toldailytopic: The unbeliever asks: how can I be saved? How do you answer?

[Zeke]

For myself, it has less to do with refusal (as if it's an act of rebellion) and more to do with my being incapable of the force of will necessary to overcome my doubt and skepticism. For myself, the kind of person who would ask such a question is the kind of person who simply doesn't have enough doubt and hence more than enough room for faith. This person may also feel [U]desperate, maybe even hopeless. I understand well the mind's ability to imagine wildly during times of hopelessness.[/U]

There are some people whose doubt is stronger than the allure of faith. Try to keep things in perspective: to non-believers your beliefs can be quite bizarre. To many people who aren't hopeless and possess in themselves a healthy dose of skepticism, the only logical response to many of your beliefs is rejection. There are many people who, like myself, simply cannot believe.

Seems like your saying those kind of people that might be interested in the issue of salvation would have to be mentaly unstable, but when we get to your kind of people we see you label them as logical.

 

[allsmiles]

Seems like your saying those kind of people that might be interested in the issue of salvation would have to be mentaly unstable, but when we get to your kind of people we see you label them as logical.

I think that people who hold to unreasonable beliefs cannot be reasonable, at the very least they cannot be reasonable about their unreasonable beliefs. That would be impossible.

 

[Son of Jack]

Your ability or inability to grasp a point isn't the topic of discussion and frankly I couldn't care less. I'm glad you finally found it within yourself to agree with the obvious distinction I made though I regret it's been an unnecessarily protracted ordeal.

Wait...what was that...oh, that was you missing the fact that I agreed with you about this from the very beginning.

Most Christians will say that there's no way to reason one's way to faith.

Really, you've taken a survey?? May I see it?

Common sense goes hand in hand with reasonableness.

Okay...

What you cling to are not necessarily reasonable beliefs: adherence to the arbitrary code of an uncompromising super being who impregnated a virgin with himself. It follows that common sense, that reasonableness cannot lead one to unreason.

Again, question begging at its very best. You begin by assuming that the supernatural does not exist. Something which you don't know to be either true or false. Is it reasonable to assume that such a thing as the virgin birth is possible in a universe which is inhabited by the supernatural?

Is this something else you've been fighting but are finally agreeing with? :doh:

I believe that it is good to doubt the unreasonable and unsubstantiated claims of Christian faith....Religious faith is the kind of faith I challenge.

You challenge it by beginning with the assumption that it is wrong without the demonstration of such a claim.

Faith by itself is neutral and I do not deny it's existence nor do I condemn it.

What would that be faith in? Define it for me.

Faith in unreasonable and unsubstantiated claims is to be doubted. That goes for Christianity, Islam, the tooth fairy, the Great Pumpkin, etc. There's no reason to have faith in one unreasonable and unsubstantiated claim over another.

Assumptions, assumptions...

Non-sequitur. That we're miserable despite our comfort and amenities doesn't connote the arbitrary notion that we're meant for a different, better world. Maybe we're miserable because this is all we've got and it sucks? And a lot of people do experience joy and completeness and they feel right at home here in this world.

Do all men seek to be happy?

And yes, I do have a better explanation... you responded to it:

People imagine all sorts of fickle fantasies. There's no end to our unrealistic desires. There exists no reason to choose one fantasy over another.

I made an important distinction which you are blurring. Some desires are natural and others are not. Happiness seems to be a natural desire.

You are something else.

Pot/Kettle...(extends his hand)

Not necessarily.

You would pass up a chance to be truly happy in order to be miserable...:sigh:...I seem to remember you mocking MaryContrary for claiming that she wouldn't trade places with Oprah...

They didn't.

Read it again.

:squint:

:squint:

What?

Okay, I made a typo...it was supposed to say that Jesus provided people with freedom from the fear of death. How is that "preying" upon others? What did he gain from it?

You would take a point that has zero merit and run with it.

