Christian Problems

[Castiel233]

Well,dealing with the very basic, the church generally would teach the following.

 

1-Believe in Jesus

2- Be Baptised

3- Preach the gospel

 

However this somewhat basic formula ignores the whole idea that:

 

1- God chooses who He wills

2-Prophecy (if it be real) implies a pre fixed and pre determined future making our actions and free will redundant

3-Jesus says that God will answer prayers asked for in His name, yet countless Christians still fret over going to Hell, despite a life time of prayer begging to be allowed into Heaven.

4- The Bible makes very contradictory statements about numerous things, not least salvation. It implies a wife is saved if her husband is righteous....and vice versa....then ruins that by saying that those who are not baptised and do not believe are damned.

5- Christians reading the same book and infused with the same holy ghost bicker among themselves who has the real revelation 

 

  

[Geezer]

I'm slow and naïve, so it took me a long time to figure out why the group I affiliated with believed it was a sin to "assume" you were saved. They taught a believer could never know for sure one way or the other. Only God knows and the believer won't know if they were saved until the final Judgment. Their teaching indicated a believer could be saved and then lost multiple times a day.

 

A believer is saved only when they are sinless in the eyes of God. Commit a sin, any sin, and the believer lost their soul. They remain in that lost state until they repent and beg God to forgive them. At that point they are "restored" but the next time they sin the process starts all over again.

 

That is some very clever teaching. Since you can't know for sure that you're saved that mandates you have to work harder, give more, be kinder, more forgiving, etc., etc. to build up as many brownie points as possible and then hope you've done enough to make the final cut or that you just happen to have been in a saved state when you died.

[Castiel233]

Edit 

[Castiel233]

I'm slow and naïve, so it took me a long time to figure out why the group I affiliated with believed it was a sin to "assume" you were saved. They taught a believer could never know for sure one way or the other. Only God knows and the believer won't know if they were saved until the final Judgment. Their teaching indicated a believer could be saved and then lost multiple times a day.

 

A believer is saved only when they are sinless in the eyes of God. Commit a sin, any sin, and the believer lost their soul. They remain in that lost state until they repent and beg God to forgive them. At that point they are "restored" but the next time they sin the process starts all over again.

 

That is some very clever teaching. Since you can't know for sure that you're saved that mandates you have to work harder, give more, be kinder, more forgiving, etc., etc. to build up as many brownie points as possible and then hope you've done enough to make the final cut or that you just happen to have been in a saved state when you died.

On basic belief, I was "saved"

 

I believed that Jesus was who he said he was

 

I witnessed once (very, very reluctantly)

 

I am baptised 

 

However, as you rightly point out, you have to keep making confession after confession and witness after witness (until you are witless)........

 

I have mentioned this before , I think, but years ago Billy Graham no less , was warned by other Christian leaders, that he was committing heresy by preaching Gods love rather than Gods wrath.

 

As for sin and the craziness of Christian theology , generally. Setting aside sin as  a disease we cannot see, that infects our souls, which we also cannot see, I give you the example of St Augustine.

 

Augustine was converted by his Mother, a woman he adored. She died and he records that he cried for an hour after her death in his grief for her passing.........and then he cried buckets for the sin of crying over his loss, because it was a sin to miss her. She of course did not matter, only Jesus. So in missing and grieving over his Mum, he was insulting Jesus. This is what Christianity does to the human mind. It turns you against yourself, as you attempt to please a being you have never met and can't even see.