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Originally Posted by arloiginla
I just feel that for the past few hundred years Biblical doctrine has commonly held that salvation was earned or retained by works. Based on this, it makes a lot of sense that the angle preachers have taken is that "clean up your life or you are going to hell!" Yet the Bible speaks a lot about love and a loving God who shows mercy and compassion. Together, those two trains of thought contradict each other.
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Well both trains of thought do come from the Bible
Quote:
Originally Posted by arloiginla
Lately, the idea that salvation is a gift of God, and that the commandments follow voluntarily rather than as a means of obtaining salvation, has become more prevalent in Christian circles.
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But a soft sell is still a sell. Salvation may be a gift, but the message still is that everyone is insufficient, everyone is irredeemable, everyone falls short, and only by believing this one particular belief can you hope to find value and attain salvation, otherwise you are doomed to an infinite punishment for a finite infraction.
If I tell the girl I love that if she loves me back and accepts me as her husband I'll give her a beautiful life, and if I tell her that if she doesn't accept me that I'll lock her in the basement for the rest of her life, my "gift" of a beautiful life may be a gift, but it's hard to see it that way from her point of view.
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Originally Posted by arloiginla
At the end of the day, I think it is a personal thing. God will look at each Christian's heart and based on that person's knowledge of right and wrong and what that person feels the Lord convicted them to do and not do in life, will determine that person's eternal destiny. Basically, did that person truly love the Lord with all their heart, seek to do the Spirit's will in everything, and love others as much as themselves?
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What about non-Christians? If a non-Christian lives an identical life, loved others as much as themselves, but without the loving the Lord part, they get eternal punishment for it? The billions who never heard of Jesus? Or those who did but made the best decision they could based on what they knew but just happened to be the wrong one? Any god that would eternally punish someone for making an honest decision but the wrong one is no god at all.
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Originally Posted by arloiginla
So then, phrasing it as "true Christianity" was not the best way to do it. But following this particular doctrine as a Christian is going to be a much better way to experience joy in life, do God's work, and most importantly - win souls over for Christ instead of turning them off and disgusting them.
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And they hope that their particular doctrine isn't actually the wrong one, that by going by the soft sell they aren't damning millions to an eternal punishment.
That's the thing, there is no way to choose between any doctrine and another.. judging them by what turns people on and off isn't a good measure, since what people like and don't like changes over time.