Is the Christian God's love unconditional?

[Woolmark]

Ok, some questions which have been playing on my mind, I am genuinely interested.

Surely his love is on the condition that you are a) a Christian and b) follow his rules?

Also, if God loves everyone as much as he does, why can't he save everyone by simply appearing to them? If I could save my children by doing this then I would in an instant, rather than turning up at the end and destroying the ones who weren't Christian.

Back I am talking about there being a choice over where you exercise your Faith. Faith is a belief in something you cannot necessarily see, experience or prove.

We all have the ability to use faith and do so every time we make an assumption about something. I have decided to put my Faith in the teachings of Christ and the Bible, as I am a Christian.

If you an atheist I suspect you have decided to put your faith in something else. You will undoubtedly make assumptions, have some sort of belief system.

^ that should be 'Faith is a belief in something you have not necessarily seen, experienced or proven.'

Mumsnetters can only profess what their own beliefs are. I believe that God loves every human being unconditionally, however we choose whether to accept this love.

No one can enter TESCOs unless they believe in the existance of TESCOs and I think its the same with Heaven. People choose to enter the Kingdom of Heaven much like people choose to enter TESCOs. With children or animals they are obvilous any decision process and do not actively object to entering the kingdom of heaven. (suffer the little come on to me for their's is the kingdom of heaven). Therefore all hindu, muslim, athetist children who are unlucky enough to die are saved. I believe that Jesus makes the decision with non christians adults. I trust Jesus to be fair, even if I don't know the answer.

With adults there is a choice and you can either chose to accept God's Grace or reject it. If entering heaven was decided on judgement of our sins then heaven would be an empty place.

So then once you have decided what to base your Truth on, what to use as your measure of Truth as it were, you pursue this belief.

You then have an experiential relationship within your belief system.

I decided to do that with Christianity and have not found it lacking.

X posted. My last post refers to my previous post.

capsium but if it's just an assumption - a guess - why would anyone with faith look at someone else with faith in something different and say "no that's incorrect".

Take the 'only 4000 people going to heaven' mentioned earlier. Is that correct?. If you are sure it is rubbish can you tell me how you can be sure when they are sure they are right?

And no I don't have a faith. This is something I've gone into before because it's perhaps natural to imagine atheism as faith that god doesn't exist. I 'believe' in nothing. What I have is a kind of list of probabilities based partly on experience, but which I am aware could be wrong. I expect a plate to fall if I let it go because it usually does and because a lot of people who turned out to be right about other things have worked out how gravity most likely works. I have the same kind of evidence that Tesco exists.

None of this is certain. It's a workaround because it's not possible to know much if anything for certain. Only believers know for sure what is true and what is false and at least 99% of them are wrong. They must be wrong because they directly contradict what all the others say.

Back it is part of my Faith to believe in what the Bible says just as it is part of your atheism to believe in nothing.

I also believe that your list of probabilities is a form of belief.

What is more, without belief you cannot say you have knowledge, because nothing is proven, it is all subject to change if new data comes to light.

Nobody can say for absolute certain that because a thing has happened once or even millions of times it will repeat the next time in exactly the same way as the previous observations. What was observed might have been part of a larger pattern, the pendulum may just swing back in the other direction for example.

Back And you need some degree of faith (in something, your probabilities for example) in order to plan and make decisions.

Oh and as far as trusting probabilities go you might enjoy this book.

www.amazon.co.uk/Proofiness-Dark-Arts-Mathematical-Deception/dp/0670022160/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385300597&sr=8-1&keywords=proofiness+the+dark+arts+of+mathematical+deception

I don't see any reason to think there's a god, let alone a loving one. I should really understand how one can think there is a loving god being an ex-christian n'all, I think I've just forgotten.

This has just again gone into a Christians against atheists thread. I hope the OP isn't too confused about it all.

I was going to ask, and dont asnwer if you dont want to, whether if there was evidence, would that be enough for you to believe again.
Or believe but not do anything about it right now?

Sorry Dutchoma and OP. I just find it quite mind boggling when people profess to having no beliefs, in anything. I'll have to stop prodding.

