genuine question from atheist - view on Christanity and personal responsibility

[kentishgirl]

Hi - promise this isn't just Christian-baiting.

I've come to the conclusion that Christianity is a substitute for having a personal conscience or taking personal responsibility. Being a Christian is like having a 'get out of jail free card' in that you are taught God will forgive you anything. So you can do anything, as bad as you like, go and pray for forgiveness and move on, slate wiped clean, feeling great about yourself. So it doesn't matter if you do wrong. As an atheist, if I do something wrong, it's always with me, it's always on my conscience, so that makes me always try to do the right thing.
I didn't always think this way. It's the only way I can make any sense of something that happened to me at the hands of a couple of serious, committed Christians. One of them even works full time for a church. They did something terrible to me but have shown no remorse, no guilt, and made no attempt to make things right with me. I'm positive they prayed for guidance at the time and then forgiveness afterwards, and now all's good in their world, while I'm still dealing with the fall-out.
Am I really wrong in interpreting Christianity in this way? Isn't it true that it enables horrible behaviour by teaching you that if you do wrong, all you've got to do is pray for forgiveness afterwards, and you are ok, never mind the effect of what you did? Basically if God is your only judge, and forgiveness is guaranteed, it gives you permission to act like a right bastard as long as you say sorry to God afterwards? there's no personal responsibility for what you have done.

Didnt understand the difficult path bit.

God is not vengeful.

God can kill you though if you carry on and carry on badly mishaving. And yes that is some peoples' experience of God.

Would you prefer God to do otherwise? Really?

That people are just allowed to roam the earth, doing exactly as they pleased? Murder, rape etc.

Thistledew God remains the same. The people differ. We Glory, Worship, Esteem, what we understand of God in Faith.

If you don't believe in God though, the brutality is rooted within the human psyche. We are all human beings, so you would have to acknowledge the potential for brutality within everyone, not just the religious.

Try this book, for starters, BigDorrit,

www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Ideas-arresting-history-inventions/dp/0553819550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395591857&sr=8-1&keywords=Science+a+bad+idea

capsicum It appears to me that you are avoiding the point I make.

My view is that both brutality and compassion are rooted within the human psyche and this is the same for everyone, whether they believe they have a relationship with the divine or not.

If it is all the same god, why do you worship a god who whispers soft words of compassion and love in your ear, but shouts encouragements to brutality in the ears of others?

Because I love Him.

He is part of me, in me. If you like part of my psyche, the good part.

And I do acknowledge of the OT. This is some of what I wrote earlier

...God was never evil. However although the Bible is God inspired it concerns people writing about their experiences of God....

....I believe things get intolerably nasty without the possibility of full Redemption. People are flawed, some seriously.

Dealing with the resulting chaos can be heartbreaking and brutal. If you read history and ideas of government, Machiavelli for example, ways preventing crime and maintaining order has always involved brutality.

I think God was as heartbroken as a modern reader at these events. Through the OT He prepared us for the coming of Christ the Saviour. In Faith I believe the timing was right, I am not sure human king could have received His message before.

^ Although I meant kind not king. Typo.

Capsium this is moving on quickly, but to answer your earlier point:

If you don't believe God, for this reason, you need to be questioning the nature of humanity, since it follows, you would believe God to be a human construct.

You are right that I don't actually believe god exists so I don't really think he did all those things. Of course quite a lot of the slaughter will have been done because the priests and prophets said god wanted it done. So it's not god I blame, but religion.

I have no problem looking at humans and knowing they are capable of terrible acts. I mean I'm not happy about it, but it's clearly true. It doesn't violate any laws of nature and is quite consistent with what we know about people.

The inconsistency is saying 'God is love" and then carrying around a book full of examples of his violence and hate. God gets better and more decent when Jesus comes along, but that makes no sense at all.

I don't think it's a book full of examples of God's violence and hate. I think, like capsium says, that it is many books of different genres from different periods in time, all coming together to explain a journey of a people - a journey of finding out about God, relating to God and each other, in a brutal and unforgiving world. The descriptions of God in the bible are overwhelmingly more about compassion and mercy, mercy in the face of rebellion and hatred and much much worse. There is inescapably a lot of stuff that is hard to get your head round, there is, but we cannot - we just cannot take it at face value, without applying the theological tools of textual criticism, without taking the entire background into account. If that is seen as copping out, well so be it. I do defend the bible, but only as described above - a dawning understanding, if you like, and then the whole thing completed in the work of Jesus.

I don't think God suddenly changed character when Jesus came along, no. That would make no sense to me, as Jesus is God. Nothing suddenly changed. So if Jesus was the perfect representation of God to people, then we can find out what God's true nature is like from looking at Jesus. That's what it comes down to, in the end.

