That's the fun part! It depends on which branch of Christianity you believe in. Some think it's only faith, some the baptism/saved, and some good works.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Explain Like I'm Five
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How odd, that one should be good not for the sake of goodness, but out of fear of damnation.
Jesus is an example of an ideal person. Being literally divine Jesus is capable of setting a perfect example of love, forgiveness, and compassion. We humans are not. We have flaws, but should still strive to be good people, just as Jesus was a good human.
If you are "being good" or "not being bad" for selfish reasons, you aren't acting out of love or goodness. Heaven, hell, reward, punishment, these shouldn't matter when it comes to virtue or vice.
The simple answer is that the "you have to be good" Christians are not the same people as the "Jesus forgives no matter what" Christians. Beliefs and doctrines vary wildly throughout Christianity, and different Christians often believe contradictory things. This isn't helped by the fact that the Bible itself, being a collection of many books by many authors, contains contradictory viewpoints. This allows believers to focus on the elements they like and ignore the ones they don't.
The “be a good person” and “you’ll be forgiven” are two separate ideas. Digging into it requires digging into a lot of different religions and their beliefs. Churches and people disagree on how those go together.
I don’t feel your request of “understanding the reasoning that Christians use” relates well to the question in your title. Much of religion now is repeating dogma rather than spiritual awareness and bettering yourself.
I had a teacher in school who believed in predestination. Basically, whether you go to heaven or hell is pre-ordained before your even born and there's nothing you can do to change it. I told him that sounded to me like I should be a Satanist because if I'm predestined for heaven I've worshipped Satan all my life for nothing and I get to chill in heaven. If I'm predestined to go to hell I've spent so much time worshipping Satan it probably won't be too bad. I'm personally not really religious myself but I really was dumbfounded at the whole predestination thing.
Sounds like your teacher followed the calvinist branch of Christianity then?
Predestination (in terms of religious salvation but also in general, like in determinism) is something that I always found fascinating. Because, if you are predestined to something (either to salvation or two just wake up today), why do we even try so hard if the outcome is already preset? Why try to be a good person if you are already destined to go to heaven or hell since you've been born? Or why do you set the alarm to wake up early in the morning and go to work if you have no influence on what will happen? Couldn't you just sleep the whole day and the result would be the same because it's already preset?
I guess you wouldn't really have that choice. If a full determinism is true, there is no room for free will and even trying to affect the result is something you are already predestined to do and any choice you think you make (or even vacillating over the choices you make) is still something you were predestined to do and only an illusion of free will.
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That's an... interesting take on predestination. The idea is that God already knows what you're going to do, because he's omniscient. It's not a matter of just picking you and then whatever you do is fine. He already 'knew' what you were going to do. So if you're good, he already knew and you're in.
If you wanna get into a religious debate about predestination, though, strap in. It's a doozy.
Omniscience and free will are contradictory but only if you feel like you should be bound by the laws of logic.
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Biblically the teacher is right. God does know where you are going to end up when he creates you. That's the doctorine.
that... does not sound right. humans have free will
One view is that God knows how people will end up not because He is forcing them to act a certain way, but because He has a perfect knowledge of the outcomes of their actions. Kind of like how a parent knows what the outcome of a small child's actions will be.
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Answer according to anyone christian: (note- not me) You don't. You have have to "Be sorry" and "ask forgiveness". You can still be an enormous piece of sh*t if you say you're sorry that you were bad.
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What's so disheartening is that a lot of fundie Christians actually use this logic to get away with twisted stuff like SH, SA, or CSA.
(And then the next day they collectively blame drag queens for allegedly doing the exact same thing to CYA, but that's another story.)
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You absolutely don't have to. But when you're a Christian, you love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul; and you love your neighbor as yourself. The result is that you do good works by virtue of doing God's will. Good works are a result of salvation.
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You see, there are these things called eigenvalues. They dimentionalize the vector space. We can contruct a personality vector space and assign a set of orthogonal personality vectors. (Sees that this is elif). Erm, think of a "which Harry Potter character are you" quiz. We can add and subtract weighted , erm, Harry Potter characters, to get to you. You are half Harry plus two Rons minus 1.5 Malfos.
Now those numbers might change over time. That is you at that moment. If you, erm, took a DeLorean back to 1955, but still had those same numbers, you would still be you. If you wiped your memory but still had those numbers, you would still be you. Stands to reason if you went back in time and got your memory wiped, you would still be you. What if someone in the past (or future) had the exact same numbers? That would be you, even though no time travel occurred.
Now (erm, how do I explain vector projection to a five year old), ummm, if your numbers are close, you are mostly you? Now Jesus, ahh, scored a particular score on the sigh Harry Potter quiz. Remeber how I said your numbers change? Well, if your numbers are close enough, you could say that he is you, or Jesus is living Through you. And as long as more people in the future get numbers close to both yours and Jesus's, you could say you are living on, or having eternal life. And in order to change those number to Jesus's, you have to be good.
What? Oh, yes I got Hermonie. How did you know?
Welp you don't want to hear it but the best explanation is religion is a system to scam commoners of their devotion and money. If things start not making sense then you should stop believing in Santa Claus
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