Ask a Christian a question

[LightGrenade04]

Go ahead, ask whatever you want about Christianity.

[LightGrenade04]

[quote="LightGrenade04

"Man was a little one, and his discretion still undeveloped, wherefore also he was easily misled by the deceiver."

I took out the rest of the garbage and would like you to look outside before contemplating the above.

What's that supposed to mean?

GIA wrote
Please accept my apology for being cranky in my response to your post.
I have no good excuse but would like to explain my mind set at the time.

I had made a mistake of reading all of your replies and had formed an opinion of your mind set. I saw intelligence, good education, yes, but I saw you as not quite having made up your own mind and so busy quoting others instead of giving your thoughts. Further I always get a chuckle when people like to be long winded and use words likemetathis and ergothat.
I saw a good mind being wasted and it pissed me off.
In other words, I was in hard debate mood and did not want to see too much bull.

I also did not realize you were a student and was replying to a hardened veteran of this place.

Sorry.

Regards
DL

That's ok, I'm sure that from looking at my post history you'll see that I have a tendency to lose my patience too. No worries.

[Greatest I Am]

Let me get it off, that I am a Christian.

Why are there so many denominations? I can understand Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Protestant, but then we get Baptists, Methodists, Christian, Free Will Christian, Free Will Baptists, Pentecostal, the list goes on.

Any thoughts?

GIA wrote
Most of us are small fish in a large sea.
We all want to be big fish in a small sea.

This is the root cause the problem you pose.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I Am]

He believes that from Perfection only Perfection can come.

Not necessarily. Whatever God creates will go good as a reflection of Himself; but it will not necessarily be perfect since to create another perfection would really be to make a copy of Himself! But that's an absurdity. Creation is good, and even very good, but it is not perfect.

GIA wrote
God can make only Perfection. A perfect world does not compete with God's Perfection. He can and does create Perfection as a normal part of His existence. He recognises that creating imperfection is not profitable.
All of God's works are perfect, it is up to us to recognize it.

He believes that a Perfect God created a perfect world for us and that a perfect Adan and Eve would make the Perfect choice in rejecting the garden of ignorance for the world of knowledge that we live in. Do you agree?

I'm afraid I have to disagree. I agree with the Church Fathers and the Orthodox Church that our first ancestors were neither mortal nor immortal, perfect nor imperfect. Prior to the fall Adam was free from sin but he was still able to sin. Nor was he immortal but was capable of attaining immortality through obedience and growth in God.

GIA wrote
Staying in the garden meant zero growth. Eve was correct in getting us out of there in a hurry.

What this means is that Adam was like a child, innocent and fully capable of spiritual growth through obedience to the Father and achieving immortality; union with God, or, as the Eastern Church calls it, theosis. Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was done in disobedience to God but we have to realize that this is not like the Greek myth of Prometheus who had the temerity to steal fire from the gods and was likewise punished for it. The fruit of the Tree was not placed in the Garden with a permanent exclusion zone around it, leaving humanity in a state of perpetual infantile innocence. It was God's intention that Man should grow up and attain the necessary spiritual maturity to to accept such things. What happened in the Garden, however, was that Man would not be taught and wished to be god-like without learning of God, to be powerful without humility, knowledgeable without wisdom, free without responsibility, autonomous without having attained the necessary spiritual maturity to handle such a gift. In doing so he brought death upon himself. As St. Irenaeus wrote:

GIA wrote
The garden was no place of learning, it was a place of ignorance. Only by eating of the tree can man learn of good and evil and learn to discern which is which.

"Man was a little one, and his discretion still undeveloped, wherefore also he was easily misled by the deceiver."

GIA wrote
To use this as an excuse is a good cop out. I was too young, I did not mean it, please forgive me. Bull
Thank God Eve was mature enough to get us out of there.

St. Irenaeus, the Church Fathers in general, and the Orthodox Church then, never speak of death as retribution or punishment from God for the disobedience of Man's progenitors. Death is what befell Man when he distanced himself from God, and it is death which is what Man inherits from "original sin" not guilt.

GIA wrote
If the general law of an eye for an eye is of value, should the sin not match the crime. What was the original sin. Was it enough to draw the penalty of death.
Further, if we were not on the right path thanks to Eve then God would end this "to Him" a failed experiment.
We are here, things are good.

Regards
DL

[Skeptic]

Go ahead, ask whatever you want about Christianity.

Why thank God for everything? Christians thank God for gifts, thank God for their achievements, thank God for the bad things that happen to them(God's grace? WTH is that?). Why can they not take credit for their own achievements. How is it good enough to thank God when your loved ones are killed? Or when hardship falls upon you?
"Oh I just thank God for the time we had with him before he was taken." That's like thanking the police officer who just wrote you a total BS ticket. And then attribute everything to "God's Plan"

If God is so great then your loved ones shouldn't be killed and you should have what you need so that there would be too little difference to recognize achievements.

[mar]

ok, I have been living with this confusion for many years as a muslim and never quite got answer. Crystains say they are monotheistis, that they believe in one god. But rather what i see is that they believe are 3: God the father, god the son and god the Holy spirit. So I went to the bible because i realised that the bestanswer is in there. So looked into the bible and my confusion increased. I found verses that said straight and forword that jesus is a prophet ( 3 times!). Another story in a bible where a man came to jesus and said "oh my good" and jesus replied that he aint good, no man is good, and that only god is good. And then i find some verses that say jesus is god and the trinity. So rather relying on the condrodicting bible, I decided to ask someone here and I am hoping to find a good answer that will remove my confusion and help me keep a better understanding about The beutifull religon, Crystianity.

mar

[McCulloch]

ok, I have been living with this confusion for many years as a muslim and never quite got answer. Crystains say they are monotheistis, that they believe in one god. But rather what i see is that they believe are 3: God the father, god the son and god the Holy spirit. So I went to the bible because i realised that the bestanswer is in there. So looked into the bible and my confusion increased. I found verses that said straight and forword that jesus is a prophet ( 3 times!). Another story in a bible where a man came to jesus and said "oh my good" and jesus replied that he aint good, no man is good, and that only god is good. And then i find some verses that say jesus is god and the trinity. So rather relying on the condrodicting bible, I decided to ask someone here and I am hoping to find a good answer that will remove my confusion and help me keep a better understanding about The beutifull religon, Crystianity.

In English we call the followers of Jesus, Christians. The word is not Crystains. It is a simple matter of showing respect. We do not call Muslims, Mohammadeans.