The Promise

[Gori the Grey]

I was driving about and saw a church sign that said (1) true love begins when nothing is expected in return.

(2) Doing good for goodness sake is true love...

Farm Boy has beat me to the punch. I'll just observe that your own preferred definition of true love strikes me as essentially the same as the one you read on the church's sign.

 

[Synobun]

Methodist theology is not very clear on that, Vin, no.

Isn't it? Perhaps I've been grossly misunderstanding my limited knowledge of Methodist belief, but they still believe in a Hell that the unfaithful go to, no? Wikipedia seems to support that thought?

"Methodists interpret Scripture as teaching that the saving work of Jesus Christ is for all people (unlimited atonement) but effective only to those who respond and believe."

"All people who are obedient to the gospel according to the measure of knowledge given them will be saved."

What am I missing? Genuine question. I've been under the impression that all Christians, regardless of sect, believe in the concept of a Hell.

 

[Farm Boy]

Why not go straight to the UMC? http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/what-happens-after-a-person-dies

Officially there is silence other than the call for the simple faith of trust in God to remain...get this, simple.

I have never once heard a Methodist minister preach on Hell. It's a big organization though, I'd bet some have somewhere. I'd bet they're getting off script though.

 

[Synobun]

That seems awfully vague and I think it flew over my head. This is likely because of my own perspective on religion and not a failure on your part, however. Thank you for trying to enlighten me.

 

[Farm Boy]

You're not wrong, it is vague. Complexity does not all things improve. I don't think that's wrong.

 

[warpus]

The ten commandments seem reasonably solid suggestions most of the time, like maybe killing people isn't a super awesome way to live and pining about all the hotties you aren't banging perhaps won't make you super happy. But God's love isn't conditional upon following them, no.

Who said anything about God's love though? I used to be Christian so I know that God says he loves all, even those he is torturing because they did not fall in line or whatever.

We were initially talking about God's expectations of us. It seems clear to me that the Christian God does have expectations of us. He wouldn't deny us his love, even if our decisions lead to eternal torture, but those expectations exist nevertheless.

 

[metalhead]

But even the non-believer feels better about themselves when they support charities. Why is that? Is it also selfish to help people because it feels good?

Yes. True charity requires the charitable act to cause the giver to suffer materially and spiritually. Our old Methodist minister used to exhort us to give until it hurt financially to do so, both because the church badly needed money, and as an exercise in painful charity. Of course, one could end up discovering that the emotional and spiritual benefits of that kind of giving outweigh the material downsides, in which case it's murky whether it constitutes "charity," but that was beyond the scope of his point.

I think most human behavior is motivated by selfish calculus, even behavior perceived as altruistic. I can do without the twenty I stuff in the collection plate, and I feel better about myself for having given the money to church. Same goes if I give that twenty to cancer research, or a homeless shelter, or what have you. However, giving of time is harder to see in that light, because it is limited and because its value can't really be quantified.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'm with Farm Boy in thinking that the core Christian truth is simple in the extreme and at the same time nearly impossible to get one's mind around, a little like a Zen koan maybe. Maybe hard to get one's mind around because it is so simple. God doesn't want anything from you; he wants something for you. Everything that can be done toward your salvation (all those commandments that it seems as though religion enjoins (and does in fact sometimes seem to spend a lot of its time enjoining)) has already been done, as a free gift, by someone else, on your behalf, and your only role is to accept that that is the case.

I get half of my theology from the seventeenth-century British poets I read and one of them, John Milton*, puts it this way, that salvation comes to those who renounce "Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds" (emphasis added), i.e. stop thinking they can do anything to effect their own salvation and just accept that someone else has already done everything efficacious to that end.

*But he and his age in turn get it from Paul

 

[warpus]

God doesn't want anything from you

Why is the message "Follow my teachings or burn in hell" then?

Someone who didn't want anything from me wouldn't say something like that. They would say: "Follow my teachings or not, it won't affect you either way, do what you want"

 

[Gori the Grey]

The thing you put in quotation marks is a distortion of the message, in my view. The message is "I love you."

 

[warpus]

The thing you put in quotation marks is a distortion of the message, in my view.

How is it a distortion? That's what the church teaches, isn't it? Which part is incorrect?

The message is "I love you."

This is an entirely different message. You can have more than 1 message, right?

 

[Gori the Grey]

You can only have one core message. I'm talking about what I understand to be the core message.

