Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

>We've probably all heard of the "fire insurance" incentive, though I suspect
>few of us actually subscribe to it.

	Who is this "us?" For me believing in and following Jesus is the 
	difference between going to heaven and going to hell.

			Alfred

    Well, hello, Alfred .1!
    
    	Would you say that the possibility of going to hell was your incentive
    for becoming a Christian?
    
    Richard
    

>    	Would you say that the possibility of going to hell was your incentive
>    for becoming a Christian?

    	Probably the primary one. Especially when I first became a
    believer. In my personal philosophy either God exists or ethics and
    morality do not. Related to that is a belief that life as we know it
    can not be all there is to it. If there is no life after death where
    the way we life this life effects our future morality and ethics mean
    little. Though not as little as if there is no God. So both God and
    life after death - heaven and/or hell if you will - are required for
    morality and ethics to exist. Otherwise the individual is the highest
    standard and maximizing pleasure in this life, regardless of cost to
    others, is the highest goal.

    I'm well aware that others disagree. In fact I spent much of last
    summer discussing this with my professor in "Technological Ethics."
    I found his arguments to be somewhat circular. There are ethical
    systems based on other things but I can't fit them into my own
    philosophy.

    As a youngster I came to the conclusion that one could not be "good
    enough" on their own to earn heaven. This I still believe. Thus
    something else is required. I found and believe the sacrifice of Jesus
    and my acceptance of it, it's meaning, and His role in my life to be
    that sufficient and necessary thing.

    		Alfred
    	

    Well, then.  I stand corrected!! 8-}
    
    Richard

    It's also called Pascal's wager:
    
    If God exists and I believe in Him, I am saved from death.
    
    If God doesn't exist, then regardless of my belief then death is final.
    
    Therefore, I should believe in God.

   Pascal still believed in insurance...

   Me I'm simple, I have a Higher Power, I call it God, Goddess, or just
   HP.  That HP created the world the universe and all order and disorder
   in it's natural form.  Science works by our discoveries of HPs creation,
   we are responsable for it's failures and misuse.   Christ like Moses
   and others were HPs children trying to make sense of a complex world
   and give leadrship toward a better future.  Their work was inspired
   by a vision of a better world.  I don't believe in hell, heaven is 
   the never ending part of me that will always continue if only by 
   others memory of me, though I'm certain of more.

   It may not sound Christian, it's roots come from there.

   Peace,
   Allison

    re:             <<< Note 511.3 by CVG::THOMPSON "Radical Centralist" >>>
    
    
    C.S. Lewis' book The Problem of Pain along with Peter
    Kreeft's Making Sense Out of Suffering are great books that examine
    some of the issues of pain, suffering, heaven and hell.
    
    C.S Lewis has a section  that mentions  the fear of hell as a
    motivator. This is within the context of discussing the problem of
    pain.  I highly recommend both books I've cited above since they were
    extremly thought provoking.
    
