Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahha.

Hahahhahahahahahhahhahaha.

Hahahhaahhaahahahhahahahahahahhahhaha.

Ok, ok, I think I'm done.

No, wait.

Hahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahaha.

Hahahaha.

Ha.

Ha.

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

And some never get it.

What? I was just delighting in the lord. LOL.

! boy Tex you are a nut!! [hugs]


OK, Jythier, this is all good, and me being of the Christian faith agree with you about how we, me included (once upn a time) think that we have to really be someone else, in other words, give up our present lives, lifestyle, whatever, to serve him. That's the reason why so many of us fail. And I don't know why the pastors and the people in the churches, or greastians as we Jamdowners call some of them, (for a good reason too!lol!) tell people who want to be a part of their flock, hey, you can't be you to serve God. It is wrong and it's why they always backslide! [rolls up sleeves, fists up, to fight with those fanatical ones who will disagree with me!]


I agree that God wants a relationship with us. I also know that we can't have it both ways cause he won't wait forever.

I had a pastor once that instead of Ramon noodles used decayed meat.

He said that many are content to go to the back of a restaurant and eat out of the dumpster. They pass right on by the front door to the restaurant only eyeing that big ol' green dumpster in the back.

There, they find some raw, spoiled meat and eat that and think they have been fed to the max, not knowing that just a few feet away is a nice side of fresh beef waiting for them and it's free. If they only knew. But since they have never had the real thing they are content with the spoiled and rotted because they don't know the difference.

That's how I was before I came to Christ. He said if we came to him we'd have abundant life. We think we do until we meet him and then we know our lives before paled in comparison.....sort of like the bad meat with all the blood drained out of it.

"OK, Jythier, this is all good, and me being of the Christian faith agree with you about how we, me included (once upn a time) think that we have to really be someone else, in other words, give up our present lives, lifestyle, whatever, to serve him."

I think what happens is as you serve Him, you realize how much better that is than what you were doing before. So you change to reflect that. You shouldn't change and deny yourself pleasure without replacing it with the pleasure of God.

"I had a pastor once that instead of Ramon noodles used decayed meat."

That's an even better example.

Well, that leaves Lula left to respond. I wonder what Catholics think about this? Lula's Mom, can Lula come out and play?

God wants a relationship with YOU, very badly. Not only are you denying yourself the pleasure of knowing God, but God the pleasure of knowing you!

Well I thought from your previous articles that God already knew everything. I am a subset of everything, so that means he must already know me. But allowing your contradiction, I am curious about something.

I read in several places in the bible where God appears to so and so, and tells them such and such. Very cool. It was direct. He didn't tell them by making leaves fall off a tree in a certain way...he actually showed up on the scene and spoke directly. Supposedly.

So I'm curious - to those of you that spend a lot of time with this. If he's so interested in a relationship and is trying to get my attention so bad, why doesn't he just drop by and say so? What changed? Why not just go on World News Tonight and say "Listen folks, I know there is some confusion, which I gather from the fact that most of you are killing/insulting/condescending to/or otherwise just being a silly twit to one another in some way right now, so I just wanted to drop by and straighten it out. I'm God, and I can do that for you. Easy peasy and without lots of guess work and doubt which not even the brightest of you would be able to get right every single time, and since I care, and since YOUR actions speak louder than your words to me, well I figured I should put up or shut up and do the same."

What gets preached is that when the almighty finally does deign to make an appearance, he's gonna be lopping the heads off of the people who didn't "see" without any chance of us saying "Ah...ok. The source! Finally! Mind if I ask a few questions? It's that inquisitive thing YOU GAVE ME, which I really appreciate, by the way. That thing you said in revelations about not trusting people really had me nervous. I wasn't sure what to think, and definitely not who to believe, and with all that psychology stuff on the Internet, I wasn't really sure that what I thought I thought was actually really what I thought. I hope you'll accept my apology...I wasn't trying to be a dumbass, but your clues are really obscure, and honestly, the whole story doesn't make a lot of sense to a human. I mean why would sending your son to die fix everything? What is the cosmic equation that makes the suffering of one man in blood cure transgressions in all others provided they simply believe it all went down that way? How does a guy pay for sins? Can I do it too? Can I pay for some sins by dying really painfully? I wouldn't mind doing that if I knew how it worked first. Is there a teller window where you just let open a vein and suffer for a while? And what about all the people that came before him? They're just screwed, I guess...or do they get grandfathered? And if he had to be sent to "fix" everything, doesn't that mean you screwed up? Oh oh...you INTENTIONALLY screwed up and knew you'd be sending Jesus to fix it all...just later. For some reason. I'd like to say that makes sense, but thanks to this brain you gave me...um...nope. Not one little bit. Sorry.

