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.

head my decision to believe is not truly random though. I am also a product of my own experiences. It wad a conscious choice to pursue My Christian beliefs further.

Yes, but it would be a bit esoteric. It would be where you made a connection to your life with something in the Bible and this informed your decision making process. Sometimes I dream in Biblical imagery for example, which makes me reflect further on life events.

capsium: "Magic is done to esteem self, miracles to esteem God."

So Aaron's trick of turning a staff into a snake would be termed a "miracle" whereas the pharoah's tricksters doing the same thing is termed "magic"? Why the difference in terminology?

One gives Glory to God, one is done to glory self. If you worship or encourage others to worship yourself, you are encouraging worship of a false god.

capsium: "Sweden has had some difficult things go on in fairly recent past though."

That I don't doubt, but when compared with a country with a high level of god believers (I'm thinking Iran, Saudi, Afghanistan), do the mainly atheistic Nordic countries appear at all unfavourable?

Surely the pharoah's people were also getting help from a god. Presumably a different one. It's not like they could do magic on their own :)

^Like for example in the lyrics to The Stone Roses song 'I wanna be adored'.

Back that's the distinction though. You have to make your own mind up about the Pharaohs. They considered themselves gods.

You are talking about different faiths though. I really would not like to draw connections to try and put countries on a scale of 'favourability' . All have their problems but I bet all contain some wonderful, albeit at times some of them oppressed, people.

capsium: "the point is in the OT times is was more difficult for a person to know/be close to/understand God than since Christ. The OT reflects this. It is why Salvation and Christ was needed."

I'm not sure what this is in response to. Is it the question about why a 4 year old can comprehend the existence of invisible microbes, whereas a goat-herder 2000 years ago would be considered unable to?

If Jesus was necessary then he was 1000s of years late. If being late didn't matter then he wasn't necessary.

Might have been in answer to something else there were a lot of questions flying about. However I do remember talking about 'Theory of Mind' and 'scaffolding'. I think you can apply this to society as well.

At certain points what is written about things being clean and unclean, and talk of spirits acting like agents causing illnesses could be seen as covering some of the ways microbes work. The terminology is just different. Imagination also plays a part. There were no microscopes or photographs.

We can understand things without photos. You understand god without photos no?

Back Jesus was not late, enough people had to be ready to receive Him. The whole of the OT makes way for Jesus. The OT rituals echo the sacrifice Jesus made for us, prophecy predicts His coming.

head of course we can understand things without photos but the arrival of photos gave a different bent to people's imaginations. Instead of imagining a description someone is giving you, you can see a photo now.

It's like the different way an individual can imagine characters in a book to a film version of that book.

Why did it have to take all that time to make way? After all, at any given point of his arrival the humans on earth had only been about for 60+ years at most. Why didn't god impregnate Eve with Jesus?

But the people of the OT still managed to believe in a god without photos? So they could believe stuff without photos right?

I don't know. Maybe something had to be worked out. Maybe enough people had to want God.

I never said people cannot believe things without photos, just photos can alter the imagination of a society.

BigDorrit the events and what people said about them, prophesied Jesus.

Enough people had to want god before people could discover bacteria? Eh?

So even if photos alter imagination why would that mean god couldn't have told us about bacteria?

'Scaffolding' and/or they did understand some of the ways bacteria work but used the terminology of spirits, clean and unclean.

In terms of imagination, photos of bacteria, now, make us imagine them like what we have seen and not Renaissance depictions of demons.

Although, when I was small I always the Dettol sword off their logo fighting with 'germs'.

^ always imagined. Typo

So god could say 'this is what bacteria look like' and described them, explained they weren't 'bad' but just that they could make you sick. There was no need to beef it up and dramatise them.