re: If Gender Is Changeable, Why Not Race? Matt Walsh

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Navin Johnson, pioneer.

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The way is narrow because those who told us the truth can’t be gatekeepers if the way is broad.

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I don't think you know what Jesus was talking about. He wasn't talking about the Church with this statement, but faith in Himself as the son of God sent to die for the sins of the world. He was talking about salvation and reconciliation being found only through Him. That's why the way is narrow, because everyone wants to worship a god of their own making and reject the only one that saves.

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And keeping that gate pays very very well!

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In terms of the Church, that's not always true. Most churches are small congregations. Many pastors don't get paid millions of dollars but require discounts for their kids to go to private Christian schools because they can't afford to send them there otherwise.

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But just ask yourself this: what kind of a shithead would God be if he created a system whereby an isolated tribesman in the jungles of Africa, who never even heard of Jesus, has to go to hell due to his unfortunate neighborhood?

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That's quite the judgement you are making there. It assumes that the isolated tribesman in the jungles of Africa is not in rebellion against his creator. It assumes innocence when no one is innocent; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and God owes no one salvation. It's an offer of grace and mercy towards those who don't deserve it.

In addition, it seems that living in a country like America where the Gospel is preached isn't a guarantee of salvation, either, since people like you are fine with rejecting the offer all day long but then complain that others aren't given the opportunity to reject it. But that's also why Christians support missionaries to bring the good news of salvation throughout the world.

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I always thought a God who demands that we all believe in him despite the fact that he purposely makes it impossible to verify his existence by any respectable standards, or else he will heartlessly condemn us to suffer eternal damnation, was a sadist, especially when we were given no choice whether to take part in this test. Basically a much less sophisticated and more narcissistic version of Jigsaw from the Saw movies.

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I don't know why so many people don't understand what the Bible teaches on this subject. It's mind boggling.

What you described is a situation where people are good or at worst neutral and that God comes along and imposes some unrealistic requirement on said good/neutral person and if they don't do it, they are cast into hell. The whole paradigm of God's injustice rests on the notion that people are innocent. That's simply not the case from the Christian perspective.

What the Bible teaches is that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, both by our representative Adam as well as with our action sins of commission and omission. We are guilty already. Whether we are given the message of the gospel or shown first-hand that God exists doesn't change that. Satan knows for a fact that God exists and yet he still rebels against Him. There are a lot of people who believe that God exists yet still rail against Him as a cruel tyrant rather than a loving father.

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But then I watched Jimmy Swaggart, a few years after he got busted with a prostitute for the second time (God told him it was none of our business). And just like that... I was SAVED.

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He will be judged more harshly by God for leading people astray than you or I will. But even so, all Jimmy Swaggart shows is that Christians are sinners in need of God's mercy through Jesus Christ, too. Why do you think Christians stop sinning after being saved? We are held to the same standard of godliness as you are, and we are supposed to repent of our sins just like you. The difference is that we have an objective moral standard to compare our lives to and know when we're sinning, and we have a means for reconciliation with God when we do sin.

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I feel bad for the billions of people alive today, who will rightfully suffer eternal damnation for their failure to not listen to their molesting, er, nurturing priests. I especially feel bad for followers of other non-Christian religions in poor developing/third world countries, many of whom lived in poverty their entire existence, and mainly only had their faith to give them the strength to keep going, only to be granted with much harsher eternal poverty because they chose the wrong side. But, hey, they should’ve listened to their theology teachers when they went to private Catholic school.

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I feel bad for all of those people, too. It's why Christians are supposed to be holy as Jesus is holy, living lives of obedience to Him and repenting when we fall short. It's also why we are supposed to preach the gospel and make disciples throughout the world, so that all peoples can hear the gospel.

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If god is omnipresent and omnipotent, he knew what would happen because to god, all of time is like looking at a single painting rather than watching a movie. He is the master of time and space, ostensibly, so by that rationale, the responsibility IS on the creator as he knew what each individual would do before they were born.

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The question of responsibility is about who is at fault for our sins. Is God at fault for letting us sin or are we at fault for willfully sinning against God, not seeking after Him to stop us? What you are saying is that whether we want to sin and whether we knowingly disobey God and seek after what is right in our own eyes is moot because God is responsible due to letting us sin, though He knows we will do it.

