If God is just, how can he damn those who never hear his son's gospel?

I agree that is tricky business. I think the core of christianity lies not with the ten commandments however but with Jesus. Just shows how careful you have to be when stripping down a religion. But I have also no problem with different interpretations (in general, there are some weird exceptions of course). Perhaps that's easy for me though because I do not affiliate myself with one religion

 

Sorry, that was not nice to say it's silly, I had pmt and couldn't help saying that. Let me clarify. Catholics believe in hell and purgatory as places you go post death. They have their own Bible. True Christianity,( if you read direct translations on a study of the state of the dead) says that the dead know nothing. So no not all Christians think like this, mainly Catholics. It is Biblical that God is kind and just and the ignorant will not be condemned.
True Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. Most religions are shops that sell God as per their own Biblical distortions. That's my opinion anyway.

 

Maybe the cosmic justice of God is way beyond what our feeble human minds could possibly comprehend. Just because some religious tenets may not conform to our idea of "just" doesn't mean that they're bad or wrong. It just means that we're too stupid to understand. (Which I think we are.)

 

Well said.

 

Welcome to Christian Diesm

The core of Jesus's teachings was LOVE. Love yourself, love your neighbors, love your enimies even. If your heart is filled with love then everything else will fall into place on its own. And you don't need to study the Bible from front to back to understand that. You don't need a priest, and a fancy Church. You dont need to believe everything in the bible to me true. You don't need this you don't need that.

.....All you need is Love.

 

I am not here to pick a fight, nor am I here to argue. I want to ask legitimate questions. Why do people believe that Jesus Christ is God, because a several thousand year old book that was translated from ancient Greek/Hebrew, to Vulgate Latin, to Old English, and to modern English says so?


I believe there is a God, because I have seen the white light deity, that so many others have. The One that shines brighter than the sun, and brings an indescribable peace and stillness. My wife has even seen the same thing.


Jesus Christ has not once came to me, my wife, or anyone I know and said, "hi, I am your God Jesus Christ." Again, I don't want to fight, I love you all (no matter what you believe), and I ask these questions sincerely.

 

because there are many people that I love that believe. they were extremely patient with me, and after enough time i began to understand many of the things that they do. the power of the gospel is love, and i could see the grace of God resting upon them empowering them to love in ways that i did not know were possible up until that time. so i gave way to the greater king, to the greater love.

then i was baptised, and from then on i have been tried in the fires of salvation, which has only deepened my resolve.

 

I don't think the cop is a good analogy. You might not know what the speed limit is, but at least you had the opportunity to find out. If the limit isn't posted, it's just a speed trap and you might be able to challenge it. But if believing in Jesus is a precondition for salvation, who would be able to figure that out without at least having scriptures to go on? Maybe God isn't fair and just, although that's not what the Bible seems to say. Or maybe the idea that people can't be saved without accepting Jesus is a misinterpretation, which is what I believe. People who think otherwise are messed up.

 

Maybe. But does that mean we condone what seem to be injustices and atrocities because who are we to judge? Or do we follow our God-given moral sense and reason and say that if God appears to be monstrous, it's probably because we've misinterpreted His word.

 

The Christian doctron , that if you follow the teachings of Christ you will go to heaven and if you dont you go to hell was written by men . Ever thing said by Jesus was written down many years after his death so we only have the words of thoes putting togher a new church . It is believed that Jesus believed in reincarnation but it was takken out of the Bible at the councle of Nicia in 329 ad at the request of Consitne . We judge our selvs , not God . After death we either come back as human , or stay on the astral plane . A few hang around as a ghost . desert rat

 

