Some Christians Shun Easter Celebrations

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I don't see your god in control at all. Where is he? Is he just manifested through your words and the words of other human beings who claim to worship him?

Funny thing is it was not too long ago when I used to say things similar to what you said above.

LOL @ hating something no evidence suggests exists.

All White. Why do you hate unicorns?

Does it make you angry that I've found Salvation through faith in the Great One Horned Stallion?

Sorry I'm not so clueless about world history that I think religion is benign.

As I pointed out, MCalavera, everyone is free to walk away. But I am not being "unreasonable" in not answering your questions. I'm only being honest. I can't give you answers that aren't there, and I will not use human reasoning to forge my own ideas and deceive myself. I want answers from God - i.e. biblical answers - or none at all. Since the basis of my faith is what I read in the Bible, not the outcome of some intellectual debate, I don't agree that that's unreasonable of me.

As someone who has had issues with my own parenting,I'd just like to point out that God does have two sides to him. He may be a strict authoritarian who punishes and chastises us when deserved, but he also tenderly cares for us and will never, ever let us down. He lavished me with gentleness and understanding from the moment I fell on my knees and repented of my sin and cried out for forgiveness. And yes, I have proof. And no, I can't show you it. My proof is for me. If anyone wants their own proof, repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. The proof comes after, not before. Atheists want to do things the wrong way round. LOL

Last edited by all_white on 16 Apr 2011, 2:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

Regarding Easter...

(Romans 1:24-25) Therefore God, in keeping with the desires of their hearts, gave them up to uncleanness, that their bodies might be dishonored among them, even those who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and venerated and rendered sacred service to the creation rather than the One who created.

(1 Timothy 4:1-3) However, the inspired utterance says definitely that in later periods of time some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to misleading inspired utterances and teachings of demons, by the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, marked in their conscience as with a branding iron; forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be partaken of with thanksgiving by those who have faith and accurately know the truth.

"forbidding to marry" is one of trademarks of Christendom. Christendom is celebrating Easter next weekend. Easter was hijacked by Christendom and given a Christian veneer. I would think more Pagans would be upset with Christendom for stealing their celebration...

kxmode, you're slightly behind. We're not talking about Easter any more, so I don't know why you're quoting me making a reference to the doctrines of hell and election and then trying to imply that they have anything to do with some heathen goddess of fertility, or a bunch of heretics who forbid marriage when God never commanded them to do so. LOL

If you want to debate those topics, fine. But don't quote me for no reason and make it look as though I'm somehow involved.

I would like to hand you a map and a compass but I don't think you would know what to do with them.

So thought process is like this:
1. Pick a fantastical bronze age fairy tale. 2. De facto reject any objective empirical or analytical evidence which contradicts it.

Got it.

Keeping in mind of course that regardless of what you believe, you have used human reasoning to reach that conclusion.



Kinky!

If I told you there's a man eating frog in the local lake, and you laugh in my face, who has made the better argument?

LOL indeed!

I have no idea why you just said that, but it came across as rude, patronising, and insulting.

As per forum rules, please refrain from personal attacks.

All I did was make a reasonable request that you don't quote people who were talking about an entirely different subject and try and make it look as though they agree/disagree with your latest argument (I still have no idea why you think forbidding to marry has anything to do with Ishtar, so I don't know whether you dragged my quote in there to make it seem like I agree or disagree. Fir the record, I am nit a member of Christendom, but of the body of Christ, so I don't fit your victim criteria.Please pick on someone else).

For the record, this was the rude insulting comment I was referring to. I didn't quote it, and am now doing so, as other posting has taken place and confusion may arise.

Bethie, if you want to believe in a frog-eating man as your means of salvation, I will not laugh in your face. I will soberly earnestly preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ - once. And then, should you not want to hear me, I will walk away.

Unlike you, I will not remain there picking apart every word you say and jeering at your personal belief system. For someone who doesn't care about Christianity, you sure are putting a lot of energy on pouncing on me and attacking me. It seems you allow yourself freedom of thought but do not extend that same courtesy to others. I have already made it plain I do not seek any further debate nor does my faith require challenging. I suggest you pick on someone else if you like that kind of thing. Many JWs on here seem to like arguing. I was not making any "argument" or trying to win any debate using evidence you so obviously require. I was merely providing an explanation for MCalavera and I made it quite clear that MY basis for belief is the bible. If YOU don't like that, fine. But I am entitled to believe what I want, and it's enough for ME. The only person you are arguing with is yourself, because I never set out to prove anything to anyone, merely to provide an explanation.

