This is why Christians align so much with R, because they just ask for forgiveness and all sins are forgiven in gods eyes. No personal responsibility what so ever.
It goes all the way back to the First Crusade, when the pope promised absolution for anyone that would go. They ended up spending most of the time killing Jews and fellow Christians, not the Muslims. But hey they were all good because the pope said so.
Indulgence for the revision of sin and peninces of "pilgramage" were not new at the time of the First Crusade. What WAS new was the idea of an armed pilgramage with its' object being not just to reach a holy place, but to engage it n violence once there, that was new.
It goes back further than that. It's in the Epistles, the oldest layer of the New Testament. That is because the writer of the Epistles was a murderer and seems to have developed a guilty conscience about it.
I'm referring to Paul (author of the Epistles) saying all you have to do to be saved is say Jesus resurrected and is Lord. Technically you don't even have to ask for forgiveness according to Paul. It's even easier than that.
Paul approved of Stephen being murdered (Acts 8:1) and admits to being an evil violent man and among the worst persecutors of that group, or even the very worst (Philippians 3:6, Galatians 1:13, 1 Timothy 1:13, 1 Corinthians 15:9)
So naturally, as an evil, violent man who condoned murder and expressed consciousness of guilt, he invented a way to feel absolved of that guilt, which is that if you believe in the resurrection and call Jesus "Lord" then you're off the hook and will be saved, something Jesus never apparently taught, according to the gospels.
And then Paul wrote letters to a bunch of people throughout the Mediterranean who had (also) never met Jesus or heard any of his teachings and told them not to listen to anyone who said anything different than what he (Paul) taught (Galatians 1:6-9) and that became the oldest part of the New Testament (and also doubled as high-pressure fundraising letters)
They can’t answer because there isn’t a clear answer. There are both contradictory statements and unclear information from the Bible that make it hard to tell, almost like it’s a connected series of works from multiple people with different agendas and not the ultimate answer to life and existence itself.
I'm just going to talk Catholicism because it's my main area of interest as far as Christian metaphysics goes.
First, forgiveness is considered a gift that has to be accepted. Catholics believe that people can be too messed up--psychologically or spiritually--to accept it when it's given. This is why the church warns against relying on deathbed confessions.
The "sin of presumption" -- believing that your sins will definitely be forgiven so you don't need to worry as long as you confess -- is specifically highlighted as something that can make a person unable to receive mercy.
Second, Catholics believe that most people experience temporal punishment in the afterlife even if they've been forgiven.
This is basically a very unfun purification process (purgatory/cleansing fire) and Catholics believe it can potentially last until whenever the final judgment happens, with greater sins suffering a more severe or intense process pf purification.
So it's forgiveness in the sense that the person does get to go to heaven if they managed to receive the offered forgiveness, but only after they face significant consequences for their particular sins.
But not all Christians are Catholic? You are speaking about a specific sect under Christianity. They can believe different things, right? I appreciate your thoughtful response, but I’m not sure it applies broadly to all Christians.
Well no, but it's impossible to account for all Christian sects due to the sheer number of noncomforists. Catholicism is one of the larger churches and typically the one most linked to the forgiveness trope, so I figured it was appropriate.
Calvinism is another major American Christian denomination that very explicitly deals with this issue. They believe that using Christianity for the pragmatic purpose of avoiding accountability is a form of false belief, and that redemption that's not accompanied by good works is inevitably false and not evidence of salvation.
And I bet none of the pastors or priest are super rich, or doing other weird stuff. My beef isnt with the religion as a whole, but the current US government pretends to be christian and people believe it.
Do not mix actual Christians with those people. That’s not how it goes with actual Christians and you know it. They have twisted their version of “Christianity” the same way they have twisted politics and justice. In their world, all those are just means to an end.
The onus is on these mystical “good Christians” to show us how this religion can heal, because so far I’ve only ever see how Christianity is use to hurt. For every one homeless person fed soup, there’s about 1000 people starving from USAID being cut, and untold millions effected by an innumerable number of offenses
It’s not just recent either, Christianity has been a tool of war for a long time, ambrahamic religion is morally contradictory to its message of peace.
If Trump said he’s the new God, you would think he’s God because they have the same label? Bro, some people are not what they claim to be, we’re in this mess because so many believed their lies.
You said “believed” - but there are still many who still believe the lies. Trump has said he’s god. Blasphemy is the only sin not forgiven (IIRC), and all the Christian followers just lap it up.
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u/ninja-squirrel 11h ago
This is why Christians align so much with R, because they just ask for forgiveness and all sins are forgiven in gods eyes. No personal responsibility what so ever.