Until the day I die, I will always be crap.

[Verv]

I can tell you simply by who I am and what I do.

I need Christ like the world needs Peace. I need Christ like how people desire painful honesty. I need Christ like how I need to cry, sometimes, and cannot stop it.

Until the day I die, I will always be crap. I will always be a sinner.

I was born with sexual desires I cannot control the way a homosexual is born a homosexual and the only difference is the way that I sin in my desires. A homosexual might desire sex with someone of the same gender. I desire sex with someone of the opposite gender and of course no thought of wedlock or purity enters the frame of my mind.

Without going into detail about my sins, my personal sins, I insure you that I have lived a life that is full of nearly daily defeats that dishearten me at every moment. But God is with me and He understands a struggle that is beyond my personal ability, and I do my best to quell it.

I can insure you that I have sinned more than many homosexuals and that it is I who need to beg for my mercy before Christ. For us to condemn homosexuality we can only present the Bible to the sinner and say what it says.

And it is that same Bible that condemns our own sins and is for what we repent.

And sometimes I am overcome. But I fight.

I fight on, until the Lonesome End. By myself I fight. Even in my relationships where I desire to be truest and most wholesome to the woman I want to be with, I still falter daily. My anguish, my failure, my shame, is a burden upon me where I am imperfect before her and it is something I cannot escape.

The wrath I sometimes feel. The way I conduct myself. All of my intentions. These are not perfect and they may never be.

My morality is an ideal that I cannot attain, like all Christians, but pray and hope that I will achieve it.

Until the day I die, I will always be sinful, perhaps, but what matters: I strive against the sin with my efforts and I have wept sorrowful, bitter tears for hours on end because of my struggle. And Christ knows my tears. And when I cry for my sins, Jesus knows it is because I want to be more.

But in the midst of this, there is a profound joy I try to feel every moment of every day just to be alive. Even when it is too cold or too hot outside or even when it is in repugnant company or painful burdens, I do my best. And even in my sorrowful tears I see a sense of beauty.

In the end of the film Journal Of A Country Priest, the man says his last words: "Tout est grace." All Is Grace.

And in my struggle, all is grace. All can become washed clean, in time.

And it is only by the grace that we are saved.

So, I ask you,

struggle against your own immorality and have hope to overcome it and knowledge that we Christians are sinners.

Before every single other human being, God looks to you as an individual. We are ourselves and accountable to only ourselves. We are asked to forgive sins that our sins are forgiven.

And so, before every single sinner you meet and before yourself, I consider myself the Sinner and the Immoral.

Until the day I die, I am the imperfection I must worry about and no one else's sins amount to my own.

If us Christians can view it that way we can maybe approach this forum with the righteousness God intended, and we can approach it with the humility deserving of a Christian.

Because, as a Christian, I know that until the day that I die, I will always be crap.

 

[Cosmic Mission]

This is half of the reason why the Christian religion is so detestable. Half of the time it belittles humanity, as we have seen in this thread, and the other half it arrogantly rises humanity to being infinitely more important than the rest of the universe (for example, young Earth creationism).

 

[HighwayMan]

This is half of the reason why the Christian religion is so detestable. Half of the time it belittles humanity, as we have seen in this thread, and the other half it arrogantly rises humanity to being infinitely more important than the rest of the universe (for example, young Earth creationism).

true

but same thing can be said about atheism.

Half the time they argue that man has delusions of divinities because we can not face the fact that we are just another species and nothing special in context to the universe.

yet at the same time they sanctify mankind above the animal world the same way believers do. If a single human dies, even if it is someone they have never met, it is an epic tragedy demanding justice and action. If a hundred cows are slaughtered to make a happy meal - "oh well we're just top of the food chain".

The hypocrisy is rampant on both sides.

 

[Braunwyn]

yet at the same time they sanctify mankind above the animal world the same way believers do. If a single human dies, even if it is someone they have never met, it is an epic tragedy demanding justice and action. If a hundred cows are slaughtered to make a happy meal - "oh well we're just top of the food chain".

The hypocrisy is rampant on both sides.

Not this atheist.