"Anyway God, thanks for dropping by. I know someone of your inestimable power is pretty drained dry if he doesn't get lots of worship, and I guess I haven't really been doing that. Sorry that I didn't feed you, unless I have been - in my own way - but what I'm told is that my own way isn't good enough. Being perfect is a real burden, I'm sure, especially if you don't have scores and scores of your imperfect creations drooling all over you 48/7 - not to mention giving lots of money to you, because You know that things are tight right now, economically. Sucks to be you dude. No one worships me, and I'm ok with that. Isn't that ironic? Have you considered a 12 step group? I'm sure you can break the addiction of having someone fawn over you. I must say - that "free will so I can be your worship slave" thing is a funny one - in a tragic kind of way. I actually thought you'd be just fine letting me tool about my day living the life you gave me. There are probably some good psychological articles about this - you could google it - but...hahaha...silly me, you already know that. Sorry."



Sorry Jythier...I can't imagine a needy God OR a stupid one, but I'll try harder.

Pblbltltltlt.

Not.

"Well I thought from your previous articles that God already knew everything. I am a subset of everything, so that means he must already know me. But allowing your contradiction, I am curious about something."

Well, the pleasure of knowing you that I was speaking of is actually the pleasure of hanging out with you, speaking with you and just generally having a relationship. As you point out, in the original post it is phrased incorrectly. Consider this a correction of that. He does know everything. Thank you for allowing that contradiction.

"I read in several places in the bible where God appears to so and so, and tells them such and such. Very cool. It was direct. He didn't tell them by making leaves fall off a tree in a certain way...he actually showed up on the scene and spoke directly. Supposedly."

How often did that occur? Who did he appear to?

Also, he sent His Son to show us who the Father was, had a book written about it, and published and put in hotel rooms. Do you really want Him to come back again, every 100 years or so, just so the people who haven't seen Him can get a look?

It's just like what Isreal went through. God would appear and do a great miracle, for the history books, and then a couple generations later, Isreal was off worshipping Baal again. So God would appear, do some other miracle, and they'd be okay for a few more generations...

So, he sent this Jesus fellow, His Son even, who was all God and all Man at the same time. He did not Sin, thus he was a suitable sacrifice for the sins of everyone else. Why is everyone else not a suitable sacrifice? Well, they've sinned. They already have the penalty of death over them. Jesus did not, so it was an actual sacrifice, not a penalty. And so, His sacrifice paid the penalty for anyone who would accept the gift.

Now, you either do or do not accept this gift, that you have been told about and know about. If you do accept it, you're forgiven, and can start that relationship. If not, why would God want anything to do with you? You don't care about His Son, that He sent for you. It was a really big thing to God, you know. He didn't just wake up one day and say, Hey, I think I'll kill my Son for the sins of the world... no, it was the plan from the beginning, THE PLAN, the big thing, the whole reason the world was created - to show how much He loves you, and how great He is.

Rejection of this gift is the worst possible thing you could do to God. Basically, you could spend your whole day singing about how great He is, but if you don't believe He'd send His Son for you, you're saying "You're not THAT great, God."

As for the beginning of the world, well, they were specifically told to not eat one thing. The snake came by and said that if they didn't obey God, they would become like God. They chose, of their own will, to eat. The snake basically taught them envy, to want what God had. Well, look where listening to the snake got us. The snake is still active, too, and is in direct opposition to God. I bet Adam and Eve didn't listen to the snake after that, and obeyed what God had said.

How were they saved in the time before Jesus? Well, because Jesus hadn't come yet, they were saved by their faith in God himself. Them saying "You're great, God!" was enough, because God HADN'T sent His Son yet. At least, that's what I believe.

