What Do I Believe?

[Deva]

 

I am interested in an answer to my question - how you think you have the true church and "absolution" whatever that means outside the Catholic Church.

There is only one church, the catholic(small "c") church, the bride of Christ, comprised of all the saints living and dead. Every believer who repents and trusts in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins is in the true church. Absolution is simply the forgiveness of sins in Jesus proclaimed to you.

 

It is completely understandable why someone like Jeffrey Dahmer would turn to Jesus at the end. After all - it doesn't matter how heinous the crimes, just pray to Jesus and its all forgiven!

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound. You sound like Jonah:

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. (Jonah3-4)

 

The Assyrians were famous for raping people to death and then wearing their rotting heads as a necklace. But Jesus said:

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. (Matt12)

 

 

 

Oh, don't sing to me. I am like Jonah? That's OK, I have been called worse. Justice or mercy? Seems we can't have it both ways, even with an almighty God.  If you think it is justice to kill and cannibalize people and then just do a sinner's prayer thing and its all better, you have a very perverted sense of justice, or should I say your God has one?  Actually,  true justice is impossible given one lifetime - Dahmer's victims would  have to rise from the dead and everything be put right as if it never happened, but I personally think Dahmer will pay for his crimes and a plea to Jesus won't do it.

 

What you say about the church is nothing different than I heard from the Baptists, except they wouldn't even use the word "catholic". And incidentally, you don't need to define the word "catholic" as if we are ignorant and don't know what it means. To you, and other protestants, there is this secret, true church that has been preserved from the beginning.  Too bad that more than likely no Christian of the medieval era and earlier would know what you meant. You can't separate your experience from the institutionalized church, because if it had not become institutionalized, you would have never heard of Jesus OR the Bible.

 

How much trust is enough trust, and how much repentance enough repentance?

[Astreja]

I believe it is really special that God made the force of gravity proportional to the inverse squared and not ~^2.091234482348498 or something. It makes gravity simple to mathematically model so that it can be easily introduced into a wide range of applied physics problems.

 

Ben, your god couldn't find two people in a fucking garden, and can't forgive unless you smear blood all over something.  It's far, far too stupid to make anything more complicated than a mudpie.

 

Florduh, My vote is to show this obstinate troll the door -- If he can't even follow some painfully simple moderator instructions and STFU with the Bible verses, I doubt very much that he's capable of quality dialogue with the rest of us.

[Deva]

Everything Ben will ever say can be found here: https://www.bible.com/

 

So what say ye? Shall we keep him a while longer?

Aw, let us practice on him for awhile.

[Fweethawt]

Let's get down to business.

I ain't got no time to play around. What is this?

There's a circus in town.

Let's shut the shit down - on this clown.

Can I get a witness?

 

-- Eminem

[Astreja]

Aw, let us practice on him for awhile.

 

Practice how?  No matter how painstaking and thorough our posts, all Ben does is fart out Bible verses with very few words of his own.

 

I suppose I could go get My rune bag and My other woo-woo toys and practice some seiðr on him... 

 

...Or perhaps the mods could change his avatar to that lovely craniorectal nude and we can watch him stomp off in a huff.

[mymistake]

 

You believe whatever your chosen religious authority tells you to believe.  You are a slave.

I Christ I am free, but those who do not believe are slaves to sin and unbelief

 

 

 

 

[Ravenstar]

blah blah blah christ, blah blah blah bible, blah blah blah verse blah blah, blah blah blah (totally misses the point of question) blah blah blah logical fallacy, blah blah blah god, blah blah blah

 

troll, or incredible delusional

 

obviously poorly educated

 

has NO idea what an EX-christian is.

 

 

Here's a clue... we are the people who did the SEEKING the bible asked for.. true, deep and thorough. It's bunk. Now, in many cases at the expense of losing friends and family... often painfully... we are here because we can no longer believe that which is unbelievable and unsupported - we value the TRUTH above all, at varying costs. It isn't EASY to walk away from a worldview and a secure social venue, ya know.  idjit.

 

Now get with the program if you wish to remain here... and show some intelligent, original thought (and maybe some research) rather than regurgitation of verse.

 

we are NOT convinced by a book which claims to validate itself. It's called CIRCULAR REASONING, and a 5th grader could do better.

 

and the Catholic Church is an EVIL and immoral institution... and I DO have the evidence for that. almost 2000 years of it.

[Galien]

 

Did post #10 really happen? Did an actual human being take time out of their day to type that out?

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/57716-what-do-i-believe/#entry878395

 

*shakes head - walks away*

 

Yep, made me wanna puke.

[centauri]

 

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound.

I think you'll find that the sound isn't at all sweet to Ex-Christians.

Granted that you had many responses to address but your approach has been visited on these forums many, many times by believers that have passed through.

You might find it interesting to go through some of the older topics and witness the responses to other Christians that wanted to make points using the Bible.

They often assumed their conclusion and then used circular logic to affirm it.

Another commonly used ploy is to claim Jesus was special and is exempt from any laws or stipulations found in the Old Testament.

That's known as special pleading, and it's used in virtually every apologetic dialog.

