The Judgments of God – Introduction

I think it's worth putting a little context into the points you made, Valiant. Now you say in your post that Christians are looked down upon for doing their biblical duty for judging that which their doctrine condemns (ie everything ungodly). But people's aversion to such judgment has nothing to do with culture being depraved or a government being more or less secular. It has to do with simple human nature.

Most people, normal people, don't like it when someone comes along and judges them to be wicked and wrong based on prejudice and stereotypes. It dehumanizes and degrades other people, plus it can constitute being an outright jerk at times. So when you make sweeping generalizations about non-believers, expect people to take it pretty personally. And expect them to react negatively. Don't expect them to just fall to their knees, start crying, and swear their undying devotion to your god. Expect them to be offended, appalled, and in some cases downright confrontational.

It really has nothing to do with one group being righteous and the other group being lost. It's human interaction and it's basic pretty much across cultures. Now I've read some posts from you that I do find offensive as a non-believer, but I try not to make a broad based judgment about all Christians based on it. I try to judge others solely on their individual merits. So when you talk about Christians being scrutinized for casting judgment, don't be so surprised. It's like that for everybody. Christians just draw more attention because they're so dominant and so numerous. It's that simple.

Jack, perhaps you should read the article before commenting.

The article has to do with Christians compromising the Biblical Gospel to make it less offensive to the men of this world. They do this in the belief that men are not so dead in sin and in rebellion against God that they cannot exercise their own will and take the first steps toward salvation. The watered down version they think is more palatable to men.

As the reasoning goes, how can a man be saved when he is told that he has no power within himself and that he must plead with Christ for mercy?

But Christ is all powerful to save the weak and helpless sinner who comes to Him in simple faith. To underestimate the lostness of men is to underestimate the power of the gospel message. The whole gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.

Did you read Augustine on 2 Corinthians 2:15-16? This view of the apostolic message is what is so offensive to men and in the fear of men has been left off in many churches.

Valiant, I did read the article and I'm sorry if I didn't get from it what you were intending to convey. But this is what I gathered and if you wish for people to take it a different way, perhaps you should consider trying to make your writing clearer.

Now compromising the bible to make it less offensive is only natural within the context of my previous comments. We have to remember that these texts were written during the Bronze Age. Culture has changed since then. What wasn't offensive in those days can be offensive in the modern age and vice versa. It's also worth considering that not watering the faith down decreases from it's appeal. It's a common sociological phenomenon when it comes to religion. When it's more stringent, it gets a lot fewer converts. Here's a site with some pretty good information on the subject.

http://mysite.verizon.net/wsbainbridge/dl/conversion.htm

Now you say Christ is all powerful and can save any helpless sinner that comes to him, but when you put this in the kind of ridged context of the biblical doctrine (which if you remember is a Bronze Age doctrine) it comes with all sorts of cavetes. Plus, telling people they're dead in sin is like breaking them down and attacking their self-esteem, so don't be too surprised when some are averse to it and why others have moved away from it.

I'm still reading up on Augustine, but without bringing apologetics into the discussion let's focus on what this sort of doctrine you're talking about denotes. Ridged, uncompromising, complicated religion is difficult to understand. And you always fear what you don't understand.

Jack, thank you for your response. It is classic worldly wisdom as from Bunyan’s character in Pilgrim’s Progress by the name of Worldly Wise Man.

Some things like the condition of man and the results of the fall and God’s promise of redemption do not change. That is why the Bible transcends time and culture. Men are sinners in need of sovereign grace. Without grace they always tend towards idolatry. Darwinism is the ultimate idolatry because it has ‘eaten up’ grace, to borrow from Mr. Schaeffer.

Can you see how the predestination doctrine we have discussed applies here? Salvation is of God. The means of grace, that is, how God applies the redemption accomplished in Christ, is the preaching of the gospel. The gospel message accomplishes its purpose in the salvation of the elect and in the condemnation of the reprobate.

The first things of grace is to feel the weight of our sin and our need of mercy. Self-esteem must be destroyed and replaced by the realization of who we are in Christ. This is the essence of entering into the kingdom of God. Men cannot enter without denying self…

“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me…” [Matthew 16; Mark 8; Luke 9]

I don't deny that the stories and the messages of the bible are the same. Stories like the Genesis story, the Exodus, and Jesus's crucifixion all have similar themes as other great stories of the ages like the Illiad, the Maharbarta, and the Analects do. It's the details and the moral standards that are thrust into a modern context where the problems arise.

