Does Jesus Love You? Hate Your? Conditionally So?

Bayerithe, I don't follow your comment about mental hostility. I'm referring to these commonly-taught aspects of Christian doctrine:

Fear: if you don't accept the Christian faith you'll burn forever. This alone is a motivator to 'belief' for many.

Superstition: there's an invisible being watching you, judging you, doing things in the world, etc.

Indignity: you're fundamentally no good, born guilty of ancestral sin of which you had no part, and in need of a brutal human sacrifice.
 
We see yet again the sleight of hand employed by Christians in choosing which god to discuss: is it God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit (despite him being the third part of the Trinity he doesn't get much air time).

God and fear pretty much go hand in hand in the first portion of the Christian myth-text. But now, Christians choose to ignore God and instead focus on Jesus, who is all love and sunshine (unless, of course, you don't believe in him then Jesus sends you to eternal hell, but I digress).

But we won't get anywhere if we expect Christians to admit that their religion is, at heart, polytheistic.
 
Perham,
Isn't the title of this thread about Jesus? Does Jesus love you?...?

I thought that might be why some of us on here are focusing on Jesus. Also, it isn't that Jesus is a different God, but rather that as Christians we believe God is most fully revealed to humanity in Jesus. Jesus is co-eternal with God the Father (and the Holy Spirit). But there was a point in time in which Jesus put on flesh and was born into this world in human form.
As far as living in fear of God. I guess that I don't follow what you mean. The best way I can describe it is that growing up I had a healthy fear of my father. Not that he every beat us kids or anything like that, but I knew he how power over me, and power to make decisions about my life. If I was disobedient I would be disciplined, out of love. That was something, although I know was good for me, at the time seemed like something I feared. If I don't get the yard mowed I won't be allowed to go out with friends.... certain amount of fear there for the consequences for not being obedient.
Again, I wrote on the first page a response about Jesus 'sending' people to hell. Several others did as well, but you haven't commented on those posts, but rather just repeated the same phrase again. Now maybe our posts were not at all persuasive, or particularly well spoken, but you seem to have not engaged them.

Dion,
I fell sorry for you if that is what your church talked about primarily. We had a dinner at our church last night and had a woman in tears testifying about the joy and love at our church. She said she grew up in a church that she described like the church you grew up in. I know tons of churches who believe in hell, but that is not the focus. The emphasis is not on negative consequences, but rather on God and having a relationship with him, and a right relationship with others.
Many, ours included, don't just focus on following God as some sort of fire insurance, but rather as a way of life here on earth that makes our lives most fulfilled, because being in relationship with God is how we were made to be.
We emphasise people serving others. I have listed on other posts on WM/Quacks about all the activities our church is involved in that have nothing to do with converting people, or getting money for our church etc.
For instance, we are in Temple/Belton area, but this Saturday we will be having folks go down to Austin and serve in the West Oak Hill area that was effected by the grass fire last Sunday.
We are called to serve. We do that in our local area, helping the flood victims in Belton and Salado, and fire victims in Austin. I could go on and on, because that is a vital part of us living out our faith in God.
 
dionysus,
from my experience you are right, there are christians who believe for all the wrong reasons. i think you overestimate the percentage and wonder if you do that intentionally to marginalize people who have struggled yet persisted and found their faith completely independent of the less reasoned, more emotional motivations that you bring up.
i also get put off by pastors and christians who focus on judgment. i can't count how many examples there are in the bible warning us against that. "judge not, lest thou be judged", "by the same measure that you judge others, you will be judged", "remove the beam from your own eye before pointing out the splinter in another man's eye" (i'm butchering these), "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"and so on and so on.
 
A couple of good posts, showing us that it is the people, not the religion, that matters.

And as far as Jesus loving you, no, he doesn't. But then he doesn't hate you either. Jesus is dead and can neither love nor hate you. What matters is whether you think Jesus loves you.
 
See, you make comments like these, but you can't back it up.

The other side already has eyewitness accounts of him being very much alive after the ressurection and being lifted up into heaven.

Simple people will view the world from a simple lens, why else would they place such importance on these "eye-witness" accounts?
 
So in a court, if you heard testimonies of a couple hundred people whom saw person A murder victim B, you'd throw it out on the account of people being simple minded ... all couple hundred of them?

I am forced to conclude that you are supremely ignorant of the inherent weaknesses and pitfalls surrounding eyewitness testimony.

There is much literature involving this, including videos of moonwalking bears.

Your intellectual tool set is, how shall I put this, not all that highly evolved to discuss and grasp this issue at the highest level. You are content to let stories and claims of eyewitness testimony carry the day. That is where you reside on the religious/cognitive continuum, and that's ok for you.
 
