re: Christians: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love“

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But what if you don't repent?

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Well, if you never changed your mind, you never believed because changing your mind goes along with believing something else.

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Then you decided not to receive the gift.

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So receiving the gift is conditioned.

The gift did nothing for you.
How could it do nothing for you and also be unconditional?
The efficacy lies in a condition of receiving/accepting/repentance.

I desperately want salvation to be truly and utterly non transactional, but I've yet to conceive of a way in which that can be the reality.

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Thats not necessarily true.

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This is true

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Christ displayed righteous anger at times.

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This is more things people manipulate from the Word of God. Christ literally taught us the first commandant is to love the Lord and then to love our neighbor.

However due to so much hatred people have even warped that meaning as well

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So not unconditionally then

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Like I said earlier, God is not going to force anyone who doesn't want to be there to be in His presence for eternity.

If you want to call that a "condition," o.k.

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I’m saying he told you it’s a bad idea

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Incorrect.

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you’ll be judged in the same manner you judge others.

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Correct.

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I desperately want salvation to be truly and utterly non transactional, but I've yet to conceive of a way in which that can be the reality.

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With respect, I think you're venturing semantic overreach. You’re treating any requirement of reception as a condition that turns a gift into a transaction. But that would mean no gift can ever be free unless it’s forced.

Unconditional doesn’t mean automatic or coercive. It means the gift isn’t earned, deserved, or paid for. Repentance doesn’t purchase salvation — it describes the posture of not rejecting it. A gift can be freely given and still do nothing for someone who refuses it.

I agree with you that salvation isn’t meant to be transactional. But non-transactional doesn’t require “no response”; it requires “no merit.”

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Christian conservatives are 100% wrong right now on the treatment of immigrants.

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That's an opinion, not a fact, and I'll bet you can't support it Biblically.

It's also a fantastic example of what we're discussing in this thread. How the left coopts the Bible and distorts the message for its own purposes.

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I’m saying he told you it’s a bad idea and you’ll be judged in the same manner you judge others.

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Okay, that helps — and I agree with that framing.

Saying it’s a bad idea to judge harshly because judgment rebounds isn’t the same as saying judgment is forbidden. That’s exactly the distinction I’ve been trying to make. The warning is about the manner and posture of judgment, not its existence.

If Jesus meant “never judge an individual at all,” then commands like helping a brother with a speck, identifying false prophets, or judging by fruit wouldn’t make sense. But if the point is “don’t judge hypocritically, self-righteously, or without mercy,” then the chapter holds together.

So I think we’re closer than it sounded earlier: judgment isn’t banned, it’s constrained — and Christians violate Jesus’ teaching when they ignore that constraint.

I wonder if part of the disagreement is less about the text and more about discomfort with judging people at all — which I actually sympathize with. Judgment has been abused a lot. But Jesus doesn’t solve that problem by eliminating judgment; he solves it by disciplining it. He warns that judgment rebounds, demands self-examination, and ties it to mercy — but he still assumes discernment and correction are sometimes necessary. Avoiding judgment entirely may feel safer, but it creates contradictions in the passage itself.

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You think the first 2 worlds being “Judge not” is insignificant?

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Yes. It is. Because you just clipped two words out of a serious book with multiple verses. Do better.

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You think the first 2 worlds being “Judge not” is insignificant?

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No, I just think they are frequently misinterpreted because people are aware of that verse but not others in which he directly commands us to judge others.

So He can't have meant that in this passage.

Interpreting that verse in the totality of scripture suggests that the correct interpretation is almost certainly to avoid hypocritical judgement, not righteous judgement.