samscilley wrote:
To repent of your sins is not easy and takes a humble heart to do. It is not enough to confess only. You must repent and show you are repentant by doing deeds appropriate to repentance.
Christians are saved by grace thru faith. (Ephesians 2:8-10) Faith requires works. (James 2:14-26) No faith then no grace. These are the terms that that the New Testament lays out to have grace.
I view these kinds of apologies as contradictory as the contradictions they are attempting to apologize for.
If humans have to repent their sins in order to be "saved", then they are earning their own salvation.
Therefore to claim that Christians are being saved by grace thru faith is a contraction. They are being saved in this case because of their own works. There would be no need for any grace at all.
Moreover, what would "
faith" in mean in this context? What do they need to have "
faith" that Jesus really will keep his promise of giving them the reward of eternal life,
if and only if, they earn it via their own works of repentance?
Clearly this theology is self-contradictory. There would be no need to have Jesus brutally crucified and butchered on a cross if people are going to need to earn their own repentance.
Moreover, anyone who needs to believe in a God, or a promise of a gift of eternal life in order to work toward repentance would already be an immoral insincere person.
Compare such a person with an atheist who strives to be a good person simply because it's what they truly desire to be in what they believe to be a secular world.
How can you not see the fallacy of this religion?
If a person's sincere desire is to be a good person, no one can possibly display that desire better than an atheist.
If an atheist is striving to be the best they can be, that speaks volumes of their true character.
On the other hand if a theist who has "
faith" that they will be saved from damnation if they strive to be good, that doesn't say anything at all about their character. In fact, many of them actually argue that if they didn't think there was a God they wouldn't see any reason to even be good.
And ironically that gives away their true character immediately.
The very minute they suggest that in a godless world morality would be meaningless, they have given themselves away as being basically a person who see no intrinsic value in moral behavior.
So why are they striving to repent?
I can't only be to avoid damnation or earn a reward of eternal life. It certainly can't be because they see any value in being moral. They wouldn't need to believe in a God for that.
If anything is crystal clear it's that Christianity has nothing to do with morality.
In fact, Christianity proclaims that Jesus could forgive even the most horrible sinner, if all they do is ask Jesus for forgiveness with a sincere heart.
In other words, Christianity is actually all about tossing morality out the window entirely and instead it's solely about proclaiming Jesus to be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, etc.
Nothing short of that will do.
All good atheists will be condemned to hell for simply not acknowledging and supporting the Christian dogma. It really doesn't even any anything to do with any imaginary Jesus or Yahweh. They are just the idols that must be worshiped and praised in this religion. Failure to worship and praise these idols results in condemnation by the religious authorities themselves. No Gods required.