Since you keyed in on the quote that you did, Preacher Gori will reformulate (that what he understands the Christian message to be is): All God wants from you is for you to believe that he loves you so much that he only wants things for you, not from you.

I'm trying to get it to koan-level of simplicity-paradox-profundity.

I'm with Farm Boy in testifying that most Christian churches I've attended spend far less time talking about hell than people who don't step inside tend to imagine.

 

[warpus]

You can only have one core message. I'm talking about what I understand to be the core message.

Forget the core message. We were discussing whether God expects anything of you or not. It wouldn't make sense to only look at God's core message to determine if this is true or not. You've got to look at all his messages and determine whether the statement is true or not from that.

My boss' core message is "Come to work and get 'er done". That doesn't mean that he doesn't expect me to wear pants. He most certainly does.

Since you keyed in on the quote that you did, Preacher Gori will reformulate (that what he understands the Christian message to be is): All God wants from you is for you to believe that he loves you so much that he only wants things for you, not from you.

Okay, but why did God create hell then? Hmm

 

[Farm Boy]

In life, there are pants. God loves you when you wear pants. God loves you when you do not.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Okay, but why did God create hell then? Hmm

So, if you want things other than the things the Being who only wants good things for you wants, those turn out to be bad things.

Since I've started in koan-mode, you'll forgive me if I continue in it.

 

[warpus]

In life, there are pants. God loves you when you wear pants. God loves you when you do not.

What you just said has 0 impact on the statement: "God expects certain stuff from you", which is what we're discussing

 

[Farm Boy]

Does it? I don't think it does. Then again, what I think is of intensely relative value, even to me.

 

[warpus]

I mean, I've read the Bible, a couple times.

If God didn't want anything from us, the Bible wouldn't exist.

 

[Old Hippy]

I think most human behavior is motivated by selfish calculus, even behavior perceived as altruistic. I can do without the twenty I stuff in the collection plate, and I feel better about myself for having given the money to church. Same goes if I give that twenty to cancer research, or a homeless shelter, or what have you. However, giving of time is harder to see in that light, because it is limited and because its value can't really be quantified.

it can't be quantified but it sure is good
helping at the Uniting Church (our Methodist equivalent) with programmes for the homeless or mentally ill it only takes a couple of visits to realise that barriers are broken down, this benefits the giver of time just as much as the receiver of the time
notable by the smile you get when somebody (previously called a client) greets you by name when shopping and you realise that is what community is actually all about and you ask how's it going with their name and genuinely care about their answer

 

[timtofly]

I mean, I've read the Bible, a couple times.

If God didn't want anything from us, the Bible wouldn't exist.

If people were not obsessed with playing Civ games, this website would not exist.

If people would stay on topic, this forum would not exist.

The Bible exist because people interacted with God. God had a contract with the Hebrews. That is why they wrote down what they did. When they broke that contract, people wrote about that as well. The context of punishment has always been about the relationship with God, but you have to have a relationship for that to even work.

Faith is obedience to God, only after God tells one what to do. It is vague because it is not a blanket command for all of humanity. You have to have a contract with God first. If one does not even accept that God exist, how does one even know what God is demanding? The Bible is specific on who is to do what. But the "who" was those individuals who were writing, and being written about, not the religion we call Christanity. Christians are just those who do decide to have a contract with God, through the death of Christ. Religion is not a contract with God. It is people who group together over common interest. Religion basically describes God as a vague unknown in human terms. Hell was not for those who disobeyed. It was for those who did not believe. Having a lack of belief is the same thing as not believing. God loves those who do not obey, and those who do not believe. Unfortunately only those who know God, can even accept God. Belief has nothing to do with what we do. It is what we think. We act on our choices. God said humans could not live if their imaginations were evil continually. If God leaves the choice to us, it is mental not the result of that choice. That is why Christians are called the biggest hypocrites, when their thoughts do not portray their exceptionally good behaviour. Most claim it as the other way around. They are bad, and allegedly have saintly thoughts. No one can be perfect in their mind, and that is betrayed in their actions. But it is not the action that is wrong, it is the thoughts that produce the actions. God has the ability to force us even against God's Will, if that is the choice we make. It is at that point we no longer have free will. That is also the point where "hell fire" and "damnaton" preachers are to warn humans against. Unfortunately humans only see it as outward actions and deeds. The stuff that is vague and meaningless to God.