Hi everyone. As my first post here I wanted to pose of series of questions and possible Christian answers which I will follow up with an answer, and someone may reply to those answers if they wish. Seeker: Christian, what is it about your religion I would find true or personally appealing? Christian: You will get to go to heaven Seeker: If heaven is a place outside this world, and Christianity is not the only religion to give this promise, why should I believe the Christian claim over others claims? Christian: ? (your answer)
1) I'd call into question the entire popular concept of "going to heaven" as generally broken.
2) If by "heaven" we are ultimately just meaning some sort of chief good to look forward to beyond this life, then yes all sorts religions have all sorts of opinions on what that looks like. Whether "heaven" in the popular imagination as some place "out there", or liberation from Samsara in Hinduism and Buddhism, some sort of union with the divine. So as to what is or is not appealing about all these ideas is, really just what one considers appealing or not.
Here is how I'd ultimately address this: The Christian religion puts forward the premise that there is a good Creator God who made everything, and it is fundamentally good. We see in the world a lot of problems, as human beings we see suffering and death--and very often we are the ones inflicting suffering and death on others. We see the inhumanity of man. Something is disturbingly wrong in the world. Christianity then argues that the good Creator God is not a god who sits on the sidelines as all that is wrong in the world continues to be wrong, but is going to make the world right.
The way God makes the world right, ultimately, is by joining Himself to us, by becoming a human being. This is what Christians call the doctrine of the Incarnation, God became man, as Jesus the Christ. We call Him Christ, from the Greek Christos a translation of the Hebrew Meshiach, because we believe that He is the One promised by God to come as foretole and promised in the ancient Hebrew Prophets. This Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man; and thus God in Him has come to share in our sufferings. Indeed, even the suffering and death on a Roman cross.
We believe that Jesus preached about the kingdom of God, not a place we go, but the reality of God's power, reign, and authority as King breaking into our world, which we see in the life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, and eventually the return of Jesus Christ. That Christ preached good news of this kingdom to the poor, to sinners, to the hopeless, the hungry, and the homeless. To the "least of these", teaching that servants and slaves are greatest in God's kingdom, that the least shall be greatest, the last shall be first, that blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Christ proclaims a systematically upside-down world, the world of where God is king.
And He embraces His sentencing and death on the cross, becoming the Victim, all that is human is dead and buried in Him; and He is raised from the dead, raising up with Him, again, all that is truly human. He has therefore become the Victor over death, destroying the power of sin, death, hell, and the devil. He stands victorious, is taken up to sit at the right hand of God the Father to rule and reign as Lord and King until He comes again. He had called together a community, a gathering, a Church, and commissioned them to preach His Gospel, preaching the forgiveness of sins that is in His name, that there is victory over death, that there is new creation being birthed into the world--resurrection is real. That God has not abandoned the world to death, but has promised it restoration, resurrection. That those who are in Christ have the promises of God which are Christ's--that is to say, resurrection from the dead. That when Christ comes the dead will be raised, God will renew all things, all creation will be made new, set right, the entire universe will be brought into the fullness of God's glory forever.
Whether one finds this "appealing" is entirely subjective. I would instead say that if this is true, if these things are in fact really and actually true. Then there is everything to be gained in Christ and nothing to be lost that is of any real permanence.
Christian: You will receive forgiveness for your sins Seeker: If Christianity is the only way to receive forgiveness of sins, can you explain to me how the remaining portion of humanity receive forgiveness for their sins? If the forgiveness of sins means reconciliation with God, are others who are other religions or use some other way deceived about their being forgiven? What if they have peace within themselves and feel they are forgiven but are not Christians? Christian: ? (your answer)
There is an objective forgiveness, that is, sins are objectively actually forgiven, and it happened when Christ died. The death of Jesus did, indeed, forgive the sins of the whole world. Nothing is left unforgiven. Forgiveness does not come by doing the right things or believing the right things, but in the objective historical event of Christ's death on the cross.
We receive the benefit, that is we become individual sharers in that objective reality as given freely through those things which God has promised. Specifically God's Word and Sacraments. The preaching of the Gospel does what it promises. Baptism, likewise, does what it promises. The Holy Eucharist does what it promises. Christ told His Church to preach the Gospel, to declare the forgiveness of sins in His name. So when the Church announces Christ crucified and risen, when it preaches forgiveness in Christ, there exists in that preaching the very promise of God, "Your sins are forgiven. Believe this good news." God promises in Baptism that all who are baptized are baptized into Christ, and therefore have been joined to Christ in His death and thus share in His resurrection, that those who are baptized are baptized for the forgiveness of sins (because it brings the sinner into communion and union with Christ's death and resurrection); likewise in the Eucharist or Communion one receives the body of Christ "broken for you" and the blood of Christ "shed for you" because these--the body and blood of Christ--are the forgiveness of sins, there is real forgiveness in that body and blood which we receive in and under the elements of bread and wine.
God promises that that forgiveness which is in Christ is for the whole world, and it is delivered to us through these Means: The preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the Sacraments, that those who hear and receive believe this good news and in their faith share in the the grace of God that is Christ's. For Christ grants to us all that belongs to Him, so that if He has overcome death, we shall overcome death; if He has God as His Father, then we have God as our Father as well. If there is new creation in Jesus, then we too are a new creation and there shall be new creation in us as well. All the riches that belong to Jesus, the Son of God, belong to all who belong to Him, that are in Him.
