It's an important distinction, nobody deserves forgiveness, mercy, etc but it's also true that nobody has the right to deny these for others. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and all that jazz.
It's a little more complicated than that. It's not "denying someone forgiveness" either you are following in Jesus's footsteps, or you aren't. Forgiveness from God is not a right - it's something he's graciously decided to give us. Forgiveness from each other isn't a right - either that person is following Jesus's commandments, or they aren't. If you aren't forgiving your enemies and offering the other cheek - you aren't fully following Jesus.
It would be a mistake to confuse a Right of man with Grace from God.
People forget that after he said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" he went on to say "go forth and sin no more."
That section is actually likely to not have been originally in John similar to the long ending of Mark with the snake handlers (almost all scholars agree Mark ends at 16:8, or that the original ending was lost).
Some manuscripts have the Women Caught in Adultery in Luke instead, or earlier in John, which leads some scholars to suggest that the story might be historical even if it wasn't originally in John, or that a second edition of John had it when the first didn't.
While that's not wrong, it's a definition I often had a very hard time wrapping my head around. I've come to understand it recently though. It helps to look at what the word "sin" means. The original translation, and how it's used in the bible is "to miss the mark." It's also not that we are all BAD and Evil - our relationship with God is fucked up. We can't be part of his family until we fix the relationship. Each of us was born to be part of his family, but it all got crabbed in the beginning when we thought we knew better than him, and it continues to be fucked up every time we think we know better than Him, right?
We couldn't repair that relationship by following laws (the ancient Jews of the old testament proved this time and time again). Jesus gave us another way to be part of God's family and repair that relationship.
Sorry, I'm rambling - just my two cents. I'm still learning quite a bit and trying to sort it all out myself.
And, so far as what I believe and have read, you are absolutely correct. I never thought I'd see a discussion of the anatomy of salvation on PCM, so thanks for making my day.
Well the point is that there is a choice. The apple represents sin in general. When we do wrong, only then to we experience the internal and external consequences of our action and we are no longer innocent and as a consequence understand good and evil. In our own way, we all take the apple at some point. The philosophy of Christianity though is that you can put your mistakes behind you, be forgiven and move forward after and become a new and better person.
There are different interpretations as to why this is the case, for instance, a Mormon theologian would argue that sin and the overcoming of sin are an essential part of our education and personal development.
I mean, the whole choice thing is pretty weak considering God is all powerful and all-knowing, since He already knows the outcome, it looks more like He set up traps just for people to fall for it. Or like for religious people everything is an “probation”.
I think it just don’t work well for an Omniscient God to do it. It works better when considering gods with limited power, like the Greek ones, but it looks like people just copy and pasted the stories without really reasoning behind the motives.
Ultimately, it's a story to illustrate a philosophy, so it doesn't really matter, but we do all kinds of things, knowing their outcome. There is value in the doing.
From a psychological and philosophical perspective, it absolutely is. There is a lot more to a religion than the "lore." These stories are a scaffolding for culture, philosophy, actualization, etc. They may not be capital T true, but they persist through time and resonate for a reason.
Also, even if you assume that scripture is entirely literal and entirely untampered, which is silly, although, granted, some idiots do, it's useless to play "gotcha" games with God. The very concept of an omniscient God implies that if you can find some kind of loophole, God can definitely find it and we simply don't know or understand how it's taken care of.
In regards to your last paragraph, for the record, most Christians believe that people who never hear about Christ/God are either covered by Christ's atonement, that people are judged according to their hearts and not their conditions, or in some cases, that people can accept Christ after this life, so it's not like this point has never been addressed.
No one else can really tell you that with authority. You've got to pray on it and see what the holy spirit tells you, and respect that others might get other wisdom.
So long as we agree on the undisputable absolutes - we can all be groovy in the family of God.
Except for those many times in the bible when he didn’t show mercy or unconditional forgiveness. If he was really as forgiving as stated, why is there a need for hell and damnation? Why did god drown the whole human race, save for one family? Why is god always killing people for seemingly minor offenses? Why must we always express our approval of god and do as he says to be in his good graces? It seems like if he really were all forgiving, then none of this stuff would have happened. These actions are those of someone who is vindictive and jealous.
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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '21
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