The Problem With All That Being Forgiven For One's Sins

Is that the results are permanent. Take an alcoholic who has beaten his wife for twenty years and caused his children, the lucky ones to end up in therapy. The unlucky ones in prison or worse.

Contrary to the way someone who has been forgiven believing events have been erased just the opposite is the case.....the results and consequences will never be erased.

 

Indeed. The harm has been done - therefore the only one served by forgiveness is the perp (in his imagination). That's why their god is so crappy. It'd rather you (*)(*)(*)(*) up all your life (thus doing untold harm) as long as you worship it - than for you to do good all your life (thus adding value to humanity) but not worship.

 

You guys seem to have a very flat notion of forgiveness. It serves the one who forgives as much as the one who is forgiven. Bearing grudges is not especially healthy.
And on a political note: if humankind ever wants to break the circle of violence, revenge for revenge for revenge, that results in endless wars, forgiving each other is the only chance.

 

I think the point was that the harm has been done. the humans who forgive will still bear the scars of that harm. A sane god would reward for works, not worship. The reduction in harm implicit in that being the best outcome by every possible measure.

 

What does forgiveness have to do with worship? However: A 'sane God' is probably not a hard-core Calvinist or Lutheran, I agree. Still, if we were merely judged by our works rather than with grace, we'd all be in trouble. Dunno about you, but I certainly hurt some people in my life and I have been hurt. Sometimes the damage was irrevocable, but I always found it healing to be able to forgive and to be forgiven for that damage.

 

Given your results oriented thinking, coupled with the fact that it doesn't take anything like such horrific behavior to yield similarly horrific results, I guess we should thank our lucky stars that you're not running the universe.

Certainly not in the minds of those who insist on living in the past.

 

Do you really think I meant one human forgiving another? I meant Hey Zeus, Gawd and the holy ghost type forgiving. A person who gets religion in prison is a perfect example of what I meant. AA meetings, prison chaplain, military chaplains, etc. When a person is dealing with adverse circumstances like bloody war or solitary confinement they are twice as vulnerable to that religious crap. Being forgiven does not erase what an evil person has done to other people.

 

Consider what Christian dogma teachs....and this is undeniable.


Say you are a raging homicidal maniac....who went into a kindergarten and shot or stabbed to death 20-25 children, plus their teachers (a la Newtown)....and you get captured alive and are given the death penalty or even life in prison....

ACCORDING TO CHRISTIAN TEACHING....if on the FIVE SECONDS before your natural death or execution....you truly and honestly "repent of your sins" and "accept Christ as your Savior"....

you get into Heaven.

Doesn't matter the horror and pain you caused your victims or their families....which lasts for years, decades.......God just "wipes your slate clean" and you get to hang out with Jesus and Mother Teresas and sip mai-tais by the Heavenly Pool Lounge for all eternity.

If Adolf Hitler had been killed by a Russian artillery shell in the Bunker (instead of suicide)...and somehow one minute before it hit, had "repented" and "accepted Christ"....he would have gotten into Heaven, no harm no foul.


BTW, contrariwise, if you are an 85 year old little old lady who has worked in a soup kitchen your whole life, opened her home as a shelter for abused women, taught inner city kids how to read, helped homeless men get rehab and jobs, never harmed a fly her entire life......but was an atheist or even an agnostic on her death....

she gets the Eternal Barbeque treatment.

 

It's even worse than that:

Revelation 21:
8 "The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

 

Whoever said God's forgiveness equals erasing the deed? Do you begrudge these people the peace they found in faith when trying to cope with their guilt? Do you think they should not find forgiveness?
Well, if so you must be a rather vengeful character. Sad really!

 

It seems Archbishop Desmond Tutu does not agree with what you see as "Christian Dogma":
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/god-is-not-a-christian_b_869947.html

Nor do I for that matter. Like many many other Christians I hope for universal salvation. See ya in heaven!

 

Yes....the most revolting people I've ever known in my life are those who live like an animal for 50-60 years and then take on this air of arrogance and superiority because they think they're headed for heaven. My hero had a paragraph to say about them:

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human fraility. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature." ~Dr. Albert Einstein~

 

Looks like your hero is full of Atheistic ideologies. Wow, I would never have guessed that you would have such a 'hero'. LOL. BTW: that same 'hero' of yours also had some fascinating things to say about science, intuition, mathematics and reality... you might also want to check out some of those other thoughts of your 'hero'.

 

Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein wrote a letter to FDR explaining nuclear fission and warning him that German scientists were working on an atomic bomb. Roosevelt appointed General Leslie Groves to head a multi billion dollar top secret project(1942 dollars) in the hills of east TN which produced the material for the atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima. I worked in the plant which produced that bomb for 41 years, 1952 to 1993. That's why he's a hero of mine. If it had not been for folks like those we might be goose stepping or worse.

My other heroes are comedians who did before and continue to ridicule that load of primitive horse schit called religion.

 

While I will accept the notion that Einstein may have been an admirable person, and was way ahead of his time, the comedians is another story. But hey,,, if you have chosen those people to be your heroes, then so be it... they are yours to deal with.... however,,, your leaning on them as authority figures (heroes) shows that you are emphasizing your need to make an appeal to authority. Congratulations.

 

....uh......ever heard of God?

 

Any need I have to appeal to authority is right here, right now and none of the mythological bullschit. Just as long as we're together on that.

[video=youtube;CjxW1VN5zGI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjxW1VN5zGI[/video]

 

Minor correction here.

Hitler DID consider himself an avowed catholic and wrote about this in his book Mein Kampf. There he also states multiple times that to kill the Jew was doing God's work.

 

Hey....nothing new. First the Ku Klux Klan required two things to be a member....the applicant had to be White and a Christian. Nazis believed they were a superior race and tried to do selective breeding among their own kind to prove it. Hitler claimed the Catholic church.

 

There you go...your admission to making an appeal to authority.... a logical fallacy. nuff said on that one.

- - - Updated - - -

Many of them... how about you?

 

hell yes, I begrudge a kid murderer the peace that comes with thinking he's forgiven. that peace belongs to all those parents of all those kids ... or whoever is harmed by the 'bad works' of others.

once again, the point here is that the god appears to care more about being worshipped than it does about minimising harm.

 

this sums it up nicely.

 

Actually it displays the idiocy of all religion, especially Christianity.

 

God.....the ultimate authority figure.


It's not just for breakfast anymore.