Thanks for asking. I believe in Jesus because of His teachings and example. He preached universal love and compassion even for society's rejects, and as one of the latter he's my guy. He also championed the poor, and stuck it to the religious Establishment of the day. I tend to agree with the Jesus Seminar that he probably didn't say or do four-fifths of the things attributed to Him, but that other fifth isn't chopped liver. I think the closest competition is from the Buddha, but how reliable are the sutras? And Buddhism can encourage a kind of detachment that I don't find in Jesus. Besides, I don't see a need for competition, as Buddhism is not about gods and the dharma is compatible with Christian discipline. As for God, I think of God as the felt presence of a Higher Power in the Universe that I associate with ultimate meaning and the summation of human idealism. In that respect, I think of Jesus as God incarnate--the human embodiment of attributes that are divine. As for those Scriptures, I take them with a grain of salt, as the effort of men to comprehend the incomprehensible. Now about that white light--were you flat lining?

 

Thank you everyone who answered me. To answer your question Okiefreak, no I was not. I was astral traveling in my living room, and seen what you and I would call a demon. It was a human figure (7-8 feet tall) that was pitch black, so black you could not distinguish any detail on the body. The only detail I could distinguish was, that it was wearing glasses, and that it had the most evil eyes that my imagination could never conceive. They glowed RED! It tried to grabbed me, and scared me to the point of re-entering my body. When I re-entered my body, I opened my eyes and I seen this white light come from the sky, through the window over my bed (looked like a portal reaching past outer-space). It was sparkling, and it overpowered the daytime sun. I could not hardly see the freaking sun! I looked around and everything had a new contrast and hue, it was beautiful. The light surrounded my bed, and I felt such a peace and stillness, I went to sleep, despite being attacked by this astral demon. At that point, I had not smoked weed in over a month, I was not drinking, and I was not doing anything in a longtime that would have made me trip. This was very real.

My wife seen it too. We were out the doctors office, and I was getting myself checked out for a problem, that has been a scourge to me, all my life. She said, she prayed to "God to know if that was the right place to be," then she came out of prayer, and opened her eyes and seen nothing but any empty room filled with the white light, she said it was misty/smoky looking. She said it made her feel that, that place was the right place, and that everything was going to be okay. She closed her eyes, and opened them again. She said the room was back to normal, and there I was. She said shortly after the Doctor came back and gave his diagnoses to me. The first doctor out of hundreds (including specialists), that could diagnose it.
At that time she did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, she believed in just a higher power.

Some of you who read this story, will think it's BS. I don't care, and I will not defend my story. You can believe it or not. I have a very rational, logical, and analytical mind. I know what I seen, and what she seen was real.

My wife has read the bible and believes Jesus is God. I have read the bible, and nothing has proved to me Jesus Christ is God. There is no biblical or historical evidence to support it. People who live by the doctrine of Jesus (not the bible), seem to be some of the nicest people, but so are others who do not believe in the godhood of Jesus.

I have spent countless nights utterly broken and devastated, praying to Jesus to manifest himself to me. He never did. I knocked and he did not answer. I sought him, and I found nothing. When I lied to myself, and forced myself to be a Christian, I was miserable, but now I feel free now.

See I held to my word, I did not troll anyone. I love you all, thanks for reading my questions and answering them.

 

I'm not doubting the divinity of Christ, but to say that he is the only way, and that no human had a chance of communing with God before 0 AD is parochial bullshit.

 

Catholics say Protestants are lost for neglecting the sacrements...

Protestants say Catholics are damned for praying to the Mother Mary, and the saints...

"Sick and tired of all your ism-schism games"

 

What does it even mean to say your a Christian? What matters is you love God. And so do Hindu's. And Jews, and Muslims.

 

And Rastas. And Native Americans. And a lot of people. Ancient Greeks, Sumerians, Egyptians. So many people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.

 

All those Neanderthals roasting in hell for being born in 130,000 BC...

 

Did they deny the name of God? If the answer is no.....then nothing about Christianity says they will be sent to hell.

You cannot deny that of which you've never heard.

 

Many people do see a demon when going out of body . Some think it is a real demon , others think it could by manifest by our own fears . We all make thought forms . desert rat

 

Then tribal people are safe, and you only risk hell for them by spreading the gospel.