Christians Central

[TheWay]

Well the Basic purpose of this post is so the Christians that play this game can have somewhere to come communicate and encourage each other, of course anyone is welcome just be kind. I do not want this to be a place of argument there are alot of denominations in Christianity but that does not mean we cant all get along we are one body with Christ as the head and we should behave as such.

I would love it if this were a place where sgw players could come to ask for prayer, to give a praise report, or just for some advice. I will do my best to keep up on this post I encourage all the christians in the game to tall their friends and realy amke this area a welcome place, not just to other Christians but also to the whole sgw community. It is about time peopel started to see what it is to be a follower of Christ, and that is a person who genuinly cares for people no matter what there background or choices.

I will start posting verses and praise reports but first I would like to do introductions so of course I will go first lol

I am 27 and married I am a youth/english pastor at a vietnemese church (Christian Missionary alliance) I am currently in college finishing up a degree in mariage and family counseling, then I will move on and pursue a Masters degree in that same field.

To the Mods: If this is in the wrong area feel free to move it just tell me where it is moved to please and also I will make sure I watch this topic and report any breach of rules quickly. To make your jobs easier

[Fear Of The Duck]

also I will make sure I watch this topic and report any breach of rules quickly. To make your jobs easier

You may have some problems with that, but best of luck anyway.


At the beginning one thing needs to be explained:
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT OUR FAITH AND BELIEFS.

FAITH/BELIEFS is something we accept as true without any proof or evidence.

In the case of religion those beliefs are IMPOSSIBLE to prove and/or to DISPROVE, hence any argument regarding the matter of them being true or false is pointless.

If there was a proof this would become KNOWLEDGE (and when you read the bible you know God for some reason doesn't want it to became knowledge, I'd like to know why)

So PPL: discuss and share your beliefs and opinions, but, please don't ridicule yourselves by trying to convince somebody to something or, even worse, saying that your truth is the only one and everybody else is wrong (I know that statement is valid from the point of view of the person declaring it but, for obvious reasons, it cannot be objective).

[TheWay]

well thank you for posting m8 and I do agree that belief requires faith, however the defenition of faith is an amazing one, when it comes to Christian doctrine. I would be happy to answer your question of why God left knowing him up to a decision requiring faith. Scripture acatualy does deal with it at a few different points. It is because knowing God exist isnt enough to save you, you must trust in him as your savior and lord you must choose him, because even the demons know of Christ and shudder in fear but they refuse to bow to him as lord. Now I understand that hasnt answered your question yet but it is one part of the answer, the other part is this it would not matter what God did to show his presence it still would not cause people to submit to him, if he came down on a cloud today people would shudder in fear but they would not bow they would not submit, you see it is not an issue of knowledge but an issue of choice.

Earlier I mention the defenition for faith was an interesting one well Hebrews 11, says "faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen" What this mean is that faith is something you recieve that allows you to know for sure to have evidence or as you might say actual knowledge of the thing you believed. You might ask what evidence do you ahve and I would answer my life my life is evidence. Now I say that and I know there are alot of people who claimthe name of Christ and their lives do not reflect Christ, matter a fact sometimes mine doesnt seem to either but dont let the bad people who are false represent us all, please.

As of the issue of making absolute statements like this is the truth well as far as I understand part of freedom of speech is being able to express absolutes, matter a fact the statement that you made " it cannot be objective" is an absolute. You have a right to make that absolue and as a matter a fact you are right we are biased, but that is because we (Christians) start from presumption that scripture is true and others who disagree start with the presumtion that it isnt. Christians should believe in absolutes matter a fact all civilized people do that is why we have absolute laws like murder is wrong and rape is as well. I expect that the Christians in this area of the forum will deal with absolute like Christ is the only way to salvation, but we should do it with respect. Meaning if you disagree we will not attack you or get angry or be rude (well sometimes we may sin we arent perfect but we should try not to).

I hope this answers one of your questions and if anyone has any other feel free to ask, this is your oppurunity to ask the questions others wont try and answer, now I may not have the answer but if I dont I will be honest and tell you that, but I will try me best to answer all questions in a thorough way

Thank you for your reply to this post Corran Horn

[TheWay]

Oh and if I ever offend just let me know I am happy to hear fair critisim

[Spacey]

please don't double post, you can edit the original post to include what you want to add.

