follow Christ.

Joe: Well maybe not, Arnie, but before I pray to the God of the Bible, I'd at least like to know to which God I'm praying.
Arnie: What do you mean by that?

Joe: I mean that the God of the Old Testament very often seems mean and cruel and angry, while the God of the New Testament is full of love. So which is it, Arnie? You can't have it both ways. How do you explain the harshness of God in the Old Testament?
Arnie: A better question may be: How do we explain the mercy of God in the Old and New Testament?


The really amazing thing is God's mercy.




Joe: Now it's my turn to ask, “What do you mean?”
Arnie: Well, God is 100% holy. Why should He ever be expected to put up with any sin or nonsense whatsoever from His creation? Instead of being amazed that He periodically calls for judgment in the Old Testament, we should be amazed that he ever shows mercy and patience. I mean, think of it, if God was not merciful, even you and I would be zapped the very instant that we'd rebel or sin in any way today.

Joe:
Interesting. But it still boggles my mind that a loving God would
condone the wholesale slaughter of innocent babies such as He did in Deuteronomy 2.
Arnie: In a fallen
world, isn't it possible that God may have to periodically authorize
some less-than-ideal measures in order to deter further evil? Like a
police officer who, in order to deal with disorder, has to use force.
If you think about it, whenever God tolerated or “ordered” violent
action in the Old Testament, it was to restrain evil or to deter some
greater atrocity.


Isn't it possible that God chose to condone some less-than-ideal measures in order to restrain further evil?




Joe: I never thought of it that way. But why did innocent babies have to pay with their lives for what their evil fathers did?
Arnie: Innocents often necessarily
pay for the sins of others. In this world our lives are inextricably
intertwined. What one man does will, more often than not, in some way
effect his neighbor. I may pollute the air, but you'll then breathe the
pollution. If a mother smokes crack, her baby will likely be born
addicted.
Exodus 34:6-7 cites this very principle at work. By the way, notice God's attributes here in this Old Testament passage:

Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;
who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity,
transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty
unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the
grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”
It seems to me that the only alternative would be for God to perpetually purge the world by sending Noah type floods over the entire earth about every ten minutes. That wouldn't be very realistic, would it?
Did God Condone Infancticide?



Joe: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘…go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
—from I Samuel 15:2-3, NASB
So
what's up with this, man? It sounds to me like your God is a regular
butcher here—slaughtering kids, women, and pets—total disregard for
even the basic standards of the Geneva Conventions!
Arnie: What initially may sound rather atrocious becomes a lot more understandable when you hear the other side of the story.

Joe: Which is…
Arnie: Which is—in a fallen, evil world (unlike the one that God created),
there are seldom any really happy alternatives. What God eventually
condoned here as necessary is certainly not what he originally
envisioned as ideal.
But let me ask you a few
questions. Would you ever think it justifiable to put two teenage boys
in the scope of a rifle and pull the trigger? Does that sound
unthinkable, atrocious, and absolutely unjustifiable? Well, what if
those teenage boys’ names were Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris? Few folks
would condemn the SWAT officers who did that very thing at Columbine
High School on April 20, 1999.

Joe: So you're comparing lots of innocent Amalekite babies to two brutal Columbine murderers?
Arnie: Well, what is clear from history is that these so-called innocent Amalekite
babies were part of a self-perpetuating system of evil that often
defied description. There are many reasons to believe that these babies
represented a rising generation of Mohammed Attas, Osama bin Ladens,
and Adolf Hitlers.
Ancient sects and nations like the Amalekites would often heat up an idol like Molech
with fire until it was glowing. Then they would take their newborn
babies, place them on the arms of the idol, and watch them burn to
death. (Source: New Bible Dictionary, Tyndale, 1962.) At other times they would kill disabled, weak, and elderly people without so much as a second thought (Deuteronomy 25:17-18).
In The Case for Faith (Zondervan, 2000), author Lee Strobel poses a question similar to the one you've asked. He says:

[1 Samuel 15:3]
sounds more like a violent and brutal God than a loving one. How can
people be expected to worship him if he orders innocent children to be
slaughtered?
Apologist Norman Geisler responds,

[The Amalekites]
were not nice people. In fact, there were utterly and totally depraved.
Their mission was to destroy Israel. In other words, to commit
genocide… The destruction of their nation was necessitated by the
gravity of their sin. Had some hardcore remnant survived, they might
have resumed their aggression against the Israelites and God's plan.

Joe: Are you saying that the end justifies the means—that their killing some babies justifies God killing more babies?
Arnie: In many cases, innocent people do inevitably suffer when justice is being wrought. But aside from that, when the Righteous Judge of the universe is sitting on the bench, any means that He may choose to use is self-justified. After all, He is the very creator and sustainer of human life.
Still,
there's more to the story here than mere punishment for wickedness. In
a scenario not unlike America's 2001-2002 role in Afghanistan, God was
using Israel at this time to “clean house” in a world gone awry.
R.C. Sproul says this in Now That's a Good Question (Tyndale, 1996):

God said to Israel, “I am using you here in this war as an instrument of my judgment upon this nation, and I'm bringing my violence upon this unbelievably wicked people… I'm going to have them destroyed” (Deuteronomy 13:12-17).
He
said, “I am calling you out of my grace to be a holy nation. I'm
tearing down in order to build something new, and out of what I build
new, a holy nation, I'm going to bless all of the peoples in the world.
Therefore, I want you to be separated, and I don't want any of the
influences of this pagan heritage to be mixed into my new nation that
I'm establishing.” That is the reason (God) gives. People still choke
on it, but if God is, indeed, holy—as I think he is—and we are as disobedient as I know we are, I think we ought to be able to handle that.

Joe: Wasn't God harsher in ancient times, and more loving today?
Arnie: Josh McDowell and Don Stewart in Answers to Tough Questions (Here's Life Publishers, 1980):

…when the two testaments are read as they were intended, they reveal the same holy God who is rich in mercy, but who will not let sin go unpunished.


Author: Daryl E. Witmer of AIIA Institute

.

Text Copyright © 2004, AIIA Institute, All Rights Reserved - except as noted on attached “Usage and Copyright”
page that grants ChristianAnswers.Net users generous rights for putting
this page to work in their homes, personal witnessing, churches and
schools.
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Warrefok
Entheos
Warrefok


Male
Number of posts : 1056
Age : 75
Location : Pretoria - South Africa
Registration date : 2007-10-18

Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2   Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 EmptyFri Feb 01, 2008 12:11 am

SIMSI wrote:
The following conversation is fictitious as presented here, ... ... ...
Thanks ... saved me the trouble of reading any further ... fiction ... like the Bible ... crusifiction & all
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PostSubject: Re: Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2   Christianity In A Nutshell ... 2 EmptyFri Feb 01, 2008 6:07 pm

Quote :
The
following conversation is fictitious as presented here, “Arnie's” responses would represent my own under
similar circumstances.
.....

Had you read further ... then you would have noticed that the conversaions and exchanges were only dramatised by the young lady ....

Quote :
but it is based
on many actual conversations and exchanges in which I have participated
over the years.
.... and represents the actual exchanges and answers that the lady herself participated in over the years ...

You may as well give your views ... Would be interesting to learn ... thnx - Sims ...
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