I cannot be saved

[ThinkerThinker]

Here is a question on faith

You have to believe to be saved. To get to the point of belief you have to be convinced of the truth of the argument. This means the sceptic’s salvation is directly related to his ability to reason logically. The better he can reason logically and rebuff the arguments, and the more control he has over his emotions influencing his logic, the less chance he has of getting saved.

The other option is to be emotionally persuaded. Here your salvation is directly related to the strength of your current emotions (fear, emotional attitude, etc) in comparison with the emotional package presented by the belief system. E.g. if your fear of change is greater than the fear evoked by something you do not yet belief in you won’t change.

On the other hand there is always to change that God does something to change your mind beyond reason and in the face of serious emotional odds but if this was the system why are we not all saved?

This is really puzzling

 

[I_are_sceptical]

Here is a question on faith

You have to believe to be saved. To get to the point of belief you have to be convinced of the truth of the argument. This means the sceptic’s salvation is directly related to his ability to reason logically. The better he can reason logically and rebuff the arguments, and the more control he has over his emotions influencing his logic, the less chance he has of getting saved.

Maybe the Christians will come up with an argument that cannot be rebuffed. Maybe, so far, they are just going about it the wrong way. After all, what they are saying just might be true. If they would just find a better/more convincing presentation, then logic would lead you towards belief, would you agree?

The other option is to be emotionally persuaded. Here your salvation is directly related to the strength of your current emotions (fear, emotional attitude, etc) in comparison with the emotional package presented by the belief system. E.g. if your fear of change is greater than the fear evoked by something you do not yet belief in you won’t change.

Why do you fear change? If belief=salvation, what do you already have that is better? If by believing you will gain a reward for all eternity, what is worth hanging on to, if you lose that reward?

On the other hand there is always to change that God does something to change your mind beyond reason and in the face of serious emotional odds but if this was the system why are we not all saved?

This is really puzzling

Are you talking about a really spectacular miracle, like what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus? Granted, not everyone gets something like this. But then, most of the time even the people such things happen to don't get anything out of it. For example, there is no record in the Gospels of mass conversion in Bethlehem because the shepherds saw a sky full of angels. It is therefore possible that you haven't seen such a miraculous proof because it wouldn't work in your case anyway. You are too much of a sceptic. Which means that - given that God does want you to believe - all the proof you need is what is already available to the whole world.

 

[seebs]

Do not mistake intellectual assent for faith, or vice versa.

Anyway, it is possible to believe something without being convinced by any argument. The foundations of my beliefs are not things I am convinced of by arguments, but things without which I can't make useful progress at all.

 

[inHisgrip]

We are not all saved because many choose not to believe. I think that many people think that they will lose to much freedom by turning to God, which isn't true. Many think that christians can't have any fun, again not true.
I also don't think that it has anthting to do with extreme emotional experience or fear, its just that some aren't willing to take the step of faith, anyone can be saved, it just takes having the desire to have something better in your life. Also, we are all self relient and choose not to think that we need help in any area of our life, which in all actuallity, most of us do need help in at least some area.

IMHO
In Him

 

[theGomer]

I can't speak for as to why all humanity is not saved but I can speak for me. Before I got saved I had several issues with Faith and Believe. These concepts are abstract.. I can't tell you how many times I heard "Believe in jesus christ and you will be saved" or "Put your faith in Christ and you will be saved". The problem was I didn't know what faith or believe was.. let lone what this unknow being who supposedly created this world. Faith by the dictionary means: "Confident belief in the truth, value, or trust worthiness of a person, idea, or thing." The dictionary meaning of Belief: "Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something" Do you see the problem yet?

Faith and Belief are two sides of the same coin. You can't have faith without belief. Yet belief is the validation or acceptance of something that is true. But is this an act to believe something.. how does this happen.. Its one thing to know something true because we have experienced it, tasted it or felt it.. but God is not something we can do with any of these unless he touches our lifes. And so many things he does for us, humanity now credits to "luck" or "fate" or "science". So the question remains how does one believe in God? For myself I watched those who had already accept God's will and I saw the peace and joy they had in their lives. They were the irreputable proof that God exsisted. By accepting, which means of my own will I had acknowledge that God is real, and by connection his Son, Jesus Christ.

