Did Jesus Suffer Enough?

he knows how messed up we are, and he still wants us in his home.

the term imperfect implies a standard as to what perfect is..
perfect is a relative term.

would you be perfect if you did not make any mistakes?..wait..if you don't make mistakes how do you learn?..so to be perfect is to make mistakes?...great..i make lots of mistakes..i must be the perfectest...lol..

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

NM

By perfect, I am referring to the Christian model of deity. That is : a god who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent.
As I have pointed out, and will continue to point out, ad nauseam if need be, this model is incompatible with what we know of reality.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Are you referring to Matthew 5:48 "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" ?

We are asked by Jesus to become perfect like the Father. The question: Is it possible for us, limited human beings, to become perfect as the Father?

I do not believe that Christ would set a bar so high that it cannot be reached. Therefore I must say that it is "possible". But please note that terms "can" and "possible" are far different than "will" and "probable".
Forgetting the past, we can look forward and say - "Yes I will be perfect from here on out." If we remain "perfect" then we have achieved what Christ asked. If we do not remain "perfect", if we fail, then we must repent, pick ourselves up and forget the past and look forward and say.......

So....
Can we??? Of course we can.
Will We??? History indicates we will fail many times on our journey.
Thank God for confession....

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

and i argue god is not who we think he is..maybe thats why he is incompatible with what you know as reality.
we as a species keep trying to put god in a box..god is bigger than the box..

 

only if it lines up with what i am saying...

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

again by who's standard?

how much of that ideal of perfection is encouraged by the 'church'

impossible as the bar gets redefined the closer you get to it..

impossible..to claim 'perfection' is flawed..

um..avoiding my own attitude to the concept of perfection..there is logic in that statement that says don't focus on how bad you messed up, but on how to fix it..
i wouldn't say forget about the past..but don't spend all your focus there..

can we achieve perfection?.. no
does that mean we shouldn't try..no..
it is in the journey that we learn..if we don't try we won't learn..

i don't need history to tell me i am fallible..i have friends and family for that..

not just the religious variety..but being able to communicate what you wouldn't normally be able to communicate..

 

So why do you continue to choose to sin.???

 

To clueluss

This is one of the weird things about Christians. When they talk of 'sinning', they are often talking of things that anyone sensible would regard as quite harmless.

As example : take the earlier discussion of lust. If I look at a woman and feel lust, to me it is just the normal reaction of my body. To these Christians, my feelings are sin. How weird is that?

 

For years i discussed such issues wit a Christan woman in a discuss groop... her las post stated that she feels smothered by her own beleifs... thats what hapens to som of 'em who actualy try to live up to the standards they preech to others... an then ther are those who have ther cake an eat it to by (for esample) havin all the "lustful" thouts they want... an then meerly repent/confess ther sins ever now an then an then repete the cycle over an over.!!!

 

I've never met a Christian that thought the "feeling" of lust was sinful. It's sinful to wrongly act on that feeling. Since males have a negative connotation in regards to how they act around women when aroused, there's a (somewhat) false belief that "horniness" is akin to "inappropriateness." For that reason, I can see why someone would feel as though they were sinning if they felt lecherous. Over all, that's not an adequate example of something "sensible" that a Christian would consider as sinning.

 

Ennui

I agree.

Sadly, some Christians do not. We had an earlier discussion over the verse :

Matthew 5:28
"But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Several Christian types interpreted this to mean that just feeling lust is a sin.

 

Are you insinuating that you sin because you don't feel like attaining perfection and are relying on forgiveness from God? That seems like willful sinning to me. You might as well just quit being religious.

 

A passage from the original blog is instructive:

"The consequence, then, is to encourage in people the belief that the debt of their sins, owed to God, was paid to God by God having God tortured and murdered by the debtors -- us."

The original blog is basically talking about the theological notion or theory of vicarious atonement. Basically this is a theory (or an interpretation) that the violent death of Jesus, involving, pain, suffering, and ultimately death, was required to reconcile humanity to God. It is related to the notion of penal substitution, which is a more extreme version of vicarious atonement, which holds that Jesus was sacrificed on the cross and suffered the penalties and pains due to sinner on account of original sin (coming from the primordial rebellion of Adam and Eve) and personal sin, each of which merit death and eternal damnation.

Salvation is effected according to these ideas by appropriating the merits of Christ's sacrifice through faith. The NT writers are somewhat vague about how this happens but the most systematic treatment seems to come from St Paul. St Paul argues all of humanity is alienated from God due to the sin of Adam and also personal sin(s), but God's work in Christ has opened a new way for humanity to reconcile with God. What is required is for each person to believe in Jesus Christ and confess him as saviour in faith, and thus appropriate the free gift of salvation in Christ offered by God to all. Any person who accepts this gift becomes justified through faith, and counted as righteous before God, as God accounted saints in the OT as righteous (just before God) through faith.

Different Christian churches understand this idea differently. Catholics require that for a person to be saved, not only is faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice necessary but you also need to be baptised (which confers grace that cleanses you of all sin and its penalties) whilst other Christians believe only faith is necessary to be saved.

