Response to: "I have become an agnostic" thread

[Travelsong]

So you pass the buck in reverse. Let's translate that logic: We are what we are because Adam was what he was. Adam was what he was because?

In any case I fail to see how your thinking places a default state of eternal damnation on everyone from Adam. I am not personally reponsible for my limitations, only the manner in which I respond to them.

 

[bapmom]

Travel,

Adam, by sinning, changed his nature. Thus he passed on the sin nature to his kids, and so on.

If, as you say, you are only responsible for how you respond to them, then how have you responded?

Have you responded perfectly from the time of your birth, or even from the time you could understand right from wrong?

The fact is, we have sinned, and because of that we wouldnt be able to exist alongside a holy God.

This doesn't mean you ought to hate yourself. Thats really a distraction technique that you've learned. You start talking about how much that makes you feel bad, and hopefully that means we'll all tell you how much God loves you (which is true) and that you shouldn't hate yourself....all that is true....BUT it distracts from the deeper truth.
It makes me think that there is something you are hiding from, something you don't want to admit. There's a reason you say you hate yourself, and its not because of the Bible, and I daresay its not because of most Christians.

You kept shoving the Holy Spirit away from what He's been trying to show you, and you've covered it with this veneer of "Christians made me hate myself", and now you've pushed God away from it for so long that you've distanced yourself from Him. Now you don't even call yourself a Christian anymore.

Its between you and God. But don't put it between God and your precious children.

 

[BobRyan]

TS - you are not reading

 

[Travelsong]

Originally posted by bapmom:
Travel,

Adam, by sinning, changed his nature. Thus he passed on the sin nature to his kids, and so on.

So sin is genetic? Can science research and perhaps cure it?

Originally posted by bapmom:
If, as you say, you are only responsible for how you respond to them, then how have you responded?

Insofar as I am able, to the best of my ability.

Originally posted by bapmom:
Have you responded perfectly from the time of your birth, or even from the time you could understand right from wrong?

Why would I be required to do something which I was designed not to do and then punished with eternity for only behaving under the laws and constraints by which I am bound? The very idea is ludicrous, yet I believed it for years. Ask yourself honestly if this is what you really believe.

Originally posted by bapmom:
This doesn't mean you ought to hate yourself.

Sure it does.The Victorian view of the human condition is what naturally results. Our old nature was evil, worthy of blame. Now we've had buckets of blood poured all over us and and have been redeemed free of charge. Folly!

Originally posted by bapmom:
It makes me think that there is something you are hiding from, something you don't want to admit. There's a reason you say you hate yourself, and its not because of the Bible, and I daresay its not because of most Christians.

Rather, in an even greater irony, our nature is hidden from us.

This is a passage from one of those "worldly" books written by one of those "humanist intellectuals":

In a sense, evolutionary psychologists are trying to discern a second level of human nature, a deeper unity within the species. First the anthropologist notes recurring themes in culture after culture: a thirst for social approval, a capacity for guilt. You might call these, and many other such universals, "the knobs of human nature." Then the psycholigist notes that the exact same tunings of the knobs seem to differ from person to person. One person's "thirst for approval" knob is set in the comfort zone, down around (relatively) "self assured", and another person's is up in the excruciating "massively insecure" zone; one person's guilt knob is set low and another person's is painfuly high. So the psychologist asks: How do these knobs get set?

Thus, human nature comes in two forms, both of which have a natural tendency to get ignored. First, there's the kind that's so pervasively apparent as to be taken for granted (guilt, for example). Second, there's the kind whose very function is to generate differences among people as they grow up, and thus naturally conceals itself (a developmental program that calibrates guilt). Human nature consists of knobs and of mechanisms for tuning the knobs, and both are invisible in their own way.

The Moral Animal : Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

Originally posted by bapmom:
You kept shoving the Holy Spirit away from what He's been trying to show you, and you've covered it with this veneer of "Christians made me hate myself", and now you've pushed God away from it for so long that you've distanced yourself from Him. Now you don't even call yourself a Christian anymore.

I have absolutely no bitterness towards god, the false conceptions of god under which I labored for most of my life, or the Christian dogma by which my mind was enslaved.

I see many of you guys set up these strawmen that you believe are stumbling blocks to me.

What I keep pointing to is the basic character of god as he must be understood from scripture, and the unfairness of holding people accountable for a condition over which they are unable to fully control.

Originally posted by bapmom:
Its between you and God. But don't put it between God and your precious children.

