Double Standards

It hasn't been long since I resigned from my church and rejected belief in God.

However, it's been plenty long enough to be told by most of my Christian friends and pastors that I'm making too quick and drastic of a decision. One pastor told me, "you've only been really struggling with this for a year. Everyone goes through this. How can you all of a sudden believe it's all just not true?"

Another pastor is fond of telling me I'll look back on this in 10 years and laugh at my drastic way of thinking.

I don't know about the rest of you who have been to church before, but it seems like every time I went I was pressured (I mean "encouraged") that I needed to make a decision to become a Christian that day. "Today is the day of salvation!" "Tomorrow may be too late!" I was told.

And here are the same people who said, "we can say the prayer right now if you'd like?" telling me I'm making a rash and quick decision after at least a year of questioning?

There is a serious double standard looming among such Christians. They believe people should come in mass to the front of stages to buy completely into Jesus after a 30 minute sermon. Then, at the same time, they think a person who has taken at least a year to decide Christianity is wrong is making a quick and drastic decision.

Seems I'm not the one who is being quick and drastic about believing things. I just don't get it.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course that isn't the only double standard that Christians have. They think God can torture, abuse and kill people (like Job and his family) and call it good, but if anyone else did that it would be called evil. They think that the Biblical stories in Genesis 1-11 are all true as reported, but reject the many other proto-historical accounts of the same kinds of ancient near-eastern stories (even though they pre-date Genesis). They believe in the miracles of Jesus and Paul among ancient superstitious people but they reject the many other claims to the miraculous in the ancient world. They subject every other religion to the strictest of scrutiny and doubt, but when questioned about their own faith resort to faith over and over again. Double standards. That's what it requires for them to believe.

Aaron M Rossetti said...

"Seems I'm not the one who is being quick and drastic about believing things. I just don't get it."

You very well may be being rhetorical when you say that you don't get it and I'm sure that you know that there's no rationale behind it. Some Christians may claim to be 'reasonable' or be able to back up their actions/beliefs with rational thought, but this was not what I discovered to be the case when the questions persisted. Their 'reasoning' usually had a 'short' in it... "Zap... zap... it's a faith thing"

I would, however, offer that as a Christian, my response would've been something to the effect of... "The Spirit can move on someone in an instant and the transformation into a new life can happen in a moment. The Spirit of God can be trusted to do this work. However, if one ever chooses to leave the faith, this is obviously 'not of God' and therefore it doesn't matter how long you 'struggle', it's never right to abandon God. Besides, the decision to accept Christ leads to eternal life, while the decision to reject Christ may lead to eternal damnation."

Another ‘mystery’ that I see now is that if faith is TOTALLY GIVEN freely by the will and movement of God alone, then whose responsibility is it when it goes away? Does God have the power to endow with faith, but we retain the power to actually loose it. The stories are many of those who have even actually TRIED to retain their faith, but lost it anyway. If God AND the individual will for it to be sustained and it goes away... Who done it? Perhaps it was ‘the reasoning mind.’ It was impossible for me to retain my faith and a reasoning mind. I ultimately choose the reasoning mind over ‘blind (ignorant… that is ‘ignoring the obvious’) faith.’

Anyway... it's all not supposed to make sense. It is impossible for myth and story to be consistent in the same ways that the laws of gravity and mathematics remain constant. There's nothing to figure out. You can beat your head against a wall long enough until you just decide it's not worth it... but I'm sure you've already figured this out.

Anonymous said...

Even if this happens a lot it's not something people are hugely aware of. So I think it's interesting and important to highlight this kind of hypocritical stance. Sounds like a lot of your friends and peers in this former church talk about compassion and human empathy, but fail to feel it when it comes to the crunch.

It's hard to face disparaging comments from peers and colleagues, let alone the disapproval of friends. Good luck.

nsfl said...

The impetus is on "getting saved" because the experience is almost always quite emotion-laden. The more people sit around and think about it, the less likely they are to plunge into the unknown. Alternatively, playing, "Softly and Tenderly" and pleading with their consciences (crafty that you tell a man he is lost and a sinner, and give God credit for "pulling the heartstrings"--the man will believe that lie that he has no conscience, and that it is the "Holy Spirit drawing") is the only way to get "sinners saved" it seems.

