Re: OT Religion

"Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com> wrote:
>
>    The problem here is that *IF* Judson is right, then Alistair will
> suffer in Hell because he did not believe in God. Judson seems to be able
> to communicate with God more easily than the rest of us, and he gave some
> advice. Alistair followed Judson's advice, and now is more confident than
> earlier that God does not exist (and thus is more likely to go to Hell,
> again assuming Judson is correct).
>
>    Now I hope Judson will forgive me for this next paragraph, as it gets
> pretty close to defamation of character. I sincerely do not mean a
> personal attack against Judson here...
>
>    Again, assuming that Christianity is correct, how do we know this is
> not a "trick" by Judson, who intentionally wanted to increase Alistair's
> chances of ending up in Hell? E.g. perhaps Judson was an agent of Satan,
> using reverse psychology so to speak, to reinforce Alistair's disbelief in
> God.

As far as my own motivations, I see no way you could ever be sure, outside
of capturing me and injecting truth drugs. ;-)  As I pointed out earlier,
this is very similar to determining if somebody means it when they say they
love you.

>    The "unfairness" of this religion, as others have pointed out, is that
> it seems like the condition for getting into heaven is to somehow be able
> to detect these tricks and not get fooled by them. But when such trickery
> can come from anywhere, and when the trickster is Satan (who is usually
> portrayed as being extremely intelligent, e.g. the "Prince of Lies"), this
> can be an insurmountable task for a mortal, whose intelligence is limited
> to the mere "human-level".


For this one, I will ask you ahead of time to forgive me. :-)  The Bible
says the real issue is that unbelievers' hearts are hardened toward
believing in God; they don't want to be accountable to God, they don't want
to submit their wills and lives to God. Therefore, they are not objective
about the evidence. Have you noted so many protests along the lines of (in
paraphrase) "but we don't have a choice" and "but we didn't authorize God to
be over us like a democracy". You see, man demands *his own* way, and this
is the *very essence* of rebellion against God. We are created beings, our
purpose is to serve God. At the point I accepted Jesus, my life was in such
bad shape that I *wanted* God to take over my life. Granted, this was
entirely situational, but I claim no credit in the exchange. In fact, I am
grateful that God let me get into such a situation that I would want to call
on Him. All of us go through trouble. In such situations, we can do as I
(and millions of others) did and look to God, or we can hold onto our human
pride and resist looking to God. It is *this precise difference*, I believe,
that serves to demonstrate a person's true heart. A kind of "litmus test,"
not for God, but for God to use as evidence on Judgment Day. If this is
true, then it can go a long way toward explaining why God permits suffering,
because it can serve to loosen man's determination to have his own way, and
move him to be willing to submit to God's way. Many people s God, but
they want God on their terms, not His. They do not want to submit their
lives to God's will. God is not fooled. I think this is why people try and
fail to find God.
--
Judson McClendon      judmc@sunvaley0.com (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems     http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."