There are all sorts of faith represented here and many of us believe differently than you. So why do you think people are focusing on you, and not squabbling with each other? Because of the way you present your beliefs, and you whip out Bible verse to support your condemnation of others. For those who don't believe in the Bible, it seems ridiculous... and well, I can't speak for those who do believe in the Bible.. But, I too can pull out Bible verse to support my side of an argument...

James 2:19&20 "You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless?"

Perhaps you should read all of James 3... Here are a few key points..

James 3:1&2 "Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly. Indeed, we all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way."

James 3:5&6 "In the same way, the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches. But a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. And the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself."

James 3:17&18 "But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness."

I applaud your fervor, but all you accomplish with it is pushing people further from you and God. No one kindly receives in-your-face condemnation. You're building walls, not tearing them down.

But you didn't provide an explanation for your beliefs, merely pointed to the book that contains them....

Rhetoric is often presented in the form of questions. So its not "why why why" at all, as I dont believe in the first place. But you, typical of many of the faithful, are unable to conceive that someone could be an unbeliever.

And so you present the line that was taught to you "Christ or eternal punishment". But that is a hollow threat - or promise as you might phrase it - to an unbeliever. Perhaps you think we are in denial or we are just outright lying.

I have found in my life that truth is incontrovertible. It is unavoidable. It can be hard to accept when it is first placed in front of you, but once it is, there is no chance to do anything but accept it for what it is: fact. That is how knowledge works. In first grade you learn to do simple addition. Even if I am wrong and there exists a god, and that god made the universe, he made it in such a way that one plus one is always two. All around the world, regardless of belief, all people accept that this is fact, truth, unavoidable, and darn it, useful.

And so it goes that we learn subtraction and division, multiplication, algebra and each makes sense in the scope of that which came before it. The truth and body of human knowledge accumulates and conglomerates into an understanding of how the world works. Whether there be a god or not, this is truth.

When this happens, knowledge creates a vast web that holds firm from first grade mathematics to assessing the load mechanics of the Golden Gate Bridge to calculating the circumference of Alpha Centauri A, 4.365 light years away. Then we know that we are on the trail of some fundamental truth. All the valid branches of math and science come together to create this cohesive whole vision of the universe, and they get accepted by people, regardless of faith, because truth is self evident, it accumulates.

But faith does not do this. If there were some fundamental rock-bottom truths and incontrovertible facts about god, they would be collective, sustainable. All people would come to accept them without hesitation. But thats not happening. Instead, religion and faith are bifurcating exponentially. Where Christanity had only 1 church in the years after Christ supposedly lived, it split and became mired into Orthodox and Catholicism, even later protestantism. And they are all busy splitting again and again. By the time you came into this world there were hundreds and perhaps thousands of Christian sects, and in reality, each and every Christian that claims to be an adherent has a slightly different view...a personal opinion. This thread stands as example of that.

There is no personal opinion in math. The truth is easily accepted, obvious and acceptable to anyone with the minimal maturity of a grade schooler.

We should see that in Christian faith if it holds some fundamental truth. Jains and Taoists would come together with Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans and hindu adherents into one cohesive world religion. Instead after 2000 years its just the opposite, and its getting worse. You shouldnt see Branch Davidians splitting off, nor Mormonism. There would be no Jehova's Witnesses as a discrete organization. There wouldnt need to be. You wouldnt see people lose their faith and become atheists. They couldnt avoid having it.

Math, Physics, Chemistry and all the branches of science transcend barriers of language and culture. As discrete languages they should be affected if there is any truth the the tower of babel myth, but they are not. I can write lim 1/∞; and its concept makes as perfect sense to an Indian engineer as a Japanese student. This is not true of religion, where we hear "Oh, but you have to read it in the original Hebrew to understand" or "You have to be part of the culture".

No. Truth just works. You can explain it to any rational mind and they embrace it as fact. You cannot deny evident fact any more than you can stand down a train on the tracks. The consequences come long before the afterlife.