Is faith a gift from God, or a choice? Does God harden whom he hardens, or do people harden their own hearts?

How are you supposed to believe in Santa Clause when you wake up early that morning and catch your dad putting your toys together? Do you just tell yourself that, "if I try hard enough, I can believe it again"? Or is your faith irreparably destroyed by the weight of reality?

Those persons who hold their dying children, after months of chemotherapy and prayers and prayer services and pleading and repenting of their own sins (assuming they were transmitted to the child as a "curse"), how in the hell do they believe in a Sky Daddy who sat up there the whole time with his thumb up his ass as their child withered away and died, despite their faith that his promises were true?

What do you tell someone who has seen evidence that trumps yours? Believe anyway? Just say the prayer, even though you don't mean it? I think not.

Anonymous said...

Daniel Morgan said: how in the hell do they believe in a Sky Daddy who sat up there the whole time with his thumb up his ass as their child withered away and died, despite their faith that his promises were true?

Through faith. Faith in a life after this one. Faith to know that child will be seen by you again when you meet them in the next life. Faith to know that there are reasons why things happen. Some because they are directed by God and others because sin is in the world and things happen just because. When a girl is raped it is because she is raped by a human person that has their own agenda. God does not "save" the girl from this because He knows she can handle whatever she is given even to the point of death. God does not give (allow) us anything that we can not handle. And believe me, we can handle more then we think we can.

In the bible, Job lost his family not because God did it, but because God knew that he could handle the out come. Satan was the one that took away Job's family. When Satan wanted to kill Job, God did not allow it. And what happened? Job said, "Naked I came into the world, and naked I shall leave." Job realized that God is all powerful and that when Job came into the world he had nothing. No possessions. No family, no wife. So, if that is the case then what is his claim to all that is here on earth? Can he take it with him when he dies? No. Can he keep it forever? No. Job realized that all he had when he came into this world was God's promise that God would love Him no matter what he went through. And in the end what happened? He has some so called friends come to him and say, "This must have happened because you did something wrong." No, life happened. Life gets in the way sometimes and it's nobody's fault. People die. We are all appointed to die once. Would those parents have chose for their child to die if they knew that it was possible for this child to grow up and know nothing but misery? What if God told them that their child would grow up to be ridiculed, shamed, raped, beaten, and die alone without family or God. Do you think they might have agreed that death would be better then that? Maybe God knew her future if she stayed alive. Maybe by dying she could save someone else's soul that was headed down the wrong path. So many maybes from a people that do not know. But one thing is for sure, God knows. God knows exactly what happens to each of us and because of that God allows something's to happen to us. Some are just our choices from our sinful hearts or from the sinful hearts of another person. Sometimes the weather is just bad and that causes stuff to happen. You hear all of these people talking about global warming and what effects it will have later if we don't find a way to stop it. So, what if we do stop it? What if we find a way to change what happens? Does anyone know what will happen next? Do we know 100% that what would happen would not be worse? We don't. That is why we need to put our trust in the Lord and allow our faith in Him to be enough for each day. As we put our faith in God, the one who knows what will happen, read His word, seek His council and just allow ourselves to be open He will bring us to truth and joy.

Do we miss that child that died. Sure we will because we have grown to love that child. Is it a shame that the child had to die. From a human perspective, most certainly. From a God perspective, maybe not. What do we do to make up for this? We press on to the mark. We finish the race with our heads held high knowing that we have a God who loves us even when we do wrong. Isn't that how we love our children? Even when they do something wrong we love them. Does that stop us from disciplining them? No. Why? Because it is done out of love that we stop them from doing things that will harm them. We stop them from stealing out of love because we don't want them to get put in jail when they get older. We teach them to no do drugs because we love them. We teach them right from wrong. Why? Because we love them. God does that for us too. Right and wrong is spelled out all over His word in the bible. Jesus is explained in both the Old and New testaments. He reason for being was spelled out for many years by different authors from different backgrounds to tell us the most important thing that we need to know. God loves us. So much so that he let His only Son die on a cross so that our sins would be covered by God's own sacrifice.

That is love.

nsfl said...

Albert,

Nice sermon.

If you had an organ playing, "I Surrender All" I may have reconverted.

When a girl is raped it is because she is raped by a human person that has their own agenda.

