Edi: "The one thing that seperates the Christian faith from every religion in this world is God dieing to get to us, and not us killing ourselves to get to Him."

er . . . actually no. Woden/Odin, Dionysios and Tammuz all came to earth as a man, died for our sins and were resurrected. Among others - common theme that.

BD, I too will put forward the case on which my life stands when I respond to claims about my life, your creator and the reasons I choose to reject those claims. I think you got that bit already but thought I should make sure the point was clear. I think many of the posts go a lot further than wacking the rock a bit hard, maybe a bit to much buy into the Lion rather than the Lamb.

I would suggest that all of us who have looked for God judge according to how we think God should be. The only exceptions are those who have never heard of more than one concept of God. I assume that you have decided that God is not a crude statue in a hut in the jungle somewhere and that God is not money and that God is not one of a host of other Gods invented by human beings. It is necessary and valid for us to determine if a concept of God is viable and reasonable, those decisions will generally reflect the culture we are raised in. The crude statue in the mud hut is just as valid a choice for God as the christain God if our own understandings of what God should be do not come into play. Not arrogance or false presumption, rather a necessary step which I see no reason to exempt the christain God from.

R0bert

Rob
I looked back on all the posts to this thread and found the starting point for the responses which seem to concern u.

Rob said:
"Mark talks about a much better Jesus than the modern church generally talks about, if I heard about his Jesus and did not know about that Jesus aceptance of his fathers violent past and the poor job that Jesus does running his church I could almost like him."

You made 3 claims here in a public forum.

1/ God is 'violent'
2/ Jesus accepted that 'violence'.
3/ Jesus is doing a lousy job of 'running' His church.

I would call that a lot more than 'Christian bashing' :) it is without question 'God bashing'.

It is a sure and certain responsibility for a believer to respond to such things with 'reverencing Christ in our hearts and making a defense for the hope that is in us, yet with gentleness and kindness'
(1Peter 3.15)

'speaking the truth in love' does not mean we will hold back from pointing out the implications of such a position as you put forward. In the same way you were free to state such things, you are free to 'pass' on the word you hear from us. That is entirely between you and the Almighty.

Your frequent mentions of 'violent' God, sends the message about some deep seated issue in your own life, that I pray you will be able to resolve one day. God is love, and He is also Just.

<<19One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" 20But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?>>' Rom 9

What else can one say, having met the Risen Lord......He began the day as Saul, a murderer of men, women and children, he ended it as Paul...saying "For me, to live is Christ, to die is gain"

May we all come to that point in our lives.

Very happy hellothere, that you have encountered the very first question that strikes someone contemplating God. You are in for a grand journey.

Now being a very ancient question there are some wonderful answers built on over centuries by many great thinkers, in fact most of western philosophy/theology is about big questions like that.

If God is compulsorily present to us, like answering the demand for a miracle, humans would not be free, we would become like robots. Additionally, in the Gospels demons recognize Jesus, they need no proof of God yet still choose their depravity and wickedness despite originally knowing what the good entails.

What kind of knowledge do you really want?

If your wife trusts you not bcz she has absolute certainty but bcz of a reasonable faith in you we can say she deserves moral approbation.

Perhaps God would like something similar from us.

God doesn’t desire blind faith but as above faith based on reasonable evidence.

God says he is “gentle and humble in spirit” and that “the pure in heart will see God” .So how about being humble enough to study and learn about Jesus, instead of being tempted to supercilious, condescending posts.

You might learn how easy it is for humans to spread lies, to pervert and thwart goodness. You might learn than God can love even me, even me!

Christians know better than anyone how dependent they are on God’s mercy, and how shockingly easy it is to sin “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” Philippians 2:12-13. To imply belief is escapism – well the true escapism is not properly looking at Jesus’ life.

The label of 'fundamentalism' is easily applied to you hellothere.

Aziliz

Why do you treat the participants in this forum with contempt? What you've written doesn’t come from a heart desiring to inform, it's motivated by hatred.

(Kolakowski)
“Desire for hatred is explained by the fact that it inwardly destroys those who hate. Since hatred occupies, at least in its complete form, the entire human spiritual sphere in that it is similar to love, it could appear as a means to integrate the personality. But the opposite is the case.

Hatred’s pure negativity (your post), paralyses all human communication, destroys the inner unity of personality, and hence it is irreplaceable as a means to disarm the human soul.

The all consuming energy of hatred renders interchange impossible; and thus it disintegrates me spiritually, even before I am able to disintegrate my enemy.

In this sense to live in hatred is to live in death, hatred continuously dominates the mind, becomes doubly degenerated self necrophilic passion.

The continuous message of totalitarianism asserts “You are perfect, they are perfectly depraved. You would have lived in paradise, if the malice of your enemies had not prevented it”

If we hate we’re uncritical toward ourselves and toward the object of our hatred; for to be critical means to differentiate, and hatred renders us incapable of differentiation. It pits our total rightness against the total, absolute, and incurable baseness of others.

This is the secret weapon of totalitarianism; to poison the entire mental fabric of human beings with hatred, and thus to rob them of their dignity.

Hating includes nothing like solidarity; ppl who hate don’t become friends because they share a detested enemy. Except for moments of fighting, they remain alien or hostile to each other.

It may be true that many of us cannot rid ourselves of cowardice except by means of fanaticism and self inflicted blindness.” But you must try Aziliz.

I’ll leave you to read Wikipedia’s quotes from Jewish leaders about PiusXII. And leave you to read the truth about Hitler’s so called Christianity.

Aziliz you won’t be worth talking to, you have started very poorly.

Martin Ibn Warriq

After wading through your lecture on hatred, I went back to read what Aziliz had actually written. He/she had simply made an observation that there have been other tales of people dying for others' sins. Nowhere did I see any hatred.

Furthermore, you stated that "Aziliz you won’t be worth talking to, you have started very poorly" this is a very judgemental thing to say to another.

I can't say whether Aziliz is worth talking to or not - a 2 line post does not reveal sufficient information from which to make a judgement.

Does not Christianity teach humility? If so, arrogance is hardly something to which a Christian should aspire.