Belief

Stinker,
So you honestly believe that unless someone is Christian they cannot feel empathy for others or honestly, truly want to help/protect (to the point of sacrificing their life) others? Ever?

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Israel

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" As I see the developments all around, I burn with jealousy for the truth we have. It makes us, in its practice, a people rejected by all, but who have the bread that all need."
P. J. Loizeaux

A man isn't a sinner because he sins. He sins because he is a sinner. Thats the trouble with him. That's why he needs to be born again. Thats why John the Baptist came saying, "Cut it down completely. Let there be a new thing altogether." The axe is laid to the root of the trees.
H. A. Ironside

Hmmm. So no inspirational stories of how you found religion? I wanted to believe, at one time. I never saw Angels or dealt with demons like Bobinator. God never answered my prayers. Which is fine, but if he really wants people to believe in him you would think he would be a little more proactive about it. I've never experienced anything that could validate the existence of the God of the Bible or any other God. I guess that's why I'm a skeptic. The whole needing a reason to believe thing.

This is disappointing. I was expecting more than this. Noone really answered my question. I know why I believe in gravity. I know why I believe 1 + 1 = 2. I know why I believe the Earth orbits the Sun. I know why I believe the Earth is round. If you trully believe something you should know why right? Why is it no believers where able to give me a solid answer for why they believe in God? I guess they don't know themselves.

Two points - try telling us why you believe each of those things - the exercise may well illustrate quite a few things.

Secondly, a more comparible question might be "I know why I am in love". If that does apply to you over someone, you might try answering that one.

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Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than hate,
light is stronger than darkness,
life is stronger than death,
victory is ours through him who loved us.
(++Desmond Tutu)

it was conviction for me. More logical as the days grew on. I accepted it as i was little and gave it more and more thought as i got older. it started out like this, or more like this, I realized that I was sinner and needed forgiveness. Ok, that sounds trait and over done. I had done things that displeased God, even small things, and could not make it up to Him. I imagined it in my mind as a blackboard that I had drawn on and could not erase. I needed someone who could erase it for me, because I couldn't and i knew it was wrong before God.

As i grew older I began to form a more logical order of Christianity. God, who is absolute, holds an absolute standard. He is a judge. being absolute He must be absolute in every aspect of who He is. The Bible says 'God is love', but the context is to Christians. The context to the world is more 'it is a fearful things to fall into the hands of a living God.' I, through my actions, had defied God;s perfect law. Being absolute is is absolutely pure. No sin can be before Him. None, Notta, Not one imperfection. Since I was already muddy with sin I couldn't clean myself from it.

BOOM

Here is where Jesus falls into place. God is merciful completely, but also just. This was the divine delimma that has limped through the Old testament to the point of Christ. This was the solution. God (the Son) laid aside His divine power and was made just like people, except without sin. he was without sin. This means He was not dirty, even though everyone else was. if God's justice was a hammer, then Jesus stood between me and God and took that blow. Twisted, huh? It gets better.

Jesus was perfect and spotless so He took on Himself the sin of the world. The One who was perfect actually became sin. He died for the sins of the world. Sin had now been put to death. On the third day He came back to life so He not only paid for sin, but He reversed the killing effect on the human soul.. Problem solved. God's absolute justice was now taken care of and His absolute mercy could now run free (so to speak). This way God does not contradict God and He can now become love to mankind. Here's the catch... Like an umbrella, the sacrifice Jesus made in absorbing the
wrath of God only covers the people who choose to stand under it. The Bible is about One man, Jesus. The Old testament points forward, the New Testament points back.

The free will thing is now up to us.


This is just a small part of the logical conclusion I came to. Briefly stated so I don't go into detail about things that are not relevant to your question. I can atest to the changing power that the Holy Spirit has in my life. I am not who I was and i am becoming more like who Jesus was. It's not some mediocre self-help ideal, but a changed life that comes from a changed heart. I have seen people change completely. From bitter and angry to gentle.

it is a process of growth. it just makes the most sense also.

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This is the short version.

http://foru.ms/showpost.php?p=34990951&postcount=2

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There is a point which "believing in things you can't see" becomes "experiencing things you can't believe". Once you have experienced the supernatural, there is no turning back. You'll never fit in anywhere else.
-LittleBigMan

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

The answer to this question is not so cut-and-dried. There were several steps between the atheism I began with and the Christian faith I now live and affirm, and they were not easy steps to take. It was a long and complicated process that overturned my entire belief system more than once (not even my Christian faith is stagnant).

Each step, however, generally followed a similar pattern: being called to acknowledge and account for serious problems with the beliefs I affirmed (e.g. P is inconsistent with itself or with Q, or perhaps R is intrinsically incoherent) and then finally accepting the superiority of a competing view (whether that was a superiority in epistemology, ethics, ontology, etc.). I have always maintained an open-minded skepticism, always willing to admit I could be wrong about something if it can be shown to me, and never closed-minded toward alternative views, willing to accept them if they are more rational, more consistent, more robust, etc.

As my contact with Christian theology increased, so did my exposure to the Bible and the message of Jesus Christ. The more you hang around a person, the more you get to know them; and the more I got to know Jesus Christ, the greater my admiration for him became until it eventually turned into a transforming love for him. My journey to God was cognitive, an intellectual journey of abstractions, and my journey to Christ was affective, an emotional journey of personal relationship.


~ Ryft

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I appreciate you asking. At first it was because I was afraid of going to hell.

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To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, "I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge" --Ravi Zacharias

"God is in the rain."~Evey in V for Vendetta

"The unexamined life is not worth living". ~Socrates

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