And when a person's farm is flooded with a deluge and they lose all of their crops and they and their entire family starve to death...that happens because of the rain's own agenda? Apparently, yes:
Sometimes the weather is just bad and that causes stuff to happen.

So, in your mind Albert, God is still good for what reason? All of these things are somehow necessitated by what? What is God's justification? If you want to defend God, you don't get off the hook by just saying, "God knew what you could handle...we need to put our trust in the Lord..."

You need to tell me why Jessie Lunsford's will not to be raped and buried alive, and her parents will, and even, supposedly, God's own will, were all trumped by the will of that little shit that raped her repeatedly and buried her while she was still alive. You need to tell me how allowing that to happen is "good"--that the exercise of a pedophile's "free will" is "better" than the "allowing" of those same flood waters that could kill a harmless vagabond to instead kill the bastard who did that to her? Why didn't God let Hitler die of polio as a child, rather than one of the millions of children who would've NOT grown up to slaughter millions of people??

And on and on and on it goes...

God does not give (allow) us anything that we can not handle.

So, for the apostates, and those who lose their faith as I described above, did God just goof up, in "giving/allowing" more than their faith could handle?

Some love.

Anonymous said...

Daniel Morgan said: You need to tell me how allowing that to happen is "good"--that the exercise of a pedophile's "free will" is "better" than the "allowing" of those same flood waters that could kill a harmless vagabond to instead kill the bastard who did that to her?

If we did not have free will then we would not have a choice in anything we do. We would not be able to chose to worship God or not. We would me made to worship Him. If you were made to worship God would you like that any less then what that pedophile did? I’m not saying that what that pedophile did was good, I'm saying that because God gave us the choice to choose between right from wrong some people choose wrong. Bad things happen. The weather does do what it does. Is it fair in our eyes? No. Do I want to see people dying and starving because their house was destroyed? No. Do things sometimes happen to good people? Yes, I can contest to that a lot. But, who are we to say which would be better? This person should die over that person?

But, think of it this way. If we all got what we want because we feel we deserve it or because we believe we have a right to something then were would this world be? No right or wrong, just what I want. So then we have to ask ourselves who has more right then others? Do my rights come before your rights? Should you die so that I might live? Who knows what the future holds enough to know what direction things should happen. God does. God makes right choice even though we don't see it from our point of view.

We look at one instance in time. This girl getting raped. Is that good? No. But, we can look back in history and see that we sent many people to war to fight a cause that at the time they believed was the right thing to do. Were some of the reasons wrong? It some instances they were. Did they know that people would die for this cause? Yes. Who says that what happened to all those solders was the right thing? Should no one had died because we all have a right to live? Maybe we should never die because we don't believe it would be in my best interest. So now we have over population. We have famine because we have too many people living, fighting for what is left of the food. We all feel that we are justified in our thoughts, choice, or whatever. We all think that we know what is better for everyone, or worse just for ourselves because that would be helping me out. All in all what happens is life. We live our lives the best we can. We take the good with the bad. Does everything that is good happen because God makes it happen? No. God doesn't make someone else lose a $20 so that I can find it. That just happened. God does not have to be involved with every little detail that goes on everywhere.

God does what He feels is right. He does not do wrong. What He does or allows to happen may not seem right by us but who are we to question what God does or says? Who are we to know what is the right thing to do?

If my child falls and scrapes his knee do I rush over and help him up as I cry because I feel his pain? Maybe once in a while, right? But, we also allow our children to fall and pick themselves up. This builds character. This gives them a sense that falling down is not always the end of the world. Does that make us a bad parent because we don't rush to their aid? No. God does the same.

I always do something when I have an issue with something that I believe God has done. I put myself in His shoes. I think of my son and consider what I would do. Know, that being said, I can only get a small idea of what God would do because I can't see what the future holds. Sure, I can see that if my son does something that a certain outcome would happen but what about those areas that I can't know the outcome? I go with what I believe would be best. God knows the outcome of every situation. Because of that He always does the right thing. We can't know that because we do not sit at His level. We can only sit where we are and Hope, Have faith that God has our best interest at heart. And because He loves us we can rest assured that He does.


