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Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
I think there is and should be a difference between behavior that God can forgive and me forgiving it, he's God, his job is to be merciful...
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That certainly makes some sense, but there are aspects of the divine economy which defy all efforts to rationalise. For example, God's holiness: supposedly so unimaginably transcendent and pure that it is impossible for him to tolerate the presence of "sin." I think this stems from the ancient view of divine/human transactions, whereby the value of small offerings made by humans was inversely proportional to that of the giver. In other words, for a god, giving much is giving little; for man, giving little is giving much. Hence man’s small gift to the god is as valuable as god’s big gift to man, but at the same time this equivalence of the gifts signifies and establishes the nonequivalence between god and man. To put another spin on this, small infractions committed by humans are intensified to such a degree before God that they require eternal condemnation and punishment.
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I may try to aspire to that but I reserve the right to be human about some things, kiddy diddling being high on that list.
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That sounds good in theory, but in my experience it seldom if ever works out this way in Christian culture. We were prompted to forgive unconditionally and totally because that is how God does it. I think you are right to point out here how truly absurd that is.