Rant of logic: There is no such thing as a "Christian"

[Mister Agenda]

I was not talking about re-distribution of wealth, and neither was Christ. Your last sentence is what Christ taught us to do, not to give everything away and then make yourself poor what does that accomplish for society.

Lack of stuff does not make you poor. Lack of income makes you poor. If you gave away everything but what you needed for food (and food preparation/storage), medical care, clean clothing, sanitary shelter, and whatever you need to keep your job (car, phone, work attire); you would not be poor. You'd still have a job and everything you and your family need for a decent life. You would just be lacking some home entertainment. There are people who live this way: give away everything beyond what they need to live in basic decency and be able to keep having something to give away.

These verses match with what I said, material things are not what's important, the spiritual is implied through all the teachings of Christ.

Apparently it's important to give the material things you don't need to the poor.

Like the last part of Matt. 6:19 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Keep your heart on the material and remain under judgement, or keep your heart on the spiritual, Christ, and escape the judgement.

Don't see how that excuses you from giving everything you don't really need to the poor. How much to give (and to whom, I have a tendency to help out those I know when intellectually I know there are a lot of people I don't know who are worse off) is something I struggle with as well.

Preparing for tomorrow and worrying about tomorrow are not the same thing. God tells us to be responsible in the gifts we are blessed with. I do rely on God for my future, there's nothing I can do to change tomorrow, I may not wake up, or can you or I stop a calamity from popping up in our lives, no, so I rely on God to help me with each day.

Living as though tomorrow will come is the smart play.

All these verses are of self pride, they have nothing to do with pride in one's children, or the way one conducts his/her self in their work. Read what I stated, please.

Were I a sincere believer, I would be a little less prideful in my ability to be sure what God was talking about and have the humility to play it safe and avoid pride altogether; but hey, it's your soul (and your family's if you teach them pride is okay as long as it's for certain things).

All this is about self pride, Christ said to look at others as they are more important than yourself, in this way you will see that serving others is very important, those who follow this are also seen as more important than others that follow this, this puts all on equal ground as God sees us. No, I do not have selfish ambitions, why should I, am I suppose to be like you just because you could not live up to Christ's example. Your wrong, I see that others need things God has given me and will share with them, giving of myself as is their need.

You seem to take pride in that. Good to hear you're living up to Christ's example, I guess, but I think I detect a contradiction in there, maybe where you condemn someone else for not being able to live up to Christ's example, as though you are capable of it.

You're hung up on the material, the riches in heaven are spiritual, I thought you said you were once a believer.

He's not the one who is trying to defend keeping his nice stuff.

It matters because there are people who really need help, and we are to give of ourselves to help them, you know the thing above about humbling yourself and becoming the servant to the poor. Want to know where God said we can not live up to His standard, start in Genesis and read through Revelation and count the many, many times He said this.

That's what he's saying. Given the admonishments of Jesus and his followers, a real effort to live humbly and give everything you can to the poor should be the goal. No one said you have to be perfect about it, just that you should try.

How is it you thought you were a Christian and not know the basics, that's like a freshman in high school science calling himself a professor.

In a thread about there being 40,000 denominations you're going to go with 'there's only one right answer and every true Christian agrees what it is'?

The Kingdom of God is at hand, it's not a far off place and yes I have sacrificed for God's kingdom, it would be far beyond your understanding.

I think that goes well beyond justified pride in your accomplishment well into arrogance and condescension.

Now that makes me snicker, who are you to even think I would look to you to live a perfect life.

More arrogance and condescension.

God said, a man must live a perfectly sinless life to receive a place in heaven, those slip ups you mentioned they are sins also, sins that unforgiven will put one in hell. God is the One saying a person must be perfect. Christ taught these thing so we could be better people, but living by these teachings without a real belief in Christ will not help you get into heaven, received grace through faith is one's only way into heaven, through this faith one will be seen as perfect, why, because Christ will be standing in front of us, it will be Christ's perfection the Father will see.

Are you saying sinning is okay because you're forgiven? Because otherwise that was just off-topic preaching.

The real matter of a life with the eternal God is to receive His Son as one's savior and Lord. After that people see many things differently, if anyone sees that salvation comes any other way is in trouble.

That's nice.

Simply believing is what it's about, so where does that leave you, somewhere below the psycho and crook, if we go by your words.

It must be nice to practice a faith where you get to heaven for having the right opinion without having to actually do anything. And asking to do more to help the poor puts him somewhere between psycho and crook? Really?

Christians did not make this world this way we all did, yet you want Christians to take on the whole problem, where is your responsibility, should not all unbelievers share in this problem, it's you guys who claim to be so smart, why haven't you fixed it, you can't because you do not care if you did you would be knee deep in filth helping all those poor starving people, how much food do you toss out every year, how about the money you waste that could be given to those in need every year, spout your comments in the mirror before pointing at someone else.

There's no prize for longest run-on sentence. Everybody shares in the problem, but there's a particular group that's fond of bragging on how great they are at helping the poor, and we can't help but notice that there are an awful lot of poor people in a country that's supposedly 80% Christian (that's the group that likes to say they're so giving). Many members of this same group complain about their taxes going to welfare when the need for welfare isn't consistent with 80% of the country being composed of people so concerned about helping the poor. It's not a problem amenable to clever solutions, it's the kind that takes a lot of work. Now, take a moment to wipe the spittle from your keyboard. You don't know what we do for the poor, you just arrogantly assume you do more. The difference is that we don't claim to have been directed to do so by an omnipotent being who will mete out rewards and punishments related to how sincerely we attempt to follow the teachings of Jesus to the best of our poor abilities. If you want to say that Christians shouldn't be held to a higher standard, that's fine (we don't think being a Christian makes you a better person either)...but don't vomit on our humble efforts in the same breath, you hypocrite.