Why is God under any compulsion to stop us from sinning? Why is God at fault when we do exactly as we want to do and it results in pain and suffering? Why should God lavish goodness and mercies upon those whose life is defined by selfish rebellion against His rule and authority? God owes us nothing and He is not unjust to allow suffering to occur when we bring it upon ourselves. He is not under obligation to save us from ourselves. If He does save us, it's out of mercy, not out of obligation.

The question then is why would God allow evil to occur? The answer is so that a greater love can occur, namely the mercy He shows towards rebels who hate Him through His son, Jesus.

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If you attribute all 'good' to God, then you must attribute all 'bad' to him as well, because if he is the only being out there, and he created everything, then he also created sin & evil. Being the master of space and time also means he knew your every move before. Thus if you were going to murder someone, he won't stop it. Sounds like 'love' to you?

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That which is good is that which conforms to God's perfectly righteous character. God cannot sin, therefore God cannot be evil, which is defined by that which is not good. God cannot be evil by definition, and that evil that does occur is done contrary to what God has commanded. God allowing evil is not God creating evil. Man performs evil and God tolerates it for a time for a greater good, yet He still punishes it because evil must be punished. It is either punished in hell or it is punished by the hell that Christ went through on the cross by faith.

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If you say god can't stop evil, then he is not omnipotent as we have been told. If he is omnipotent, then he is rationing his supposedly endless power while your kid dies in a hospital. I don't want anything to do with an almighty who doesn't bother to try and stop the evil that he created.

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God could stop all evil, but then He wouldn't be able to show the greatest good to His creation, which is the death of Christ on the cross; God dying for His enemies.

Children dying in hospitals is not due to an evil God, but the evil of sin perpetuated by Adam and every one of his children throughout time, including you and me. No one is innocent and no one deserves a long life of bliss. However that bliss is attainable through faith in the son of God who died to pay the penalty that our sins deserve. Eternal life is a mercy extended to sinners, not a payment of obligation extended to the righteous.

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From what I have been taught, he already knows if I am going to heaven or hell, so why even give a shite. I've wanted off this fricking ride since I was a kid, but I'm too stubborn to give that a-hole the satisfaction of creating me knowing I was going to suffer for all eternity. I'll let him wait just a bit longer.

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All people have the obligation and responsibility to honor God and obey Him. Since we are sinners, we cannot be united to God through our works and must be reconciled by the works of Jesus, the only perfectly obedient servant of God. You have an obligation to worship God as God and His son as the Lord and King over all creation. Instead of seeking to "stick it" to God, you should be seeking after reconciliation. You don't have to be His enemy. You can become as an adopted son, receiving a glorious inheritance that will never perish. No more suffering, no more pain, no more sadness. Only basking in the love of God poured out for sinners like you and me who don't deserve it. I pray you will repent and trust in Jesus Christ's atoning death on the cross. That is the only way to know true peace.

Good news for Elizabeth Warren.

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the evil of sin perpetuated by Adam

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let's not even get into the genetic impossibility of there being only one woman and one man to start, they had two sons and one killed the other. Someone fricked their mom/sister. A lot.

The early stories of the bible should read like "The Hills Have Eyes" because there should be nothing but a bunch of retards fricking their mothers and siblings hoping to get all 4 appendages this time.

The story of adam and eve could not have happened. It is a nice way to explain evolution to simpletons.


Furthermore, what kind of a POS god creates 2 beings that frick it up and then says "Oh man that's disappointing, guess I have to punish billions and billions of them because these two decided to have a bite of something that I arbitrarily told them not to"

He should have started over. Or maybe not let Satan hang around the nice Garden he just created out of energy and matter.

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especially when tempered with acknowledgement on the part of the faithful that they could be wrong but choose to believe....
Why does such an acknowledge matter? If you have confidence that something is true, what good is it to say that it's possible that it isn't true? Is that a credibility thing for you?