You paint a false dichotomy between your strict version of reformed Christianity and Darwinism (which isn't even a real faith or ideology). It would be more accurate to say that the polar opposite of Christianity is the modern Church of Satan, which actually preaches that people should worship themselves as gods. Evolution, science, and reason do nothing of the sort.

Now going back to predestination, I don't see how preaching the gospel applies when by definition it is only for those who were born saved already. If god predestines people, why bother preaching? Wouldn't it just in turn be reciting the already accepted doctrine to one another, further reinforcing already held beliefs?

Saying self-esteem must be destroyed and people broken down sounds a bit too much like psychological torture. Look up tactics for interrogators. You'll see it's the same premise. In the modern age, this kind of force is looked down upon. That is why modern religions seek to persuade, not break down, converts that their lives will be better. If it is done out of love instead of fear, the convert is more successful.

Please check out that link to see more. I was willing to look over the references you gave. Would you please extend the same courtesy?

As I have said before, I know your world view because I was born into it. Now that Christ has delivered me from its captivity, why would I want to go back to bondage? Psycho-babble and its humanistic explanations of supernatural regeneration are of no interest to me. It denies the gospel and therefore denies the testimony of Jesus Christ.

We are warned to beware the wiles of the evil one; ‘wiles’ is plural. He is more subtle than to deceive all with open Satan worship. Darwinism achieves the same goal of drawing men deeper into their own depravity.

So you're not even going to try and look into the information I presented? I assure you there is nothing in it that directly attacks your religion. It makes no claim on it. It's not even trying to get you to break away from it. It is just offers explanations on the nature of conversion based on some research in the social sciences. And a good deal of it applies to our discussion about what leads people to god.

I went out of my way to read Romans 9 and 10 as well as Matthew 23 as you suggested so I could better understand predestination. And I like to think I do now. But you're not even trying to better understand my points. You just flat out reject them, writing it off as psycho-babble without even looking at it. That's being unreasonable and prejudice, plain and simple.

I'm not in any way trying to attack your god or convince you to revert to atheism. I would never do that to someone, regardless of what they believed. It's your claims I counter. You say Darwinism is a real ideology when it isn't. You say it opposes your god when it doesn't. You don't assert this with any proof or rational understanding. You just state it and believe it blindly. Henceforth, you will never gain a greater understanding. And as I said before, you will always fear irrationally or otherwise what you don't understand.

Jack, your getting close to a working definition of depravity...

"you will never gain a greater understanding...you will always fear irrationally or otherwise what you don't understand"

And I thought you were interested in predestination.

I was interested in predestination, Valiant. I still am. But that is not what this conversation is about. You're deflecting my points. What I'm trying to do is make a point about aspects concerning belivers and converts. I'm making no statement on the devine or doctrine. I'm asserting a point and citing it with a link to back up my claim. You do not do anything to counter my claim or debate the point in the article as we did with Romans and Matthew. You completely scoff it off and avoid the debate entirely.

How is it that seeking to understand different points of view is depraved? How is living in ignorance and dogma any more righteous? I do not understand why you will not even try to understand something you clear don't. What is the point? Is there one? I would appreciate your input.

Please reread the No! post...humanistic explanations of supernatural regeneration are of no interest to me. They deny the gospel and therefore denies the testimony of Jesus Christ.

How do you know that I am unfamiliar with these things? Liberalism affects everything,m including theology.

the left's view of America's past and present are also rejected. The left points out the hypocrisy and violence used to advance domination rather than justice. But because the left points out sin in America, it is relegated and marginalized.

True, the political left doesn't point to the remedy of sin, but they do show sin that America needs to repent of.

To quote a friend of mine, 'hogwash'. Consider the words of Christ. Is the Left for or against the building of the kingdom?

"Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad." [Matthew 12:29-30]

Even in my disappointment (NOT hatred or anger or dislike) you can still cause me to smile.

All or nothing mindsets that use one litmus test promote ideology over fact. Just because the Left is not that into spreading the Kingdom of God by preaching the Gospel, does not, and this is implied by Romans 2, have legitimate concerns for equality and justice. And just because someone wants to preach the Gospel to the world, does not mean their social agenda is just. Somehow assumption plays a key role when people make such implications.

I think what describes the reality we see is how Chomsky described King. When King was battling the KKK and corrupt Alabama sheriffs, people we were suppose to hate, then he popularity grew. But when King's criticisms came closer to home, such as when he battled for economic justice for the Memphis trash collectors or preached against the Vietnam war as being immoral, then his popularity dropped. And, Chomsky adds, if he had not been assassinated, he would have been villified.

See, it is easy for conservative Christians to attack the evil practices of the godless. But what happens when we question the foreign policies of our country especially when they were directed by a conservative Republican President? What happens is that apologists for power defend authoritarianism without regard to the policies questioned.