But at this point I was still not saved. It is not enough for me to just accept that God is real. To be saved in this life and in the eternal life I have to put my faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Again what is faith, How does someone have "faith"? Is faith an action? an emotion?. For me I determined that faith is what Christ had when he was on his knee's in the Olive grove before the pharisee came for him: "My Father, if this cannot pass away, except I drink it, thy will be done." Mathew 26:42. In this moment he submitted to the Father. He did it most importantly of his OWN FREE WILL. He did not have to. He performed an act of will based in pure exquite love. God does not ask that of us. He knows we are incapable of it. Instead all he ask is that in faith I submitt to him by believing that he sent his most beloved Son to redeem me. What does that mean? It means that I, a sinner, belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of the One True God, and of my own free will ask that through his sacrifice, God accept me a s his son.
That is it.

 

[Logic]

That's not true, if I had my choice I would love to believe in God and follow Christianity, but evidence or raton to believe either is a bit flaccid, imho.

 

[flicka]

We are not all saved because many choose not to believe.

I can choose who my friends are, what to have for breakfast and what brand of toothpaste to buy but nobody can choose to believe something without some sort of evidence or experience. Unfortunately, I know too many Christians who are Christians because they chose to be for reasons that have little to do with receiving gods good grace.

 

[PathofThyself]

I am not of the belief that one has accept Christ in this world in order to be saved. I do believe you have to eventually accept Christ. However, I am not familiar with any passage that says it has to be done in this world, this place, this time, this life. We do not know exactly what transpires upon death. For all we know we see Christ and he tells the non believers "Egg on your face now huh?" lol

Some people are not believers because they have had little exposure to the proper channels, the moving proof of belief, or were influenced by parents or other people. Will God, being as forgiving and kind as He is, forsake these people who had no basis by which to choose? Will He send a child of His to "Hell" or the equivalent? Would you? If as human beings we can forgive our children when they have wrong beliefs, is God not as great as man? Is He unable to be accepting and forgiving as we would be to our own children? It has been a long held belief that vanity is a sin, yet many attribute vain tendencies to God. These people are claiming that God sins.

I believe God wants His children with Him at the end time. And the ones who were led astray, He will still accept and love.

 

[inHisgrip]

I can choose who my friends are, what to have for breakfast and what brand of toothpaste to buy but nobody can choose to believe something without some sort of evidence or experience. Unfortunately, I know too many Christians who are Christians because they chose to be for reasons that have little to do with receiving gods good grace.

Yes many do need to have proof, however, the proof each person needs is different. I am sorry I didn't say it originally, but that to me is part of putting your belief in something.
Recieving God's grace is a choice though. Whether you have an experience or proof, it is our choice to call upon Him or not. Unfortunatley many do not make that choice
In Him

 

[inHisgrip]

Sorry, replace proof with evidence as per your post.
In Him

 

[flicka]

Yes many do need to have proof, however, the proof each person needs is different. I am sorry I didn't say it originally, but that to me is part of putting your belief in something.
Recieving God's grace is a choice though. Whether you have an experience or proof, it is our choice to call upon Him or not. Unfortunatley many do not make that choice
In Him

And many call but get no reply as evidenced by many on these forums.

 

[ThinkerThinker]

The point is; to be saved you need to believe there is a God, to believe there is a God you either have to receive convincing proof (which realistically speaking there is not *) or you have to forgo the rational and allow the decision to believe to be driven by unfulfilled needs (usually accompanied by a degree of emotion). If, however, you are a person content with life and you have learned to trust you inclination for being rational and not be led by emotions then, unless there is intervention from God, you cannot be saved.

* PS - I know the level of proof are different for people but I am talking about the kind of proof which cannot be disputed rationally and can be verified scientifically.

 

[The Midge]

We also have to ask ourselves if creatures as foolish and fallible as humans are actually capable of rational thought that can either prove or disprove God or the spiritual realm? Could humans function without emotion to guide them as to what is right and wrong and our finite logic is unable to cope?
Science does not come to bear on something that can not be impircally measured (such as faith, belief and the spiritual realm). So in the end you have to make your own mind up about what is true or not. A seeker after truth has to be open to the possibility that their premises or observations wrong and perhaps their experiences are unreliable whether you decide for or against the existence of God.
What test remains? Christians claim God to be a personnel God. They claim that the Bible paints his portrait. So perhaps you can ask to talk (that is pray to this being) and being personnel you should get an answer.
There is a catch. Christians also teach that we have been speparated from their Father-God by sin or the evil we have done. You can not meet with this God unless that is sorted out. The goodnews, it is claimed, that God came down to pay the sacrifice that would allow us into the presence or open up the communications channel with God- Christs death on the cross was the way that you were cleaned uo from your sin. The blockage that stops you finding out about God or not should be removed.
If all this is true then the way to approach God is to admit you sin and accept the payment even if you are unable to be certain if it is true or not. So, you say to God "If you exist I'll confess to everything that I have done and accept of this Death and resurrection of your son business. If that is what it takes for me to find out if you are real or not then I'll do it. The rest is up to you."

