My problem with Christianity

@BritishFailedAesthetic It's what happens when we don't [i][b]realise[/b][/i] that God IS Love.

Yes, folks, what happens is people afraid to actually HEAR the Good News, clinging instead to the [i]self-justification[/i] of the depth of their belief in sin and their own emotional response.

@SW-User [quote] clinging instead to the self-justification of the depth of their belief in sin and their own emotional response [/quote]

@BritishFailedAesthetic Really mate, derision simply does not cut it.

But keep it up if you find it satisfying.

😀

Remember:-

[i]But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,[/i]

Derision and total refusal to look at any theology but your own reveals much about you. Think on these things.

@SW-User And you currently have no hope WITH your ideology, you are a Universalist.

@BritishFailedAesthetic Please, just say exactly why you absolutely refuse to look at the [b][i]biblically based[/i][/b] arguments presented by those such as David Bentley Hart in favour of Universalism. I have posted where Mr Hart offers a deep [b]biblically based[/b] interpretation, this of Romans, a Letter in which St Paul offers his own deepest theology of Salvation.

So again, PLEASE, just say in simple language exactly WHY you refuse to even look at the posts.

Thank you.

PS And actually you have offered no defence of the hope that is in you, merely implied that I am damned.

@SW-User Again, because I read the bible. Do you not think I would've loved universalism to be true? My unsaved family would have a plave in heaven but God is wise.

BTW I believe universal salvation is true for children.

@BritishFailedAesthetic If you think that answer adequate regarding my polite request, I can only conclude that you are a bigot.

Bigot:- a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction.

Your refusal to look at an indepth interpretation of a fundamental NT text by another believing Christian simply because it contradicts your own current opinion is the act of a bigot, given your outright condemnation of another human being who thinks other than you.

@SW-User Guessing you go to an Anglican church- rainbow flags ahoy 😆

@BritishFailedAesthetic Once again, a resort to derision.

Quite frankly, pathetic.

@SW-User I gave you a polite response and I wasn't saracastic about children getting universal salvation.

Be childish and call me a bigot, get a childish response.

@BritishFailedAesthetic I have explained in detail exactly why you are a bigot.

Irrespective of how "polite" your response was, it totally avoided answering the request I politely made to you. Your response reveals bigotry. Which, I might add, is better than implying that another human being who believes differently from yourself is damned.

@BritishFailedAesthetic "BTW I believe universal salvation is true for children"

Which just shows how incoherent and confused your own understanding of God's Plan of Salvation is!

But I will leave it there.

@SW-User The Christian martyrs: "Well everyone gets saved but I'm still going to die for Christ even though it won't make a shred of difference if I do or don't" 😆

@BritishFailedAesthetic Well that it is. Dogen's Life Koan in a slightly different context.

But if you seriously think such a statement makes a mockery of Universalism you obviously have no actual understanding of it - not surprising as you refuse to look at the [b]biblically based[/b] arguments for it presented by Christians [i]who read the Bible[/i] just like you.

@SW-User Go read about what Jesus said regarding unbelief, see Mark 16:16

@BritishFailedAesthetic I simply believe in a different way.

You really do seem to be confused, even desperate.

@SW-User

@BritishFailedAesthetic By the way, virtually all scholars (Christian scholars) agree that the passage you quote was not originally in the Gospel. All the oldest existing manuscripts do not contain the passage. It was added by an ardent evangelist.

@BritishFailedAesthetic Oh, ha ha.

Even more desperate. In fact, rather pathetic.

@SW-User Even if not plenty of other texts where even sin and hell are correlated.

@BritishFailedAesthetic If you actually took a look at the [i][b]biblically based[/b][/i] arguments of the Universalists I have cited you would find that all such passages are dealt with and correlated in a perfectly reliable and understandable way. However, as you point blank refuse to look at such evidence you will remain ignorant of these interpretations.

@BritishFailedAesthetic Yiu wrote:- " Do you not think I would've loved universalism to be true? My unsaved family would have a place in heaven but God is wise."

David Bentley Hart, who [i]reads his bible just like you[/i] and witnesses to a far deeoer wisdom in God that you appear to know of. Mr Hart is speaking of human beings made in the image of God, and his words relate to how heaven could ever be if those we have loved in this life are in fact excluded perpetually:-

[i]I know of another Evangelical writer—this one a philosopher (of sorts) who periodically insists on perpetrating theology, always with catastrophic results—who is wholly committed to the infernalist orthodoxy, but who at least has the instinctive decency to recognize that indifference is not sufficiently distinct from malice to count as a genuine moral stance. And apparently he also grasps that talk of a final beatitude that might involve specifically averting one’s thoughts from certain persons one has loved in the past is, at the very least, counterintuitive. He therefore proposes just the opposite of the Thomistic picture: not that God, in order to increase the felicity of the blessed, will provide them with the delectable diversion of watching the damned writhing amid the fire and brimstone, but that instead, in order to grant them the perfect blessedness of the Kingdom, he will veil the sufferings of the damned from their eyes, and will even elide all memory of the lost from their recollections. Think of it as a kind of heavenly lobotomy, a small, judicious mutilation of the intellect, the surrender of a piece of the mind in exchange for peace of mind. After all, consider how happy we could all be if we never had to think of anyone’s sufferings at all. I suppose that this is better than the Thomistic picture; it demonstrates a keener sense of charity, at least; but it is charity of a distinctly tragic variety, I have to say. How terrible to imagine that the beatitude of the saints must consist to some degree in the destruction of part of their humanity. And surely a blessedness that subsists only by way of ignorance is one of a peculiarly defective kind. But perhaps these really are the only alternatives the infernalist has to choose among: If there really is an eternal hell, where souls suffer in perpetuity, perhaps the blessedness of the saved absolutely must in some large measure consist either in callousness or in ignorance. If so, the latter is the less appalling of two quite appalling options.[/i]

So yes, maybe God, in His wisdom, will perform some sort of lobotomy on your mind. Or just maybe, God is wiser than your own current understanding of the Bible you read.

@SW-User I would prefer to remain ignorant of everyone's or anyone's interpretation of what they feel the truth is. Heck a lot of what preachers preach in other Christian churches I disagree with. And isn't universalism Christian? Last I heard they were!

@SDavis I'm interested in Universalism as my own Pure Land Faith is explicitly Universalist.

If you look back at our discussion you will see why I spoke of it in a Christian context.

Thanks

@SW-User.

Universalist / Universalism is an off shoot of Protestants which is a Christian denomination -

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Universalism#:~:text=The%20Universalists%20believed%20it%20impossible,the%20rest%20to%20eternal%20punishment.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/universalist

Pure land Faith are you speaking of Buddhism?

Are you doing comparisons -Buddhism to Christianity.

From my studies there are several basic similarities in all religions. There are several basic beliefs in all religions. And there are at least one or more basic truths in all religions.