Why Should I be a Christian?

Originally posted by Eladar
If your self righteousness doesn't allow you to see it, the go in peace.

I can't read minds if that is required to continue this I guess I will leave you in peace.

Originally posted by JakeChess
I'm biased against Christians. I was hoping maybe someone would be proper and politely explain why I should repent without attacking me. But, given this forum and given the people on it, I was extending the olive branch to the wrong people. I didn't necessarily want to become a Christian, I was just hoping some nice conversation on the subject would balanc ...[text shortened]... l discussion.

Though, I didn't help matters by attacking Eladar and Chaney3, so there's that.

Fixation on the Bible as a primary source of grace is peculiar to Protestant variants of Christianity. There are Christians who hold that the Bible is not the primary source whereby the Holy Spirit makes his will known to man. Roman Catholics and Greek and Russian Orthodox, for example, hold this view. So one can very well be a Christian without primary reliance on the Bible.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I believe I am called to love God and man. I don't believe God gave us a check list of those who are, and who aren't worthy of being loved.

That doesn't mean I am accepting sin just the sinner. I would remind you Jesus died for sinners and we too need Jesus' grace for our own sins.

I try to think of Jesus not the sinners when sharing the gospel. If Je ...[text shortened]... em I believe I should share Jesus with them for His name sake, not because they are good enough.

Yes, exactly. I don't often hear this wisdom in this forum.

There is often much hate from Christians concerning those they feel are "defying God".

This seems defeating of the Christian message.

Love, not hate, indeed.

Originally posted by KellyJay
The struggle with sin binds us to it, curruption in our lives is so complete it requires God to set us free. We would never go to God on our own.

So do we play a part, yes as we answer God's call we do. This removes from us the ability to think we can just live as we will than get right with God after we live a life of sin. If God call is on our lives we ...[text shortened]... ur faith, when the call comes it is who so ever will. None of us will have an excuse before God!

How much of your faith tends towards Calvinism?

I see a few hints in just this one post.

Originally posted by RBHILL
A person still can not follow Jesus unless he or she is drawn to follow Him by the Holy Spirit.

This is the "Total Depravity" concept in Calvinism.

I don't buy into this.

To say that we are unable to save ourselves from sin is one thing, but to say that we are morally unable to choose to follow God and find salvation in Jesus Christ unless we are guided to him by the Holy Spirit is just not true. This argument smacks of elitism. It says that we cannot choose God until God has chosen us. But God accepts all who seek him and follow him. The Holy Spirit comes and justifies us after we have chosen to seek God and accept Christ's salvation. We are always free to choose God. That is why we are without excuse.

Originally posted by Suzianne
This is a Calvinistic concept.

Just realised my jeans are Calvinistic.

I'm so confused.

Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
Just realised my jeans are Calvinistic.

I'm so confused.

See my edit to that post. 😉


Edit: Sorry, I realize that you must know what I am talking about. Calvinism 101.

Originally posted by Suzianne
See my edit to that post. 😉


Edit: Sorry, I realize that you must know what I am talking about. Calvinism 101.

🙂

Indeed, but this thread was crying out for a Calvin Klein joke.

Originally posted by Suzianne
How much of your faith tends towards Calvinism?

I see a few hints in just this one post.

Please be a little clearer on what your asking me and why? You referring this type of thing?

John 6:44
No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.


1 Corinthians 2:
11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

If we attempt to delude ourselves into thinking we can just come to God any ole time we
want and make things right we run the risk of missing God completely. When God calls
us we need to answer, and once we do we start a relationship of a different nature
between us and God starts, that being again to obey Him.

This is in my opinion the great news of God, my salvation rests with Him, and so does all
others! So I ask for God to give me eyes to see and ears to hear what He wants. I know in
my flesh dwells nothing good, I need Him. I also know everyone else is in the same boat
we all need Jesus and because Jesus died for each one of them for Jesus sake I attempt
to do God wants which I know is the first and second great commandment to love God
and man.

Jesus died for each of us so I attempt to not look at those who are in my opinion good,
bad, and really evil. Jesus died for each of them, so for each of them I share the grace
of God the best I can. Which means those that want to harm me, those that have harmed
me, those that agree with me, and those that don't. Even those I love I need to share with
and sometimes they are even harder to share with from time to time, since there is a risk
with them I don't care about with someone I am sorry to say I don't care about nearly as
much as I should.