So we rationalists enjoy when you post your nonsense, because you show the discontinuity in your community. Your endless permutations of interpretation, your arguments show that you are not on any path to truth. You should be able to add up the facts and come to some incontrovertible tenets. Faith communities should be able to refine belief, collapse to a singular fundamental faith. But that is not happening. That this topic needs to exist shows that today you are no closer than you have ever been, and most likely further away. You are not winning hearts and minds, you are losing each other. There is no truth binding you.

However, humans can apply math to the concept that each of you has a unique interpretation of god and each faith has a different god and get a measure of the truth. As each person is born into the world, their possible concepts of god can be reified into notation understood the world over. Tower of babel be damned.


One the left-top we start with one god, one concept. As we go right the line drops off as we dream of more gods and different designs for them. There on the bottom left the blue is heading towards infinite zero. This is represented by lim 1/∞ which means it never quite falls to zero when we calculate it, but we can see that its heading there. In a simple lim 1/∞ I can effectively define "infinitely small" in a useful manner, but 500 generations of Christians cant come to consensus about god using the 12143 words in the bible. This topic is a sterling example of that.

The more that you disagree what god is, what he wants, what faith is, the less likely that any one person is correct, or that any person at all can be correct about it. If you are one person in 6 billion, you have a 1/6,000,000,000th chance of being correct. If you have ever shifted in your beliefs about god, you have effectively increased that fraction by orders of magnitude. There could be 1000 concepts of gods truth per person, or an infinity. With each thought, you fall further from thinking correctly each time, since you are just as likely wrong today as yesterday or tomorrow. You become increasingly farther away from that unified vision that you seek.

This even extends to "accepting Jesus". Each of you argumentative Christians in this topic have your own idea of what that means, and since you are equally human and fallible, you are no more likely to be correct about Jesus than Pradesh the Hindu. Or me.

The same goes with math. If for a second anyone had a valid reason why one plus one isnt two, it would all falls apart... but it doesnt. In all the time that you Christians have argued about your god, 5 divided by 2 is 2.5, no arguments offered. No doubt is cast, no miscommunication.

Last edited by Fuzzy on 16 Apr 2011, 4:27 am, edited 2 times in total.

Correct. But this happens to be a thread relevant to my belief system. Its original title is "Some Christians Shun Easter Celebrations." I jumped in to talk about why, as a Christian, I shun Easter celebrations.

This thread is relevant to me and my faith. If the thread title had been "some Satanists eat human flesh and draw dark circles" or "some gaming addicts stay up all night and chain-drink coca-cola" I would have left it well alone.

Apart from Parakeet, I seem to be the only Christian commenting on this thread so far. If you are implying that I am being intolerent merely by participating in this thread, I'm afraid I cannot agree with you. I am merely discussing my beliefs in an appopriate thread in an appropriate sub-forum.



I think that because they are quoting me and disecting my peaceful explanations and trying to pick them apart and get me to argue with them, when that's not what I'm here to do.



That is because those who don't believe in the bible are used to forming their own belief systems and providing evidence or logical arguments to back them up. It irks and frustrates them that Christians do not form their own opinions, but choose to be trusting and childlike and believe whatever God tells us. There are times when Christians ask God "Why?" and he doesn't give us an answer. That is entirely normal parental behaviour. Children are forever asking "Why? Why? Why?" and sometimes the parent just can't give them the answer because it's too grown-up for them. It greatly angers the non-Christians who are interrogating us that we are unable to provide an answer, and I understand why this is so. It is because they are used to a belief system that is only valid if they can provide all the answers. They do not understand that Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship. Our Heavenly Father is patting us on the head and saying, "when you're older, you'll understand. For now, just do as you're told."



Well then, perhaps you shouldn't try...



You can claim anything and allege anything from the bible if you pull out verses and apply them to situations or people they were never directed at. Here we go:



First off, I do not know why you are directing this at me, because you do not know me well enough to know if there is a lack of works in my life to show my faith, and even if there were, works as evidence of faith is not a topic relevant to what I was discussing. I was discussing heathen festivals, election, and heaven and hell, so that verse has just gone crash bang wallop. It's not relevant.

Maybe it's relevant to YOU. Since you are quoting the bible at me, perhaps you profess to be a Christian. If so, do you celebtate Easter? (a heathen festival). That would be a classic example of what this verse is talking about: professing Christians who pay lip-service to God but who carry on living as though they were the heathen and never put their faith into action.



As a Christian, I already have.

Perhaps you should, too.



OK. Here we go...