(Looking for a broken record player)

:squint:

:squint:

Christianity doesn't teach anything. Christians teach what they believe Christianity means.

I'm with Aquinas in saying that all theology will be like straw before the consuming fire that is God...doesn't mean that it is all wrong. Same is true of others.

You don't have faith in Jesus, you just hope like crazy that what you've read about him and been told about him by people you trust is true :chuckle:

It is possible that I am wrong...but the fact is that I've experienced something that I can't totally explain. I've met God in the person of Jesus. I don't expect you to believe that, but that isn't my problem.

The fact is that you hope like crazy that I'm wrong, and you believe what other people have told you and you've read about him.

This discussion has been... an excuse for me to shake my head more than I have in one sitting for quite some time. You're a piece of work.

Never claimed to be anything other...

 

[Son of Jack]

I have some familiarity with it but I think my issue is slightly different.

"Why is the world the way it is?" is a fine question and in fact has propelled science, philosophy, religion and innovation of all kinds. I'm was questioning the first part of your statement, which is "people acknowledge that the world is not the way it is supposed to be".

Understanding how we got here seems a worthy exercise but I am not sure that the world is "supposed to be" any way other than what it is.

Then, I would ask, why so many people assume that it should be a certain way? The fact is that we are unhappy and we don't want to be. Where should we have gotten such an idea?

The first of the four noble truths in Buddhism is that life is suffering, and I think that's very correct, if you consider the many forms that suffering comes in. If you accept the evolutionary view, life on this planet is the way it is largely through suffering and desire. Buddhism concerns itself more with understanding and transmuting that suffering.

Christianity is accord with Buddhism on this point. Where they differ is why it is so? Though, at bottom, one could argue that they are similar on that point as well, as it was Adam and Eve's desire that led to the Fall of man. The real difference lies in the fact that Buddhism claims that this isn't reality; it's an illusion. Christianity says that your suffering is real and needs to be dealt with.

I'm not sure what the patterns of depression are, but I would be surprised to learn that the rich are more depressed than the rest of us although I know that's held as a common truth.

I found this article...doesn't make my case, but it is interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/nyregion/07therapists.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Another way of looking at your statement above when contrasting rich and poor countries might be: "consumerism fails to satisfy, particularly when you don't feel you're getting what you deserve."

Not exactly. It isn't about what we deserve so much as what we want. We want happiness that transcends our experience...nothing in the material world can do that, not even wealth or power or rank or security.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by deep spirituality. I suspect that, like in the West, a lot of people typically accept the religious tradition in which they were brought up, but that doesn't imply their religion will bring them much comfort.

Sure...I don't doubt that.

Consider the Dalit untouchable class in India. The Dalits live and still live in unimaginable poverty. I used to live in India as a boy and I can still remember the terrible squalor and poverty in which they live. One of the things I remember is that whenever I saw Dalits together they were smiling and laughing. They seemed happy, even though they were the lowest of the low, rejected by society and their own religion.

Until recently, most Dalits were Hindus, which for them meant they had little formal religion at all because Dalits weren't allowed in most Hindu temples because they were considered unclean. What teaching they received is that they were being punished for the sins of a past life.

I think that may describe the mindset of a lot of Dalits but it certainly isn't true for all because recently a lot of Dalits have converted to Buddhism and a lesser number to Christianity. They find themselves for the first time able to question their place allotted to them within life, and to expect more than the status accorded to them.

The point is, spirituality was not serving the Dalits well, in this life or in the next, because most Hindu traditions that acknowledge the Dalits indicate that the only hope for a Dalit was to serve casted Hindus well enough that they might stand a chance of being born into a caste in the next reincarnation. Of course, that would also mean being born into soul-crushing poverty as most castes are not well off.

There is a difference between accepting one's lot in life and true, transcend happiness.

