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No way. christianity isn't christianity without an afterlife and no promise to be with God in the afterlife. Therefore it would be worthless.
If I wanted to be a good person by the worlds standards I could do that without faith(personally I probably couldn't ).
Yes. His Kingdom. His will.Being a Christian is about life here on earth. Most of the NT is about our time on earth and what we do with it for God.
life is but a vapor . Eternity is much much longer. No eternity with god , christianity would be a joke. Yeah we give up our lives for him and his will , that part is understood .The idea of Christianity is to be in it for God and not for ourselves. Heaven will be even more about being in it for God and not ourselves.
Yes I would because God's hand has guided me through life and the older I get the more I see that.
I didn't see where he asks this: what's the context? What's he talking about?The Op asks; would we - should we - pretend to be subjects of a King who has no Kingdom.
But would you then be a Christian...or a "God-follower?" Notice that the New Testament makes a distinction between the two. Cornelius, for instance, was a God-follower. He didn't become a Christian until Peter's visit.
Being a Christian isn't just about being a good person. It's not even just about being a God-follower. It's about accepting the mission that Jesus commanded us to perform.
If I am following Christ I am a Christian.
I never mentioned being a Christian is just being a good person, not sure how you plucked that from my answer. The question was,
Would you be a Christian if there was no afterlife?And my answer is yes because I would not want to be without God's guiding hand through life. God is Jesus and Jesus is God.
If there wasn't an afterlife we would not know one was lacking, now would we? In this hypothetical world, the Bible would read differently, but we would not be aware of this, it would simply be what it was. Even if life ended and we knew nothing past that, Jesus would still offer love, peace and joy in this life. People follow things for far less than that.
There isn't much in specific in the scripture. A lot of things have been made up that people have now accepted as "gospel," but the most solid information from the gospel is, "It's better than you'll ever imagine." So everything that has been imagined...is wrong.
Lewis when he wrote his book The Great Divorce was careful to tell his readers not to become overly concerned with the details in his treatment of heaven because his main point was why some would choose hell over heaven, and that there would be no heaven with a little bit of hell in it.
But I would not say everything that has been imagined in christian art is always simply wrong, I don't think people in the past always thought of artistic depictions as being exactly as heaven would be, I would guess some knew it was imagery?
I think the OT figures simply trusted-without fully knowing what the outcome would be. But inside every human heart is a desire for continued existence, because that existence, itself, is a good- and one that we cherish without always being immediately conscious of the fact. Extreme physical and/or emotional pain can war against that innate desire but the basic love of and preference for life is still within us.I decided to reword this.
The Old Testament has very little to say about what happens in the afterlife. Yet throughout the OT many worshipped and served God, even to the point of execution. So hypothetically speaking if heaven and hell were put aside, would you still follow Jesus?
Answers could be something like "no way, I'm just in this because I don't want to fry" or "yes I would continue to follow Jesus no matter what" to "as long as the church serves coffee and doughnuts, I'm in"
By "wrong" I don't mean immoral, I mean inaccurate.
If I am following Christ I am a Christian.
I never mentioned being a Christian is just being a good person, not sure how you plucked that from my answer. The question was,
Would you be a Christian if there was no afterlife?And my answer is yes because I would not want to be without God's guiding hand through life. God is Jesus and Jesus is God.
If there wasn't an afterlife we would not know one was lacking, now would we? In this hypothetical world, the Bible would read differently, but we would not be aware of this, it would simply be what it was. Even if life ended and we knew nothing past that, Jesus would still offer love, peace and joy in this life. People follow things for far less than that.
I didn't see where he asks this: what's the context? What's he talking about?
What does "following Christ" mean? Christ came to earth with a specific mission:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16–17, NIV).
Following Christ means to share in His mission:
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. -- John 14
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. -- Matthew 28
This is more, then, than merely being a God-follower as Cornelius was.
Well what I'm looking for is people's motivation for being a Christian. Is it just to stay out of hell and get into heaven?
In this hypothetical Jesus asks you to take up your cross and lose your life for His sake, do you?
Because Jesus also offers tribulation from the world, and being persecuted.
Of what worth would that be if your existence ended the moment they started throwing rocks at you?
I guess I'm seeing this from a different perspective because I've already given up on this life.
I am sorry to hear you have given up on life.
In this hypothetical I still think that there would not only be different scriptures but a completely different kind of life here.
There would not be persecution to the death if there was no afterlife. I base this on how I view God.
I think people are taking this thread over what is a completely made up hypothetical far too seriously.
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