Test by expereince and subjective exsperiment.

 

[Emmy]

If your own will says "I cannot be saved" and you mean it with all your heart,you are right;God will not force you.If you say you cannot be saved,because it is too "unbelievable to be true",my sincere guess is,that you will be saved,but only after more wondering and searching.If I may point out to you that God loves you,He knows your heart and is only waiting for you to ask Him into your life.Sincere greetings from Emmy,a sister in Christ.

 

[ThinkerThinker]

If all this is true then the way to approach God is to admit you sin and accept the payment even if you are unable to be certain if it is true or not. So, you say to God "If you exist I'll confess to everything that I have done and accept of this Death and resurrection of your son business. If that is what it takes for me to find out if you are real or not then I'll do it. The rest is up to you."

You cannot accept something as true unless you believe it is true. You can ACT as if it is true and go through the motions of confessing and accepting, as you suggest, but unless you believe in what you are saying and doing it will be empty words without meaning or effect. Why not then play it safe and go through the same sherade with all the other belief systems?

You cannot accept something as true unless you believe it is true. You cannot believe unless something stimulates that belief in you. The stimulation will nto come unless your rational mind is convinced or your unfulfilled needs impell you to set your rational objections aside. You will not be convinced unless the argument is stronger for than against, or you are convinced that believing will fulfill your needs. Only then can you make the 'choice' to accept the belief. --- Which bring me back to my point that if you have a strong ability to reason, are critical to start off with and have no pressing unfulfilled need you cannot be saved.

 

[The Midge]

I question all of humankinds abitlity to reason on the grounds that humans are evidently foolish and falible. My case is here: http://www.christianforums.com/show...155#post8370155 . If your rational mind is impaired it may not be convinced of any reallity whether the stimulation is there or not.
If you do not feel the need to be saved (that there is nothing to be saved from) why raise the question of salvation in the first place? Why question if God/ Christ can save in the first place?
If you need to find the answer then you have to try. An honest enquiry is what I suggest not to suspend your critical functions.
Part of that honest enquirey should be to ask if you have a need that you have not felt that you are not able to rationally deduce (which could easilly be the case is your rational thought process have a fault which conceels this need from you). Sometimes that has to be drawn to your attention from without. A child who was raised in a pig sty and imitating the habits of pigs may be unaware of how shamful his living conditions are until he encounters another child who has been raised in a house and has seen that there is more to human dignity- learning, culture, family relationships, commerce and all the other activities that are the norm for humanity. Yet if the only world he knows contains nothing for pigs he knows no other measure.

 

[flicka]

I question all of humankinds abitlity to reason on the grounds that humans are evidently foolish and falible. My case is here: http://www.christianforums.com/show...155#post8370155 . If your rational mind is impaired it may not be convinced of any reallity whether the stimulation is there or not.
If you do not feel the need to be saved (that there is nothing to be saved from) why raise the question of salvation in the first place? Why question if God/ Christ can save in the first place?
If you need to find the answer then you have to try. An honest enquiry is what I suggest not to suspend your critical functions.
Part of that honest enquirey should be to ask if you have a need that you have not felt that you are not able to rationally deduce (which could easilly be the case is your rational thought process have a fault which conceels this need from you). Sometimes that has to be drawn to your attention from without. A child who was raised in a pig sty and imitating the habits of pigs may be unaware of how shamful his living conditions are until he encounters another child who has been raised in a house and has seen that there is more to human dignity- learning, culture, family relationships, commerce and all the other activities that are the norm for humanity. Yet if the only world he knows contains nothing for pigs he knows no other measure.

I couldn't get your link to work..

But based on the rest of your post I would say that I personally didn't raise the question of salvation and God/Christ....those ideas were thrust upon me by others. However, the example of the pig sty vs. the normal way of living escapes me in the case of non Christians vs. Christians because there is nothing outwardly different about either. What is considered shameful or dignified depends entirely on your POV and is not necessarily indicative of a rational mind.

 

[ThinkerThinker]

If you do not feel the need to be saved (that there is nothing to be saved from) why raise the question of salvation in the first place?