Conversely the Piraha tribe in the Amazon are fundamentally irreligious; although they have a conception of spirits, those spirits are confined to objects and people in the here and now in a very unspecified and undefined animism:

Source

And yet, when Dan Everett came to live among them as a Christian missionary and learned their ways and language better than any outsider, he found them to be fundamentally happy. So much so, in fact, that he came to question his own beliefs and became an atheist.

I'd be curious to see what irreligious means. Did they have no spiritual beliefs at all?

To clarify my position; I am not arguing against religion's importance in society, or that it is a negative force. I am arguing that there are examples that show that spirituality isn't always a positive force to unchain the oppressed (in this life or the next) nor does it always provide a palliative worldview to help us bear suffering.

Well, some do and some don't...that's how we can adjudicate between competing worldviews.

It might help explain why Dalits must suffer and be made to suffer for both the caste Hindus and the Dalits. But a more useful and empirically verifiable explanation is a socio-historical one.

Accepting the Christian worldview isn't rejecting the socio-historical one but a focusing of it.

True, and I don't think we really disagree on these key points. One important role that I think many religions including Christianity are good at playing is helping us to reconcile our lots in society, placing suffering in a different perspective, and providing hope and some answers regarding what happens after we die. Of course, that doesn't make Christianity or any other religion "true", but that's a different question.

Honestly, I'd argue that Christianity is the only explanation of suffering that is existentially satisfying.

Having said that, not even spirituality guarantees this in our culture. There are plenty of depressed Christians whose faith and commitment I wouldn't presume to question. Depression is no failing on their part, nor is it a failing on the part of their religion. But spirituality on its own is clearly not the whole answer.

As one who has suffered from depression, I wouldn't disagree with you. However, the difference lay in the way one approaches the malady. One of my seminary professors confessed that he too battles depression for a few reasons, one of them being his sensitivity to the awful fallenness of the world.

Conversely, materialism in the philosophical sense rather than the spiritual sense, can provide its own fulfillment in an industrialized culture once you decide for yourself what meaning there is to be found in your existence. I have found a materialist outlook to be rewarding and enriching.

I don't doubt that...what if your current circumstances change?

Just in case I have to head the Argument from Reason off at the pass, I am of a mind - but cannot prove - that the existence of reason has a materialist cause, in that we live in a universe composed of discreet objects. As such, it is governed by logic. My materialism reaches an end a fraction of a femtosecond after the Big Bang, at which I have to shrug my shoulders and say "I don't know."

Fair enough.:thumb:

The Buddha thought so too. Is there only one answer then? According to Christianity, yes.

Would you agree that the Buddha and Jesus had distinct approaches to life?

They'll get my saturated fats and sugars when they pry them from my cold dead body.

PS. Sorry about the tl:dr

...:e4e:

 

[Nick M]

Not to complicate things but I would say to them;

God created us to be with Him -Gen 1:27

Our sins separate us from God -Ecc 7:20, Gen 3:23

Sins can not be removed by good deeds -Eph 2:8-9, Gal 3:11, Rom 3:27

Paying the price for sin Jesus came and died and rose again -Rom5:8

Everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life -Jon 3:16, 36

Life eternal means we will be with Him forever as first intended -Rev 22:3-5

:guitar:

How would you answer someobody that says Jesus says to obey the commandments to inherit eternal life. His brother James emphasizes the point. Just wondering.

 

[Nick M]

Realize that you need saving and understand why. This is the biggest stumbling block in my experience.

Exactly as the sacrificial lamb himself said. He is the stumbling block. Why do I need him?

 

[Persephone66]

I would tell the unbeliever that they have already saved them self by not believing.

 

[Punisher1984]

The problem, Punisher, is that whether or not it is a nonsensical metaphysical question people ask the question "why am I here?" all the time, and many are not satisfied with the answer, "no reason, you just are."

The answer doesn't change just because some one doesn't like it.

Why do you think that the West is, generally speaking, the most depressed part of the planet? We live in an environment that affords us the luxuries and leisures and safeties that our ancestors would have literally killed for, and yet we are an angry and unhappy lot.