 

[Aianna]

but same thing can be said about atheism.

The only thing common among all atheists is the lack of belief in gods.

Half the time they argue that man has delusions of divinities because we can not face the fact that we are just another species and nothing special in context to the universe.

yet at the same time they sanctify mankind above the animal world the same way believers do. If a single human dies, even if it is someone they have never met, it is an epic tragedy demanding justice and action. If a hundred cows are slaughtered to make a happy meal - "oh well we're just top of the food chain".

I would agree that it's not correct to slaughter those cows and being a vegan, I practice what I preach.

However as I said before, the only thing common among atheists is a lack of belief in any gods; nothing else is a "belief" or tenant of atheism. Correlations between atheism and certain beliefs may very well exist, but none of such are mandated by some "atheistic code."

The difference being that Christians follow a religion whose holy book specifically states the aforementioned ideas that belittle and rise humans below and above where we are.

 

[quatona]

Because, as a Christian, I know that until the day that I die, I will always be crap.

Whatever helps to make you feel better.

 

[TheBear]

Whatever helps to make you feel better.

It's not his fault.

The crushing of the human spirit and the idea that people in their natural state are worthless, are preconditions which religions need in order to survive. That's the main thing it's followers are brainwashed with, and is reinforced again and again.

 

[Beanieboy]

I don't understand the OP.
You claim that you will always be crap. To me, that's a self fulfilling prophesy.
If you only see yourself as a sinner, you will only see yourself as sin.

While none of us are perfect, I don't expect others to be perfect either. I don't say to my partner, "You are crap, because you have this fault." I love him knowing that he has a fault. To demand him to be perfect is to demand the impossible, and to be unreasonable. I may help him with his faults, but I don't see him as his faults. I see him for all the good he is.

I see sin as something that is simply either not loving to ourselves or others. It is harmful in some way. While smoking is not in the bible, I think of it as a sin, since it harms the body, and potentially leads to fatality. Most sin we know because we have been on the giving and receiving side (lying, slander, rudeness, cheating on a loved one, etc.)

However, I don't believe that all God sees us as is sin. In fact, I question how much he really cares about sin. Rather, what Christ taught was that one simply had to love God and love each other. That is all that really matters.

When I was a kid, I remember asking my mom what she wanted for Christmas or her birthday, and she would say, "I just want you to get along with your brother John." John and I were enemies that often fought, and did small things against the other, like seeing what present he had that was exactly the same size, opening it first and showing him what I got, and saying, "what's in that one??"

I thought the request was kind of a nonpresent. How was me getting along with my brother a gift? However, now, as an adult, I've seen kids fight. It's jarring, annoying, makes the time very unpleasant, and a real wet blanket on any occasion. What my mother was requesting was actually the thing that she wanted the most. She wanted me to get along and love my brother. I understand the value of that now.

In the same way, I think that is all one has to do for God. He wants us to be happy, and make the world a better place. Think of how the world would be if we simply treated one another in simple kindness. Think of how the world would be if we loved our neighbor as ourselves, and didn't care about getting in return when we gave. It would be amazing and wonderful.

It's sad that the church teaches Christians that "they are crap", they are sinners, they are blemishes in the eyes of God, and only Jesus' Blood-tint glasses that he puts on the Father's face allows him to look at us.

How, then, can a Christian tell a nonChristian that God loves us so much, if all we are is sinners, are crap? How can we believe that we have become a new creation, if we are crap until the day we die? God loves us very much, as we are now, in the hope that we will love God in return, and become the divine creatures that he made us to be.
In Buddhism, I meditate on the knowledge that I am the Buddha, I am perfect right now, divine, full of inner light and goodness, and it completely changes the way I think, I feel, and behave. The things I do that are not in line with that perfection naturally fall away. I am happy about myself, and in so, able to love freely, because I have love for myself. How could one love their neighbor as themselves, if they don't love themselves in the first place? I see myself in my mind's eye, an internal light that I know is the presence of God, and that God doesn't think I'm crap, but loves me very deeply, and it is probably a sin if I don't trust God enough to love myself as well.