...for the apostates,...
Then we have to question did they really believe? I'm under the belief that once saved always saved. No one can take me out of the hands of God. Does that mean that others believed, gave themselves to God and then lost their way? No. This could only mean that their hearts were not truly right with believing in God. Does that mean they can't come back to God? No. God stands at the door and knocks. Should we always believe all the time? It would be nice, but because we are people born in sin, not perfect, we allow everyday issues to press our faith to the point where we question God. Is this right? I don't believe so. I believe this is done on the part of Satan as he plants seeds of doubt in our minds. We start to see that there are issues like Noah's ark that can't be explained. That someone should have died instead of another person. We tend to believe that everything needs to be explained for it to be real or justified. God now does not exist. Why? Not because He does not exist but because we have chosen to write Him out of our lives. What changed? Did God? No. We did. We made a choice. We decided that what we think is better then what God thinks. Me, all minuscule, knows better then God, All Mighty.

slaveofone said...

It's funny you should mention this "hurry up and believe" mentality versus a "don't hurry up and disbelieve" mentality. I've been an agnostic most of my life. This didn't go well with most in high school and college because somehow they had already spent all the time necessary to really explore the evidence and arguments and come to adequate conclusions. I was just as amazed by how quickly people made up their mind that there wasn't a God and Christianity wasn't true as I was by those who said there was a God and Christianity was true. I don't think anyone has a corner of the market in making quick decisions about things that should take serious time to explore evidences and arguments and engage with different perspectives and such.

When I decided to pursue truth, it took me five years of intense study and taking multitudes of courses on religion and philosophy and evolution that consumed every waking moment of my days in order to come to a conclusion about several very basic things: is there or isn't there a god, is there or isn't there Truth, etc. And I've spent the last decade since forming my beliefs--which are still changing and incomplete. It seems most people do not go to much effort to figure out most theological/philosophical issues. It appears you and I are the odd balls.

Speaking as a Christian, I don't have much to do with the organized religious institution. I went to a service a couple weeks ago for the first time in about a year and was so stunned by blatant anti-Semitism that I remembered why I don't go and have resumed my usual non-attendance. I would take anything in "church" with a grain (or more) of salt if you can stomach it (I can't). Most of what I see and hear in "church" is not historical Christianity, but a brand of "Christian culturalism". If you want to know how a Christian should act, you should look first and foremost at Yeshua.

nsfl said...

If we did not have free will then we would not have a choice in anything we do. We would not be able to chose to worship God or not. We would me made to worship Him.
This doesn't follow at all. If we were mindless slugs, or even if we were canines, would we "not have a choice in anything we do...be made to worship [God]?"

No. First, "free will" as you use it is nebulous. You seem to be confusing moral agency with physical freedom. In that sense, let's consider something:
I want to fly.
I want to push a button and destroy the whole earth.

Why did God not make me so that I can do those two things if I want to? Why did God not embed a machine gun inside my body, such that when I feel the urge to slaughter hundreds of people at a time, I could??????

God restricted human freedom

That is, you cannot claim that God hasn't already put certain restrictions on what you and I are able to do, by virtue of the design of our bodies and brains. Why is it so incomprehensible to you that we did not have to be as we are? My Saint Bernards were not invented by God. They were bred by man. I dare say that my Saints do not "worship" God or me. I dare say that when they get hungry, they choose to go eat. I also dare say that their lack of the "freedom" to even understand rape, or commit it, hardly makes them "inferior" creatures. In fact, even granting that "free will" is somehow worth the price of human evil [this still doesn't explain natural evil], did it have to be this way? That is, God could have made nothing, or God could have made no human beings at all. Neither of these options is somehow intrinsically less preferable to a God with no "need" to create anything, with a free will or not.

If you were made to worship God would you like that any less then what that pedophile did? I’m not saying that what that pedophile did was good, I'm saying that because God gave us the choice to choose between right from wrong some people choose wrong.
This makes no sense whatsoever.
First, God could reveal itself clearly to each and every human being without infringing upon their "freedom" to worship God or reject God. After all, God has certainly supposedly done so in the past, right? Paul? Moses? Etc.? For God to make itself known as well as we know the nose on our own faces is NOT the same thing as God "forcing" humans to serve itself.
Now, that said, if God chose to go down to the little shit that raped Jessie Lunsford RIGHT BEFORE he was going to choose to do it, and talk to him, and say, "please don't do that, you won't be happy and neither will she," would the little shit still have done it?

