You did clarify. I totally disagree... but to be brutally honest, I think we will both be corrected once we get Home. :)
Surgery is on Tuesday, if you pray please pray for steady hands while he gets the nerves pulled out of the scar tissue and pray now, if you will, for steady nerves on my end!
What's next on the discussion list?
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Losing salvation
Yes, I absolutely believe that a real Christian can sin and lose their salvation. By that I do not mean that sins of ignorance lead you there, or even that by simply failing to be perfect (since we can't be perfect, that's where grace comes in) causes one to lose one's salvation.
I am not saying that there is a specific sin that can cause an individual to lose his salvation since I think that the sinning that causes a person to lose his or her salvation is dependant on the individual himself. How that person thinks about himself and his sin. As when Paul says that to eat unclean foods is not a sin unless you eat without being fully convinced in your own mind. Therefore to consciously keep doing something that you fully believe is sinful, or someone who deliberately hurts other people all the time, knowing the hurt he or she is causing - those are things that can cause a person to lose their salvation.
I think there is a deliberate and conscious choice involved in losing one's salvation just as there is a deliberate and conscious choice involved in choosing one's salvation. I don't believe there is a formula involved in either so I can't say precisely what could cause another to lose that salvation. I could say, if I knew a person well, if I thought they were in danger of losing their salvation based on how they live, as when Christians are told to warn each other in brotherly love.
Where maybe I could, theoretically, given what I believe about divorce, divorce my husband without feeling any condemnation, that doesn't mean that it would not be sinful for another person.
In Galatians, Paul says "Be not deceived for God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption" but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."
There are a lot of Christians whose lives show nothing of what they claim to believe. Who use the liberty of Christ for license to sin. The above verse shows it isn't a matter of losing some sort of reward in Heaven but of reaping corruption, or spiritual death.
In the parable of the talents, one of those who is given a talent buries it instead of using it to create more wealth. He is like the Christian who, having professed Christ, believes he is always saved, but he is not. He is not living his faith.
As to fear of Hell - some people start at that point and then learn to love God. Others love God first, and what "fear" of God there is comes as they consider the I AM that I AM. There's nothing wrong with a prod of fear as every parent knows although if the fear aspect overrides the mercy aspect, there is a problem.
And you know, it took me a while to realize we were thinking different things when you talk about "rewards" in Heaven, since I have never understood that as anything more than a metaphor. I've never thought about losing or gaining some sort of special, tangible reward in Heaven and I'm still not sure that isn't just a metaphor like the vineyard.
It isn't fear that drives me at all, except in the way that I am sometimes overwhelmed as in "Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made...."
As a child, I think I was born with a sense of the divine that never really left me in the sense that I did not have to learn it. I first loved God. Then later, I learned fear because the church that I grew up in, while not given to fire and brimstone sermons, told me that no one could ever know they were saved until they died. I had loved God wholly and unselfconsciously. Now there was fear. For myself, for my family. I couldn't imagine wanting to be in Heaven if anyone I loved was in Hell.
But I never entirely swallowed that no one can ever know line either, because I had the gift of loving God from the time I was born. Without that gift though, I can easily see how people might have been overwhelmed by despair. Me, more or less around the age of six, decided "bullshit." Around fourteen or fifteen I stopped going to church. I am a pretty self-contained person. It wasn't a big "I am turning my back on the church" thing. It just didn't strike me as relevant. God was always in my life.
I think now, that not going to church, probably saved my life. I think it would have worn me down eventually. They would surely have excommunicated me somewhere down the line because I don't think I could have kept my mouth shut forever and I would almost surely have offended the powers-that-be, and the powers-that-be in the church where I grew up are close relatives. *G* Excommunication would have been a big deal in terms of relating to my neighbours and if I had built my house on that sand, I would have no ground under me. Now I am just a fairly run-of-the-mill heathen, I think, in people's eyes. This area isn't so completely suffocatingly Mennonite anymore either, and I can't think of a Mennonite family in which a divorce hasn't happened. But back then...
Don't know if I'm clarifying anything or further confusing the issue? When is your surgery? I'll be praying for you. Next week, probably Wednesday, I'll be leaving on a trip.
Layla
I am not saying that there is a specific sin that can cause an individual to lose his salvation since I think that the sinning that causes a person to lose his or her salvation is dependant on the individual himself. How that person thinks about himself and his sin. As when Paul says that to eat unclean foods is not a sin unless you eat without being fully convinced in your own mind. Therefore to consciously keep doing something that you fully believe is sinful, or someone who deliberately hurts other people all the time, knowing the hurt he or she is causing - those are things that can cause a person to lose their salvation.