I have no intention of indoctinating my children the way I was. Of that you can rest assured.

I understand it will be dificult because my wife is still a Christian, but I think we will come to a workable compromise. We've been married for nine years, much of it through trial and tribulation. I think we can handle a small paradigm shift on my part.

 

[Travelsong]

My new dogmatic banner reads: Have faith reason will prevail.

I apologize for the grammatical errors in the excerpt from my last post. They were mine. I typed that out by hand.

 

[riverm]

Travelsong,

I believe a lot of people have been down the same road that you are traveling now on your spiritual journey. I can’t begin to count the number of times I have.

I was scared into salvation at an IFB Church when I was just 8 years old, but not until 2002 did I truly commit my life to Christ. Thus my journey began searching for God. But you know, like the U2 song “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” I too am still searching, but I’m still running the race. I got tied up for 2 years in a Fundamentalist church thinking I had found God, when all I had found was “religion” and the bondage of legalism and bigoted hypocrites that wanted to hold all the power.

So I left, still running and like you I have tough questions that I was taught that if I pose such tough questions or struggle with, that I’m not a real Christian or that there was no room for doubt and anxiety and fear and even failure in faith.

But even the disciples struggled with doubt and questions, but what was key to me is John 14:1, where Jesus tells His disciples to just TRUST Him. It’s so easy to get stuck in a pit of doubt, especially when we see horrors of the world and the evils and the same sins that we personally walk into that we’ve been struggling with for years.

IMO, Jesus doesn’t require us to check our baggage at the door before we come to him. All Christ asks is that we follow Him. We’re not supposed to have all the answers. We’re finite, we’re tiny and we’re not God. We are humans that are easily confused and prone to rebellion.

God knows this and He know that you and I have some tough questions and doubts, but those things aren’t what’s important to Him. God’s more concerned with what we you and I do in the face of these doubts and questions.

I can relate to U2 and Bono’s words when he sings I believe in the kingdom come, Then all the colors will bleed into one, Bleed into one, Well, yes I’m still running. You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains, Carried the cross of my shame, of my shame. You know I believe it, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

I always thought that that was a cry of defeat, but I was way off base. It’s a cry of Trust. And it wasn’t until I faced my doubts and questions did I finally realize this.

I believe it God, You know I do, but I still haven’t found it. I haven’t found all the answers. I’m still running though, still running towards the finish line. I’m not giving up. I’ve tried everything. I’ve climbed the highest mountains and the city walls. I have spoken in the tongues of angels and held the hand of the devil and I still don’t get it, but I’m not giving up.

That’s the kind of trust Jesus is asking of you and me…

Don’t quit the race Travelsong, keep running and it’s only God’s grace, through the work of redemption that has brought you and I this far and it’s only His grace, through that work of redemption that will lead you and I home…just trust Him.

You’re in my prayers

 

[Travelsong]

I don't quite grasp this notion that I've dropped out of the race, or thrown away my deepest held convictions. Christianity isn't all bad. In fact much of it is good. In it's purist altruistic and anti materialist sense it may be the best thing going for humanity.

We can all acknowledge an inability to perfectly conform to any moral code we adopt. Apart from perhaps complete insanity, it's a universal fact of our condition. I admit my fallibility. My mind is still however focused on the transcendent. Sacrifice, selfless love (inasmuch as they really exist) are still my prime duty.

You need to understand that I am simply not going back to a requirement for the belief in Jesus or else eternal flames of woe. What a pathetic motivator.

 

[bapmom]

Belief in Christ is not meant as a motivator, Travelsong....its just the facts.

And ya know what? If you were afraid of Hell when you were little, why is that bad? Its not a nice place! God WANTS you to be afraid of it. Not because He hates you, but because He loves you.

I WANT my kids to be "afraid" of touching a hot stove, that way they won't touch it.
Not all of us come to Christ because we feel overwhelming love for Him, the love grows later.

Saying that there's no room for failure within the Christian faith, and that a person might not be saved if they ever have a doubt, THATS just wrong. I agree.

 

[Travelsong]

Originally posted by bapmom:
Saying that there's no room for failure within the Christian faith, and that a person might not be saved if they ever have a doubt, THATS just wrong. I agree.

That's not what I am saying, or ever believed, although I was overwhelmed with the burden of fully suppressing my more primal instincts. I think any Christian who takes an honest look at themselves will admit that the quest for holiness and purity is on the whole increasingly impossible and frustrating as you become more aware of your own limitations.