Better question: if God had shown Jessie, or her parents, in a dream, or just went down as an angel and told them face-to-face, what was going to happen that day...would that have somehow "infringed on the free will" of that little shit? No. It would have prevented something tragic from happening, without limiting human freedom, by giving a victim foreknowledge so that they need not suffer.

I can go on all day, Albert, and the verdict is the same: the problem of evil renders the idea of an all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing God as silly as Santa Claus. And you know it, as the logic is bulletproof. You just don't want to open your eyes and admit it.

Bad things happen. The weather does do what it does. Is it fair in our eyes? No.
Okay? Who controls the weather, Albert? When millions of children die in Africa every year due to simple starvation and dehydration, which both stem from the lack of rain on the continent, and the attendant lack of soil for agriculture, WHY? WHY? WHY? It sure as hell isn't fair if there actually was some God sitting up there with its thumb up its ass doing nothing. It sure as hell still isn't good that it happens, even though there is no god. But, it makes more sense in the latter case, since no miracle feeds billions of people every day, but instead, the work of farmers, the logic and work of those who have developed the technology to refrigerate and transport food, and the arbitrariness of the weather. Your god gets no thanks for our decreasing the number of starving persons on the globe substantially in the past 150 years. Your god sat on its ass for millions of years while humans struggled and died, and finally realized that spending their time offering sacrifices didn't get them anywhere, but spending their time doing science did.

Do I want to see people dying and starving because their house was destroyed? No.
Okay, so if you had the power to prevent it, as you say your god does, would you stand idly by, thumb in ass, and let it happen?

Do things sometimes happen to good people? Yes, I can contest to that a lot. But, who are we to say which would be better? This person should die over that person?
How about neither? How about, if you have all the power in the world, you feed every person by ensuring that rain falls where it needs to, and that you reveal the secret of fertilizer to them, and the Haber process to make it, thousands of years ago, rather than making them figure it out for themselves? How about you tell them how to develop refrigeration, and engines, and supermarkets, and civilizations, instead of giving them a bunch of arbitrary and stupid laws that helped no one [see the entire friggin' Torah, basically]. How about you quit caring, if you're god, about whether these creatures are giving you enough of their attention, and you *stop hiding in the clouds* and start giving them some of yours?

Your god doesn't exist. If it does, it's evil.

But, think of it this way. If we all got what we want because we feel we deserve it or because we believe we have a right to something then were would this world be? No right or wrong, just what I want.
Albert, this is a total non sequitur, and has NOTHING to do with the problem of evil. We all obviously DON'T get what we justly deserve, because every human being deserves not to be raped and buried alive, or to slowly starve to death for lack of rain.

So then we have to ask ourselves who has more right then others? Do my rights come before your rights?
We are all equal. No one's rights should be infringed for another's.

Should you die so that I might live?
How about we both live? And help each other to do so?

Who knows what the future holds enough to know what direction things should happen. God does. God makes right choice even though we don't see it from our point of view.
If this is the result of God's "right choice" then I'd hate to see what would happen if your God made a "wrong choice"...I guess the whole planet would explode, eh? There is no God directing the affairs of men, only men directing their own, thinking that God is helping them.

We look at one instance in time. This girl getting raped. Is that good? No. But, we can look back in history and see that we sent many people to war to fight a cause that at the time they believed was the right thing to do. Were some of the reasons wrong? It some instances they were. Did they know that people would die for this cause? Yes. Who says that what happened to all those solders was the right thing? Should no one had died because we all have a right to live? Maybe we should never die because we don't believe it would be in my best interest. So now we have over population. We have famine because we have too many people living, fighting for what is left of the food.
Albert, this is a rambling, incoherent argument. If your God existed, what need would there be for humans to go to war? This God could meet all of their needs and help them to understand each other and get along with each other. And, your God could regulate fertility such that conception didn't occur more often than the planet could support. If your God existed, it could rain manna down on everyone who was starving, rather than supposedly doing it once for one group of people, then sitting on its thumb for the rest of time and humanity as they starved to death...If your God existed, things would not be as they are. That is how I know that your God does not.

nsfl said...