    "If the first and lowest operation of pain shatters the illusion that
    all is well, the second shaters the illusion that what we have, whether
    good or bad in itself, is our own and enough for us.  Everyone has
    noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is
    going well with us.  We "have all we want" is a terrible saying when
    "all" does not include God.  We find God an interruption.  As St.
    Augustine says somewhere, "God wants to give us something, but cannot,
    because our hands are full -- there's nowhere for Him to put it."  Or
    as a friend of mine said, "We regard God as an airman regards his
    parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to
    use it." Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our
    happiness lies in Him.  Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He
    leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. 
    While what we call "owr own life" remains agreeable we will not
    surrender it to Him.  What then can God do in our interests but make
    "our own life" less agreeable to use, and take away the plausible
    sources of false happiness?  It is just here, where God's providence
    seems at first to be most cruel, that the Divine humility, the stooping
    down of the Highest, most deserves praise.  We are perplexed to see
    misfortune falling upon decent, inoffensive, worthy people - on
    capable, hard-working mothers of families or diligent, thrifty little
    trades-people, on those who have worked so hard, and so honestly, for
    their modest stock of happiness and now seem to be entering on the
    enjoyment of it with the fullest right.  How can I say  with sufficient
    tenderness what here needs to be said?  It does not matter that I know
    I must become, in the eyes of every hostile reader, as it were,
    personally responsible for all the sufferings I try to explain-just as,
    to this day, everyone talks as if St. Augustine wanted un-baptised
    infants to go to Hell.  But it matters enormously if I alienate anyone
    from the truth.  Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only
    for the moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really
    be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness
    of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this
    must fall from them in the end, and that if they have not learned to
    know Him they will be wretched.  And therefore He troubles them,
    warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will ahve
    to discover.  The life to themselves and their families stands between
    them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet
    to them.  I call this a Divine humility because it is a poor thing to
    strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor
    thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is
    no longer worth keeping.  If God were proud He would hardly have us on
    such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us
    even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and
    come to Him because there is "nothing better" now to be had.  The same
    humility is shown by all those Divine appeals to our fears which
    tourble high-minded readers of scripture.  It is hardly complimentary
    to God that we should choose Him as an alternative to Hell: yet even
    this He accepts.  The creature's illusion of self-sufficiency must, for
    the creature's sake, be shatered; and by trouble or fear of trouble on
    earth, by crude fear of the eternal flames, God shatters it "unmindful
    of His glory's diminution."  Those who would like the God of scripture
    to be more purely ethical, do not know what they ask.  If God were a
    Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and
    best motives, who could be saved?  And this illusion of
    self-sufficienty may be at its strongest in some very honest, kindly,
    and temperate people, and on such people, therefore, misfortune must
    fall.
    	THe dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our
    Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more
    leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success.  Prostitutes are
    in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they
    cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-rightout, are
    in that danger.
    
    Sorry about the length, but when reading it for the first time I was
    struck by C.S. Lewis' characterization of God's humility in being
    willing to accept us even if we're "scared" in as a last resort.
    
    

	So Richard, what incentives do you see?

			Alfred

	RE: C S Lewis His works were required reading in Philosophy and 
	Christian Thought, a required course where I went to college. I
	had trouble with his books back then and keep meaning to re-visit
	them now that I'm older, more mature, and my own ideas are more
	developed.

    The incentive to becoming a Christian is to band together with other
    Christians and create a world of Peace, Love, and Justice for all.
    
    But then perhaps the "definition of Christian" is too exlcusive to do
    that.
    
                            Patricia

I would like to suggest that an incentive to become a Christian might be to
experience the most meaningful life possible.

See, I'm not so concerned about an afterlife.  If there is one - great.  If
not, whatever I believe ain't gonna make much difference.  I refuse to be
ruled by fear of the unknowable.

I'm more concerned about life *before* death.  And I believe that when Jesus
spoke about death many times he was speaking about being dead while the body
is alive, or spiritual death.

Jesus' social teachings remain revolutionary.  We've yet to be able to live
them out fully on any kind of large scale.  Jesus called us to be the light
of the world and to allow the light to shine forth so that others would come
to glorify God.

Peace,
Richard

    
    Richard,
    
    The Bible makes it clear there is an afterlife.  Jesus's ressurection
    and teachings are clear.  How can you be at odds with this
    teaching/belief and yet embrace "Jesus".  I'm really at a loss to
    understand.
    
    While there is great incentive to be reconciled to God in this earthly
    life it is far more important to be reconciled to God in eternity for
    the consequences are paramount.  We can only vaguely perceive eternity
    now (if at all) but if you use an analogy with time (even though
    eternity is timeless) forever and ever together with God or separated
    from God will make all the difference.  Our earthly lives are described
    as "a vapor".  In the scheme of God's plan it certainly is.  I'm 34 and
    already am sensing the shortness of this life.  But it is a motivator
    to be ready for eternity and to be not ashamed.
    
    Concerning a social gospel there is no such thing except in the minds
    of men.
    
    jeff

Note 511.11,
    
>    The Bible makes it clear there is an afterlife.  Jesus's ressurection
>    and teachings are clear.  How can you be at odds with this
>    teaching/belief and yet embrace "Jesus".  I'm really at a loss to
>    understand.

I don't think I'm so much as odds with it as with the degree of emphasis.

>    Concerning a social gospel there is no such thing except in the minds
>    of men.

A great shame, if true.  And I don't believe for one second that it is.

Peace,
Richard

"The Love of God is its own reward."

Peace,

Jim

    Love of God leads us to love of man, inevitably.
    
    Mother Theresa said this, although she may have been quoting someone
    else.