I agree with flicka. Also, I raise the question because I cannot see how someone can be condemned for not accepting something he cannot believe in because there is no convincing argument, as far as that person is concerned, for accepting it and there is no inherent personal need for accepting it. And it is not just Christianity but all religions and philosofies - they all have a case, they all have their arguments and their reasons why they are THE truth. If the Zen argument then does make a convincing case for that person and he accepts that one is it fair for any of the others then to condemn that person or are they themselve to be blamed for not making a more convincing case?

 

[Existential1]

You seem to place God, who is implicit it in the saving you speak of, in some metaphysic.
As if the putatively saved were on a given stage: where reason gives some key, to understanding of that stage; and entree to a salvation path, secured in belief.

That is not a model I would subcribe to.

Rather, the being we have, self and world, has an epigentical nexus, which is ineluctably inseperable from an exigency to which there is is that resolution which is our epigenesis.
Faith, which you did not mention explictly, is broaderband than belief: it works this epigentical management, to raise entire phenomenalities, and can see them die and fall away; beneath the action of faith, is only the God void.

This faith is a holistic action, or election, of assumption. Faith is epigentically effective assumption: assumption that covers all the necessary bases; and provides existence and ontology.

This faith is a more all absorbing (like martial arts, or rock climbing, or white water canoeing), than is the case for belief, in your somewhat mecahnical modelling, concerning reasoning and emotion.

Spiritually effective reasoning, such as engaged in by Jesus, passes through and manages the veil, between the temporal and the eternal. Jesus reasoned in manner which brough Christ being (the fulfillment of Judaic project and conception) into earth play: and that saw him take on a loving and a sacrificing, that is existential in its extremis, before it is intellectual or emotional.

Here is a question on faith

You have to believe to be saved. To get to the point of belief you have to be convinced of the truth of the argument. This means the sceptic’s salvation is directly related to his ability to reason logically. The better he can reason logically and rebuff the arguments, and the more control he has over his emotions influencing his logic, the less chance he has of getting saved.

The other option is to be emotionally persuaded. Here your salvation is directly related to the strength of your current emotions (fear, emotional attitude, etc) in comparison with the emotional package presented by the belief system. E.g. if your fear of change is greater than the fear evoked by something you do not yet belief in you won’t change.

On the other hand there is always to change that God does something to change your mind beyond reason and in the face of serious emotional odds but if this was the system why are we not all saved?

This is really puzzling

 

[Existential1]

Again, I would not place these considerings in a map, or a setting, or an apriori frame of reference.
Rather, you find yourself in a cavern, with the machinery of your own being: and a resource box of bits.
Believing is something you already do: to have the cavern; to have the machinery; to have the resource box.
Can you cut into this believing; come to understand what it is you do through it; and perhaps rejig it in its context of your existential machinery?
Believing seems to operate within a given empiricality, a given horizon and filed for reality. Faith has much of the same dynamic, but extends the reach that we had with believing, to where we can transcend, alter and displace any given reality.
So you experiemnt and reflect, you design and you alter; and you put in place, and you turn the key. How do you know when what you do partakes of God?
The lights come on; the machinery comes to a new life as if before it had been dead; the cavern horizons fall back and down, revealing infinitly cascading vista of ineffable possibility.
Its as if you have moved to a new technological level, from the pre-stone age, to the age of material manipulation through cognition, in one veil passing moment.
Is this what it is to be saved, to be sons of God? Certainly something like it.
It isn't a matter of argument, and subcription to a balance of probabilities: its trying a new distributor, and turning the key; and, for the first time, having the machinery not only run, but fly,

The moralists and the dogmatists and the metaphysicians might have it otherwise. Maybe they are about some other project.
But, to follow Jesus, to know Christ and God, it is not they who have to be followed.

You can craft belief and faith and God and salvation as you will: that is the freedom of faith; and then you reap as you sow.
If you build a lorry, then that is what you have: and it can never be a helicopter; and it will never fly.

So salvation is a matter of what you value. Belief is a matter of courage. Faith is a matter of sacrifice.
The economy of being is exotic: which if your quiding maps are grey; then we can easily forget this.

I agree with flicka. Also, I raise the question because I cannot see how someone can be condemned for not accepting something he cannot believe in because there is no convincing argument, as far as that person is concerned, for accepting it and there is no inherent personal need for accepting it. And it is not just Christianity but all religions and philosofies - they all have a case, they all have their arguments and their reasons why they are THE truth. If the Zen argument then does make a convincing case for that person and he accepts that one is it fair for any of the others then to condemn that person or are they themselve to be blamed for not making a more convincing case?