While I have no problem with you believing whatever makes you feel good, you're not going to be able to dialog with most Ex-Christians very well if you rely on the Bible to affirm that your beliefs are somehow superior to the beliefs of others.

My personal experience that led my out of Christianity was when I realized that Christainity was revisionist theology.

I thank the many Jewish writers that opened my eyes to how badly the New Testament distorts and misuses the Hebrew scriptures.

That first came as a terrible shock because it wrecked everything I was brought up to believe in.

Humpty Dumpty was smashed and no apologist or preacher can put it back together again.

It might be helpful to keep in mind that the phrase "been there, done that" is a fairly good description of the people here and that's why it will be difficult for you to dialog using tools that are not accepted as meaningful.

[RipVanWinkle]

We are not trying to convince you to abandon you faith in Jesus. Believe what you want.  But we have left that faith because we finally realized it is a myth used for two thousand years for the accumulation of power and wealth. This was no knee jerk reaction. We all (or virtually all), independent of each other, did extensive research because we did NOT want to give up a virtually life long faith through which we saw the world. 

 

You see, we don't threaten people with horrible punishment for not agreeing with us. You have that right. But don't insult us by saying or implying the we just don't understand the faith we worshiped for many years. We quoted the same bible that you are quoting now. But we each separately had a reverse road to Damascus experience, so to speak. Not with visions or the like. We had a "Wait a minute, does this make any sense?" experience. And that was the beginning of our "awakening" to the truth. 

 

But I don't think you want the truth. You want your security blanket. Have a nice sleep.  bill

[par4dcourse]

Everything Ben will ever say can be found here: https://www.bible.com/

 

So what say ye? Shall we keep him a while longer?

A thoroughly redundant verse machine. Can him.

[midniterider]

Many apologies. It was my intention to thoughtfully respond to all of the comments on the "What is the gospel?" thread. I only responded to posts through part of page 5 (even though there were 11 pages) before the thread was locked. I can only assume that since I was abiding by the forum guidelines (and has not received any warnings for breaking forum rules) and in lion's den style "permissively unrestrained without devolving into repetitious verbal abuse" in my responses that no fair-minded moderator would close the thread because they didn't enjoy what I was saying.

 

It became clear from the beginning that no one was particularly interested in the gospel or what it means for people like Jeffrey Dahmer and myself, and would rather simply ask me questions, so feel free. I will do my best to respond. As I can no longer respond to the last 6 pages of posts, I haven't even managed to get to them, so if there was something I didn't respond to in the other thread that you would like a response from, you can ask me here.

 

To start with, here is something I believe:

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (Jn6)

 

Well, I'm  not particularly interested in the gospel from a standpoint of personal belief. I discarded that belief 10 years ago. It is sort of interesting though to observe the Christians that come here to spread the word and create the mental gymnasiums to allow contradicting scriptures to co-exist.

[midniterider]

 

no fair-minded moderator would close the thread because they didn't enjoy what I was saying.

 

First, I don't have to be fair, but I am anyway. I closed the thread not because I don't agree with your beliefs but because there is no productive discussion when one participant relies on quoting books rather than making his own intelligent argument.

 

 

I personally don't care if a thread goes on to infinity but after a while I ignore the multipage scrolling posts but will read shorter posts.

[Bhim]

 

Bhim, really, what can he say?  If he were Reformed he might pull out B.B. Warfield's trusty old Counterfeit Miracles.  No true Scotsman around here.

 

 

 

True, he might.  As a former Reformed Christian myself, I can relate to this point of view.  Reformed apologists have an answer to everything. I even heard a pastor talk about how he was able to give the eulogy at his deceased, unbelieving brother's funeral, whilst believing the man was in eternal hell.  But most Christians will repeat these claims only half believing them (because they violate their common sense), and ultimately come to a realization that the argument they're making goes against their own conscience.  That's why I'm curious what Ben thinks about all of this.

 

We are not trying to convince you to abandon you faith in Jesus. Believe what you want.  But we have left that faith because we finally realized it is a myth used for two thousand years for the accumulation of power and wealth. This was no knee jerk reaction. We all (or virtually all), independent of each other, did extensive research because we did NOT want to give up a virtually life long faith through which we saw the world. 

 

You see, we don't threaten people with horrible punishment for not agreeing with us. You have that right. But don't insult us by saying or implying the we just don't understand the faith we worshiped for many years. We quoted the same bible that you are quoting now. But we each separately had a reverse road to Damascus experience, so to speak. Not with visions or the like. We had a "Wait a minute, does this make any sense?" experience. And that was the beginning of our "awakening" to the truth. 

 

But I don't think you want the truth. You want your security blanket. Have a nice sleep.  bill

 

I concur and am not trying to get Ben to stop believing in Jesus.  I would, however, like for him to cease convering others to his religion.  That's another reason I see some value in this discussion.

[LivingLife]

We should have a new category called Trollobyte for twits like this that only spew verses from their babble.

 

Folk like this need to confront us pond scum/vomit eating dawgs to validate their beliefs b/c in their infantile minds, one cannot turn their backs on gawd b/c teh beeg book says so.

[midniterider]

 

 

no fair-minded moderator would close the thread because they didn't enjoy what I was saying.

