WARNING! This will be a long post considering many posts from before about Christianity. I have quotes from: Lastwish, DaRkEcHoEs, and xkenshinx. If you're not one of those 3, this post may be a little long. Just a forewarning.To skip back a few pages to lastwish's post... I don't wanna quote but he said something like:
If christianity is true, and god is a kind and loving being, then why is there any suffering at all? According to christianity, god is all knowing and transcendant among all planes of existance, so why would he even create us if he knew it would cause so much pain and suffering? We don't even have a purpose--yet a christian would say that chatacism we are here to glorify god (paraphrased). If god was so powerful, he could think of a better way to glorify himself than to create a people, have so many suffer, and only have a few glrify him. I just think many parts of christianity are hypocritical and don't make any sense.Q: Why is there any suffering at all?
A: God created us
perfect. think back to Adam and Eve. First story in the bible, everyone knows it. He gave us the perfect life, the perfect minds, bodies, and souls. We as humans
chose the suffering, we
chose to be imperfect. Why is there suffering? Satan is also in the world too, you know. Don't look at this as a one-sided veiw.
Q:Why would he even create us if he knew it would cause so much pain and suffering?
A:This was a tough one, but MY opinion is thus: God wanted us to ENJOY life. He wanted us to experience firsthand love, faith, all the wonderful stuff that's in life. What would we be if we were put on the Earth, and a mighty hand from god came down and would smite us if we did not worship him? We wouldn't be a very great people now would we? God gave us a free will so we could do as
we chose. God doesn't want us to be puppets.
Q:If god was so powerful, he could think of a better way to glorify himself than to create a people, have so many suffer, and only have a few glrify him.
A: Same as above, basically. We have free will so that we can CHOOSE good over evil, we can choose apples over oranges, we can choose god if WE want to. He's not going to tell us what to do, or force us to do it. Some people choose to glorify him, some people choose to hate him, some people turn thier heads.
Enough from Lastwish - now for DaRkEcHoEs. Here's his post- Way i see it ANY one could have wrote the bible and say "yup it was god he told me to" Do you know how many people hear voices? couldhave been some crazy people making up stories....or the work of a king who was losing control of his kingdom and made this up to regain control of his people.You know, I thought this myself, when I was little. I was brought up every sunday in church, and it was boring as anything. Let me tell you - I hated church so much like you wouldn't beleive. Going to church on sunday didn't make me become a christian. What made me become one is that one weekend, my youth group went up to an old abandoned castle in the mountains where we had 2-3 days of intense worship, teachings, prayings, and all of them in a relaxed settings, just for teens like myself. It was in this building that I
really accepted christ. But there's a little thing that most people overlook as Christianity, but CHristians find it the basis of thier religon. I just found out something interesting: Webster's intermediate dictionary defines faith(one of the definitions out of 6) as:
beleif and trust in and loyalty to god and also -
The quality of being true to one's promises. That's what you need a sermon on darkechoes - faith. There is no way for us to go back in time. There is no way(that I know of, honestly) to prove that what the bible says is true. What do Christians do when they accept Christ? They promise to god that they have accepted thier son as thier savior, and they place thier FAITH in him. Look at the definitions I gave you. The second one deals with keeping one's promises, the first one deals with loyalty and trust in God.
Another quote from echoes -
Another reason i dont believe in the bible is because, all this stuff happeneing in egypt but there isnt ONE black person in the bible (from what i read) If the bible setting took place in africa, how did the english know it before the african's?Well, I thought I knew the answer to this one - but I checked it out with my mother really fast, who was about 5 feet away from me... her answer was simple... you're correct, echoes, the bible didn't say there were any black people... but as my mother said - "Did it say any of them were white?" There were Etheopian people in hte bible too, you know.
Now for a quick quote from xKenshinx...
reading the bible isn't going to make u a better person... end of story...You know kenshin, you're absolutely right... I could sit from 9 pm to 4 in the morning and read the first 14 books of the bible and go out the next day and be the same person. It's all there, in a nicely bound book for us - all we have to do is read, and follow. God wants all of his people to follow him - he provided us with the instructions, we just have to do them. He gives us laws to go by, he gives us ways that we can become better people and better christians... all YOU have to do kenshin is go out and do them. You'll be a better person. It worked for me.
One last quote - I promise - from Lastwish. THis one angers me a little bit... HOW can you possibly post about this? Have you not read the rest of the bible? You've concentrated on this one little verse.
But on the cross, Jesus asked "Why have you forsaken me?" in essence representing that god had turned his back--at least that's what I get from that passage, and that's what I was taught.You were taught god turned his back on Jesus? Jesus had the weight of our sins on his shoulders, he's saving us from the temptation of the most evil thing in all of creation - satan - he has nails in the most painful places in his arms, he has thorns crushing into his tender temples, he's nearly naked, and hundreds of people shouting for his death -
AND HE'S JUST A MAN. HE MAY BE THE SON OF GOD BUT HE IS STILL JUST A MAN. HE IS NOT INVINCIBLE TO PAIN, HE'S NOT SOME SUPERHERO. If you were up on a cross bleeding endlessly as your wrists ripped against the nails driven out the other side, while the people who supported you as little as three days ago cheered your pain on, what would you do? Jesus hung on the cross instead of Barabbus, instead of all of us, to bear the pain of our sins so we don't have to. Imagine god - god was heartbroken that HE had to send his only son - HIS ONLY SON - to die in the most painful way, to save us! Imagine the excruciating pain that god must have been going through! And you say he turned his back on Jesus? God the ever-knowing, you said in one of your posts - God is all-knowing, and he knew that this had to happen if humanity was to stay in heaven with him.
Well sermon over... I hope I've opened all of your eyes to what Christianity's all about - and feel free to debate me.
Please do.
WH-Lightning
*edit* I'm serious - you can email me at
hka_lightning@hotmail.com or AIM me at WiZLightning if you dont want to say a question on the forums *edit*