In Buddhism, we say, Namaste - I honor the God within you.
Rather than seeing each other for their faults, for their sins, we see the divine, the potential, and the beautiful miracle of each soul that lives within each person. I don't see someone to judge or condemn, but someone to respect, to honor, to heal, to love, to appreciate.

 

[quatona]

It's not his fault.

Sure it isn´t (and I didn´t mean to say it was). I´m working from the assumption that he has no choice in seeing things that way.

The crushing of the human spirit and the idea that people in their natural state are worthless, are preconditions which religions need in order to survive. That's the main thing it's followers are brainwashed with, and is reinforced again and again.

While I agree that this is a frequent motive in Abrahamic religions, I wouldn´t go so far to say that it is a precondition that religion needs in order to survived.

 

[geekgirlkelli]

Why is it that so many seem to assume that just because you're not Christian you must be an atheist?

As for the OP: I used to believe the same thing. Glad I snapped out of it. I am much happier, more productive, and much more well-liked person today now that I realize I am simply an imperfect human trying her best to get along in this world, and that it's perfectly OK to be so. The guilt of seeing yourself as "nothing but crap" is really dehabilitating. I hope some day you are freed from the bondage of that way of thinking, as I was.

 

[TheBear]

Sure it isn´t (and I didn´t mean to say it was). I´m working from the assumption that he has no choice in seeing things that way.


While I agree that this is a frequent motive in Abrahamic religions, I wouldn´t go so far to say that it is a precondition that religion needs in order to survived.

I'll clarify my remarks by saying that without constructing the need for salvation, Christianity and other religions would have died on the vine ages ago.

 

[Angel4Truth]

I'll clarify my remarks by saying that without constructing the need for salvation, Christianity and other religions would have died on the vine ages ago.

Of course there would be no such thing as Christianity if there was no need for Savior. Problem is though that life tells us we sin. Our conscience tells us we sin as well. It wouldnt take any pastor to make me know as an adult that I am as far from perfect as it gets.

 

[OphidiaPhile]

Of course there would be no such thing as Christianity if there was no need for Savior. Problem is though that life tells us we sin. Our conscience tells us we sin as well. It wouldnt take any pastor to make me know as an adult that I am as far from perfect as it gets.

Many of us do not believe in the concept of sin, it is merely a human construct to justify religion.


People make mistakes but that does not justify such a flawed and ultimately destructive concept as sin.

 

[quatona]

Of course there would be no such thing as Christianity if there was no need for Savior. Problem is though that life tells us we sin. Our conscience tells us we sin as well. It wouldnt take any pastor to make me know as an adult that I am as far from perfect as it gets.

The problem is the equation "not perfect = crap".

 

[Verv]

It's not his fault.

The crushing of the human spirit and the idea that people in their natural state are worthless, are preconditions which religions need in order to survive. That's the main thing it's followers are brainwashed with, and is reinforced again and again.

This is the most condescending crap anyone has ever said.

'It's not my fault.' You are acting as if Christianity is not my choice -- do you think I am a child? Could you try to get any higher in your throne right now?

I will not even respond to this directly because it is such a trashy response.

I don't understand the OP.
You claim that you will always be crap. To me, that's a self fulfilling prophesy.
If you only see yourself as a sinner, you will only see yourself as sin.

While none of us are perfect, I don't expect others to be perfect either. I don't say to my partner, "You are crap, because you have this fault." I love him knowing that he has a fault. To demand him to be perfect is to demand the impossible, and to be unreasonable. I may help him with his faults, but I don't see him as his faults. I see him for all the good he is.

I used an overexaggeration of the word -- my mother, for instance, is not perfect but I would never characterize her (or other people) as 'crap.'

However, while writing this at 10 AM after staying up all night drinking, I decided to artistically blow it over the top.

I just thought it was a more provocative post than, "Until the day I die, I will be flawed in some way."

I see sin as something that is simply either not loving to ourselves or others. It is harmful in some way. While smoking is not in the bible, I think of it as a sin, since it harms the body, and potentially leads to fatality. Most sin we know because we have been on the giving and receiving side (lying, slander, rudeness, cheating on a loved one, etc.)