So it's automatically untrue because of the eyewitness accounts? Well, I don't think that's what you meant. You just meant there is not a lot of evidence supporting our beliefs. I just don't see how you have more evidence to support your claim that Christ isn't the risen Lord than we have to support our claim.
 
You misunderstand the concept of the Trinity.

I, much like Isaac Newton, misunderstand nothing involving the Trinity and the charade involved with claiming that 3 is really 1.

Christianity marketed itself as being a monotheistic religion and had to invent the concept that 3 is really 1. There is really little beyond that to justify the notion of the Trinity.
 
Not everyone believes in universal sin. I and many others continue to maintain that it's a misunderstanding of several verses. We're judged by our own works, not someone else's. And yes, belief is a work.

This is heretical to orthodox Christianity.

Good for you for thinking outside the box.
 
So it's automatically untrue because of the eyewitness accounts?

Hmm, another tradesman whose logical toolset includes many rusty, if not completely unused, tools.

Did I say it was automatically untrue? Or am I saying that eyewitness recountings are not automatically true?

It would behoove you to learn and understand the very broad, very basic, and very real problems that exist with eyewitness testimony.

I just don't see how you have more evidence to support your claim that Christ isn't the risen Lord than we have to support our claim.

What about Xenu? Or Zeus? Or Mohammed?

Christ is but one version of many man-made gods. We just happen to be living in a place and time where many buy into that particular story.
 
Then explain to me why, where, how I am wrong.

And I don't even need to employ calculus to do so: 3 gods are not 1 god. Simple arithmetic provides the answer.

I could just as well invent a religion that had 4 gods and claimed that 4 = 1. Maybe even use an analogy that it's like a square, or rectangle, you know, you need all 4 sides to create the whole.

Or how about 6 gods? Then I could use a benzene ring analogy.

Religion is amazing in its ability to cloud and befog the human mind.
 
I suppose your condescension and closeminded, worldly view makes you intellectually superior ....

No, those things are not what make me intellectually superior. I could tell you what it is that does make me intellectually superior but I think you'd just get mad and defensive about it, and politeness and decorum prohibits me from engaging in such a discussion.

My "counter-argument" was quite plain: the eyewitness accounts of Jesus arising from the dead are worthless.
 
You also asked how I know what His will is. I'll be honest. A lot of times I really don't know what His will is as His plan is unfolding. He knows the proper time to reveal it to me, and often times, it is not all at once. It's not as if I hear His voice speaking directly to me through a burning bush either. Often times, it is just a feeling I get (kinda vague, I know) or sometimes He is literally speaking to me through my friends and family. Also, there are many times where I do things and I don't even realize that it was God pushing me to do it until long after the process is over.

I like this because it artfully shows how people have a desire, need even (evolutionary based?) to attribute their emotions, choices, and decisions to a deity. It is comforting to be guided by a deity. This is a natural human condition.
 
As long as you insist on your own paradigm, you can't be proven wrong - this is Perham's one claim to intellectual superiority.

You can talk all day about how there cannot be three persons in one Godhead, but that only stems from the arrogance you've already shown, which is that your opinions are the standard of truth.

If there is in fact a god, why is it so hard to fathom that His being would actually be beyond your experience or understanding? It's just as stupid for you to bind your own ideas onto God as law as it is for people to anthropomorph God into the kindly old man sitting on a cloud with a staff - or that matter to give him any physical bodily form i.e. LDS.

Jesus said over and over again, "I and the Father are one", while at the same time praying that his followers would be one "even as the Father and I are one". Doesn't take a lot to see what he means by being one - being united, of the same purpose, of the same nature.
 
You can talk all day about how there cannot be three persons in one Godhead, but that only stems from the arrogance you've already shown, which is that your opinions are the standard of truth.

But I did offer the example of a religion claiming that 4 gods are 1, even 6 are 1. Would you be as accepting of that concept as you are of 3=1?

And yet you still cannot see that all this just screams "man-made". Not surprising, because if you could see through a glass darkly, if you could lift the scales from your eyes, then you wouldn't be confined to your religious cage.


Jesus said over and over again, "I and the Father are one"...

You do know, don't you, that any one of us could craft a story where our main actor mouths similar profound and pithy statements? That doesn't make it true, however.
 
I don't believe I have all the answers. In fact, I know I don't have all the answers. There are some things that I will never understand as long as I am of this world. There is a reason why the word "faith" is used to define someone's religious beliefs. It is because we don't know and understand everything.

I will pray for you Perham and all non-believers on Hornfans. I encourage my brothers to do the same.
 
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