I'd say it's because of the competition mentallity that our culture tends to foster - that all of us need to "keep up with the Jone's" as those herd animals compete for status through meaningless endeavors (like buying the newest car or owning the most toys), spendng their lives in virtual slavery to their work so they afford these little symbols of social dominance.

I don't see religion making the situation any different - other than changing the focus of the competition (such as switching the status symbol from ownership of property to how much "good" one does with his money) very little changes...

I think most people acknowledge that the world is not the way it is supposed to be.

The world isn't "supposed" to be - it simply is.

Thus, the question "why" is born.

The "why" question is based on the teleological fallcy - that if something exists there must be a reason for it to exist. This line of thinking assumes the universe to be ordered according to a given plan: as far as we can tell, there is no plan - things just happen because causality determines them to happen.

 

[Redfin]

The TheologyOnline.com TOPIC OF THE DAY for November 25th, 2009 10:52 AM

toldailytopic: The unbeliever asks: how can I be saved? How do you answer? (And how do you support your answer?)

Take the topic above and run with it! Slice it, dice it, give us your general thoughts about it. Everyday there will be a new TOL Topic of the Day.
If you want to make suggestions for the Topic of the Day send a Tweet to @toldailytopic or @theologyonline or send it to us via Facebook.

I'll "dice it."

The believer asks "How can I be saved?"

My answer - Acts 2:37-38.

Support? Them's the Holy Spirit's words given through Peter.

 

[Stripe]

I would tell the unbeliever that they have already saved them self by not believing.

Saved from what? :idunno:

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Well, I try to get them lost first, hence I steer the conversation towards their total inability to do good in the eyes of God. e.g., Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8.21, Psalm 51:5, Psalm 58:3, Isaiah 53:6, Isaiah 64:6-7, Jeremiah 17:9, John 3:3, John 3:19, John 8:44, Romans 3:10-18, Romans 5:12, Romans 8:8, 1 Corinthians 2:14, Ephesians 2:1-3; 2 Timothy 2:26.

If they reject the idea of God outright I find the opening to show them that they do not live life in the same way that they claim. For the lost will always assume some objective notions of right, wrong, good, evil, that are nothing more than subjective perspectives, lacking an Objective Truth Giver.

Lastly, we take a short walk through Romans:
Romans 3:23; 6:23; 8:1; 10:9; 10:13

The rest is in the hands of the Holy Spirit.



AMR

 

[Persephone66]

Saved from what? :idunno:

Ignorance.

 

[Sozo again]

Ignorance.

I see you're not saved yet. :chuckle:

 

[Stripe]

Ignorance.

:squint:

 

[PlastikBuddha]

I would tell the unbeliever that they have already saved them self by not believing.

:squint:

 

[PlastikBuddha]

:squint:

:ha:

 

[Flipper]

Then, I would ask, why so many people assume that it should be a certain way? The fact is that we are unhappy and we don't want to be. Where should we have gotten such an idea?

Well all sentient beings want to avoid suffering. The natural world clearly expresses that premise. Humans have the capacity to ask "why?" Some humans believe that the world is not what it should be. Others, such as the Stoics or many sects of Buddhism work towards accepting the world as it is.

Christianity is accord with Buddhism on this point. Where they differ is why it is so? Though, at bottom, one could argue that they are similar on that point as well, as it was Adam and Eve's desire that led to the Fall of man. The real difference lies in the fact that Buddhism claims that this isn't reality; it's an illusion. Christianity says that your suffering is real and needs to be dealt with.

That's a good exposition of the principle differences. As a materialist, I argue that suffering and desire are a necessary part of existence because, if you loosely map the two concepts to what I believe to be true about science, they are both part of the engine that drives evolution.

What I admire about Buddhism is that it hypothesizes that these two factors stem from the same source and it further suggests that these two fairly simple impulses are transformed by our sense of self-awareness and ego into a myriad of perceived problems. I certainly don't believe that Buddhism is the only answer - just one of them.