Valiant, I was not implying that the information in the links was attempting to circumvent the supernatural. It was just information regarding research into how people come to identify and associate with a given faith. It says nothing about the nature of god and does nothing to deny the legitimacy of Christianity. The fact that you think of it as an affront to your point just shows you haven't read the article or done any research yourself.

There is no liberal agenda in such research. The social sciences are just that, sciences. And as such they cannot make any judgments or claims to the supernatural. They can at times affect certain stories and fables told about certain religious traditions, but at no point do they actively condemn or cast doubt on the nature of religion.

Now if you don't want to look into these matters our of fear that it may oppose your deeply held viewpoints, then that's just being unreasonable. You lose the argument the second you stop countering the claims of others and start spewing irrational fallacies. This goes back to what I said in my first post. The message of love and forgiveness preached by Jesus and other religious figures like him gets hurt under the veil of dogma. It turns religion into a source of tyranny. And when you take Christianity and turn it into tyranny, you effectively destroy any merits or benefits it may have.

I know you don't believe that the gospel is truth, but consider for a moment what it means if the gospel is truth. In that instance, what you call a false dichotomy is really your rejection of truth.

It's somewhat like gravity. I can believe all I want that gravity has no effect on me, that if I jump off the roof of my house I will simply soar up into the spruce trees and beyond them into the clouds. I can insist that my husband is setting up a false dichotomy by declaring that I will break my ankles if I jump. But, ultimately, I cannot argue with truth -- at least not without breaking some bones.

Valiant and I have accepted enough evidence that the gospel it truth to believe that it is true. We don't need to "jump off the roof" to be convinced.

I know, you don't believe the evidence is real and you will always come up with some argument about why it doesn't quite meet the standards of truth and then insist, that since it doesn't meet your qualification that we should not declare it truth.

So what happens when you "step off the edge of the roof" on Judgment Day, Jack? Salvation is a safety belt for those who think that God might be real and we might want to plan for truth revealing itself to be truth NOW while we still have the chance.

Life is about standards.

I was making dinner tonight and I used my measuring cup to "judge" whether I had the right ratio of water to rice. If I want to sell a gold coin at the local shop, the proprieter will use a scale to assure that the coin weighs what it is supposed to weigh. My daughter was asked to audition for a singing part and the judging panel evaluated her voice for its fit in the cast of the musical they are producing. Life is about standards of measurement and value ... otherwise known as "judgment".

Yes, Christians say that some behavior is good and some behavior is wrong. We define what is good by what God has said is good in His Bible and what is bad by what God has said is bad in His Bible.

Personally, I don't much confront non-Christians are their non-Christian behavior. I prefer to share the gospel with them so that they might become Christians and judge for themselves whether their behavior is good or bad. Only those with the Holy Spirit truly can know good from bad behavior. Without an accurate standard of measurement, most of the human race is lost in the moral woods without a compass. But, yes, the Bible does say what it says and people can understand what it says if they'll read it for themselves. Sometimes it helps to read commentary, but that is no substitute for reading the Bible. Some people, non-Christians and, sadly, some Christians, get angry at what the Bible says about their behavior. The solution to that is not for Christians to stop reading the Bible and suggesting that others read it too, nor to water down the message there, but for those who find themselves feeling judged by the Bible's standard of measurement to accept that they are not in the right and change their position. God is a remarkably accepting deity, provided you get with His program, which means letting go of your own.

Aurora, you're using scare tactics now. By saying I should consider the ramifications if I'm wrong about the gospel, that's an appeal to fear. Otherwise known as an appeal to emotion. That is not proof of anything other than you're desire to scare me into believing what you believe to be true. But it doesn't change the fact that it is still a belief. And belief is not truth, no matter how much you believe it.

You say I don't believe the evidence? I've scrutinized this evidence you and Valiant have presented me and it fails the test. It's too fallacious. Under the lens of reason, they do not hold up. You can't compare that with things like gravity because gravity is measurable and testable. God and the supernatural is not.

When it comes to morality, using god as justification for determining what is 'bad' is an abandonment of reason because there's no way to rationalize it. How can you rationalize something that comes from a supernatural spirit that is only known through a 2000 year old book written by Bronze Age men? True morality is an emergent product of reasonable people using reasonable standards to make reasonable rules. And part of being reasonable is being open, skeptical, and willing to change. That goes against dogma. Now I have nothing against believers either. You can believe whatever you want. But when you seek to impose your standards on others on the basis of your religious beliefs, that's stepping outside the bounds of reason and surrendering to the whims of irrational dogma.