We all feel that we are justified in our thoughts, choice, or whatever. We all think that we know what is better for everyone, or worse just for ourselves because that would be helping me out.
So Albert, are you contesting that it would be better if no one starved to death, or contracted AIDS [which your God supposedly created], or polio, flu, dysentery...etc etc etc [ditto on god making disease]? Are you contending that our value of "people shouldn't have to die in agony" is wrong? Do you have any reasonable argument to support that contention?

Okay, so if you agree, then the question is, "so why does God let them?"

The answer is, "God doesn't, because God doesn't exist"

All in all what happens is life. We live our lives the best we can. We take the good with the bad. Does everything that is good happen because God makes it happen? No. God doesn't make someone else lose a $20 so that I can find it. That just happened. God does not have to be involved with every little detail that goes on everywhere.
I agree, bc God isn't there!

God does what He feels is right. He does not do wrong. What He does or allows to happen may not seem right by us but who are we to question what God does or says? Who are we to know what is the right thing to do?
And this is what Paul said in Romans 9. The right thing to do is not to allow people to suffer unnecessarily. It's a simple premise, Albert. Your God apparently doesn't agree, or it doesn't exist.

If my child falls and scrapes his knee do I rush over and help him up as I cry because I feel his pain? Maybe once in a while, right? But, we also allow our children to fall and pick themselves up. This builds character.
So, God taught "character" to the six year old I met with leukemia who died last week? If your child was about to fall and land on its teeth, and bust a bunch of them out, and scrape all the skin off its face, and break its jaw and skull, and you saw it about to happen...

...and you did nothing...

...what kind of father are you? Are you "building character" in your child?

This gives them a sense that falling down is not always the end of the world. Does that make us a bad parent because we don't rush to their aid? No. God does the same.
God lets kids fall down and die. Some dad.

I always do something when I have an issue with something that I believe God has done. I put myself in His shoes. I think of my son and consider what I would do. Know, that being said, I can only get a small idea of what God would do because I can't see what the future holds.
Stop right there.

What you're saying is, "it makes no sense when I try to understand what God allows," and instead of admitting this, you make excuses for GOd! You say, "well, there must be SOME reason that God allowed this," but WHY do you do that? Why "trust" a God who has given you absolutely no reason to do so? Empty, unfalsifiable, unsupported promises of heaven and salvation mean little when we watch our child wither away of cancer. If God loves us, then this God won't sit on its ass and watch it happen and say, "um, this is good for you."

Sure, I can see that if my son does something that a certain outcome would happen but what about those areas that I can't know the outcome? I go with what I believe would be best. God knows the outcome of every situation.
So why did God let Hitler be born? Why not prevent the sperm and egg from fusing there? Did the sperm have a "free will"? Did the egg? Did God have to honor that couple's desire to make a baby? Obviously not, since God sure as hell doesn't help a lot of Christian/Muslim/etc couples who want to conceive and can't and pray and pray and still can't, so medical science helps them, where their God can't and won't.

Because of that He always does the right thing. We can't know that because we do not sit at His level.
And this is exactly a contradiction. You can't say that God does the right thing and that we can't KNOW IT. What you can say is, "I hope that GOd does the right thing...I think/trust/have faith..."

We can only sit where we are and Hope, Have faith that God has our best interest at heart. And because He loves us we can rest assured that He does.
Or, we can sit where we are and say, "does this make sense?" If not, then why should we believe it? Why should we believe that God saw it fit to bless Hitler's parents with the child who would grow up to lead a slaughter against 6 million Jews and millions of others in WW2, while not seeing it fit to bless a couple of praying Xians with a baby??? It's absurd and beyond belief, Albert, to believe this.

...for the apostates,...
Then we have to question did they really believe?
Yes I did, Albert. You don't have to believe me, I don't really care. But if you don't, then it's just your way of coping with what I proved wrong -- you said that God never gives us anything we can't handle. I pointed out that apostates are proof that you're wrong. Instead of admitting that you're wrong, you say, "they didn't believe in the first place."

I'm under the belief that once saved always saved. No one can take me out of the hands of God. Does that mean that others believed, gave themselves to God and then lost their way? No. This could only mean that their hearts were not truly right with believing in God.
Whatever helps you to sleep at night.