I think there is a deliberate and conscious choice involved in losing one's salvation just as there is a deliberate and conscious choice involved in choosing one's salvation. I don't believe there is a formula involved in either so I can't say precisely what could cause another to lose that salvation. I could say, if I knew a person well, if I thought they were in danger of losing their salvation based on how they live, as when Christians are told to warn each other in brotherly love.
Where maybe I could, theoretically, given what I believe about divorce, divorce my husband without feeling any condemnation, that doesn't mean that it would not be sinful for another person.
In Galatians, Paul says "Be not deceived for God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption" but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."
There are a lot of Christians whose lives show nothing of what they claim to believe. Who use the liberty of Christ for license to sin. The above verse shows it isn't a matter of losing some sort of reward in Heaven but of reaping corruption, or spiritual death.
In the parable of the talents, one of those who is given a talent buries it instead of using it to create more wealth. He is like the Christian who, having professed Christ, believes he is always saved, but he is not. He is not living his faith.
As to fear of Hell - some people start at that point and then learn to love God. Others love God first, and what "fear" of God there is comes as they consider the I AM that I AM. There's nothing wrong with a prod of fear as every parent knows although if the fear aspect overrides the mercy aspect, there is a problem.
And you know, it took me a while to realize we were thinking different things when you talk about "rewards" in Heaven, since I have never understood that as anything more than a metaphor. I've never thought about losing or gaining some sort of special, tangible reward in Heaven and I'm still not sure that isn't just a metaphor like the vineyard.
It isn't fear that drives me at all, except in the way that I am sometimes overwhelmed as in "Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made...."
As a child, I think I was born with a sense of the divine that never really left me in the sense that I did not have to learn it. I first loved God. Then later, I learned fear because the church that I grew up in, while not given to fire and brimstone sermons, told me that no one could ever know they were saved until they died. I had loved God wholly and unselfconsciously. Now there was fear. For myself, for my family. I couldn't imagine wanting to be in Heaven if anyone I loved was in Hell.
But I never entirely swallowed that no one can ever know line either, because I had the gift of loving God from the time I was born. Without that gift though, I can easily see how people might have been overwhelmed by despair. Me, more or less around the age of six, decided "bullshit." Around fourteen or fifteen I stopped going to church. I am a pretty self-contained person. It wasn't a big "I am turning my back on the church" thing. It just didn't strike me as relevant. God was always in my life.
I think now, that not going to church, probably saved my life. I think it would have worn me down eventually. They would surely have excommunicated me somewhere down the line because I don't think I could have kept my mouth shut forever and I would almost surely have offended the powers-that-be, and the powers-that-be in the church where I grew up are close relatives. *G* Excommunication would have been a big deal in terms of relating to my neighbours and if I had built my house on that sand, I would have no ground under me. Now I am just a fairly run-of-the-mill heathen, I think, in people's eyes. This area isn't so completely suffocatingly Mennonite anymore either, and I can't think of a Mennonite family in which a divorce hasn't happened. But back then...
Don't know if I'm clarifying anything or further confusing the issue? When is your surgery? I'll be praying for you. Next week, probably Wednesday, I'll be leaving on a trip.
Layla
sin and damnation
Faith vs. works is indeed a place where all good Christians probably agree in their deepest hearts about what *they* should do, but have difficulty explaining to other people. I serve Christ because I love Him and wish to please Him - thus my statement "I love you Lord" is expressed in my walk. Likewise, you'll find many a human saying, "I love you babe" and then walking off... people say what they don't mean all the time. Saying, "Yeah I'm a Christian" and placing no faith on Christ is hardly being a Christian. So... well enough, better minds than mine have tried to resolve this issue. :)
But what brought me to discuss it initially was not the urge to attack the impossible quandry, but what you had said (and mentioned again in your last post) about being condemned (damned?) for the sin of divorce. A divorce may (or may not) be a sin - but even when we slip into sin, I don't believe we slide away from grace. If I'm driving my car and get angry and blaspheme then run into a telephone pole and die, am I going to Hell? Um, don't think so. *All* my sins are forgiven. Past, present, and future. Do I then sin cheerfully? NO!!! Because it separates me from the presence of God and it grieves the Holy Spirit.