 

First, I don't have to be fair, but I am anyway. I closed the thread not because I don't agree with your beliefs but because there is no productive discussion when one participant relies on quoting books rather than making his own intelligent argument.

 

 

I respect that you disagree with my beliefs. I also respectfully disagree with your belief that I cannot productively argue my beliefs in discussion. I consider translated primary source material an essential component of the discussion for both conveying what I believe and why I believe it.

 

Since you are the moderator, you have the authority to silence me, and I submit to that authority, as I am called to do in scripture:

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme,or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. (1Pet2)

 

 

We don't have slaves in our country. That was outlawed in the 1800s. You may have noticed a lack of slavery where you live.

 

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution.... American Atheists is an institution... http://www.atheists.org/  .... be subject to that as it says in the bible.

 

Honor everyone ... like Richard Dawkins, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Ricky Gervais, Satan, etc.....

[midniterider]

The 'holy' words you spew seem to have no transforming effect on us, BarnacleBen. Probably cuz we heard it before and have rejected it. What's next?

[Galien]

Has no masters.

[Deva]

 

Aw, let us practice on him for awhile.

 

Practice how?  No matter how painstaking and thorough our posts, all Ben does is fart out Bible verses with very few words of his own.

 

I suppose I could go get My rune bag and My other woo-woo toys and practice some seiðr on him... 

 

...Or perhaps the mods could change his avatar to that lovely craniorectal nude and we can watch him stomp off in a huff.

 

 

I don't really care.. but some new people here can see how all Ben can do is quote verses. He is a demonstration of the uselessness of Christianity.

[mymistake]

We should have a new category called Trollobyte for twits like this that only spew verses from their babble.

 

 

Clever, but I prefer the term "Biblebot".  It's more to the point.  

 

 

 

Folk like this need to confront us pond scum/vomit eating dawgs to validate their beliefs b/c in their infantile minds, one cannot turn their backs on gawd b/c teh beeg book says so.

 

 

And they keep quoting the Bible because the Bible says that God's word will not return void.  It must be true because they couldn't put it in the Bible if it wasn't true.

[florduh]

Quoting the Bible to those who know the Bible and have rejected it should be recognized as a useless tactic even to a moron. For that reason I assume he is merely a troll and not interested in fruitful discussion. Surely, a Christian can say stupid things on their own without incessantly quoting the book.

[HymenaeusAlexander]

What do you believe? We know what you believe. You’re a confessional Lutheran who by admission subscribes to the Book of Concord. All you’ve been doing is quoting from Protestant canonical writings through the interpretive lens of your confessional standards. As such, any attempt at asking you questions would be a pointless exercise in your ability to regurgitate the interpretations of the Protestant Bible provided by Luther, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, et al. I can do that. I can read.

 

What we’ve been trying to get you to do is provide justification for why you believe these things. So far you’ve offered relatively little other than unsubstantiated and self-referential assertions along with nebulous appeals to authority. When your truth-claims have been challenged you’ve done nothing but offer more unsubstantiated assertions or attempted to shift the burden of proof.

 

Step outside the circle and offer some actual justification for your beliefs. Tell us the real reason for the hope that is in you that doesn’t begin with “well, the Bible says…” You’ve not adequately established why those specific 66 books should be an authority on anything other than the tenets of orthodox Protestantism and you’ve certainly not established the authority of the politically-charged interpretations of those cherry-picked ancient writings offered by a handful of 16^th century German theologians. Until you do this, quoting the Bible and offering Martin Chemnitz’ interpretation of it is pointless.

 

You’ve bought the line that this particular collection of ancient writings contains the magical “words of life”. You’ve been told that some of us could be magically transformed through the faithful recitation of these incantations if only a magical unseen spirit that, like the wind that blows where it wills, imposes its power upon us. Then we will be cut to the heart and cry out, “please, barnacleben, tell us what we must to do to be saved!” That will be your cue to declare, “Repent and believe the True Gospel™! Embrace the Faith once for all delivered to a couple of German guys named Martin.” If that doesn’t happen, you think that because of the hold that the dark magic has upon us, we will cover our ears and gnash our teeth and rush headlong at you and do some sort of internet version of stoning you while you humbly proclaim, “Father, forgive them.”

 

We’ve read and studied the Bible. It’s part of the reason why we’re not Christians anymore. Any hostility you encounter is going to be due to either your frustratingly evasive biblebot behavior or factors like us having heard all of this bullshit before and having been put through any number of various emotional and psychological abuses as a result of the baggage that comes with this nonsense.

 

So please, pretty please, with sugar on top, provide a defensible and reasoned argument substantiating your assertions and deal with the solid counter-arguments that have already been presented to you with something other than merely more scripture quotes.

[stryper]

Can I start quoting Lord of the Rings to start proving it now?

since it parallels the bible.....why not.

[par4dcourse]

I firmly believe Salma Hayek should be on the IHOP menu.

[florduh]

 

I firmly believe Salma Hayek should be on the IHOP menu. 

 

 

Does that dish come with a side of pancakes?

 

I firmly believe that one-legged waitresses should work at IHOP.