I am saying it is unfair to suggest that we are damned by default just because we are born with a nature that prevents us from bringing our undesired instincts under control.

 

[bapmom]

TS,

actually the "quest for holiness and purity" is NOT impossible NOR increasingly frustrating.
We rest in the peace that is Jesus Christ. This does not mean we do not fail, but it DOES mean we realize that within that failure lies the strength of Jesus Christ. We can do nothing without Him, BUT WITH GOD all things are possible.
It IS possible for you to live a mature Christian life, and to feel fulfilled and happy within it.

 

[James_Newman]

You'll soon find that living in the bondage of sin can be extremely frustrating. The devil is a cruel master. You are not truly free, until the Son has made you free.

 

[Travelsong]

What "sin" can I possibly be in bondage to any more now than when I was as a practicing Christian?

The answer is only as many and as much as I allow.

Interestingly, even as a Christian I rarely gave thought to Satan because I always understood my salvation or damnation depended solely on my own faith or disobedience. My very existence was enough to condemn me, and it was only my belief in the purest blood and suffering that I was saved.

It seems odd that I ever believed such a thing.

 

[bapmom]

TS,

it seems odd to me too that you ever believed such a thing.

Thats not salvation, what you just described is faith in YOURSELF, not faith in Christ.

Christ did it all for you. Those who are saved are not desparately holding on to their "faith" in order to ensure that they are saved.

Jesus did it all, the acceptance of that is enough. GOD is the ONe who gives us the faith. It doesn't come from us. We are not saved based on how well we lived, or how hard we worked to be good.

If this is how you believed, then this was not Christianity.

 

[Travelsong]

I never said that I derived faith on my own. I merely said that it was my own faith or disobedience which saved or condemned me. In any case, I wasn't trying to argue for or against unconditional election or irresistable grace.


The point was that I never excused my actions as stemming from the influence or control of Satan. This is why I rarely gave him any regard.

 

[bapmom]

TS,

ok, I wouldnt have wanted you to try to excuse yourself wtih some claim about "satan made me do it."

Point is, its NOT your faith versus your disobedience.

Its whether you've believed on Jesus Christ as your own personal saviour. Your individual sins are only a symptom, in and of themselves they are not the problem.

It is belief or unbelief in jesus Christ that saves or condemns.

 

[Travelsong]

If I never knew the name of Jesus or of his existence, what condemns or justifies me then?

 

[bapmom]

whether or not you were willing to know more.

If you WERE willing to learn more, than God would send you a witness to TELL you more. If not then your own unbelief in God would condemn you.

It is a falsehood to say that people the world over know nothing about God. The most "primitive" tribe in the most remote area of the world knows something about God, and God responds to them according to their willingness to follow what light He gives them.

 

[Travelsong]

So then the name of Jesus or belief in the specific historical events of his death and ressurection aren't necessary?

 

[gb93433]

agnostic - a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience. (Websters)

My knowledge of love is not very knowable but is very known. I can know the infinite God and my knowledge of God limited by my finite mind ansd ability to understand. I can know my wife and still know little about her. I can have a relationship with my wife and know little about her. I can have a great relationship with my wife and know little about her brain and genes.

 

[Bro. James]

What condemns or justifies? Or to whom are we accountable?

The fact that God is Holy and we are depraved condemns all mankind to eternal separation from God. Man cannot justify himself in any way, shape, form, or fashion. His will is in bondage to his depraved nature. We are sinners by nature and enjoy sinning. That is the condemnation. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ(plus the application of our faith).
No, we have no faith of ourselves--not one iota. If we could apply our faith then we would be saved by works--scripture says we cannot do that.

Justification? The shed blood of the Just for the unjust. He who knew no sin died for the ungodly.

What part of these things can we provide? ZERO.

God convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgement to come. This causes us to repent of our woeful condition. God then gives us the faith to believe that Jesus paid the price for our transgressions--a price we could not pay. This belief, causes us to be born again--it is all facilitated by God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We are passed from death unto life, and are preserved by the Lord Jesus, no one can pluck us from His hand. Thank the Lord we do not have to depend on "our" faith. Praise His Holy Name.

A little child can understand. Adults have more difficulty--total depravity is a tough but necessary medicine for the soul. This is not repeat after me salvation. This is not making a decision based on an emotional experience.


Selah,

Bro. James

[ November 09, 2005, 12:54 PM: Message edited by: Bro. James ]