Your belief

[muhammad_isa]

The Catholic church has a lot of problems, including a Pope.

Well,, I would agree with you that hierarchies can be troublesome, but nations need leaders, imo.

..It's also a works based religion, which Martin Luther just about lost his life over.

Martin Luther is not a prophet or G-d.
Salvation does not have to be "either or" .. faith without works is useless, as is works without faith.

Each believer has a personal relationship with God and needs no one to "intercede" for them. We have direct access to God through Jesus.

That is a contradiction.
You are saying a person needs nobody to intercede, and then say we can access G-d "through Jesus".

 

[talib-al-kalim]

But what do you do with what can't be "proven", yet still might be true?

That's right. Much of the truth is not even known, and not everything can be proven. But if I say "this is true", or "this is false", I refer to something that can be proven, or has at least an overwhelming evidence on its side.

Maybe I am not understanding here, but should Faith be based on something?

Yes. A prophecy or words of wisdom should go together with mental experience, and make sense in the whole.

 

[Faithfulservant]

That is a contradiction.
You are saying a person needs nobody to intercede, and then say we can access G-d "through Jesus".

It works if you accept Jesus as fully God. I think you know what Thinking Required is saying lol

 

[muhammad_isa]

It works if you accept Jesus as fully God..

..and yet we have no report of Jesus claiming he was "fully God" in the Gospels.
..just Christians claiming that he inferred it, by interpreting one or two verses in isolation,
ignoring other verses where he stated he wasn't.

Jesus is reported to have said "Why are you calling me good? No one is good, only God"

 

[Faithfulservant]

Yes He did. Jesus said before Abraham was I AM

 

[Thinking required]

and yet we have no report of Jesus claiming he was "fully God" in the Gospels.
..just Christians claiming that he inferred it, by interpreting one or two verses in isolation,
ignoring other verses where he stated he wasn't.

Does Jesus state that He is God? No, but He certainly implies it. Do the Jews think that He is God, Yes. The Jews say, you are making yourself equal to God. Jesus states the He will raise His own body from the grave, God says that He will raise Jesus, the Holy Spirit says that He will raise Jesus from the dead. And then you can get into the I AM statements that God uses.The Apostle John claims that Jesus is God in the first couple of verses of the book of John. Peter declares Jesus to be the Messiah, God coming in the flesh. Only God can forgive sin, yet Jesus forgives sin and gets in trouble with the Jews who want to kill Him over this. I could go on and on.. All things were made through Jesus when He was only the Word existing with God during creation. I could keep going, but……guess that I got past your one or two verses. And let’s not forget the thousands of healing that Jesus carries out. Jesus never states that He not God. Jesus role was always pointing mankind to God the Father. Jesus said that He laid aside His dirty and put on humanity.

Philippians 2:6–8 (NASB95): although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Colossians 1:13–18 (NASB95):
14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.
17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.

 

[Thinking required]

Martin Luther is not a prophet or G-d.
Salvation does not have to be "either or" .. faith without works is useless, as is works without faith.

Agreed, but Luther did finally after many years of reading the Bible finally understold that works, keepino the law had nothing to do with Salvatioin. “By Grace you are saved by Faith, not by works so that no one can boast” God wants us to realize that it was all His doing. But genuine Faith will always produce good works. Yes, a Christian has to bear fruit.

 

[RJM]

Still, can you stand on gas, don't think so or that means I should be able to walk on helium. "The Sun is a huge ball of hydrogen and helium held together by its own gravity." From a NASA site.

Gas has mass. A lot of gas has a lot of mass.

So ... busted.

Yes mass determines it, but still does not tell us what makes it. Spin a normal ball and put paint on it, I don't care how big the ball is, the paint will fly off of the mass,

The Earth is spinning. Why doesn't the paint fly off the earth into space?

And it doesn't seem to matter what the mass is made of,

It's made of atoms

 

[Cino]

Does Jesus state that He is God? No, but He certainly implies it. Do the Jews think that He is God, Yes.

I think you are mistaken. None of the Jews I know think that.

 

[RJM]

A true Christian

But which 'we true Christians' club?

Do the Jews think that He is God, Yes. The Jews say, you are making yourself equal to God.

I say I'm an octopus -- you say I'm calling myself an octopus: does that mean you think I'm an octopus?

 

[Cino]

I agree, I believe Pilate might have believed there was no truth, that could have been why he responded the way he did. Living in the world that he was living in could not have been easy. Everyone answered to Rome. When I was in the Army, my truth did not matter, only what the military wanted.