This reasoning would suggest that saying "You're great, God" would still be good enough. And if there was a way out, such a simple one, I might add, before Jesus, then why bother? It's just as easy to say "You're great, God" and to say "I accept your gift."

What I was trying to understand (which isn't fair, really, because there's actually no way for you to explain this - whether you admit it or not) is how does the sacrifice of a sinless person fix everything. And I'm kinda looking for something like math, here. Or logic, maybe. Some metaphysical answer that explains why that fixes things. I know you can't do it...you'd have to be omniscient, and though the way you, and several other thumpers, write seems to indicate you DO know things that you couldn't possibly know, I'll happily pop that little bubble. You don't. If it was easily knowable, everyone would already know - especially the people that LIKE to logic their way through things as opposed to the "Oh you want an answer why? Well because it says so, right here...duh" crowd.

By the way, all my religious ideals are part of a nested "if" statement.

If this is true,
then this
else if this is true,
then this
else if...etc...

I say this because I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I'm not anti-christian. I'm anti people claiming to know things that they can't possibly know for sure and then parading that as if it is objective truth. It's very SUBjective, but it's never peddled that way.

Science will admit that it does not have the capability to prove that something is true. It only has the capability to prove that everytime an event has been witnessed (objective) that a certain thing has been true, but it always allows that one day, observations might show that this particular thing is NOT always true.

I often wonder when religion will at least admit that they can't prove something is true. And actually, I believe religion as a whole knows that, but its zealots pander subjective interpretations of things as revealing absolute truths all the time. With only one observation. Words in a book. It's flimsy, man, and I'll suggest to you, and I hope you take this with the humility that is intended - when mankind starts to treat religion like science - with observation and objective argument, I think it will be far closer to the real mind of God than it is now. Someone that creates a universe just doesn't seem to be capable of the irrational to me, and I can't imagine he would want us to believe what we believe using irrational concepts - like...sigh...sorry..."faith."

IF there's a God,
THEN I must learn everything I can about this creation in order to truly appreciate it and by doing so, appreciate him AND I can't do that by closing my mind to observational data (like fossil records)

IF I am not doing that,
THEN I am wrong.

That's my take.

"how does the sacrifice of a sinless person fix everything"

The penalty for sin is death, according to the Bible. If this is true, then we are all condemned to death.

Also according to the Bible, Jesus did not sin. If this is true, then he was NOT condemned to death.

According to the Bible, Jesus gave his own life willingly, as a sacrifice that would atone for ALL sins. Because he was God, this sacrifice was big enough for ALL sins, not just one person's sins.

So, it wasn't just the sacrifice of a sinless person, but the sacrifice of God too.

Sacrifices atoning for sins are seen throughout the Old Testament. However, before Jesus, it was an every year thing, with a lamb (iirc). Now Jesus came and made the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

That is my understanding of it. I can't prove the ifs from anywhere else but the Bible. But, the Plan makes perfect sense logically. While some just say "it works 'cuz God says so" it is also able to be reasoned out logically.

I feel like I just repeated what I've already said there, with a little added, so maybe that's not quite what you're looking for.

I can't prove to you that God exists. I couldn't even if he came down from heaven on a chariot, brought me up there, hung out with me for a Saturday, and brought me back down to Earth. One can be absolutely sure of something, and have something proven to them, while not being able to prove it to others. It's incredibly frustrating, because I KNOW it's the truth, and it's been proven to me completely, but I can't prove it to you, because you have different experiences than I do. You'd probably write me off as a nut if I said I hung out with God last Saturday, in heaven, regardless of what actually happened.

He didn't, but that doesn't change the fact that it is not provable to all while it is provable to some.

So, I absolutely know, without a doubt, the Jesus Christ died for our sins, and that the Bible is the absolute Word of God, and that if you don't believe that you're going to Hell. I don't know what Hell really means, but I know it's bad. So I do go around, with no 'if' in front of the truth. And I'm not ashamed of it.

People I'm commanded to love are ending up in Hell everyday, and you want me to pretend that it's a maybe? I don't THINK so. No way. People deserve better than that.

It's incredibly frustrating, because I KNOW it's the truth

No you don't. You BELIEVE it's the truth, but you do not know it. There's no way for you to know it because for some reason God stopped making personal appearances. So odd.

I love discussing this, but we can't as long as you confuse beliefs with facts.