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For me its a question of honesty. I can have confidence that UGA is going to beat Vandy but I don't know for a fact it will happen....to state unequivocally that I know for certain that UGA will win is not totally honest because I can't know what the future holds. The same is true of faith, belief or confidence...it is not entirely honest to claim one while also claiming to have knowledge or fact. I understand it is a subtle difference in a person with strong faith because that faith is a big part of their perception and that perception is their reality....it is tantamount to fact for that person....but in a strict use of the word it is not, therefore tempering one's belief or faith with acknowledgement that one could be wrong is both honest to a fault, acknowledging that faith is a higher calling and important in and of itself without fact. Not to demean faith but kids are a good example when it comes to Santa Clause....they have faith in the existence and the evidence they have suggests proof of the existence. Then most move into the phase of doubt but wanting to believe, and I like to think not just for the material joys but also the "magic"....but this soon moves onto the phase, again for most, where they know better but still pretend to believe, mostly for the material aspects but hopefully some of the magic is still there....but at this point they are being dishonest in a minor fashion...I think a LOT of believers are in a similar phase and do not realize that their proclaimed proof speaks more about their lack of faith than it does of their strength of faith. I am not arrogant to say this is so of all believers, although in a heated moment I might LOL, but watching people for 55 years has led me to believe that the numbers are not small.

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For me its a question of honesty. I can have confidence that UGA is going to beat Vandy but I don't know for a fact it will happen....to state unequivocally that I know for certain that UGA will win is not totally honest because I can't know what the future holds. The same is true of faith, belief or confidence...it is not entirely honest to claim one while also claiming to have knowledge or fact. I understand it is a subtle difference in a person with strong faith because that faith is a big part of their perception and that perception is their reality....it is tantamount to fact for that person....but in a strict use of the word it is not, therefore tempering one's belief or faith with acknowledgement that one could be wrong is both honest to a fault, acknowledging that faith is a higher calling and important in and of itself without fact.

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Relying on an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God's testimony is a lot different than relying on fallible man in terms of confidence. It's not exactly apples to apples to compare hope in a UGA victory to confidence that all of reality can be explained fundamentally by the God of the Bible. It's not just hope, it's more than hope. It's a reasonable faith.

I adhere to the presuppositional approach to apologetics. My study of this approach has given me even more confidence in what I believe than just about anything else because I'm able to see how the object of my faith provides a coherent rationale for reality that doesn't exist otherwise. Or as some great men in the faith phrased it, the proof of (the Biblical) God's existence is that if He didn't exist, we couldn't prove anything.

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Not to demean faith but kids are a good example when it comes to Santa Clause....they have faith in the existence and the evidence they have suggests proof of the existence. Then most move into the phase of doubt but wanting to believe, and I like to think not just for the material joys but also the "magic"....but this soon moves onto the phase, again for most, where they know better but still pretend to believe, mostly for the material aspects but hopefully some of the magic is still there....but at this point they are being dishonest in a minor fashion...I think a LOT of believers are in a similar phase and do not realize that their proclaimed proof speaks more about their lack of faith than it does of their strength of faith. I am not arrogant to say this is so of all believers, although in a heated moment I might LOL, but watching people for 55 years has led me to believe that the numbers are not small.

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This is such a trite comparison, if I may say so myself. The stakes are much higher with God than with Santa Claus for one. However I understand your point but it still falls short of reality. There is abundant evidence for the truthfulness of the Bible. There is abundant evidence for design in creation, implicating God. There is abundant philosophical evidence to support the truth claims of the Bible and the necessity of God. There is abundant evidence in the depravity of mankind and the search for salvation woven into our very psyches.

This isn't some exercise in wishful thinking. This is a rational, reasoned, and coherent worldview with real-world implications.

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So there's about a billion Hindus going to hell by your logic here

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no, according to the bible. do you have a problem with that?

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Their unchanging truth is different from yours

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sigh. they both can't be true. christianity is monotheistic. hinduism is henotheistic. they don't have their "own truth." they do however have their own belief, however epistemically justified it is or isn't.

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Since, you know, your god has a monopoly on truth

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well that would be true by definition. aka, truism.

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accepting the eternal damnation of billions because they weren't born in the right place where the 'right' religion was pushed on them

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that has nothing to do with anything. that is not why anyone is damned.

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that same soul could have just as easily been born to a famine stricken village in The Congo with no shot at eternal life

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who says that person has no shot?