Does that mean they can't come back to God? No.
Back??? You just said that they weren't God's to begin with?

God stands at the door and knocks. Should we always believe all the time? It would be nice, but because we are people born in sin, not perfect, we allow everyday issues to press our faith to the point where we question God. Is this right? I don't believe so.
I agree !

Reality, in other words, has a way of making faith difficult, because your God is so uninterested in helping us when it could. Your God sits on its ass as we cry in misery when it could've prevented the misery. If your God loves us, and its love is what gives us the stuff we deal with, then I don't want the love.

I believe this is done on the part of Satan as he plants seeds of doubt in our minds. We start to see that there are issues like Noah's ark that can't be explained.
Because they're fairy tales, not reasonable, and there is no reason to beleive them. Do you believe in the miracles of Mohamed? Why or why not? If not, why don't you apply that same reasoning to the Bible?

That someone should have died instead of another person. We tend to believe that everything needs to be explained for it to be real or justified. God now does not exist. Why? Not because He does not exist but because we have chosen to write Him out of our lives. What changed? Did God? No. We did. We made a choice. We decided that what we think is better then what God thinks. Me, all minuscule, knows better then God, All Mighty.
This is circular reasoning, Albert. You presuppose that an almighty, all-knowing God exists, so you can't question what it does.

I question your premise, and apply reductio ad absurdum -- to show you how absurd your premises are: if what you believed were true, we wouldn't experience what we experience, we wouldn't have the evil we know in the world, and we would be asked to take it all on blind faith, esp things like Noah's Ark, by some God who supposedly loves us and wants to know us, but doesn't have the time to dispatch an angel to help us understand and believe...

Your God is unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

Daniel Morgan said... "We are all equal. No one's rights should be infringed for another's.

Whos says that your rights shouldn't infringe on mine? What if Jessie's rights infringed on that guy's rights to have what he felt was his? Who is to say what is right? What is wrong?

Daniel Morgan said... How about we both live? And help each other to do so?

You say this and at the same time you have passed judgement on a man for raping this girl. Again, you pass judgement on this man without understanding what he believed his "right's" were. For all you know, he believed he had a right to do whatever he was doing.

Where do you get your moral measuring stick from?

If you look at this from the girls moral perspective the man had no right to do what he did. And then if you look at the man's moral perspective he had every right to do what he did.

If I can't "infringe" on the mans rights then what makes him wrong? And what makes me right for stopping him?

You say God is evil. What is your measuring stick?

What is it that you are comparing God to that you to say He is evil?

For something to be considered good there has to be an opposite equal that says something is evil.

Love is good, murder is bad. But wait, if a man rapes someone then he should die. But that is bad so we can't do that. Let's put him in jail til he dies. No, that would infringe on his rights to be free.

We become a lawless nation that anyone can do anything because we don't want to infringe on anyones rights.

Your moral standard is not my moral standard. And if we are "equal" then we need to be measured by a high enough authority that we can all hold the same moral measuring tape to judge our actions.

Where does that measuring tape come from?

Mine comes from God.

You might say that God is evil because He allows people to die.

God sees it all from a different perspective. His way's are not our ways.

When you "judge" Him from a human perspective He will never live up to what you expect because you expect Him to make everyone live in perfect peace all the time.

Oh but wait, that is not exactly true. Because if someone is keeping up with the Jones and you are not then that would mean that God is evil because someone is making more then you. We just can't have that. Everyone is equal. Everyone should be making the same as everyone else. I'm sure that you take your check and compare it to everyone you know and say, "You know what Jim, I noticed that your check was smaller then mine so I"m going to give you a portion of mine so that we will be equal." Yeah, I'm sure you do that. Because everyone's equal right?

What about the homeless people? Do you invite them into your home and say,"Please take what you want. Make yourselves at home." We are all equals here. What is mine is yours. And what is yours is mine. Equals all the way. But, the first time you cross my idea of what is right then you are no longer equal. I have the right to judge you.

Round and round. Where does it stop?

You have to have a measuring stick to say that something is right or wrong. Where does that measuring stick come from?

Where?

It can't be from man because we would never nail it down as to what is right or wrong. What is right to you may be wrong to me.

So, where do we measure from?