[The Xeno]

I'm not to sure about this thread.
We'll see.

[TheWay]

sorry spacey I wouldnt have doubled posted except there was no edit button available on that post for some strnge reason maybe it had something to do with the size of it

The Xeno, thanks for stopping in and dont worry m8, I am sure evryone will behave and if they dont want to discuss religion well they can stay out of this post lol, it allows the christians who play this game to ahve a place to talk about things regarding the game while using bible verses or while talking about what drives there life and thier values.

[Fear Of The Duck]

well, even the commies thread somehow managed to exist without ppl throwing **Filtered** on others, so there is a hope!

my point about the faith was that you look around and you see evidence for what you believe BECAUSE you believe in this. for you it's God, cos you believe in God, for somebody else it might be international conspiracy, mother nature, UFOs or leprechauns, cos they believe in those things.

good what you say about free choice. i've always been an advocate of free choice and it's consequences. i thing the story about the fallen angels is a good example: God gave them free will, they made their choice, and God accepted it. He just banished them and let them exist with the consequences of their choice while it was in His power to simply annihilate them (and not annihilating was the consequence of earlier giving them free will. good example for us)


and: wait till come forth finds this thread

[Spacey]

and: wait till come forth finds this thread

This thread is being considered with implications. As of now, the purpose of this thread is:

...so the Christians that play this game can have somewhere to come communicate and encourage each other, of course anyone is welcome just be kind. I do not want this to be a place of argument...

That is the topic. Questions and discussions that deviated from those lines have been allowed hesitantly. I will take a stronger stance if needed.

[TheWay]

Thank you Spacey for keeping an eye on this post, it is appreciated.

I do think we need to define the idea of argument so we and everyone else is under the right interpretation. When I said that this is what I meant. Conversation is discussing and issue, but in order for it to be converstaion and not argument both parties must enter into that conversation for mutual disscusion, when one of the parties is no longer freely exchanging and recieving ideas it becomes a fight or argument to prove ones point, this is what I do not want. However if someone poses a question then I think that question can be answered and by multiple people with different view point but we must be careful not to push our oppion on those who dont want it. In this area though it will be hard to mod that, however please give the members the oppurtunity and I believe you will find that these isuues can be disscussed in a very encouraging way.

[Come_Forth]

Hmm interesting thread. I will be happy to debate, but I will not troll your thread. I used to be a Christian, but have since left all forms of religion. My main problem with the idea of God (besides the evidence issue) is the problem of pain. Christians tell me that humans were created to worship god with free will because the angels are like robots with no free will. So god created us to get worship that would be made freely. Pain is a result of sin which is a result of free will. The problem for me is that god should be able to get worhsip without the pain. If the angels have no free will then how did satan decide to rebel? If angels have free will why create humans and earth?

[TheWay]

okay lol I will try to respond to your questions the best and the honetly I can.

1. The question of what caused evil, has 2 parts natural evil and mans inhuminity towards man.
a. Natural evil is like natural diasasters and such. This has come about through the fall of man in Adam. The scripture says that Eden was perfect before the fall, and that the earth did not fight against man it gave up its resources without struggle, but after the fall man would have to battle the earth, this was mans punishement. The theology behind this is that when man through Adam recieved the penalty for sin, the natural world chnged and hence the disasters we see today.
b. Evil in man, well technically evil was present from the moment God layed down the first rule (do not eat of the fruit in the tree of knowledge of good and evil), because once there was law there was the possiblity to break that law and hence sin which gives birth to all evil. Now when Adam who was without sin choose to disobey God then his sin was counted to all men because would have sinned since Adam was the first man (this should bring a question that if someone asks I will answer but for now it is not relevant to these issues).

now that we have talked about whta evil is an how it came lets move on to why.

2. Why didnt God create us with free will and just not put the tree in the garden couldnt he have just kept all temptation from us and allow us to live in a perfect untested state.

