Sunbeam said:
No offence, but this is JW salvation-by-works doctrine, not mainstream Christian doctrine. Christians don't believe that they can do anything to earn their reward, all of their 'debts' have already been paid and their reward is guaranteed (salvation-by-faith-alone).
What exactly does that mean? It certainly couldn't mean exactly what you said, because that would mean we could do
anything and still be saved because we simply "believe by faith" in Jesus. No Christain theolgian would teach that (at least not ant I know
) because it's not true.
You can't be saved by faith alone. I could quite seriously believe in the ransom of Christ and yet do things that aren't Christain (e.g. homosexuality). According to the bible, God will not allow gays into his kingdom. All the faith in Jesus won't save you from destruction for not obeying this work. You could say that faith in Jesus will cause a homosexual to turn away from his "sinful ways" but then that would require you doing a work to
prove your righteousness, hence God's grace isn't a "free gift". The gay man would be curbing his natural desire because he had "the thought at the back of his mind of reward", otherwise by your explanation God would forgive him for being sinful anyway, since salvation is a "free gift".
I agree with you that the "salvation-by-works" doctrine of the JW's is bad, but this is the same thing that is taught by orthodox Christain doctrine. Once you have to "prove" yourself to God, the gift isn't free. At least the JW's "call a spade a spade" and tell you outright that God demands x,y&z from you for you to make it to "the new world" (of course, in addition to x,y&z, the JW's also demand 1, 2& 3, which isn't in the bible). The "Orthodox Christain" teaching takes one scripture, which obviously couldn't mean what it says literally and present it to the belivers as if it were a fact. The funny thing is both the preacher and the congregation know that is not true. So basically what I'm saying is that, while we may not be able to buy our salvation from God, we must show works to get it(which is what I suspect Paul was saying). So Mommy is right in that regard. You may not as a Christain do something only for selfish reasons, but you know if you don't that God will kill you, and that's a big reason for doing a lot of things (like no pre martial sex. Only fear of God would force two 19 year olds to get married just to "get it on".) Works do count and are way more important than just believing.
Flower, here is a link to an article on morality apart from god:
. http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/ethics.html
While I don't explicitly rule out the possibilty of God, the bible's God is unbelievable to me. I really don't think there's a need for God, and if God is as powerful as he proports why can't he speak to us today? Why restrict yourself to ancient Jewish guys? Besides which, the bible is chuck full of errors and condractions. There are numberous threads that deal with this topic (check out threads by Joseph Alward). Best to both you and Sunbeam.
Go therefore and baptize the people in the name of the father and of the son... what the hell, we just need to bring up the yearbook numbers!