You expect God to just come out and say "Here I Am." And for everyone to drop down on thier knee's and say, "Now that I have seen you with my own eye's I will believe." Is that true?

If God came to you and shown Himself would you worship Him? Would you forget all of your wants and needs and follow Him? Would you put aside your hopes and dreams and say, "I will follow God."?

I doubt it. Why? Because you would sit there and try to explain away the fact that God reveled Himself to you just like this whole website is doing.

We Christian's come here because we want to tell you that God does exist. And He does. God is alive and living in my life. Does that make me perfect? No way, I"m still a sinful man. Do I need to worry about my sins? No, why? Because I have been forgiven and I know that in my next life I will be standing with Jesus (my measuring stick) and I know that he will tell me good job good and faithful son.

You demand that God does this or that and you will not believe in Him until He does. Well, why should He do anything you want Him to do to prove He is God? Who are you to depand something from the one who created you?

No matter what happens you will never believe in God. Not because He does not exist, but because you don't want to have to follow someone other then yourself. Freedom. Who has more freedom? You or me? I have the freedom to know that when this earth passes away I will be with Christ in my new and improved body. Where will you be? I suppose since there is not a God you believe that once you die you just become worm food.

Yumm. Now that sounds like something to live for, right?

I am here on this earth to do good things for all the people around me. To do the best job I can in my work place so that people will pat me on the back because someday, yes, someday I will be gone and they can say, "Who, Daniel was such a good worker. Oh well, let's all get back to work now."

Wow, to be remembered so that other people that knew me while I was alive can remember me and then when they die people can remember them... for a while. Sounds like a lot to look forward to, don't you think?

I have a different look at it then you might. I believe that because I asked Jesus into my heart that God has forgiven me of all of my sins, past, present, and future. And when I die, I will stand before God and He will show me my life. I will see all the good things I did. I will see all the bad things I did. And God will say, "What do you have to say for yourself?" And Jesus will step in and say, "This one is covered by my sacrifice on the cross. My blood covers his sins." God will then let me into His kingdom where I have a life that I wil live without pain, without suffering, no more tears. That is what I have to look forward too.

Now, If you choose to continue to believe as you do there is nothing I will ever say that would change your mind. We could go round and round answering each other's questions and still not being able to agree on anything because you have already choosen which side you want to be on just as I have.

What makes sense to me can never be explained in anyway for you to understand. I say things that sound foolish to you because I have faith in a God that will bring me into a new life when this one ends. You on the other hand refuse to believe in Him so you continue to use logic when logic does not bind my God. My God works outside of human reasoning. My God confounds the intellegent people of this world and shows the simple people of this world Himself.

With all you logic yo can not tell me what happens when we die. Why? Because everyone that has died has left this earth and can't tell us what happens. We have to believe that there is an "afterlife". You can't do that with logic.

I have faith. Faith is not explainable. Faith can not be learned. Faith is not something I can give you. Faith is stepping into the unknown and understanding that you will not fall. Logic does not allow for that to happen. Logic will not allow you to take that step without knowing for sure there is another step.

I took that leap of faith over 10 years ago and I still believe. Not becuase I haven't seem my share of sorrows. Not because I have'n't seen my share of people in the church that fail to do the "right" things. Not because every Christian I have met treated me with kindness,(believe me when I say that there a lots of them out there that are not kind.) I'm sure you know them too.

I still have my faith because God is alive in my life. God does not allow all of the sorrows of this world to pull me from His hand. I have hope in a better place. I new life. The one after this one. I don't live for this life, I live for my next life.

You can have that hope too. It's a matter of faith. No logic will help you. No answers from me will get you there.

You continue to live your life of questions and just know that I'm sitting here with the answer. God is the answer. God is everything. God is that little hole in your heart wanting to be filled with understanding as to why.

We are all equal in the eyes of God.

He measures us the same. I could never get into heaven just as you can't on our own.

My sins are no different to God then the sins of that man that raped that girl. A lie from me is the same as rape to God. Because God does not look at them from our human perspective. A sin is a sin. I deserve to die because I have lied about something just as that man deserves to die for rape.

The only way I know I'm going to a better place when I die is because of what Jesus Christ did for me on that cross. He died so that I might live.

Daniel, my heart goes out to you. I really do hope you find the answers you are looking for.

Regards,
Albert