Why a True Christian cannot be a Modern Liberal

[darin]

Is that by choice or because God has taken away the desire to sin. Bad mindset gone--good mindset present ?

When somebody accepts Christ -makes the conscious decision to follow Him, Our spirits are made new. We are 'reborn' spiritually. The old desire for things of a sinful nature are buried.

[Abbey Marie]

Is that by choice or because God has taken away the desire to sin. Bad mindset gone--good mindset present ?

Hey Dillo, give it a try and you may see for yourself.

[diuretic]

Just reflecting on this again. The attempt to bash people of a particular political persuasion with a hammer labelled "religion" is not just distasteful, it's illogical.

Politics and religion are two different things. They have different aims and have different processes. There's no contradiction between someone holding political views and also practising a religion. Someone can be a Christian, a Buddhist, Jain etc and hold political views. The attempt to suggest that someone can't hold certain political views and still profess their Christianity relies on a severely narrow idea of what Christianity is. It's the mindset of the fundamentalist. It's the same mindset as any fundamentalist approach to religion.

[Dilloduck]

When somebody accepts Christ -makes the conscious decision to follow Him, Our spirits are made new. We are 'reborn' spiritually. The old desire for things of a sinful nature are buried.

Buried ? Temptations to sin again are buried ? Then why all the sinning by those "born again" ?

[Dilloduck]

Hey Dillo, give it a try and you may see for yourself.

How would you know that I haven't ?

[Abbey Marie]

How would you know that I haven't ?

Either you haven't, or you're enjoying playing devil's advocate. Whatever floats your boat.

[Dilloduck]

Either you haven't, or you're enjoying playing devil's advocate. Whatever floats your boat.

I think a lot of people reject religion because people can't explain it. I'm not playing devils advocate. I want to hear a description of a "true" Christian. If I can ever get one, that might explain a few things. Surely Christianity can explained. I also don't believe that being born again makes one immune to temptation nor sinning in a manner.

[manu1959]

I think a lot of people reject religion because people can't explain it. I'm not playing devils advocate. I want to hear a description of a "true" Christian. If I can ever get one, that might explain a few things. Surely Christianity can explained. I also don't believe that being born again makes one immune to temptation nor sinning in a manner.

there is only one true christian.....

[diuretic]

I think a lot of people reject religion because people can't explain it. I'm not playing devils advocate. I want to hear a description of a "true" Christian. If I can ever get one, that might explain a few things. Surely Christianity can explained. I also don't believe that being born again makes one immune to temptation nor sinning in a manner.

John Milton in Areopagitica said:

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.

(emphasis added)

So perhaps to him a true Christian was someone who knows good and evil and despite the temptations of evil chooses good. But he also goes on to say:

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary

In saying that perhaps he was also emphasing that Christianity is constant practice and not merely mouthing words of scripture and shying away from temptation. It's about being in the world and staring temptation in the face and denying it and not succumbing and then scrambling to cover it up or tearfully begging for forgiveness on television (Swaggart).

[Dilloduck]

there is only one true christian.....

pretty much my thoughts on it----the rest of us just put different amounts of effort into it.