James 4:8
Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

Originally posted by JakeChess
The title says it all. Why should I (or anyone else) be a Christian over any other faith?

I'm not shy to admit that I am distrustful of organized religion, maybe someone can change that by explaining why they believe, what goes into being "A Good Christian", etc.

Provide historical evidence if you can, as I also believe the bible to be a work of fiction.

The title says it all. Why should I (or anyone else) be a Christian over any other faith?

To be reconciled to God you should confess that Jesus is Lord.
It matters to be reconciled to God.

Are you kidding?
What could be more important than being reconciled to God?

I'm not shy to admit that I am distrustful of organized religion, maybe someone can change that by explaining why they believe, what goes into being "A Good Christian", etc.

In the privacy of your own living room or bedroom what "organized religion" is there?

If I am going to be a man I must be a completed man.
If I am going to be a man I must be a man who has fellowship with God.
If I am going to be a Christian, I must be an overcoming Christian; a victorious Christian learning to live in the realm of Lord Jesus.

Why should you become a Christian?
I think you should want to become a Christian to be a part of the eternal purpose of God to dispense Himself into man that men and woman may be united with God our Father.

Provide historical evidence if you can, as I also believe the bible to be a work of fiction.

You can start with the "history" of your sins.
Do you think what you said was not recorded?
Do you think what you did was not remembered by God?
Do you think what was done TO you was not remembered by God?


We call can start with the "history" of our wrong-doings, our transgressions, our unrighteous deeds, our iniquities, our sinful deeds. This is the history we can start with.

Then we can believe that One such a Man, Jesus, was the Son of God Who bore the judgment for our sins in His body on the cross. He loved us. As God and man His death was in time yet has eternal significance and eternal efficacy.

As much as it is possible for you and I to understand, God came in Christ to lay down His life because of His great love for us. He came to save us from having to appear before God unreconciled.

You should become a Christian FIRSTLY, that the real record of your real sins which carry real guilt can be totally erased before a Perfect holy and righteous God. He will by no means then, remember yours sins and your lawlessness forever.

" For I will be propitious to their unrighteousnesses, and their sins I shall by no means remember anymore."

You should want to be a Christian that you might boast before God that your HISTORY is Christ, your legacy is Christ, your destiny is Christ, and your righteousness before a perfect God is Christ Himself. And your sins and lawless guilt is no longer remembered by God once He judges them in Christ on His cross on Cavalry.

Listen to Isaiah 43:25.

King James Bible
I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
It is I who sweep away your transgressions for My own sake and remember your sins no more.

Originally posted by moonbus
Fixation on the Bible as a primary source of grace is peculiar to Protestant variants of Christianity. There are Christians who hold that the Bible is not the primary source whereby the Holy Spirit makes his will known to man. Roman Catholics and Greek and Russian Orthodox, for example, hold this view. So one can very well be a Christian without primary reliance on the Bible.

I've never heard that before and I've been a Christian who believes God's Holy Spirit is a
main part of every Christian's life. We are told to try the spirits in scripture, because not
every 'spirit' is the Spirit of God. So with scripture if we are being lead to go against what
is written by some spiritual force, than we should ignore and rebuke that. God is not a
God of confusion the Spirit of God will line up with the Word of God there isn't any time
where one will contradict the other. If there is a change, God will clearly make that known
as He did when gave Noah permission to eat meat when before we were not supposed
to, or when gentiles were able come to God for salvation while before God's people were
limited to one nation.

Originally posted by JakeChess
The title says it all. Why should I (or anyone else) be a Christian over any other faith?

I'm not shy to admit that I am distrustful of organized religion, maybe someone can change that by explaining why they believe, what goes into being "A Good Christian", etc.

Provide historical evidence if you can, as I also believe the bible to be a work of fiction.

Since Christianity includes 'Christ', or Jesus, it would seem logical that if you choose to become a Christian, you should have a sound understanding of who He is, as a starting point.

However, most Christians on this forum have their own view of who He is, and isn't, and they all contradict each other. When pressed on why that can be, the general response is:

Don't worry about it, just pick one.

