Begging your pardon, but 99+% of people aren't aware of that method;
It's giving it a name. The socratic dialogue is just asking questions to understand someone better. Empathy is all about understanding someone better. Some people can do this without asking questions, some can't, but the central point is reaching a shared understanding.
No one can do as God can. Everything we can bring before him are as rags. God loves his believers; this is why Christ came. The previous generation under the law and prophets knew God to be a fact; and they still disobeyed him.
I slightly disagree here. God loves his believers, but disavowed the Jews, the curtain torn, and opened everyone up to receiving the Grace of God so long as they accepted and believed in Jesus Christ. When you say the previous generation, it's the Jews yes, but the Jews themselves split into different groups. The main one Jesus disagreed with, were those who used and abused the Talmud, the Oral Law, to get away with ignoring the words of God. These were the Pharisees, but I usually just call them the
Edomites as they descend from them and this goes back to the story of Jacob and Esau. They're pretty much just Jews in name, and not action or beliefs. In some ways, you can hearken our current Zionists and Jews to these Edomites, but that's getting into the weeds of things.
The sin that caused Lucifer to fall was pride, he wanted to be glorified like God.
Most commentators relate Lucifer's fall to Pride, but the Book of Revlation only tells of the war in Heaven, and that Satan was cast down to lead the world astray. This leap of faith ends up being the starting point for Paradise lost and other Gnostic-like texts.
We do not deny pleasure; we try to deny ungodly pleasure. I was an adulterer; I visited prostitutes, strippers. Those were someone's daughter...what if they were trafficked? I slept with married women; anyone who would have me and I was empty. I drank after I got out. I made mistakes. Moral relativism lead me down a path that was ungodly. That caused me to be hurtful to people. To cause suffering.
How many times in your life have you shutdown your computer after masturbating to something foul and felt genuinely good about yourself. This is the first clue that it's gravely unhealthy. This is a meme across the entire internet for a reason. "Post N*t Clairty" as it's called. It's a sign that something is wrong; shame is a sign of something wrong.
Shame is a sign yes, but of something being wrong? People in cruel justice systems, are shamed back in line, and are ashamed to step out of line. Even in our western world, it's often a shame for anyone in left-leaning families or groups to come out as Christian. Shame is just one of many emotions. I think listening closer to your emotions, listening to your body's health, your feeling, your gut. Ungodly pleasures or "post nut clarity" will make one of those senses go haywire and you'll feel it, maybe slowly dulling and rusting you aware, but you'll definitely feel it. Most people do not have the will to act on what their senses tell them(those with poor will), or their senses are so dulled(addict types), or they've denied them so long they distrust them(academic types). If you can listen to those, then moral relativism can help achieve creations beyond yourself, the act that embodies God the Father as seen in Genesis.
They turned his temple into a den of thieves. They gambled, swindled, changed money, and made the temple about money over God. He had the authority to do what he did.
I've bolded 2 parts to think about here. Here's a quote from the screwtape letters regarding it.
We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun – the finely graded differences that run from "my boots" through "my dog," "my servant," "my wife," "my father," "my master," and "my country," to "my God." They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of "my boots," the "my" of ownership. Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by "my teddy bear," not the old imagined recipient of affections to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful), but "the bear I can pull to pieces if I like." And at the other end of the scale, we have taught people to say "my God" in a sense not really very different from "my boots," meaning "the God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit – the God I have done a corner in."
The Jewish ruling class.The Sanhedrin and the High Priest, specifically. The Sanhedrin was ruled by the Saducees and the Pharisees, of whom Christ Jesus repeatedly called out, with authority.
I misunderstood. I agree completely.
So none for the Apostle Paul?
Note I said Gospels. If it was across the New Testament, I have a lot of respect for Paul as he was instrumental in the early Christian Church, especially being the Apostle for the Gentiles. This note about it being the Gospels is important. Paul isn't from the original 12 apostles of Christ.
So then by your own admission, you see yourself as a judge; but do not extend the same to others?
Ultimately, I'm not a Christian. Of course I judge, the same way you judge that my previous message was worth a response. You need to have values to judge something on those values. In beliefs, I'm a Christian Agnostic, I agree mostly in the morals put forward by Christianity, but I don't believe in the God the Father or God the Holy Spirit, and only see Jesus Christ as a man with a lot of good points.
Any church that changes it stance when politics pressure them; well they aren't really churches unto God, because they bowed before human beings. God doesn't change in this regard. If the Anglicans fly LGBT pride flags, you can be sure that a number of us consider them to be apostates.
The protestant church changed it stance regarding divorce and annulment when Henry the 8th was around. Also changed the stance around the inclusion or exclusion of the Apocrypha from the Bible(not as Biblical canon, but as further reading). When you dig into the origin of the Church, the Church that retains the most of the original traditions is the Orthodox Church. Even the Catholics are very lukewarm in their traditions, as you'll see in lent. Of course the vast majority of Christians are lukewarm Christians and all that's really important is staying away from Sin, and belief in Christ for the Grace of God. Just mere Christianity. The schism of the church, between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, leaves most people to pick either or.
When you dig into the early Christian Church, and when you dig into the selection of which books are valid in your chosen Bible and the apocryphal texts, you see how politics applies to almost all churches.
Ultimately I respect you housepoopr as you're willing to substantiate your beliefs. The main point I was making was your delivery was an insult. The Golden Rule is something to think about. A consistent Christian will want the way they treat others done to themselves. If you're going to deliver on anger to overwhelm and insult someone, you have to be prepared and want to receive the same in return. It draws a lot of comparisons to notions of "you reap what you sow" and Buddhist Karma. If someone is a Christian believer, and is behaving in a poor way, they shouldn't just expect that returned, but want that returned to be consistent in the Golden Rule. In this way a sadistic Christian is a masochist.
Depends on your Biblical Canon whether or not this exists. Protestants like housepoopr wouldn't as it's mentioned in the book of Maccabees(2 Maccabees 12:46) which Martin Luther nuked out of the Protestant Bible because it favours Catholic Teachings. Even within the sects of Christianity there is bickering and squabbling over the teachings, that you almost wonder if they learnt from the book of Job with what happened to his theologian "friends". In my opinion, the application of theology and Christian Apologetics is just an appeal to reason and not a substitute for faith(and those who use these are more likely than not, only Christian in name, as they substitute faith).
When you think of Purgatory as existing, some works like Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy(specifically the part in purgatory lol) make a lot more sense.
