17th March 2003, 11:39 PM
Quote:How does stuff like the Catholic practice of being able to pay the church to absolve yourself of sins work, exactly?
It doesn't! That's my point exactly! :) That was one of the many ways that the religious leaders used God to suppress and essentially steal from everyone else. (Crusaders, Conquistadors, etc... )They deliberately never translated the Bible into languages the common people could read (if they could read at all) so they could continue this practice and many others. History is full of examples of people using God's name for evil. That's why I stress that you don't follow people- we mess everything up even with the best intentions. God gave us his word, the Bible, to be the measuring stick. It's the only way we can stay on the right track. I don't think Catholics still do this, but I don't know a lot about it. There are some issues about Catholocism that I disagree with and I think are man-made rules that are not in line with the Bible, but for the most part those are external things that don't change the core values of the Gospel. That's what's important. I don't want to comment anymore on it because I am very ignorant on the ceremony and practices of the Catholic church and it wouldn't be right to say things I don't know.
About the 10 commandments. God gave the 10 commandments to the Israelites as their Law because at that time Jesus had not come. This was thousands of years before Jesus. The 10 Commandments were really just the big ones, as there were also hundreds of other rules that they were supposed to follow- good parts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are devoted just to this. And they had to continually offer sacrifices as repentance for their sins. The thing was, the Law didn't change their hearts. People generally don't like to obey rules, in fact they usually have a strong urge to break them. :) And they were no different. Jesus talked about being a slave to the law, meaning that you were under continual pressure to be perfect. It was the good works system just like we talked about before. Jesus set us free from always following laws by changing our hearts so you want to do the right thing and giving you the power to change. And really, the 10 Commandments are just subsets of what Jesus gave us: love God first, then love everyone else.
You were also saying that God could just show himself to us, and that would be proof enough. But he did! Just not when any of us were alive. Jesus came to earth, did incredible things, and changed the world. It was recorded and is passed down even now. But because time has passed and none of us saw it actually happen, we don't believe any of it. If God came today and showed himself, I have no doubt that many people would now believe. But then a hundred years from now, or a thousand it would be "myth" again. Whatever proof we had of these events would be discarded by the modern, more sophisticated people as crude hoaxes we created to satisfy our simple minds. "Oh, that footage of God walking on water- just CG. Look, you can even see the Photoshop sun-flares. And those water reflections are so fake." God would have to prove himself every generation.
I know you wanted the last word, but I didn't want to leave your questions unanswered. You can still have the last word if you like, you just better not ask anymore questions. :) Oh DJ, don't feel like you have to stop. I only wanted to mention something that I used to fail at a lot so hopefully you guys would avoid it. I would get so angry and insulted and just attack people, and that's not good at all.
Darunia- I won't bite into your flame bait. I was talking about the churches of over 200,000 people in Africa. Or the rapid growth of Christianity in places like China or Muslim countries where Christians are killed immediately if the government discovers them. You'd think the threat of death would completely quell it, but instead the church grows like a wildfire. Because life is worth dying for.