Still a Christian - ask me questions/tell me about yourselves

[speedyj1992]

At least this fucker has an epic username. This album by Speedy J rocks so fucking hard:

Would you believe me if I told you I'd never heard of this guy? I'm going to give this a listen tonight, though, thanks for showing me this.

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I want to help people come to Christ

I can't come I'm afraid. I'm anorgasmic.

I think you know what I was trying to say, but okay, I'll keep in mind my phrasing (pardon the "Archer" reference) for future reference. That was somewhat funny, actually, even though I technically shouldn't find it funny.

How is "I want to help people be more open to faith in Christ, whether that's believing themselves or being more tolerant of those who do believe"?

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There are a couple of reasons I'm here - first, I want to help people come to Christ, because having been on both sides, I can say this is the less miserable one. It's not always sunshine and rainbows, but the tough times are less tough, and there's way more direction.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you won't help people "come to Christ" here.

Regarding what you said and what chimp3 got at, have you guys ever heard of "bridge theory"? It's the idea that God is infinitely good, so sin is infinitely bad, and that, to reconcile the broken relationship between God and man (since the Jews couldn't keep the covenant God gave them), something infinite needed to happen to replace all the finite works (which is all we as people are capable of) of the covenant of the Old Testament (which goes waay beyond the 10 Commandments). All the animal sacrifices given by the people were flawed and never kept, so something perfect needed to be given to reconcile all the sin for all time, and that was Jesus' sinless life. 

God didn't allow Jesus to sin so we could have relationship with Him, to answer that question, and to answer the next, we should expect everything from Him BECAUSE He did that. We couldn't atone for ourselves, so Jesus did, and that is an act of extreme sacrificial love such as has never been seen in literature or other religions or in the real world, because sin is infinitely bad in the eyes of God, and yet He sacrificed Jesus for us despite how bad sin mars us in His eyes. And yet we have a hard time seeing people who we disagree with in a loving way (yes, I struggle with that, too).

You know it's not true when you make up a reason for the made up thing. It's one of the ways to spot a con artist - if they try to sell you a solution to a problem only they know exists, then the problem is not real... and the solution is snake oil.

Define sin without referring to a god.

This is hardly enough space (and I have hardly enough time) to get into all of it. BUT I'll start off with this:

There is extra-Biblical evidence of Jesus' existence (look up the historian "Josephus", he is I think the main historian who wrote about Jesus, besides Luke, who wrote one of the gospels)

Josephus only ever mentions Christians. It's as if the myth was already existing... As if it didn't really originate on 33ad, nor 60ad.... but 100~200bc... and only got renamed... hmmm, kinda around the time of the Teacher of Righteousness... and a very similar message.

All 12 of Jesus' disciples (13 if you include Judas) were real people, and all of them died under execution, proclaiming Christ to their deaths (minus John, who died in exile), which Jesus actually told them would happen to them (not "You are all going to die for my sake", but He said "In the world you will have tribulation", among other references)

A Teacher and his disciples.... interesting...

There is an extreme LACK of "alternative events" of the NT, and there are actually over 25k manuscripts of the gospels, which is more copies than "The Iliad" and the works of the ancient Greek philosphers, and with greater consistency

How about all the gospels that didn't make the cut?
Many more than the ones that actually made it to the NT.
Aren't those representative of such "alternative events"?

There's a book detailing some of them called "Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman. It would do you good do educate yourself before perpetuating false news.

The book of Acts, which follows the Gospels and proceeds Paul's letters, was considered a historical record

Perhaps parts of it, yes.
But the whole thing?? I'd take extreme caution with such blanket statements.

There are the occasional scientific and historical predictions in the NT (there's more in the OT, and I would encourage you to Google these yourself), BUT the most interesting is that it predicts that Christianity will be a big trend and many will come to believe (that's more in Revelation)

Was that the part written after Christianity was adopted by the Roman Empire?

The major religions you hear of with other people who headed them, Islam, Buddhism, and Hindu (those are the main ones that come to mind) all have the graves of their respective leaders available. Considering the extreme impact of Christianity on our world and culture, and I know this isn't evidence so much as just interesting and powerful, it's worth noting that Christ's grave and body are nowhere to be found

Could it be that the man was never a real man, but a mythological figure?
Could it be that the real man behind the myth lived well before the events portrayed?
Could there have been various real men, whose stories got cobbled together into a single person, with some extra magical glue to account for the extraordinary miracles?

Pontius Pilate (who put Jesus to death) was a real person, the Roman government was indeed an occupying force in the Jewish nation at the time, and there was a significant movement around the time of Jesus' precahing that's never really stopped, even if it's at times slowed, changed, or taken steps in wrong directions

Yes, a real person that held that real position... not exactly when the book claims... by quite a few years.


And New York exists for real, hence Spiderman stories must also be real, huh?

You've clearly put a lot of thought into your replies to various comments, so allow me to do some of the same (I won't address every single thing):

First, you can't know other people and where they are at all the time, least of all over a forum. Whether or not someone comes to Christ is very hard to predict, and can take years in some cases, in which I may only play a very small role, which I'm very okay with. 

Second, I didn't invent Christianity, obviously - as a religion, it exists to worship God, who didn't create sin, we did. I would define sin as all forms of evil, at all levels, within our existence and world, that we are all guilty of. Of course, we can't know what is considered sin without God, but that's not part of the definition I gave. 

And actually Josephus does mention Jesus, so ... 

I assume the "gospels that didn't make the cut" refers to ones that were clearly contradictory and inconsistent, both internally and in comparison with the others (aka Thomas' and Judas'). That's literally why they're not in the Bible canon.

And Revelation was written somewhere between the year 70-85 whereas Christianity was officially adopted past the year 300 (I looked it up, honestly was surprised it took so long). 

In THEORY, we could be talking about more than one man or what you described, but it's highly unlikely. Honestly it takes more faith to believe that His closest disciples all lied about who He was to their deaths for something they didn't believe in and were able to write that consistent of a character considering their lack of educations. There are some educated screenwriters today can hardly write a consistent character, it seems. 

And lastly, there's basis in reality for Spidey, but we're talking about a work that was presented as intentional fiction to get across a point. The Bible is presented as reality, so your comparison works only up to that point.

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1963/1964 you say - how old are you, if I may ask? And how old were you when you read the Bible?

I just turned 60.  I learned to read at 2½, read the Bible when I was about 6 or 7, and occasionally re-read bits of it.

Also, the water cycle wasn't discovered until the 1800s, and while it was theorized a couple hundred years before that by the Chinese, those particular scriptures are fairly specific.

I still think that believers are reinterpreting scripture specifically for the purpose of being able to point and say "Look!  This is about the water cycle!"  There's rather a lot that the Bible got wrong, such as the number of legs on an insect and the value of pi (being out by nearly 5%, when neighbouring lands had a much closer approximation, doesn't suggest a god with scientific knowledge.)

First, I would encourage you to read the water cycle verses - Ecclesiastes 1:7, Isaiah 55:10, Amos 9:6, Jeremiah 10:13, and Job 36:27-28. Regarding your insect and pi references, what verses are you referring to? I'm also unclear about your last comment in the parentheses, but I'd gladly respond with some clarification.