Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
Anyway, the church teaches that at the end of our lives we shall be judged on our love. Some may demonstrate an implicit faith, hope, and love in the way they've lived their lives, and whether or not they've ever heard the word.
This is not contested by any in this thread. Yet here your post asserts it as if your interlocutors denied it. Since none do contest it why bother writing as if they do. Your post is shadow boxing. It means nothing.
No. I actually read and responded to your particular post. You wrote, "Whoever ends up in the lake of fire suffers the pain of rejecting love over cold selfish pride." In making that statement you apparently believe that the vast majority of humanity, who will be delivered to the lake of fire because they do not believe in Jesus Christ, actually end up there because they have (consciously) rejected love over cold selfish pride. Do you actually believe this or, perhaps do you believe that God will save each and every individual who chooses love over cold selfish pride (whatever that might actually mean) apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ?
Hmm… love is the heart of Christianity. Without it we’re nothing, regardless of faith, as Paul tells us in 1 Cor 13. God didn’t do all He did so that we would remain nothing, but so that we would become something, something like Himself. That’s the path that faith sets us upon, the path that we must be on. As Augustine put it, “Without love faith may indeed exist, but avails nothing.”
I do not know which church you belong to nor what your parish priest believes and teaches. What little I know about the teachings of the Catholic Church I have been able to glean from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It has several interesting sections, as follow:
As with the bible, one must include and comprehend all church teachings in order to understand the whole. All men are born with sin, in the state of "original sin", a state of injustice because it means that man is born alienated from His Creator, an unnatural, unjust, disordered state of being. And look around yourself and observe that all men are constantly looking for "life and happiness", often in very sinful ways. Understood correctly we're looking for God but in all the wrong places, idolizing lesser, created things over the Creator. But the desire for happiness is part of our created natures. As Aquinas taught, "God, alone, satisfies", but He's the last place where proud, fallen, man looks.
Mortal sin is "sin that leads to death". It must be persisted in and is always directly opposed to love of God and neighbor. This is why it can be said that "love fulfills the law" (Rom 13:10); love and sin are mutually exclusive. Grave matter also includes the deeds of the flesh outlined in Gal 5 and Rev 22, sins that demonstrate that one has turned totally against love and away from God-despite what they might say, including any professions of "faith".
Thank you. Perhaps you and concretecamper should strike up a conversation as his understanding of Catholic doctrine seems, at least to myself, to be much more orthodox than yours. In any event, I am bowing out of this discussion primarily because I, as a Protestant, believe myself quite ill-equipped to carry it on.
You are welcome. My personal interaction here at CF with concretecamper have not been nearly as positive as they have been with yourself. He seems to me to be quite conservative in his understanding of Catholic doctrine. I appreciate interacting with you.
At the very least a truly omnibenevolent God would eliminate sin, death, disease, and disasters. If He would not or could not, then He would not be omnibenevolent.
No, I didn’t. You think God is a jerk since He’s not omnibenevolent. That’s how it reads, anyway.
Mind reading is a new talent for you? Clearly you're not good at it. This non-benevolent god is imaginary, it's a jerk in fact. No one in their right mind would voluntarily worship the jerk-god conceived in your posts.