From a rational point of view, the idea of vicarious atonement and penal substitution seems morally problematic. It paints a picture of a cruel God who seems to require a bloody sacrifice of his own Son in order to appease his wrath. Such a God seems cruel and primitive and little better than a tribal deity which like the Gods described in Greek mythology, need absurd and bloody sacrifices of bulls and even sometimes human beings (i.e. the sacrifice of King Agamenon's daughter Iphiginia in the Iliad to ensure Agamenon's fleet is able to sail to Troy) so they are beneficial to humans. Even if there was a historical Adam and Eve, there seems to be no proportionality between any sin they could do, or any human could do now, which would require infinite punishment, either of the sinner or of an innocent and sinless victim (Jesus). What kind of God would do something even worse than punishing the guilty, and make an innocent person suffer the full consequences of the guilty person's crime? No human justice system would countenance such an absurdity.

 

In all honesty, I can truly see how the devout Christians would look at that phrase and interpret it the way they do. Personally, being attracted to a woman's appearance is not "lust" to me. Lust is hard core "I want to throw you on the table and start fucking you, right now." That's the type of image I get from it. When you start imagining in your head how exactly you'd fuck her, then I understand that it might be construed as adultery.

 

In regards to the thread question, I don't believe Jesus suffered nearly as much as he should have. I don't believe he should have been given the reward he was given for dying. Eternity in Heaven as God's son? Bullshit. Some people in today's society die a much more painful death than Jesus ever went through. I prefer the outcome from the Divine Comedy. I want Jesus to be in Hell. If he's repenting for everyone's sins, he needs to be at the center of Hell. He needs to continually experience torture at the expense of humans. At the rate we're multiplying and becoming a more sinful society, I'll bet he'd regret "dying for our sins."

 

it's not weird.

you claim this is a normal reaction of your body, and that's true. but it's a reaction that is dependent upon your mind. it's not all biological, and it's not "automatic". i think this is common sense, but to make sure i researched it a bit, and this is from a psych 101 website...


Psychological Factors in Sexual Motivation
Hormones alone cannot cause sexual arousal. Psychological factors are also highly influential.

Erotic stimuli: Both men and women can become sexually aroused by external and internal erotic stimuli. External erotic stimuli include sexually exciting material that is read, heard, or seen. Internal erotic stimuli include thoughts, fantasies, and memories of past sexual experiences. What is considered erotic varies according to the individual, historical period, and cultural context.

Desires: People have an infinite number of desires that influence the motivation for sex, including to procreate, to express love, to have physical enjoyment, to cope with difficult situations and emotions, to validate one’s desirability, and to do what peers do.

Cultural context: Having a strong influence on sexual behavior, cultures inform people about sexual scripts, or implicit rules that allow a person to judge the appropriate sexual behavior for a given situation. For example, people follow sexual scripts when deciding whether they should initiate sexual activity or wait to receive a partner’s advances.

A culture’s social and economic structure determines the gender roles that men and women adopt. These gender roles in turn determine people’s attitude toward sexual activity. In some cultures, for instance, women need marriage to get access to status and wealth. In such cultures, a woman is less likely to be interested in sex for its own sake, since casual sex can damage her reputation and reduce her chances of marriage.

Sex and the Brain

Psychological influences are clearly powerful motivators for sex, and the brain is highly involved in sexual arousal. People who have lost all sensation in their genitals because of spinal injuries, for example, are still capable of sexual desire.




there's a difference between sex drive, which is primarily biological, and arrousal, which requires some type of stimulus. the stimulus can be physical, or it can be a thought. the thought can come from an association you make. perhaps from the smell of a warm apple pie, or perhaps from the sight of a beautiful woman. what i am saying, is that it doesn't make any more sense to associate sex with the sight of some random beautiful woman than it does with the smell of a warm apple pie.

why? because it's not correct to have sex with apple pies and it's also not correct to have sex with random beautiful women.

 

I don't really know what you're getting at. Of course arousal is caused by a stimulus. Why isn't it correct to have sex with apple pies or random beautiful women? I dislike it when people take it upon themselves to dictate to other people their beliefs on whether or not it's okay to have sex with apple pie.

 

Lori

Itis probably a truism that everything involved in human behaviour is partly learned. So sexual arousal is influenced by learned stimuli. So what?

It is still automatic. If I look at a sexy lady, I get aroused. It is just that automatic.

That is not sin, or even wrong. It is a natural response. Wrong is only if I act on that arousal in an inappropriate way.

 

i'm sorry that you dislike it, but i'm arguing this from a perspective in which sex is a lot more involved than just getting your rocks off on some random hot body, or pie.

 

would you say that the same is true for pedophiles? is it not wrong (and natural) for them to think about children in a sexual way, and become aroused, as long as they don't act on that arousal in an inappropriate way?

 

I really don't think it's that involved. The only thing you need is hormones. That's...about it.

Yes, I believe that. Have you never sat around in your room pondering what it would be like to kill someone? As long as it's just thinking about it, it's cool. You might just want to make sure to never get drunk. After all, you know what they say: "drunk actions are sober thoughts."