sojourner Posted October 26, 2007 Share Posted October 26, 2007 nah your not ranting you are just calling a spade a spade I dont hide behind my ignorance and act like I dont have it , how silly is that? If I open my mouth Im gonna be found out anyways, might as well just own up right off the bat. I do concede that taken on a literal level the bible is very hard to grasp with any kind of a loving God and that we as christians do pick and choose As a universalist I have to ignore certain scriptures or just say they are not revealed to me yet lol so do calvinists armenians and the whole lot I started out a southern baptist, calivinist and right now universalist - just so maybe you can follow the thought processes Ive gone thru and where I currently am this is why I am enjoying discussing, God says come to Him and reason together, well that is not me coming all alone all the time with my head and heart and a bible to me. It is going to ALL my brothers and sisters out there cause to me we all have our own parts to offer. Without each other we just cant be complete in our knowing to me. So Im trying to reason these things out here lol thanks sojourner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWIM Posted October 26, 2007 Share Posted October 26, 2007 God says come to Him and reason together That was just metaphor, he didn't mean that literally. It means "Take the god concept and apply reasoning to it" Or it means, "God is in your brain, visit your brain and reason." LOL see? You can make ANYTHING a metaphor. And you can make that metaphor fit your own needs easily. In the above metaphor, God does not exist, the author means "God says come to him" meaning the Concept of god is irrational and he is saying come to him, *come* meaning, visit him in your mind, reason with the concept, to shed light on the non-existance. Guess one of the bible authors was atheist, either that or I applied a metaphor where it was meant literal... Appling metaphor at wil, and using enough imagination *I* could make the entire bible an anti-religion atheist document.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted October 26, 2007 Author Share Posted October 26, 2007 I suppose this thread is coming to an end. I just want to thank everyone for participating in the question: Salvation-a free gift? The term "free gift" is redundant. It doesn't make any sense. Any actual, real gift is always free. If it has strings attached, or conditions, it is not free. This has been abundantly illustrated in this thread. Salvation is itself a large topic. It seems there are many different Christian understandings of that word. It seems to me that salvation, in the regular meaning of that word is to rescue someone from something dangerous or undesirable, such as "sin" and "death". Salvation is not free if we understand that Jesus gave his life to achieve it. Exactly how that "sacrifice" saves humans from death and hell is apparently not well understood, even by Christians. At least we have had not real explanations that make any sense. Conclusion: We don't know what salvation is, and even if we did, in the Christian context, it is certainly NOT under any circumstances a "free gift." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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