• undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    “Worship me as a god or ill have you tortured for all eternity.”

    Christians: yep, I see no problem with this. Its definitely not an abusive relationship.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      “I love you more than you can understand, but I will use my unlimited cosmic power to hide from you, and I will never interact with you or help nudge all the diverging religions in the right direction. The fate of your immortal soul, your worth as a human being, and your relationship with me will depend on whether you think I exist and kiss my ass despite me using my aforementioned unlimited cosmic power to hide my very existence from you.”

      Many humans: ooh I love a good mystery!

      It’s like the ultimate rich deadbeat dad who you never get to see. The Elon Musk of the supernatural world, if you will.

      • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        You know!

        Now, if you could step round all the Buddhists, Muslims etc. trying to appeal their fate because they “dedicated their lives to helping starving children” and “there’s no way we could have know ln about you” or whatever. Yeah, you should have thought about that before you became a sinner shouldn’t you! Yeah, thats what i thought…

        No, no, I don’t care what you did. So long as you’re really sorry for not being perfect,

        Like me

        , acept me as your God and are willing to worship me forever and ever and ever, you can come right on in. Turns out, ultimately, I don’t care about good or bad that much. I want people who will worship me and tell me I’m good and kind, unlike like those disgusting sinners I’m torturing forever.

        • Zink@programming.dev
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          1 month ago

          Funny how God seems so much like a shitty human ruler personality, but combined with the ultimate power fantasy. Gee I wonder how that happened.

      • Flax@feddit.uk
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        1 month ago

        I mean, Christianity is the largest religion and varying properties and various concepts of a Jesus has infiltrated basically every main religion apart from Judaism. Which is a pretty big nudge. Anytime God does show Himself, people come up with all sorts of excuses not to believe. You also need to realise while God is infinitely merciful, He’s also infinitely just.

        A question for you would be: how would you balance that out? Being infinitely merciful and infinitely just?

        • Zink@programming.dev
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          1 month ago

          I don’t consider “a dude might have existed 2000 years ago and built an enduring reputation” to be very compelling. Especially not while living in a world where everybody around me has instant access to the whole of human knowledge and yet so many stay disconnected from reality.

          I mean if he wanted to, he could materialize in front of every single one of us like Doctor Manhattan to give us reassurance and a taste of being in the presence of his light. He knows what each of us needs in order to be brought into the faith. Yet, he presents us with a world indistinguishable from one where he doesn’t exist, and he has gifted us with these incredible conscious intelligent minds, and his main rule of existence is that we don’t use that intelligence to explore the world he’s given us and instead rely on some ancient translated and edited texts.

          The infinitely merciful and infinitely just thing seems to me like a simple logical contradiction along the lines of asking whether God can create a stone so big that he himself cannot lift it. Isn’t the whole point of showing mercy that you let somebody off the hook instead of making them submit to what would otherwise be just?

          • Flax@feddit.uk
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            1 month ago

            If God were to act like a door-to-door salesman, when would he show up? “Oh, I haven’t believed yet because he hasn’t shown up yet”. He showed up once for all. You say He gives us a world indistinguishable from one where He doesn’t exist- but this doesn’t make sense either and isn’t even scientific. What do you think the difference in the world would be? Also again, the vast majority of people on earth have heard about Jesus. It’s hardly an obscure secret.

            He gives us free will and respects our decision.

            Mercy isn’t the opposite of justice. Unjust is when you let people get away with things. God has mercy on those who are truly repentant and trust in His sacrifice as their salvation.

            Good works aren’t exceptional. To do good is what’s expected of us. So when we do something wrong, we can’t undo it. A good driver is someone who follows all of the rules. If you go through a red stoplight, you can’t make it up by stopping at three more. Our sin required the perfect and infinite sacrifice - which is God Himself.