Christianity also provides a mechanism for why we have those problems, but I don't really believe the back story to be true as anything but an allegory. This is not to say that it doesn't help alleviate suffering or has no benefit to society - of course it does. I am no enemy of Christianity and although I don't find a literal interpretation of the bible to be rationally satisfying, I believe the message has value and that there are good historical reasons for why we should on the whole be grateful for the influence of Christianity. Even the conflicts and contradictions that the doctrine has set up in many people have been beneficial to humanity as a whole - Michelangelo's art, for example, is a great example of this.

I found this article...doesn't make my case, but it is interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/nyregion/07therapists.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

It is interesting, and the idea that money cannot buy happiness (or your way into the kingdom of heaven) is so prevalent, it's almost a cliche. That indicates to me that there is some truth behind it. We probably all know people who are not well off but are fundamentally content.

Not exactly. It isn't about what we deserve so much as what we want. We want happiness that transcends our experience...nothing in the material world can do that, not even wealth or power or rank or security.

How about "what we think we deserve" then? It may be the sense of being cheated, of covetousness, that is responsible for this discontent. Emblems and exhortations of conspicuous consumption and status are everywhere, reinforced by the popular myth that anyone can have access to these things.

There is a difference between accepting one's lot in life and true, transcend happiness.

In many paths to psychological health, acceptance is always the first step. I suppose if you reduced Buddhism to its most basic form, you might argue that acceptance is the only step.

I'd be curious to see what irreligious means. Did they have no spiritual beliefs at all?

The former missionary to the Piraha, Dan Everett wrote a book called 'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes' which I own. You should remember that the Piraha don't have any past tense in their language and so live in the immediate now, which means they have no unwitnessed back stories of any kind. I'm going to quote relevant passages fairly extensively from it, so brace yourself. Here's what he wrote:

No one had ever collected or heard of a creation myth, a traditional story, a fictional take or in fact any narrative that went beyond the immediate experience of the speaker or someone who had seen the event and reported it...

...I sat with Kohoi once and he asked me, after hearing about my god, "What else does your god do?"

And I answered, "Well he made the stars and he made the earth."

Then I asked "What do the Pirahas say?"

He answered, "Well the Pirahas say that these things were not made."

The Pirahas, I learned, have no concept of a supreme or creator god. They have individual spirits but they believe that they have seen these spirits and they believe they see them regularly. When we looked into it, we saw that these aren't invisible spirits that they're seeing. They are entities that take on the shape of things in the environment. They'll call a jaguar a spirit, or a tree a spirit, depending on the type of properties that it has. Spirit doesn't really mean for them what it means for us, and everything they say they have to evaluate empirically.

[a story about an encounter about a jaguar follows that some Piraha consider a spirit story and other interpret just as an encounter with an animal. But the story is simply about a living Piraha who is struck at and scratched by a Jaguar. Both escaped the encounter unharmed. The book then goes into an explanation of the two kinds of spirit the Piraha identify, bloods and no-bloods. Of the bloods, one kind can give the Piraha good advice or bad depending on its whim and is human in nature. He talks about how Piraha he knew would sometimes "visit" the village in their spirit form to play small tricks or to give advice. The other kind is the more animistic form.

The no-bloods tend to be white and blond, although the Piraha concede that not all white people are no-blood spirits because they can bleed.

He then expounds on some examples of spirit interactions he witnessed. One involves a Piraha man who dressed as a woman who recently died. He talked in falsetto about what it was like in the ground. Then another Piraha appeared as a comical spirit who bragged about wanting to sleep with all the Piraha women. The Piraha thought this was very funny. Everett's narrative continues below]

I had discovered, with Peter, a form of Piraha theater! But of course, this was only my classification of what I was seeing. This is not how the Pirahas would have described it at all, regardless of the fact that it might have had exactly the same function for them. To them, they were seeing spirits.. They never once addressed Xisaooxoi by his name but only by the names of the spirits.

