so that's what bothers me about christianity!

[butter_fly_]

yay modern technology. i'm on the phone with my friend brenda who is instant messaging with her friend steve. steve says that god has already saved the world and we live here for his glory and god has a plan for each and every one of us and if we only do his will the plan will become clear and we will do and be what we are meant to do and be

Comments

[teferi]

I'll play devil's advocate here and note that there are many Christian denominations who believe that faith is not enough, that good works are necessary in order to enter heaven.

Not that I buy any of 'em, but just pointing that out before you tar everyone with the same brush.

[butter_fly_]

hard to explain, but i'll try. i feel like i've finally gotten to the heart of what it is that bothers me about christianity and that "good works" are sort of a secondary layer

[butter_fly_]

and an example: doing good works is like a child putting a band-aid on somebody who has been knocked out. ineffective and misguided. think about it: working in a soup kitchen, visiting the ill or elderly, sending books or sweaters to children in impoverished foreign countries... those are fairly typical "good works". necessary as a stop-gap measure, meaningful to the individuals involved, but completely unable to change the status quo in a fundamental way for the better. again with the perpetual immaturity and irresponsibility.

[headlessanne]

very humanitarian! did u visit the americanhumanist.org? read the Humanist Manifesto's, they're very good. ^_^ *hugz* and penguins to all

Christianity isn't the only one.

[aloneinharmony]

I won't even get into other religions, but our society does the same thing to us. I don't remember who said it, but I heard recently the idea that school teaches us to try only to be "good enough" and to work for someone else's approval. Many teachers are willing to forgive mistakes as long as you show that you're trying. The problem is, if you know what the teacher wants to see, it is very easy to make it seem like you are "trying," or even get an A even if you don't understand the material. Plus, if you know you're doing well enough to get an A, where is the incentive to work a little harder and learn a little more? The analogous case in Christianity is following the 10 commandments and "try" to be a good person, and appear "good enough" in God's eyes to get into Heaven. If you're good enough to get into Heaven, why should you try to improve? (Of course there always are people who truly are hard-working and do like to learn more and help others because they enjoy it, but if people work for a set reward instead of something that

[fimoc]

The tricky thing here is to have actual faith- there is nothing valued in Christianity without true faith. If you look at it from the point of "oh, I'm absolved for everything anyways", then you don't have true faith in what you're supposed to believe in but are rather manipulating the teachings. It's really quite remarkable how growth into a better person can follow from just the motivation of developing such faith . . . however it does restrict people by insane amounts and make them dependent on lying to themselves.

One thing I always thought was-
since if one is genuine in his/her intentions, he/she is forgiven

If there is faith in heaven, then somebody will obviously be honestly sorry for everything bad they ever did

assuming they TRULY believe heaven exists and that it's nature is eternal bliss, they will obviously be sorry for whatever they did . . . so with that guarantee, one can be a horrible person purposefully and still be saved as long as they believe in the ideal of heaven . . . isn't that nice?