Our actions may be exactly the same... but what motivates me to avoid sin is that I don't like upsetting God, not a fear of damnation. I want to do His will, I want to be an ambassador for Him, I want to share His love. I can't do any of that with sin in my life. But I trip.
So with divorce - even if I left my husband for no good reason at all, I don't believe that would damn me. It would likely result in a rather unpleasant conversation with Jesus at some point... "I wanted you to do XYZ and you walked away from it to do your own thing" but damnation? No.
Did you truly mean to say that you felt that some sins after salvation could result in damnation?
But what brought me to discuss it initially was not the urge to attack the impossible quandry, but what you had said (and mentioned again in your last post) about being condemned (damned?) for the sin of divorce. A divorce may (or may not) be a sin - but even when we slip into sin, I don't believe we slide away from grace. If I'm driving my car and get angry and blaspheme then run into a telephone pole and die, am I going to Hell? Um, don't think so. *All* my sins are forgiven. Past, present, and future. Do I then sin cheerfully? NO!!! Because it separates me from the presence of God and it grieves the Holy Spirit.
Our actions may be exactly the same... but what motivates me to avoid sin is that I don't like upsetting God, not a fear of damnation. I want to do His will, I want to be an ambassador for Him, I want to share His love. I can't do any of that with sin in my life. But I trip.
So with divorce - even if I left my husband for no good reason at all, I don't believe that would damn me. It would likely result in a rather unpleasant conversation with Jesus at some point... "I wanted you to do XYZ and you walked away from it to do your own thing" but damnation? No.
Did you truly mean to say that you felt that some sins after salvation could result in damnation?
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Faith as a noun
Well, first of all, with regards to divorce, I myself do not believe that because, as you say, "you broke the lamp," therefore you ought to live in darkness. That was the position of the Mennonite church I grew up in but not all Mennonite churches hold that position either. There isn't a central authority in the way that there is for the Catholic church, so you have disagreements about everything within different Mennonite churches except for two things: they all agree on pacifism, and they all agree that Jesus is Lord.
I wish I could remember the name of the theologian who, in his later years, when asked what he had learned from all his years of studying the Bible, responded, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
That is all I know.
And I understand the difficulty people have with self-described Christian fundamentalists because you would probably describe yourself as a fundamentalist in that you are living the Bible as best as you understand it, and I too - yet I don't know that we would agree on anything beyond "Jesus loves me, this I know."
The Bible isn't nearly as straightforward as many people like to think it is. For every verse on how we are saved by grace and not by works, there is another verse that tells us faith without works is dead.
To be "dead" in the Bible meant to be spiritually dead, as when one of the disciples wanted to bury his father and Jesus responded, "Let the dead bury the dead."
Or in James, when he writes that "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
It isn't that Mennonites don't believe in grace. They do - they do not believe that works will get them into Heaven. Grace gets them into Heaven. But they also have to uphold their part of the contract by following that grace with action. You have said something along those lines when you say that those who claimed to be Christians but who somehow fall away were never "really" Christians and therefore that doesn't contradict the once saved, always saved thing.
To me, that's sort of playing with semantics, like my friend who felt that if her first marriage hadn't worked out it was because God had not truly joined them.
To me, ultimately, you are still recognizing that a formula said, and not lived through, has no meaning.
What I think is that you can't take anything out of the Bible out of context as different passages illuminate and expand on each other. Such as Paul saying that our works will not save us, to emphasize out utter dependency on Christ and James expanding on that by saying that pure religion reaches out to others and is lived by example, not through empty words. As James writes a few verses later:
What does it profit, my brethern, though a man say he hath faith and have not works? can faith save him?
He goes on to say that faith without works is dead and further that "yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works and I will shew thee my faith by my works."
Belief - faith - is meaningless as James says, "Thou believest there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble."
He goes on to make the point that Abraham followed through on his faith, and it was the following through part which made his faith real. He didn't just say he had faith. It didn't become faith until he had followed through.
Which is the problem with just saying some formulaic A,B,C thing. That's like Abraham saying to God, when God wanted him to sacrifice Isaac, "Sure thing, dude." And then rolling over and going back to sleep because he thought God couldn't mean what he said, to do something so horrible.
Abraham moved - he acted - he did a work - when he took his son Isaac to the mountain prepared to do the work of sacrificing him. That was when it became faith. That is why in one part of the NT we read that Abraham was justified by faith and in another (like James) we read Abraham was justified by works.
They are not contradicting each other; the term "faith"as used by Paul is being misunderstood as a passive word, not an action word. James defines faith.