I see this as rational and Christ indeed summed up the two commandments:

The Bible, Mark chapter 12 verses 28-31

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," Jesus answered, "is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these."

However, I don't believe that all God sees us as is sin. In fact, I question how much he really cares about sin. Rather, what Christ taught was that one simply had to love God and love each other. That is all that really matters.

You are right on some level though we are warned that we jeopardize ourselves with hellfire through misbehavior.

Christ also forgave people by saying, 'Go forth and sin no more.'

It's sad that the church teaches Christians that "they are crap", they are sinners, they are blemishes in the eyes of God, and only Jesus' Blood-tint glasses that he puts on the Father's face allows him to look at us.

Well, that is generally true. We are terrible sinners that are otherwise unworthy of God's love except through the grace that He extends to us.

How are we not sinners?

As the philosopher della Mirandola said -- we are born with the bodies of beasts; we are souls occupying terrible forms that are inherently desiring of things that jeopardize our soul. They want to not only be fed food but we want to feed ourselves sex and a sense of pride and some of us are innately inclined towards violence.

How, then, can a Christian tell a nonChristian that God loves us so much, if all we are is sinners, are crap? How can we believe that we have become a new creation, if we are crap until the day we die? God loves us very much, as we are now, in the hope that we will love God in return, and become the divine creatures that he made us to be.
In Buddhism, I meditate on the knowledge that I am the Buddha, I am perfect right now, divine, full of inner light and goodness, and it completely changes the way I think, I feel, and behave. The things I do that are not in line with that perfection naturally fall away. I am happy about myself, and in so, able to love freely, because I have love for myself. How could one love their neighbor as themselves, if they don't love themselves in the first place? I see myself in my mind's eye, an internal light that I know is the presence of God, and that God doesn't think I'm crap, but loves me very deeply, and it is probably a sin if I don't trust God enough to love myself as well.

God loves us all even though we are sinners. Have you read the Bible? This is a very recurring theme that His love is so great that it is 'in spite of' our imperfections.

Why is it that so many seem to assume that just because you're not Christian you must be an atheist?

As for the OP: I used to believe the same thing. Glad I snapped out of it. I am much happier, more productive, and much more well-liked person today now that I realize I am simply an imperfect human trying her best to get along in this world, and that it's perfectly OK to be so. The guilt of seeing yourself as "nothing but crap" is really dehabilitating. I hope some day you are freed from the bondage of that way of thinking, as I was.

I cannot free myself from the way of thinking because it is a factual observation:

I am crap. I do crappy things. I need to reel myself in as much as I can.

What freedom is is not behaving like crap all the time; by controlling oneself and achieving a higher sense of moral propriety within oneself.

You can do this by becoming an atheist piece of crap that thinks itself polished; or you can do this by living rightly.

I'll choose the latter.

NOTE: of course atheists are pieces of crap -- just as even the best of Christians in some sense are pieces of crap and definitely at one time were crap. It was just convenient to use the term 'athiest piece of crap' here because it tied in a bit.

Many of us do not believe in the concept of sin, it is merely a human construct to justify religion.


People make mistakes but that does not justify such a flawed and ultimately destructive concept as sin.

Sin is not a human construct... It is a Godly construct.

People make mistakes, you are right, and then there are people who consciously and knowingly make these "mistakes" of adultery, of murder, of theft, or lying, of cheating, etc.

The problem is the equation "not perfect = crap".

I made an exaggeration.

Perhaps what is better is not perfect = sinner.

 

[CreedIsChrist]

I can tell you simply by who I am and what I do.

I need Christ like the world needs Peace. I need Christ like how people desire painful honesty. I need Christ like how I need to cry, sometimes, and cannot stop it.

Until the day I die, I will always be crap. I will always be a sinner.

I was born with sexual desires I cannot control the way a homosexual is born a homosexual and the only difference is the way that I sin in my desires. A homosexual might desire sex with someone of the same gender. I desire sex with someone of the opposite gender and of course no thought of wedlock or purity enters the frame of my mind.