Christian: You are victim of Original Sin. You are predisposed to sin, because Adam sinned, and this is how sin came to all mankind. You need to be rescued from this. Seeker: Is this notion of Original Sin in any part of the bible except the Epistles? Was it part of major Jewish understanding? Furthermore, if I have no choice in the predisposition to being a sinner, as a result of someone else's choice, then how can I be said to have true free will, or any man, for that matter? Christian ? (your answer)
The will isn't truly free. The will is captive to the lusts of our broken human nature. We certainly have the capacity to choose whether to commit a sin. There's nothing that predisposes or predetermines that you or I murder, rape, or maim another. "Original Sin" which is chiefly a Western/Augustinian approach is not that each and every person will commit every possible sin there is to commit; it ultimately means that even in our best choices in life we won't be truly free from the problem of sin.
A couple terms I'd like to introduce here:
1) Concupiscience. A fancy theological word that basically can be said to mean "selfish desire", our desires for self-gratification. What have also been called "the passions" or the "lusts of the flesh". It isn't a problem that we have certain natural appetites--for example for food, or for sex. Food and sex are awesome. The problem comes when our appetites become harmful and destructive. We are hungry and so we steal from another hungry person, we want to have nice things so we hold on to our wealth even when the opportunity to help someone less fortunate than us arises. We sexually objectify others, we turn our sexual drives into weapons that destroy and hurt our fellow man created in God's image. How often do men forget that the women they lust after are daughters, sisters, mothers, real, equal, fully human people. They are the wonderful creation of God, made in His wonderful image, women are not here to gratify our desires--nobody is. Nobody exists for our selfish desire, but how often do we treat our neighbor as objects. How often are our motives rooted in what we can get, how can we get the most and get away with it.
2) Related, a phrase used in Lutheran circles: Homo incurvatis in se. It means "Man curved inward." The human condition is largely one in which -I- am the center of the universe. This is what sin, very fundamentally, is--man bent or curved inward upon himself.
Sin drives us inward toward ourselves; Christ calls us outward toward our neighbor. The promise of God in Jesus is that we, as we are now, will become as Christ is. To become human as Christ is human. That we will actually become the sort of people that exist outwardly, toward others, toward the world, toward creation. Hell could be said to be, in its deepest darkest sense, what happens when we completely and irreparably descend into the deepest depths of ourselves.
Christian: If you do not accept Jesus Christ, you will burn in Hell for all eternity. Seeker: I have heard that Christians sometimes say that there is exceptions for people that have not heard, but otherwise not. If a person grows up in a society where Christianity is the minority, and may have heard of Jesus through their own religion or elsewhere, but it is not commonly accepted, and they have been provided no convincing reason why they should accept the Christian claim, or have never talked to knowledgeable Christians about Christianity, then are they still going to hell even if they have heard? Christian ? (your answer)
In the Nicene Creed we confess that Jesus Christ "will come again to judge the living and the dead," Judgment does not belong to you, me, or any one else. God alone is the judge, and so the job of the Church isn't to say who is "in" and who is "out" but to declare what God has done, is doing, and will do in and by Christ for the world. Some Christians seem to forget this and instead seem to think they can speak authoritatively on who is "in" and who is "out" when that simply isn't information they have access too. The Church's job has never been to stand as the judge over sinners, but to be that community of sinners that is trusting in the promises of God.
Seeker: It is a Christian claim that love comes from God, and specifically a claim that love comes from knowing the love shown to us by the sacrifice on the cross. How then do you explain the love shown by people of other faiths that do not know or accept Christianities claims? Do you believe they have some kind of lesser love or how would you explain this when you see it or hear of it? Christian ? (your answer) Me: Thanks. Sorry for the long paragraph. Editing into portions is not working for me for some reason.
All that is good and lovely is of God. Christians don't have a monopoly on love; the love that Christians hold as highest is an ideal that we do not reach in this life because such love is perfect and we, being sinners, do not reach such heights here and now. The perfect Law of God is what Christian Tradition calls the Great Commandment:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself."
God's Law, however, stands above us and because it reveals what is perfectly good and right thus shows us how we fail. Thus revealing to us that we are sinners--we very often do not love God, we do not love our neighbor.
Thus the Christian hope isn't in excelling to the heights of God's Law, but in trusting in the merciful compassion of God in Christ--we trust in grace. Grace which comes to us sinners and says that we are the forgiven sons and daughters of God, adopted of God in Christ because of His infinite kindness toward sinners.
So no, nobody is loving as they ought; Christian or non-Christian. And so no, the love of atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, etc is not a lesser or inferior love than what Christians have in themselves. The Christian hope is not found in that there is a superior love in ourselves and from ourselves; but that there is a superior love that is God's, and which God has for the whole world, for everybody. Because everyone is a sinner, nobody is better or worse than anyone else. It is that God loves me, not that I love God; it is that God loves you, that God loves everyone. Everyone matters, everyone is the beloved of God. Grace is for everyone, mercy is for everyone. God's new and good creation is for everyone--that's the Gospel.
-CryptoLutheran
