Selfishly spreading the good news
Offline This post relates to the christians who tell us that believers go to heaven while non-believers go to hell. That God cares only for faith and not works. When these christians are asked what happens to the people who never heard of Christ all but the harshest of fundies tell us that God will not punnish them for non belief because it would be unfair since they never had the opportunity to believe.
If this is the case, why spread the word? why have churches? If mankind forgets Christ then everyone gets a free pass into heaven. By telling someone who would otherwise not have heard of Jesus you are creating the potential of going to hell. Clearly teaching them God's word is not in their interests, so why do it. Is it because spreading the word will earn you brownie points with God by demonstrating your own faith? If so then to do so is incredibly selfish. Impress God by creating te risk of hell for others.
Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!
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Can I say how a Christian would respond to this without everyone assuming that I am supporting fundamentalism?
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I would love to hear your answer on this. I have seen enough of your posts to know that you are not a fundy, so I, for one, promise not to beat up your answer too much - lol.
OK. Here goes.
This is an over generalization. Christian theology also states that faith without works is dead. This is often called a contradiction but it is more about priority. Having heard the "good news", faith comes into play and it is primary. But if works don't follow then the believer's faith is false. The transformation caused by faith compels good works and the absence of such works is evidence that faith is non-existent and that the individual is paying lipservice.
Regarding those that have not heard "good news" they cannot have fully formed faith without having actually heard the good news. But they can have a soul that is intuitively receptive to the transformative power of the holy spirit and hence will be motivated to good works. Hence the judgment of god is based on their intuitive interaction with the divine. Such a person, upon actually hearing the "good news" has their faith fully actualized and becomes fully cognizant of their spiritual nature.
Or something like that.
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This topic gives new meaning to the phrase "no news is good news."
Yeah, wavefreak's response is the same one that I learned in Sunday school. It's a kind of "no true Christian" argument that tries to mitigate the "once saved, always saved" doctrine with the need to perform good works.
It makes more sense in the context of puritanical Calvinism, where the idea was that nobody knows who the "elect" are and that you can sometimes indirectly figure out who is going to heaven by their behavior, even though it's grace, and not behavior, that is the actual determining factor.
Yet another example of twisted, convoluted Christian nightmare guilt in my book.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert
I guess I don't see where guilt enters into this. Or even 'once saved, always saved'. I always hated that idea. That and who the 'elect' are. It was questioning things like this that got me excommunicated.
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