What we had seen was not the same as Shamanism because there was no one man among the Pirahas who could speak for or to the spirits...

...Whatever anyone else might think of these claims, all Pirahas will say they experience spirits. For this reason, Piraha spirits exemplify the immediacy of the experience principle....

... The Pirahas did not feel lost, so they didn't feel a need to be saved, either...

...The immediacy of the experience principle means that if you haven't experienced something directly, your stories about it are largely irrelevant...

...I thought again of the challenge of the missionary: to convince a happy, satisfied people that they are lost and need Jesus as their personal saviour. My evangelism professor at Biola University, Dr Curtis Mitchell, used to say, "You've gotta get 'em lost before you can get 'em saved." If people don't perceive a serious lack of some sort in their lives, they are less likely to embrace new beliefs, especially about God and salvation..."

...Their own beliefs were not in the fantastic and miraculous but in spirits that were in fact creatures of their environment, creatures that did normal kinds of things (whether or not I thought they were real). There was no sense of sin among the Pirahas, no need to "fix" mankind or even themselves. There was acceptance for things the way they are, by and large. No fear of death. Their faith was in themselves....

...They live most of their lives outside thes concerns because they have independently discovered the usefulness of living one day at a time. The Pirahas simply make the immediate their focus of concentration and thereby, at a single stroke, they eliminate huge sources of worry, fear, and despair that plague so many of us in Western societies.

They have no craving for truth as a transcendental reality. Indeed, the concept has no place in their values.

Well, some do and some don't...that's how we can adjudicate between competing worldviews.

Now obviously I wouldn't find the Piraha world view satisfying for me because I was not born Piraha. But I think that Everett's account clearly indicates a group of people who have found a rather unique existential accommodation. Their belief in spirits is animism at a very simple level and the cause/effect benefit of such a belief is obvious, particularly as they have no other oral culture.

Perhaps as individuals, maybe not as societies.

I don't doubt that...what if your current circumstances change?

Then I guess we'll see how fundamental and useful my world view really is. I have experienced suffering before and it has stood the test then. I obviously hope it will continue to help me make sense of what I experience. If it doesn't, I will reassess what I think I know from a different perspective.

Would you agree that the Buddha and Jesus had distinct approaches to life?

Well, clearly. As I indicated in the post you replied to, Jesus made some fairly exclusive and absolute claims, at least when taken at their face value.

Honestly, I'd argue that Christianity is the only explanation of suffering that is existentially satisfying.

Well this is clearly not the case. I think there are many other valid challenges from other religions and from materialism and I hope I've made some case for that here.

 

[Flipper]

Ignorance.

Ignorance is, at best, mitigated.

 

[PlastikBuddha]

Ignorance is, at best, mitigated.

It is also universal.

 

[Ktoyou]

Seek-Faith-Grace

Any real authentic person, living according to God's plan does come to know God through Grace this way. If you examine any process, it is either seeking, the first stage, or faith, the building of knowing that Jesus Christ has made salvation possible and authentic faith leads to Grace.

When someone comes along and says "I was a Christian for 15 years and lost my faith because there is no evidence, you know that person was never a committed seeker to the point of achieving a knowing faith. No one who seeks and finds authentic faith, turns from it. God does not, through the Holy Spirit, come into one who is not deserving of the gift. God never makes mistakes, to say so, is evidence of not knowing Him. To know what Jesus did to make salvation possible is to know that through the work of Jesus Christ is the door to salvation. No one who has authentic faith loses it, and no one who receives Grace, loses that, it never happens, for true faith is to know, not to question at some later date.

It really is that simple and whenever one who is true in faith is part of the Body of Christ and is saved.

Those who turn back to doubt and sin never were able to seek fully, as anyone of pure desire can find faith and the Grace of God.

No Baloney.