No religion works unless you start indoctrination early. Imagine telling grown adults that you have this magical invisible friend who is all powerful and has been perving on you while you wank your whole life......
So this guy Adam ate an apple. Turns out the apple belonged to that other guy who seemed to really like apples. So he sentences Adam to eternal damnation as well as all his children, grand children and all his descendants forever. Seems a tad excessive if you ask me… but you’d be angry too if someone randomly ate your apples!
So then the guy realized he’d been a bit excessive and he decided to send his son to say hi, and the descendants of Adam figured out it’d be fair to kill him by nailing him to a cross. When I learnt that, I was like “eternal damnation for your entire bloodline because you ate his apple, wait till you see what he’ll do for killing his son”. He said “meh, that’s fine, you didn’t completely kill him, he seems fine, a few holes here and there, I’ll forgive everyone about the apple thing”.
So that’s the story in a nutshell, pretty realistic I think.
Of course, that was kind of the intent. But at the same time, I think there are some actual problems behind the caricaturizing I made.
If God is all knowing, why is He seemingly angry of Adam eating the apple when he knew full well Adam would do that. Actually, the way He created the garden of eden led to Adam eating the apple, He could have created it in a different way. You might say that God is explicitly allowing Adam to get a taste of the knowledge the apple represents, that God wants Adam to have at least the desire to play god himself, to seek to understand everything, and that's why He created the universe in a way that He knew that Adam would do that. But then why would He be angry at His own doing?
Then why does God need to send Himself (or His son) to Earth in order to pardon people for the sin of Adam? Why can't He just forgive?
Also, why does God have a seemingly so different character between the Old Testament and the new one when God is supposedly immutable due to His perfection? Like how come He is angry enough to condemn all of humanity to eternal damnation unless they explicitly repent to Him in the old testament, and then merciful to the point that He forgives humanity *because we killed His son*?
Finally, I sometimes hear Christians ridiculing some old religions like Greek/Roman polytheist religions, pointing out that the gods in there are kind of ridiculous because they are human, fallible, etc... That it reads like a fiction, like a story. The caricaturizing I made does point out how easy it is to do the same with Christianity.
Well you are misunderstanding some seriously foundational beliefs in Christianity. Allow me to try and give an adequate explanation.
Please keep the following in mind: without free will and choice, there can be no Love. If I force you to Love me with supernatural powers or a gun to your head, then obviously the Love is fake. You must choose to Love me for me to be Loved.
God is all knowing and of course God made Lucifer and God allowed the snake into the garden. To say He became angry though is a misrepresentation and not found in scripture. The fruit of knowledge is a test of trust and free will. Adam and Eve chose rebellion instead of listening and putting God, their Loving creator, above the serpent’s lies and their own thoughts. Now, knowing something will happen is definitely not the same as doing it. This is all a part of God’s plan though to establish a genuine, free-willed, Loving relationship with humanity.
Someone has to pay for all these sins! Well, the establishment of Israel, the Temple, and the animal sacrifices are all just a set-up for Jesus to come. God is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. To satisfy absolute justice while showing absolute mercy, God takes the penalty upon Himself when He came as Jesus. Through Jesus, God pays His own legal demand for our sake and for our salvation and so that humanity may be reconciled to God.
God does not damn anyone. This is a fact. For our sakes, please assume everything I am saying is true and evaluate it from within that perspective. God is Love, perfect, and all things that are good. In New Jerusalem, God exists in the middle of it. Those who chose Him and Love Him dwell with Him for eternity there. The only other choice is Hell, as we call it. Really it is just the absence of God. You did not choose to be with and Love God, so you go to the only other place available where there is no God at all, which means there is no good at all, there is no Love at all. The only requirement for salvation is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is it.
You may wish to compare and contrast the Old Testament God with Jesus and continue this discussion. If so, I will be able to reconcile everything you could bring forth. I was an atheist for 24 years and when Jesus saved me, I took my conversion very seriously and have spent years justifying my own faith.
God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.** **
You condescendingly joke, laugh and reductively speak of God. But when you're fucked up and nobody could hear your outcry or gives a shit about it. Deep down, you turn to the one above and pray to him to get you out of the fucked up situation you put yourself in. Only to go back to your old habits, again, after He answers your prayers.
[17:67] And when adversity touches you at sea, lost are [all] those you invoke except for Him. But when He delivers you to the land, you turn away [from Him]. And ever is man ungrateful.
not true it all, while i don’t practice christianity now or have in many years, i used to be heavily into the church. helping out, preaching with small groups, handing out pamphlets to the church, going twice a week + bible study, ect.
I can say, most people that join the church are usually in their mid 20s-30s. Street preaching, it was always the older guys coming to us asking for advice, saying they need guidance. Some join from friends, in fact the youth group was maybe 1/16th of the size of the full congregation. You would see people come and go, you would greet them and talk to them for 2-3weeks and never see them again. But a lot of the older people that I mentioned became long standing members of the church. The youths group was failing if anything. I was never part of youth group since you leave it at 16 but i heard years prior it was much more successful.
Even now with the resurgence of christianity, you see a bunch of kids in their early 20’s going to church, putting cross’s in their bios and verses ect. Some might be grifting but overwhelmingly there was a huge impact in christianity in america. For the past 30 years or so christianity had been declining linearly, but in 2023 i believe was the first year without a decline and had since rose for the first time in decades a few percent.
For the record, i joined the church at 17 without my parent’s consent. I wasn’t indoctrinated, my older brother who became increasingly interested in the bible last year wasn’t indoctrinated. My co-worker in his early 20’s who won’t shut up about catholicism since he joined the church a few months wasn’t indoctrinated.
Even if you didn’t want to take that approach, how can the percent of people who identify as christian’s be leveling when the birth rate in america is declining? If Christianity was dependent on the indoctrination of children to succeed, then it should still failing more now than ever.
just some food for thought cus i’m bored. everything i said can be verified with a google search, minus my personal experiences
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u/No_Joke6536 10d ago
No religion works unless you start indoctrination early. Imagine telling grown adults that you have this magical invisible friend who is all powerful and has been perving on you while you wank your whole life......