The answer is yes he could have but then we would not be able to genuinely love him. Let me explain, the existance of free will is use less and meaningless if one does not have the ability to truly exercise choice. In order for man to Love God he must choose him above his own will, meaning man must choose to put God above his own desires. In order for man to choose God he must then have another opposite choose to God namely himself, hence the reason for the tree of knowledge. Satan tempted Adam by telling him if ate the fruit he would be like God and so Adam put his desire to be more above his desire to obey God. This disobediance by God's creation this lack of love of deserved death for Gods creation but God is merciful and plus he of course knew this would happen God knew Adam would eat he knew man was imperfect and so could never truly love him they needed help, hence the reason for a whole story. God wanted his creation to glorify out of choice and to truly love him but we didnt have the ability because once given choice we would choose ourselves everytime. God new this and set a plan in motion before we were even created to resolve this issue. First he let man live on their own to see that on their own they would fail to do right, and they did fail so God sent the flood the next lesson he taught us was that even if he gave us law and strict punishement we would still fail we did (no man can keep the whole law because we are imperfect and so the law cannot save. Next he sends the answer his own son a part of himself to come to earth and pay the penalty for all past present and future sin hence giving man a clean slate (when they choose Christ, the gift is not automatic although the gift is suffieciant for all men it is only effecient for those that choose to believe, of course people will have questions about this as well). Now once Christ died for our sins he sent a helper to come in us and help us as sinners know how to truly love God in a self sacrificing way, this was the holy spirit. So now we have free will and if we believe on Christ as savior and lord we have complete and total forgiveness and he sends the spirit to help us , also we have Christ in heaven interceding before the father on our behalf. I hope that is suffiecient I am tired lol

Last question, about the Angels. Well very simply put they were given free will one time to make one decision and that is it they were not offered forgiveness or even able to resend there choice. That is why scripture says the angels look down on us with wonder at how God deals with us.

I hope that has given a decent theological answer to your issues and thank you for stopping in

[Come_Forth]

The basic problems that I see is why would god want worship anyway? Another problem that I also see is that when the consequence for disbelief is hell the choice is not really that free. It is like pointing a gun at someone and telling them to give you all of their money or you will shoot them, of course the person will hand over the money so the choice is not really that "free" It seems to me that more proof should be given before god just throws me in hell. I guess that some proof would violate my free will . If showing me proof would violate my free will then god had no problem with harming the free will of the people in the OT by performing all of those miracles. There seems to me to be too much pain to blame it all on humans. Humans are not perfect but are falliable. God knew that humans would "sin" and that all this pain would be the result.

I don't think this is what you wanted the thread to be so I can post elsewhere.

[Fear Of The Duck]

Another problem that I also see is that when the consequence for disbelief is hell the choice is not really that free. It is like pointing a gun at someone and telling them to give you all of their money or you will shoot them,

Not exactly. As I said, this is about belief. Person pointing gun at you is not a matter of belief, it's real. God IS a matter of belief. If you decide not to believe then you also refuse to believe in heaven or hell, so from your point of view it makes no difference, so the choice is free. But if you choose to believe in God then you have to accept the pain as a punishment for your sins.

Btw: how would you define a free choice? IMO you still can say "no" to the robber if you accept the consequence of this, so you have a choice (I know this is very unlikely, but still possible. Maybe that gun is just a toy?).



I think I should say something about me here:
I am a Christian (Roman Catholic exactly) but I'm not an expert in scriptures and theology. I'm just a normal guy with some questions and doubts and my own answers to them based on what I know and my own logical deduction.
That's why I've welcomed this thread as an opportunity to clarify some issues and verify my way of thinking.
@Spacey and mods: I also welcome ComeForth in this thread as somebody interested in the topic but with different point of view, hence able to come up with questions and issues I wouldn't think of. And I know he won't flame the thread.

[Come_Forth]

Sorry, I was pretty vague in my post. I was talking about worship when I was talking about the gun. I have a choice of whether or not to worship. It would be like God saying "Worship me or I will send you to hell." It is not simply enough to believe in God, because the Bible says that even the Bible believe that Jesus is God etc. The choice in the gun example of whether or not to give the person your money is free, but it is weighted because the person will shoot you if the money is not given. In real life it is even more complex because it is not God who is telling me to worship him or not, but a book that people say is His word.

What I would like to see is some evidence of God's existence that I could not use to prove the existence of Thor, Zeus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
[cleaned. Spacey]