HL,
i am impressed you can research other sources than the bible for your information, not much, but impressed.

Research of other texts is pointless if your own belief makes you incapable of seeing truth, as it clearly does in the case of Gnosticism. I am being forced to conclude that nothing can remove your bias. That is sad indeed.

You cling to this Christian fantasy that just accepting Christ into your life is all that is needed for Salvation, as if this changes a person irreversably. Gnostics are fully aware that humans change and if they can accept Christ, they can also reject him at any time. How could a christian priest ever possibly commmit paedophilia if Christ was within him?

Once Again! your understanding of Gnostics comes more from your own bias than the Truth. Gnostics (how many times do i have to thump this into you?) have to ask Christ's help to achieve their slow, long, hard rise (Narrow is the path and many fall by the wayside) towards their ultimate goal - reuniting (re-ligare) with God. They are NOT 'self-fulfilled' 'Gods'. Take off your blinkers and see the Truth, Man!

What part of 'Gnostics require the aid of/faith in Jesus Christ' don't you GET??

Faith IS of God (you got that sort of right!). It is up to each MAN to choose to accept this inside and work constantly towards building it up and holding onto it while simultaneously eliminating that within him which constantly seeks to deny this faith (it is the struggle of one or many lifetimes to fully eliminate that which denies faith).

(I would ask that you await the confounding post limit expiry to hear my full argument before replying)

Some pretty sharp minds on this post. Who can tell me -

What became of those who lived before the bible was written?
What of all the innocent but ignorant, were they destined for damnation?

And if mother Theresa was a jew would she go to heaven?

Seems to me you're all looking at the same sky, but seeing different cloud formations

To be "born again in the spirit of God":

Agree from your heart, and confess that Jesus is God and you
wish to lay your burden of sin on him, accepting him as your
savior and lifelong guide (Lord).

Admit that he is God who came in the flesh, was crucified, and on
the third day, rose from the dead, and is seated at the right hand
of God.

Admit that he will judge the living and the dead, for which reason he has now washed away your past sins,
and remembers them no more,

That he has broken the stranglehold that Satan and sin has had on your life.

Recognize that as an adopted child of God, he has sent you the Holy Spirit of God to
guide you and cleanse you, to help you be a new creation in the Lord.

Recognize that during your life, you can only do this if you truly love him with all your heart, mind and soul,
following the first commandment, which following will lead you to follow his ways and make decisions as he would.

__________
That priests, who are probably not born again (compare the doctrine of works which claims that
man as man can clean himself up with the doctrine of grace where man can do nothing without choosing daily to rely on the Spirit and the Word for guidance, the key being "choosing"), can wallow in sin, is a characteristic and proof of the degeneracy and violence of humans as humans.

If they are born again, they have the availability of the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't mean they will choose to cooperate with it.

The element of free will is a mandate of God for his creation. He never imposes his will, but allows humans to destroy themselves and others, to their own destruction and ultimate judgment.

There is no force involved, except at the end. The element of love is that God didn't have to offer mankind a way out, but he did. It is a choice that is real, but one that many will ignore.

Imaginary priest pedophile: "I and my needs are perfect (I don't need to change [repent]). Therefore, if I decide to abuse a child sexually, that's okay. I don't need to change [repent].

Imaginary murderer: "I and my needs are perfect (I don't need to change [repent]. Therefore, if I decide to murder someone, that's okay. I don't need to change [repent].

Imaginary weapons of mass destruction terrorist: "I and my needs are perfect...."

Jesus calls on humans to repent i.e. change, because as is, they are full of sin / sinful, and the latter does the above -- destroys one's neighbor. This requires perceiving a sinful self/past, first, not perceiving a divine spark within the self, or one's divine potential.

The next step is following his lead -- through accepting him as lord and savior (from what? from the scenarios above, and their choices to destroy others).

____________

Which stage of human "perfection" allows one to "thump" others, and call them names if they don't "agree"? Is this the secular version of a crusade -- prepping to do violence, or doing violence?

bennie,
Argumentum ad baculum (Latin: argument to the cudgel or appeal to the stick) – narrow religiosity often resorts to this sort of tactic with regard to hell/ damnation, particularly Fundamentalist Christianity. Unfortunately, for many people, this is the whole crux of the Christian faith: "Do what God tells me to tell you to do, or else you'll roast in Hell for all eternity." The Calvinists will probably say (stemming from their belief in predestiny), "Do whatever you damn well please, you're probably going to roast in Hell for all eternity anyhow and there's nothing you can do about it." Either way, the ‘love’ of God is hardly illustrated or appealed to. Hell certainly exists – as a state of mind, here on earth.

Christianity is the offshoot of Judaism. The Torah teaches that all humanity is created in the image of God. In the Jewish myth of creation, one couple, Adam and Eve, are the parents of all humanity. In this view God speaks to all human beings and all human communities in various ways. All perceive the one God in their own way and take different paths to the service of the ultimate Godhead. A narrowly defined Christianity seems to pretentiously usurp its ‘parent body’.

Judaic storying telling gives us an interesting tale. When Moses was ‘divinely’ requested to go down into Egypt, he rather reluctantly says, "They'll laugh at me. Who shall I say has sent me?" and gets the massive punning answer, "Say that ehyeh asher ehyeh has sent you," which is invariably translated as "I am that I am" but actually means "I will be that I will be" - put this into English so it is coherent, "I will be present wherever and whenever I choose to be present."

Might seem, ‘he’ hasn’t been ‘round for awhile.

Bennie, indeed.

We are all here trying to find a teddy because Peter has asked a leading question from nothing more than a belief in belief assumption like .... "How does God exist?". Of course there can never be one of these teddies but it is concerning that many people still adopt some ancient codification of magic where they insist on intelligence first before matter. May I suggest that one of the problems with such magic is that a pattern cannot be designed and necessary at the same time. If it is necessary then it is not designed, and if it is designed it is not necessary.

i.e.
No matter how aesthetically pleasing something is, or how prestigious its supporters are, or how many billions of dollars a certain religious industry has bet on it..... it will always come down to ..... does the theory over-ride the evidence?