I'm not a historian, so take what I'm about to say as my layperson's understanding.

Pilate was the one giving the orders to the Roman army stationed in Judea.

He was in a politically difficult situation, with Rome far away, where the power games between his patrons and their oponents were taking place. He wanted to keep the peace in Judea, because pacifying an uprising would have required forces from neighboring areas, and it would have reflected poorly on his patrons. On the other hand, he was probably well aware what the expectations were regarding a Messiah claimant: Ending Roman occupation prominently among them.

So my understanding is tbat he was probably pondering political truths, whether executing yet another Messiah claimant would ignite an uprising, or whether not doing so would be counted as weakness by his political opponents.

 

[muhammad_isa]

..genuine Faith will always produce good works..

Right .. but if you discard the law, on what basis do you judge what "good works"
actually are?

 

[juantoo3]

Matthew 10:34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35 For I have come to ‘set[a] a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; 36 and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ 37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

I was brought up in a Christian home and my children were as well. Both of my children have a close walk with their Lord and I believe their faith was built on my trials and tribulations that God manifested Himself in. Thank the Lord . However I know a lot of people that walked away and I don't believe they were in the walk in the first place.

This is why the word religion is so distasteful to me as a description for what I experience. I had a conversion experience in my late 20's my daughter did as well and my son in his teens. I think people that grew up in a family culture of religion won't mean anything without that experience.

IMO

Proverbs 22:6 6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

 

[juantoo3]

Is Truth an "arbitrary standard"?

In a word, yes.

"Truth" is a moving target.

 

[wil]

I am not sure how you can believe that your parents were Christians, sorry. Going to church three or four times a year doesn't make anyone a Christian

Oh.my, we have an arbiter of true Christians now?

I believe the actual requirement is a lot less than going to church more than 4 times a year or at all.

 

[juantoo3]

Truth is Truth. 2+2=4 Truth, nothing subjective or personal here. Either there exists a creator or not. One is truth, even if we can not validate it.
Truth is, the Sun exists, the earth exists, the earth rotates every day, 1 turn. The earth is moving through space kept in orbit by the gravity of the sun. Nothing subjective here.

If you look into philosophy you will find the term "truth" has a very wide range of meanings, and people tend to cross those meanings routinely

 

[juantoo3]

I was going to do some experiments regarding near death experiences, but couldn't find any volunteers.

Look up Raymond Moody

 

[juantoo3]

Yes mass determines it, but still does not tell us what makes it. Spin a normal ball and put paint on it, I don't care how big the ball is, the paint will fly off of the mass, not be drawn to it. And it doesn't seem to matter what the mass is made of, the sun is suppose to be all gas, and yet it has gravity. It's OK, the greatest minds in the world can't explain it either. It's a God thing.

Perhaps. But then how long did humans, under the insistence of the Church ("god") I might add, labor under the belief the Earth was square, flat and the center of the universe?

Particle physics was unheard of two hundred years ago. Red shift, dark energy and dark matter were only beginning to make themselves known to humans a hundred years ago.

What is time?

All of these things are G!d things, doesn't mean humans are incapable of understanding.

 

[juantoo3]

All I am trying to state is that there is truth even when it comes to religion (I so dislike that word). I have been dealing with this for the last 39 years. Do I believe the Bible to be truth expounded to mankind from God. I have lived two different lives, the life before the Bible and God and the life after the Bible and God. I found every answer to life in the pages of the Bible. I had lived 35 years without this. It opened my eyes to truth. Yes, this is my story. If I am wrong, I just die like everyone else and rot in the dirt. But if I am correct in believing the Bible, then life just gets so much better after this world. Seems like a simple answer to me. Wait, there is a book called Pascal's Wager written by Blase Pascal, interesting concept. Every religion says that man (or women) (man meaning mankind) can be good enough to please God and be with Him one day, only Christianity says that mankind can do nothing to please God.

But see, you are crossing streams of reference against each other. That only leads to confusion, every time.

Biblical truth is a form of truth, but it is not the same kind/form/type of truth as reality.

You mentioned 2+2=4...that is hard science (truth if you wish). Very little of science is hard science.

Philosophy presents us with many variant manners of looking at life as we understand it, each its own variant of truth.

No different for the many religions, each is a morality play providing us with wisdom and guidance, but this truth is not the same truth as science or philosophy.

 

[juantoo3]

Going to church just for "hatches, matches and dispatches"

ROFLMBO