I think the thing here is that many people who are christians or at least drawn toward Christianity want to know if it is possible to believe in God and Jesus and even the bible but without believing only certain people will be saved and the rest sent to hell. If we accept the arguments that this could be so, then it is also apparent that believing in a God who would torture most of the people who have ever lived for all eternity is a very damaging thing to believe even if you think you will be saved yourself. As zulubump said what about friends and relatives who are not saved. Can we really worship a God who is like that? Or do we do everything out of fear? Also it can lead to the kind of sneaky evangelism so many people deplore. So this is why we want to try to convince believers that they need to change their interpretation of scripture.

But capsium, I'm not claiming that I am right. I am asking how a believer can say that another believer is certainly wrong.

And I don't trust probabilities.

Nobody can say for absolute certain that because a thing has happened once or even millions of times it will repeat the next time in exactly the same way as the previous observations.

That is probably true which is why nothing I rely on is 100% proved. One can only approach certainty in a practical sense.

I act as though the solid ground will support me, that gravity will hold me to it and that the air will sustain me, but I don't have faith that they will. Only a reasonable expectation based on knowledge.

Well for my part I am comforted by the fact my Faith can help save others. As I said in my post on page 1.

Your reasonable expectation is a form of faith, Back.

I think as christians we need to accept we could be wrong and if so only accept those those things that are going to not do any harm to others and hopefully will help them.

capsium it might be if I was sure it was true.

btw I read some of the book you linked to on Amazon (they show a sample) and that part at least seemed to be about advertisers lying about their product and ordinary people misunderstanding scientific results. I'm not sure that proves anything about science really. I'm always ranting about how the media report scientific results and lead people into misunderstandings.

but what about my question? can anyone tell me how one believer can be sure enough to say out loud that another sincere believer is wrong.

I wasn't trying to derail the thread btw. I thought it would be a simple one off question.

Hi OP.

I think God felt the same way as you do about doing as much as you can to save your children, which was why Jesus came to live among us. We then have the choice to make, as children have a choice as to whether they respond to their parents or not.

I know a few people who have had a 'damascus road' experience but it's more unusual. But even when this happens people still have a choice - Paul could have said 'no, I know you're real but you can still sod off', but he chose to change radically in the light of the revelation given to him. We may have lesser shades of revelation but we can still choose.

I believe God's love is unconditional, yes. God wouldn't be God without this. God loves all God has made, and longs to be reconciled with all God has made. This is what it all comes down to: Reconciliation. If people choose not too, I think God's heart breaks, again and again. But God does not force anything or anybody, for that would not be unconditional love.

(I love the Rob Bell book 'Love Wins' too, a really fresh look at the doctrine of hell and salvation.)

BackOnlyBriefly - I would never tell someone that they are wrong. I have a certainty about my faith, but not the kind of arrogant certainty that makes everyone else wrong and somehow lesser. I may be wrong myself, but have such certainty as to want to share that with others - that doesn't mean I say they are wrong, merely that I'd love them to explore something I have found that is so transformational and liberating.

The 4,000 thing is very odd.

Back when a believer ascertains something is True, for which there is no physical evidence for, it is said in Faith. Often part of that Faith is exclusivity of truth.

Of course as mad says believers can be wrong about things, they can interpret The Bible incorrectly (take short sections out of context), for example. We should all recognise our fallibility.

I take it that question was to me gold? If there was evidence there was a loving god I'd have no know which god it was loving us and what he wanted from me rather than arbitrarily assuming it was the god I'd most heard about. For example, if I was in Afghanistan and took nature as a sign of god that provides then I'd probably think it was Allah. How do you know there is a loving god? What reason do you have to think it?

Capsium yeah I see that happens. What I'd like to understand is how people with faith reconcile that with other people of faith having a different and specific belief. As in "only 4000 people going to heaven"

I have been told by many christians for example (including some on MN) that you know when you have picked the right belief. That god puts that sureness into your heart.

If you don't believe that he does then surely you are just picking a side rather than really claiming it is the truth. In which case it would be silly to say that the person who believes differently is wrong. If it's just a matter of personal choice then his is just as valid as yours.

If you do believe that god puts the sureness there. That he guides you to the right choice then what about those other believers who also have this sense of sureness. How can you say they are wrong when god has guided them too?

I can't see any scenario where one believer can honestly say another believer is wrong, but clearly I'm missing something because we see that they do.