It's difficult. There will never, ever be words that make this all suddenly clear, that are a definitive answer to the whole existence of God question, let alone the character of God and the many whys of human existence. Not in this life at least ... But it's not the rationalising of it that convinces me. I am convinced by many of the theological arguments but that's beside the point. it is my own day by day experience of a God who loves fiercely and unconditionally that swings it. An experience of a peace beyond understanding, a beautiful hope that never fails and proves itself again and again.

I know it's not enough. I know that. I know that people reading this will just think I am all kinds of nutter. That's OK. I'm well known around MN for such - but if we cannot bring our own story into this, then it only remains dry theory, and we go round in circles for ever talking about the same things. That's OK, I quite enjoy it, really. But it's not the theory that draws me in.

If you obey, God is love.
And His love is available.

But if you repeatedly disobey alarmingly, you are in danger from his wrath.
He does have fierce anger too.

By getting to know God through Christ, it should change a person though, so that they are like Him, want to be like Him, do His will. The change comes from the inside in our spirits and is worked out in life. As a persons knowledge of God grows they and they should find themselves become more Christlike, this is God's will. We emulate Christ because we love Him.

So to disobey, would be going against a person's new nature, in Christ, and would feel increasingly uncomfortable.

Just for interest, I did a search on 'love' and 'hate' in the Old and New Testaments.

OT: love: 458 hate:104 (half of the sixty hits I looked at were 'whatever', so this is an estimate of half the hits)
NT: love: 301 hate: 25 (three quarters of the hits were 'whatever')

So that is more than four times as much love as hate in the Old Testament. And, of course, you would have to look at the context of each hit to ascertain whether it was God doing the hating, or a human being.

Interesting niminy

I have read that the references to God as being full of mercy, compassion and love far outweigh refs to God being wrathful, angry etc etc. Not that we should ignore the 'difficult' side - but try to understand it. Sometimes though the references to this side of things are talked about as if that is the only way the OT God is described - far from it.

Niminy, actually doing a search on 'love' and 'hate' in the bible was an interesting experiment. I know you're not claiming that really proves anything, but I wonder if anyone thought to do that before?

madhairday, it does depend how you count it. I mean if your neighbour was nice to his dog on tuesday, but killed a bus load of kids on wednesday that could be counted as one good thing and one bad thing.

Don't want to start making lists of quotes here because we all know about the really bad stuff don't we. Genocide, infanticide and so on.

And note that many Christians do see god as violent and vengeful. You have bluepen and capsium right here to compare notes with.

BackOnly. I dont know if you realise that you have misquoted me?

One of my posts says that God is not vengeful.

I didnt say he was violent either.

Back I told you I see Christ as God and He is the same as God in the OT.

Some of the events in the OT are brutal, I talked about that. But I see them in terms of bringing people forward, which means flawed people, some very flawed, amongst more flawed people, through some very dramatic, traumatic but also some very poignant events, so they are ready to receive Christ and the Redemption He made available.

And we can compare notes anytime Back, but thank you for telling us that...

bluepen you are right. You did say not vengeful so that was incorrect. However you did say among other things:

if you repeatedly disobey alarmingly, you are in danger from his wrath. He does have fierce anger to.

God is allowed to kill. He owns everything and everyone. There is no escape. Resistance is futile

Since I was speaking to posters who seem to see Jesus/god as gentle and mild it seems reasonable to point out that even other posters on this thread do not think that.

capsium I hope that answers your point too. I'm just drawing the attention of other Christians to the fact that it's not just atheists who think god kills people.

I understand that Christians will be doubtful about what I say so I'm simply saying "look there are lots of other Christians who disagree with you too". In fact there are millions of them.

capsium: "yep. 2 messages. One choice. Choose life!"

Alternatively, believe my unsubstantiated assertions or die!
PS: You die anyway.

capsium: "Depends on your definition of demons"

Are you moving the goalposts? You have strongly implied that demons are spiritual beings that cause symptoms that appear are very similar to mental illness. Are you now changing that definition?

bluepen: "I do think that people in general somewhat have a wrong view of God. Then rant and vent when He doesnt seem to fit the actual picture."

I think your view of god is pretty accurate. And the behaviour is very human. One could say it is very human, especially the ancient strain of human.

bluepen: "Christians and the church and general, over about the last 60 years, has chosen to very much sugar coat things."

Probably for good reason. The churches are empty enough now; who knows what they would be used for now if the branding of the church was spun in the way you are suggesting."

bluepen: "God is indeed loving"

Are you going to redefine "love"?