Christian Arrogance

by startingover 104 Replies latest jw friends

  • mouthy
    mouthy

    What word would better describe the situation when you claim god chose you and not me?

    Well You evidently did not ask God to come into your life. He is God, never interfers with your free will
    But if you invite him ,you will see he chose to respond

  • Perry
    Perry

    Matthew 10:32 Whosoever ° therefore shall confess ° me before men ° , him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven .

    It is not arrogance to plainly state what God has done for me in my life. It would be arrogant to claim that I deserved anything good. It would be arrogant to remaim silent when I read about others pain and shipwreck and not tell them that God not only revealed himself to me but also tenderly took me under his care and nurtured me and restored me after the Watchtower tried to destroy my mind, my hope, my love and my trust.

    God has a contract in his hand. It is signed in his own blood....it is a blood covenant that delivers sonship. I give testimony that God is a man of his word. He made me his son. He spoke this very thing directly into my spirit. This unbreakable certitude is available to ANYONE. The holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we ARE the children of God. My name is written in the lamb's book of life forevermore....PRAISE GOD.

    Now, I carried a latent grudge against God for many years....even after I gave my life to him. I reasoned why did God allow me to go through so much hardship? Why didn't he make me his son while I really cared about doing what was right during the 8 years that I REALLY tried to be good as a Witness?

    That answer came to me a while back when I realized that I simply wasn't ready to give my will all to God. None of us are ever really ready. So, my experience with God is that he brings some people to the point where it is more painful to not give your life to God than it is to keep the ownership of it.

    The Calvinists go wrong by misinterpreting the movements of God as not working in concert with the human will. Only a wilful participant can take that final step. Just because God knows who will take that final step toward glory, doesn't mean that I am not a participant in my own destiny.

    Just the same, I just couldn't get over the fact that God was uninterested in my efforts to be good. I was utterly devastated by this revelation.

    I didn't understand all this at the time of my conversion to Christianity. So, what I did was basically tell God that I would go with him wherever he would take me. BUT, I told him that I would no longer try to be good. I told him that I would not go out of my way to sin like I did before in my anger. But, also I wasn't going to be ashamed of being a sinner either, since this wasn't my fault. Basically, I told him that I was his problem now.

    Little did I know that this is what probably finally ratified the the New Testament contract on my behalf:

    For whosoever ° will save his life shall lose it : and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it .

    The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination : how much more, when he bringeth it with a wicked mind ?

    All my work as a Regular Pioneer was an abomination to God. All my efforts to be good were of no value.

    Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away

    All my righteousness was just filth. It isn't sin that keeps God out of peoples' lives....it is their "righteousness".

  • shamus100
    shamus100

    Thanks Perry,

    We all get it.

  • VoidEater
    VoidEater

    Not meaning to cast aspersions, but I would say that anytime God is thanked or the Devil is blamed...

    ...it seems an awfully convenient way of not accepting responsibility or expressing appreciation for your own actions and capabilities (good or bad).

    I think of my dad who has spent a lifetime of begging God to allow him a relationship, and never getting it.

    I think of myself who never felt a connection to anything greater than myself until I rejected the Sky Daddy stereotype.

  • changeling
    changeling

    I've posted before how the expression: "I'm blessed" irks me. And yes, I would say it's arrogant to say God singled you out for "blessings" when millions are suffering.

    Good things and bad things happen to everyone. What tips the scales in favor of some? Hard work, good genes, a healthy life style, common sense, intelligence, being born to an affluent family, being born in an affluent country, serendipity...

  • Perry
    Perry

    Do you have any children changeling?

  • Finally-Free
    Finally-Free

    I don't think all or even most Christians are arrogant. It just seems that way because it's the arrogant ones that make all the bloody noise.

    W

  • changeling
    changeling

    Yes, Perry. And grandchildren. I love them to pieces. Please don't use them to prove your point.

  • Perry
    Perry

    I don't have too, you made it for me.

    I love them to pieces.

  • changeling
    changeling

    I'll bite...

    Because I love them, I cannot for a second concieve of the possiblity of the existence of a "heavenly father", who demands to be worshiped, and if his demands aren't met, condemns his children to a fiery hell, death at Armageddon, or some other concoction any particular sect may preach.

    I would like for my children to love me and respect me as I do them, but worship me? Look to me for every little decision they make? Never feel like adults because "it does not belong to them to direct their steps"? Please!

    Man created God, not the other way around. And his creation was flawed.

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