A couple of questions about Christianity that cause me some difficulty

[Prodigy54321]

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seriously txag, your responses are becomming more and more evasive.

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What does the Bible say about who God is (His nature)?

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why do you keep avoiding actually answering my questions?

I suppose you are looking for me to say that the Bible says that God cannot contradict his nature???

and as I asked before,

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What in his nature forces him to consider a person as sinful when they haven't even made a single decision yet?

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[furyshade]

i agree with prodigy, what just god would force humanity to share the sin of one person who wished to have knowledge? and i also wonder about that whole "free will" thing, our will is limited to our knowledge, if i live in a remote african village and never hear of christianity in my life, do i go to hell for my original sin?

[ChrisV]

The usual reply is that people who've never heard of Jesus are exempt from having to accept him as Lord. To save future generations from hell, therefore, we should not spread the Gospel, but rather eradicate it from the face of the Earth, so nobody has heard of Jesus and everybody will be saved. QED.

[jogger08152]

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Do you believe the child in my example is somehow a robot?

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The mother wouldn't give her child "the opportunity" to avoid the truck, because what this really means is, the opportunity not to avoid it.

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Would a true loving God have given humans free will?

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I don't know. Christians believe that God created stones, carrots and yellow-throated warblers without granting them free will, right? And creating these things did not change his nature to "non-loving God", right?

And even if the idea that "to lovingly create humans" somehow must be construed to include "...and must give free will to them" (and of course I don't understand why this should be so prima facie: we think of humans as having free will only because we seem to have experienced it; if there is an obvious but non-tautological reason why "human" must include "free will", I don't see it), why shouldn't God provide some sort of free will whose worst manifestation could not lead to infinite harm?

For instance, it seems to me that it would be more loving for God to give humans free will that, if misused by any particular human recipient, would at worst lead to that individual suffering the fiery torture of Hell for not more than (say) eleven million years. Once we say that the form of free will given humans by God can lead to eleven million and one years of fiery torture or more, couldn't we argue that the "gift" of free will is more of a curse? Or at least, couldn't you and I agree that we, imperfect though we are, seemingly can imagine a modified version of free will that appear to be "better" than the one (that God gave us, Christians believe) that sometimes ends with us enduring Hell for eternity?

Put another way, since God is divinely loving and he chose to invent both "free will" and "consequences", isn't it weird to think of him as having also invented Hell, then linked it to free will via consequence?

Put another nother way, the only way Hell could be necessary to the existence of free will, would be if God made it so, which would be especially strange if God is in fact even more loving than our moms and dads. I think.

Best regards,
Jogger

[arahant]

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seriously txag, your responses are becomming more and more evasive.

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What does the Bible say about who God is (His nature)?

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Wow. I really thought you would have read the Bible!

[txag007]

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What in his nature forces him to consider a person as sinful when they haven't even made a single decision yet?

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It's not God's opinion that we are born into sin; we are. Here's an example: Look at a nursery full of two year olds. Let enough time pass and one kid will have all the toys in the room. Did someone teach that kid to be selfish? No. It's natural. Why? We are born sinful.

[furyshade]

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What in his nature forces him to consider a person as sinful when they haven't even made a single decision yet?

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It's not God's opinion that we are born into sin; we are. Here's an example: Look at a nursery full of two year olds. Let enough time pass and one kid will have all the toys in the room. Did someone teach that kid to be selfish? No. It's natural. Why? We are born sinful.

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um, let's look at genesis, were adam and eve born in sin? unless i am mistaken they were not, god cursed human kind by being born with sin after eve ate the fruit, which means god gave humans sin at birth, it isn't natural assuming the bible is true

[Prodigy54321]

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What in his nature forces him to consider a person as sinful when they haven't even made a single decision yet?

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It's not God's opinion that we are born into sin; we are. Here's an example: Look at a nursery full of two year olds. Let enough time pass and one kid will have all the toys in the room. Did someone teach that kid to be selfish? No. It's natural. Why? We are born sinful.

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forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe our sinful nature supposedly comes from Adam and Eves' concious decision to sin.

it is this inheritance of sin that I find to be cruel.

[MidGe]

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We are born sinful.

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You are born sinful.

Speak for yourself, arrogant xtian.

[revots33]

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Here's an example: Look at a nursery full of two year olds. Let enough time pass and one kid will have all the toys in the room. Did someone teach that kid to be selfish? No. It's natural. Why? We are born sinful.

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So the kid who ends up with all the toys deserves to be tortured for eternity? Doesn't this strike you as a little out of proportion to the crime?

The fact that you could even use the example of a 2-yo in a nursery as an example of "sin" illustrates why the concept of original sin is so repugnant to me.