I came across an interesting website, again regarding divorce. I don't agree with everything. My view on divorce is much broader than what he describes, broader than yours too. I don't believe that the only out for a marriage is physical infidelity. Infidelity comes in many forms as Jesus said when he said that whoever looked at a woman with lust in his heart was an adulterer. For myself, I am totally persuaded in my own mind, as everyone must be, that it is the spirit of the thing that is addressed, and not a specific act.
I believe that yes, we should forgive until it hurts, and God knows, I have done it my entire marriage. I think that is the best thing. But I also believe that God totally would get it if I left my marriage and that I would not be condemned. I don't think that God would think less of me somehow or that I would lose some reward in Heaven. I think that the Jesus whose feet the woman washed with her tears totally gets me. "Much shall be forgiven her for she loved much." Knowing that, I think, may ultimately be the reason I stay.
I haven't finished reading the entire web page but here's the link. I think you would find it interesting, even if you don't agree with it.
Layla
I wish I could remember the name of the theologian who, in his later years, when asked what he had learned from all his years of studying the Bible, responded, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
That is all I know.
And I understand the difficulty people have with self-described Christian fundamentalists because you would probably describe yourself as a fundamentalist in that you are living the Bible as best as you understand it, and I too - yet I don't know that we would agree on anything beyond "Jesus loves me, this I know."
The Bible isn't nearly as straightforward as many people like to think it is. For every verse on how we are saved by grace and not by works, there is another verse that tells us faith without works is dead.
To be "dead" in the Bible meant to be spiritually dead, as when one of the disciples wanted to bury his father and Jesus responded, "Let the dead bury the dead."
Or in James, when he writes that "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
It isn't that Mennonites don't believe in grace. They do - they do not believe that works will get them into Heaven. Grace gets them into Heaven. But they also have to uphold their part of the contract by following that grace with action. You have said something along those lines when you say that those who claimed to be Christians but who somehow fall away were never "really" Christians and therefore that doesn't contradict the once saved, always saved thing.
To me, that's sort of playing with semantics, like my friend who felt that if her first marriage hadn't worked out it was because God had not truly joined them.
To me, ultimately, you are still recognizing that a formula said, and not lived through, has no meaning.
What I think is that you can't take anything out of the Bible out of context as different passages illuminate and expand on each other. Such as Paul saying that our works will not save us, to emphasize out utter dependency on Christ and James expanding on that by saying that pure religion reaches out to others and is lived by example, not through empty words. As James writes a few verses later:
What does it profit, my brethern, though a man say he hath faith and have not works? can faith save him?
He goes on to say that faith without works is dead and further that "yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works and I will shew thee my faith by my works."
Belief - faith - is meaningless as James says, "Thou believest there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble."
He goes on to make the point that Abraham followed through on his faith, and it was the following through part which made his faith real. He didn't just say he had faith. It didn't become faith until he had followed through.
Which is the problem with just saying some formulaic A,B,C thing. That's like Abraham saying to God, when God wanted him to sacrifice Isaac, "Sure thing, dude." And then rolling over and going back to sleep because he thought God couldn't mean what he said, to do something so horrible.
Abraham moved - he acted - he did a work - when he took his son Isaac to the mountain prepared to do the work of sacrificing him. That was when it became faith. That is why in one part of the NT we read that Abraham was justified by faith and in another (like James) we read Abraham was justified by works.
They are not contradicting each other; the term "faith"as used by Paul is being misunderstood as a passive word, not an action word. James defines faith.
I came across an interesting website, again regarding divorce. I don't agree with everything. My view on divorce is much broader than what he describes, broader than yours too. I don't believe that the only out for a marriage is physical infidelity. Infidelity comes in many forms as Jesus said when he said that whoever looked at a woman with lust in his heart was an adulterer. For myself, I am totally persuaded in my own mind, as everyone must be, that it is the spirit of the thing that is addressed, and not a specific act.
I believe that yes, we should forgive until it hurts, and God knows, I have done it my entire marriage. I think that is the best thing. But I also believe that God totally would get it if I left my marriage and that I would not be condemned. I don't think that God would think less of me somehow or that I would lose some reward in Heaven. I think that the Jesus whose feet the woman washed with her tears totally gets me. "Much shall be forgiven her for she loved much." Knowing that, I think, may ultimately be the reason I stay.
I haven't finished reading the entire web page but here's the link. I think you would find it interesting, even if you don't agree with it.
Layla
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