OK, once again, that is not relevant at all, because I am not being a teacher in a church, I am being a user on an Internet forum, casually talking about my faith with a bunch of perfect strangers, none of whom appear to be Christians.. I would never, ever, ever set myself up to be a teacher in the church, and it's not because of the verse you quote, it's because of another. I am a woman. The bible forbids that women usurp authority over men in the church. So that issue is now over. Ended. If you were a bible-believing Christian, you would know that God does not allow women to teach, and would never even have brought it up. Since you obviously do not know even that most basic of facts, why are you trying to quote the bible at me?



I completely agree. God never said a truer word. But how is that relevant to me, or to what I've been saying in this thread? That verse is merely a statement of fact about the terrible things that can come out of our mouths at times. If you are implying that anything wicked or worthy of hell-fire has come out of my tongue (or rather, my fingers as they were typing on the keys) in this thread, I'm afraid I cannot agree with you, and I'd challenge you to provide quotes. Like I said, I was merely participating in a thread relevant to me.



Very true. I was indeed trying to be a peacemaker and plant seeds of peace when I came under attack for my patient laborious explanations of faith (although I'm aware you are probably trying to imply this the other way round, and say that I wasn't, but for the life of me I cannot see what your justification can be). Let's have a quick peek at the context, and see what came just before:

4But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.

15This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.

16For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

I am not lying against the truth, as others are. Nor am I confused. Nor am I trying to base my wisdom on earthly logic. Nor am I the one trying to strive and argue and pick fights and be nasty to other people. So I guess the verse you picked was relevant to me after all. The part that came before, the part you missed out, must be what the non-Christians are doing on this thread.



I am not trying to "accomplish" anything. I have not done any preaching here other than posting a link to a Youtube video explaining the real gospel. Others had posted videos in this thread, and I don't see you picking on them.

It is not a crime to discuss Christian beliefs in a thread about Christian beliefs, and I am not comdemning anyone. I have merely explained the basis for my beliefs, upon being cross-examined by fellow users of this forum. Since the basis for my beliefs was biblical and based on a personal relationship with a living God and not based on logical reasoning, people then began to ridicule it. That is all.

If anyone chooses to build a wall between themself and God that is their choice, not mine. People know the gospel. I am not here to preach. I am here to participate in a biblical discussion, which is entirely different from preaching.

It's up to them if they respect my belief or ridicule it. And it's up to you if you want to continue attacking me. But you only have two methods available to do so: human logic and reasoning, which is irrelevant to a Christian, and will fall on deaf ears, or biblical reasoning, which so far you have failed miserably at. Quoting things out of context simply will not work with a true Christian. You will have to find a verse that says "Thou shalt not discuss thy beliefs with the heathen, nor shalt thou explain thy reasons for not observing heathen feast days" and I'm afraid, however much you search, there isn't one.

Just to illustrate how easily you can (wrongly) get anyone to do anything by mis-quoting the bible:

Using your method, I could falsely allege that God wants us all to commit suicide.

Imagine a poor depressed bloke sitting in front of the bible telling himself it holds the answer to all of life's problems. He mutters, "I wonder what God wants me to do?" He opens it at random, and it says:

"He went and hanged himself."

The man freaked out, closed the bible, hyperventilated, then opened it again. He read:

"Go thou, and do the same."



Like I said, there is no verse that forbids me from discussing my beliefs nor from explaining them to strangers. Quite the contrary - here's one that is relevant to me. Three, in fact:

14But and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled;

15But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

16Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.

There you have it. I've done nothing wrong. Someone asked me (MCalavera did) and I was ready to give him an answer with meekness and fear.

Now I'm off to look at some other threads, because not only am I in this thread to talk about my Christian beliefs, but, in a more general sense, I'm here to talk about autism.

Bethie, you are just going to have to accept that all I require to follow Jesus is faith. If you require something else on my behalf, then you are interfering in my private belief. It seems more like this evidence you are insisting you need is for you. It must be, because it certainly isn't for me.

Christians do not become Christians because of some humanly-devised logic, but rather, because of conviction of their sin and repentance and the awareness of their need for salvation. Therefore, however much you may try, you can't argue with a Christian that way. You're wasting your time.

If you want to argue with me, try bringing me biblical proof that I am sinless and need not repent and will stand blameless before God on Judgment Day in my own right and have no need of the blood of Jesus.

Those are the only things that would topple my whole belief system. But there is not such evidence. That's why there is nothing to argue about.