Seems rather weak that Christians are following different versions of Jesus, and His identity should be in such question.

Originally posted by karoly aczel
There are more options.
Christianity could be 100% right (highly doubtful cause it cant even agree with itself), it could be half right, partially right, a historical anomoly,etc. , a bad joke , wrong , evil and controlling .... there are all sorts of manifestations

That post wasn't one of my best. There is an interesting question regarding belief revision here. Over in debates mchill, I think it was, was saying that I ought to give Mr Trump a chance and make my judgements about him after he's had some time in office. I don't think that that is right, as I can make a judgement now and change my mind based on new evidence. I can revise my beliefs in that case.

With theism there seems to be a problem. I haven't read the whole Bible, but I find it unlikely that there will be anything in either the later parts of the Old Testament or the later parts of the New Testament that would make me start to believe in God. In fact, unless God exists and decides to intervene to provide me with direct evidence then there's a straightforward evidential problem with updating my beliefs. Similarly I'm not going to become an atheist due to the problem of proving the absence of a God of some form or another. So I don't see a rational basis for revising my beliefs in this.

Having said that, there's an entertaining ontological proof based around modal logic, known as Fitch's paradox of knowability. Regular contributors may remember this thread Thread 167265, where I was attempting to show that it was impossible to know that there was not an omniscience. Sadly the proof fails due to knowledge not distributing over disjunctions. However it relied on something we called a Church proposition.

K(P) means that the proposition P is known to some agent or agents.

Epistemic modal logic relies on these axioms:

T) K(P) -> P - If P is known P is true because knowledge is justified true belief.
B) K(P & Q) <-> K(P) & K(Q) - knowledge distributes over conjunction.
K) K(P -> Q) -> K(P) -> K(Q)

For the second part of the proof we also need an axiom I'll call N which simply states that tautologies are necessarily true.

N) if ⊦P then ⊦□P

where □P means necessarily P and ◇P means possibly P.

We start with a proposition P&¬K(P) which means that there is a proposition P which is true, but not known by any agent to be true.

1. K(P & ¬K(P)) ⊦K(P) & K(¬K(P)) From B
2. K(¬K(P)) ⊦¬K(P) From T
3. K(P & ¬K(P)) ⊦K(P) & ¬K(P) From 1 and 2
4. ⊦¬K(P&¬K(P)) - 3 is a contradiction so the assumption on line 1 was false.
5. ⊦□ ¬K(P&¬K(P)) - from axiom N.
6. ⊦¬◇K(P&¬K(P)) - from the duality of necessity and possibility, necessarily not means not possibly.

This just says that it is impossible to know the conjunction P & not known P - one would have to know something and not know it.

A reasonable sounding proposition is that any given proposition P is possibly known by some agent. In other words:

Possibility axiom: P -> ◇K(P)

So:
7) P & ¬K(P) ⊦ ◇K(P&¬K(P)) by our possibility axiom, but this contradicts 6.
8) ⊦¬(P & ¬K(P)) by reductio from 6 and 7.
9) ⊦P -> ¬K(P)

In other words the set of all agents collectively know all things. This means omniscience, at least collectively, and appears to be evidence for God's existence and doesn't beg the question which most ontological proofs seem to.

It hangs on the possibility axiom, that given some proposition P there is at least one possible world where it is known, if one denies that axiom the proof fails. Another argument against it is that there is something wrong with the way the possible worlds are set up - the accessibility relation hasn't been set up carefully enough, or God exists.

Originally posted by chaney3
Since Christianity includes 'Christ', or Jesus, it would seem logical that if you choose to become a Christian, you should have a sound understanding of who He is, as a starting point.

However, most Christians on this forum have their own view of who He is, and isn't, and they all contradict each other. When pressed on why that can be, the general respons ...[text shortened]... ristians are following different versions of Jesus, and His identity should be in such question.

Except Jesus said His sheep knows His voice. If you do not know it, I think you should
ponder the meaning behind that revelation.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Except Jesus said His sheep knows His voice. If you do not know it, I think you should
ponder the meaning behind that revelation.

Are you implying that your version of Jesus is the correct one?
And that the other Christian 'sheep' are wrong?
Because face it, not all Christians believe in the same Jesus, and cannot even explain whether He is God or not.