[arloiginla]

Originally Posted by photon

Well both trains of thought do come from the Bible


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.

You are basing that on human equality. If you created everything in the world including the girl, that would be completely acceptable, especially if the girl was perfect when you created her but defied you purposely and rejected you.

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.

Completely true. I have no doubt whatsoever that those who have never heard of Jesus or Christianity, or salvation, will be judged on what they do know and not what they don't. The God I believe in would do no such thing, because it would be contrary to His just nature.

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.

Wrong. It has nothing to do with a soft or hard sell. Those who are offered God's gift of salvation and do not accept it, will face eternal punishment apart from God, since they chose to be apart from Him during life. That doesn't change. But telling people their problems rather than offering them a gift that will change them forever, is not the best way to find converts IMO. In today's society we don't like to be spoken to in that way. 200 years ago that approach might have won many souls for the Lord. But in today's Western society I think it's a safe assumption that it doesn't go over very well.

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.

I didn't judge one doctrine and say that those who believe in the "old" way of thinking (you're going to hell! stop being gay!) aren't really Christians. I think it is personal - each of us will be accountable to God Himself and it won't matter what doctrine we held, it will only matter whether or not we accepted His gift of salvation and strove to follow His will in our lives.

I wasn't judging which doctrine turns people on and off being right or wrong. Rather, I simply said that one doctrine is more likely to win over unbelievers and therefore acting in love in todays society, than the other, which seems to be doing more harm than good.