Without going into detail about my sins, my personal sins, I insure you that I have lived a life that is full of nearly daily defeats that dishearten me at every moment. But God is with me and He understands a struggle that is beyond my personal ability, and I do my best to quell it.

I can insure you that I have sinned more than many homosexuals and that it is I who need to beg for my mercy before Christ. For us to condemn homosexuality we can only present the Bible to the sinner and say what it says.

And it is that same Bible that condemns our own sins and is for what we repent.

And sometimes I am overcome. But I fight.

I fight on, until the Lonesome End. By myself I fight. Even in my relationships where I desire to be truest and most wholesome to the woman I want to be with, I still falter daily. My anguish, my failure, my shame, is a burden upon me where I am imperfect before her and it is something I cannot escape.

The wrath I sometimes feel. The way I conduct myself. All of my intentions. These are not perfect and they may never be.

My morality is an ideal that I cannot attain, like all Christians, but pray and hope that I will achieve it.

Until the day I die, I will always be sinful, perhaps, but what matters: I strive against the sin with my efforts and I have wept sorrowful, bitter tears for hours on end because of my struggle. And Christ knows my tears. And when I cry for my sins, Jesus knows it is because I want to be more.

But in the midst of this, there is a profound joy I try to feel every moment of every day just to be alive. Even when it is too cold or too hot outside or even when it is in repugnant company or painful burdens, I do my best. And even in my sorrowful tears I see a sense of beauty.

In the end of the film Journal Of A Country Priest, the man says his last words: "Tout est grace." All Is Grace.

And in my struggle, all is grace. All can become washed clean, in time.

And it is only by the grace that we are saved.

So, I ask you,

struggle against your own immorality and have hope to overcome it and knowledge that we Christians are sinners.

Before every single other human being, God looks to you as an individual. We are ourselves and accountable to only ourselves. We are asked to forgive sins that our sins are forgiven.

And so, before every single sinner you meet and before yourself, I consider myself the Sinner and the Immoral.

Until the day I die, I am the imperfection I must worry about and no one else's sins amount to my own.

If us Christians can view it that way we can maybe approach this forum with the righteousness God intended, and we can approach it with the humility deserving of a Christian.

Because, as a Christian, I know that until the day that I die, I will always be crap.

jmville, you are NOT crap. We may have the "wound" from our ancestors, but we are all gifts and special in the eyes of God.

For God to come here on earth, in the form of a human, and be tortured for our sake in order to provide perfect atonement for our sins shows us that we are extremely valuable in God's eyes. To the point of being spit at , ridiculed, physically tortured, abandoned by his friends and even some of his followers, to being nailed to a cross shows us his love for us and his effort to bridge us to him.

 

[Garyzenuf]

Because, as a Christian, I know that until the day that I die, I will always be crap.

Best for you not to be a Christian then jm.

*

 

[quatona]

I made an exaggeration.

Ok, but not only that - the result of your comparison always depends on the comparandum you pick. If it´s unrealistically high, you´ll look bad, if the standard it sets is low, you will look good.
Comparing yourself to a god will of course give you a bad result. You are not a god, after all. Compared to a bird, I am very poor at flying. Not being perfect concerns me about as much being unable to spread my wings and fly does - not at all.

Perhaps what is better is not perfect = sinner.

Sorry, jm, but if your OP was just an extended version of "we are all sinners" I think it was pretty much redundant. Everyone knew already that this is one of the fundamental creeds in Christianity.

 

[Isambard]

The self-hatred some christians hold certainly cant be be healthy for one's mental well-being.

 

[HighwayMan]

The only thing common among all atheists is the lack of belief in gods.



I would agree that it's not correct to slaughter those cows and being a vegan, I practice what I preach.

However as I said before, the only thing common among atheists is a lack of belief in any gods; nothing else is a "belief" or tenant of atheism. Correlations between atheism and certain beliefs may very well exist, but none of such are mandated by some "atheistic code."

The difference being that Christians follow a religion whose holy book specifically states the aforementioned ideas that belittle and rise humans below and above where we are.

lol. So it's ok to generalize Christians/believers, but not ok to generalize atheists?