Headinhands:
why would god need animals or anyone to be sacrificed? Why not just forgive
Animal sacrifices were commanded by God so that the individual could experience forgiveness of sin. The animal served as a substitute—that is, the animal died in place of the sinner, but only temporarily, which is why the sacrifices needed to be offered over and over. Animal sacrifices have stopped with Jesus Christ.
You ask; why animals? What did they do wrong? That is the point—since the animals did no wrong, they died in place of the one performing the sacrifice. Jesus Christ also did no wrong but willingly gave Himself to die for the sins of mankind (1 Timothy 2:6).
Do you ever want people to sacrifice an animal in front of you before you believe they are sorry
What, and lift myself to God’s status as the judge of the earth? You have got to be kidding. I am the one who deserves to pay for my wrongdoing, but Jesus took my penalty instead. My job is to learn to forgive others when they wrong me.
“By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 10:10–12)
And getting back to blame and sin, yes, I'm not perfect, I've messed up countless times. I try to make good my mistakes where I can
Restoration (making good your mistakes) is very biblical actually, and a healthy thing to do. However, in relation to eternity, that is WORKS, and we can’t save ourselves by our works. Even our most righteous work is “as filthy rags” to God. We simply don’t make the grade, no matter how hard we try.
Isaiah 64:6 says: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”
And don't forget I'm not the one who is advocating that it's moral for people to get away with things, you are, with gods forgiveness.
Yet you seek to be forgiven when you try to make good your mistakes? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? You want forgiveness but everyone else can stick it? Where do you draw the line over who gets away with what? That is what I mean by we are all the same.
You maintain that a serial rapist/killer can go to heaven? While an atheist charity worker goes to hell.
As I said to you before, Jimmy Savile was an atheist charity aid promoter. He deserves hell just as much as you and I. What he did was horrendous. I seem to recall the thief on the cross believed he was unforgiveable. He said in Luke 23:41 “And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds;”
And so is the 'you break one law/you break it all' that's disgusting
James 2:10 tells us “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.”
As for the cup analogy. Would you deem it right for the person who broke the cup to be eternally tortured?
Again, you miss the point, only this time I think you’re not just trying to be difficult. I was using the analogy to show people’s mistakes as broken cups. A sin is a sin, a broken cup is a broken cup. There comes a point that a cup doesn’t work for the purpose it was intended for and becomes useless, only fit for the bin.
I don't deserve to be eternally tortured, no one does. It's a sick sick tool used to kowtow people into a belief that they otherwise would reject.
The difference is that, whether or not you accept you are an eternal being, you will live for eternity. That’s how you’ve been made. And if that’s true, which it is, then having the choice for where you’ll spend that eternity is quite incredible. It really is a free gift with n strings attached.
I didn't make those viruses and organisms. Neither did I set up a world knowing there would be so much suffering.
That might be true. But you do have a sin-nature that rebels against God. So do I. And it’s that introduction of sin into the world that brought the disease, sickness death and suffering. Albeit temporarily. God could not pretend it didn't happen. Remember, he gave Adam and Eve a fair warning of what the consequences would be if they rebelled and disobeyed that one simple instruction.
And make a really horrid place for people who happened to believe in a different god to go.
Would you really honestly prefer there to be no justice? I read a horrific story recently about a 4 year old girl being stolen from her parents and tortured, raped, then buried alive sucking her thumb and cuddling her teddy. It made me feel sick and angry to read it. I can really understand why God would require there to be a punishment for that sort of sin. I do understand it can be easy to think of our own personal sins as being acceptable (usually because we did them!), but God is the judge of all men, not us. Judgment and punishment is something I understand, and I also know that I stand “guilty as sin”, despite all the lives I have changed for the better, and all the lives I have saved in my line of work, I still have violated God’s laws.
And to dismiss millions of Muslims and Hindus as obviously just not thinking hard enough or wanting god enough is staggeringly offensive.
Can you cut and paste where I said it’s because they are “obviously just not thinking hard enough”, because I can assure you I didn’t say that. Or even imply it. Otherwise John 3:16 would say “whosoever just thinks hard enough shall not perish but have eternal life”, and it doesn’t. It clearly says throughout the bible that it is not anything WE do for ourselves. It is all about what HE has done for us. That’s open to anyone who started out in a Hindu or Muslim religion, or indeed no religion at all.
The data shows no unexplainable difference between Christian and non-Christian. The things that make a difference are health care and education
Earlier you said that Japan, an unchristian nation, live the longest, as though that proved a point about not needing God. However, they have one of the highest suicide rates in the whole world.
Africa, on the other hand, the country that suffers financial hardships, doesn’t even feature in the top 100 countries.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Interestingly, the WHO statistics show Africa as the largest country on the map with the smallest amount of suicides.
www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/