Waterrock wrote:
I don't presume to sit in God's chair when it comes to soul-judging, but it looks to me the principle in play has something to do with the premise that rebellious souls, after physical death, will never change from anti-God to pro-God. The opportunity for exchanging one's anti-God nature for a pro-God nature is here, in this life. When we die physically, our nature is locked-in.
"What can change the nature of a man?" Not God, obviously.
I can never get over this idea. Apparently, God is so repulsive that he has to threaten torture or extinction to get people to want to spend time with Him. Is He ugly, or something? What's so weird about God that only people who accept complete, kinky-style submission can stand to be around Him?
Waterrock wrote:
The crimes are transitory but the effects of the crimes upon the criminal's character, unless he repents, are eternal.
An idea based upon an unsupported presumption that people cannot change after death.
Waterrock wrote:
I know there are many who keep telling themselves that.
No. God offers satisfactory evidence: the experience of His call in your life;
Care to explain why my drawing breath proves that humanity was saved by a Jew getting nailed to a piece of plywood by the Romans 2000 years ago?
Waterrock wrote:
It's a subjective proof, but it's satisfactory. And to the believer, it is the strongest sort of proof: the Q.E.D. kind of proof.
Basically, you're saying it's true because you believe it. That's not proof, that's arrogance on your part.
Waterrock wrote:
The thing is, when it comes to God and immaterial quantities such as virtue and evil, there will always be a point at which objective proof is impossible: the ideas that God says He is good, and that He merits your worship, and that your soul was designed to co-operate with Him may be just an unproveable in the afterlife as the ideas that our rebellious acts against God and against our consciences have placed us in God's moral debt, and that God has paid that debt Himself, and that we need to exchange our fallen nature for a new one. Faith will always be in the equation somewhere; it's just a matter of where it is placed.
This is because those ideas are silly. An all-powerful being doesn't require cooperation. Rebellion requires the ability to resist. You only bring up conscience because spreading Christianity is pretty much an exercise in playing with other people's emotions to make them feel guilty about nothing. "Moral debt" is an empty metaphor that uses money as a comparison to rationalize the idea that you've harmed or taken away something from a being that's supposedly part of everything, which is impossible. Faith is only necessary because you're not capable of providing any other reason why anyone should believe anything you have to say.
Waterrock wrote:
Plus, the wait-and-see option is not neutral; it works directly against God's agenda of redemption
I know you don't want us to stop and think about what you're saying. We have to decide now now now before it's too late! I see the same thing in infomercials for other crap that doesn't work.
Waterrock wrote:
Redemption is not just a matter of perfecting souls in eternity; redemption ends there, but it begins here on earth, when people realize that their fellow human beings are not randomly-generated naked apes in a randomly-generated universe, but are beings specially cherished by their Creator and endowed with special purposes. That realization (and other realizations that are built into acceptance of Christianity's good news) provokes the individual who embraces it to treat his fellow human beings with compassion and respect, following the teachings of Christ, and to encourage others to do the same.
Because, if you're not with us, you're against us, and God will kill you. That's how you follow this up, in fewer words.
