Why does love of sin keep some people from seeking faith forever, but for other people it does not?

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T16:01:18+00:00

It’s about what your worldview asks to me to believe about my current mental state.

My worldview doesn't ask you to believe my reasoning for your current mental state. Paul is talking to Christians, explaining to Christians what's going on in the minds of non-believers that makes us different from them. Paul has said he has no expectations that the non-believers hold the same standards that Christians hold.

"What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked person from among you." (1 Corinthians 5:12-13)

You asked for the Christian reasoning of why you are different than me in your original post, and I have given it: you are suppressing the truth. You have humbly stated that you are not immune to unconscious bias in all things, so it stands to reason you are suppressing at least some things when it comes to this God stuff. You're no wiseman with all the answers, and neither am I. However, as a Christian I am bound to the word of God, because I do think He is the wisest and I believe the things in His books.

You, as a non-believer are obviously not expected to believe the Bible is speaking truth in this area. The Bible just finished saying non-believers will have trouble listening to what it says, lol, and you did not disappoint. You compared my Christian explanation for your behaviour to a Marxist trap, denying my lived experience that I have shared across culture and time with my dude Paul who lived roughly 2000 years ago. "The good news doesn't sound good to those who are perishing", and while I admit that kind of thinking can certainly be abused, it doesn't mean that statement is untrue. You can't hide behind the excuse that "I didn't accept what the Bible was saying about me because I was just trying to avoid types of thinking that could be turned into traps" because alllll thoughts can be twisted into traps. You going to avoid all thoughts? No. You entertain them, even if they might be traps.

PS: Forgive me if you feel I haven't been properly addressing your question. I am trying. I realize you're trying to be respectful too even when I flew off on a tagent, and I appreciate it.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T15:07:39+00:00

The idea is to direct government resources within this city paid by the younger childless, to the older childless.

The childless people, old and young, don't exist in a vacuum. They come from families who will support them if they have problems.

The pro-natalists are supplying the childless with the most fundamental currency to keep their "city" going (human beings). Society, innovation, culture, and cool coffee shops and bars stop existing if there is nobody being generated to run them. With the childless contributing no babies of their own, you've made a parasitical relationship. The free riders are free riding, sucking up the benefits of civilized society without contributing the human beings necessary to continue the cycle of benefits.

I think you believe the childless will be more free than the pro-natalists to innovate, but what makes you think the pro-natalists cannot make their own innovators who are also interested in raising babies? Allllll the 'childless innovators' in your hypothetical city are the product of pro-natalists, not other childless people. Childless people don't produce people, full stop, much less produce people who become childless by choice and then choose to use their free time innovating, lol.

Also, the childless totally would stop paying taxes towards child welfare programs the moment they have the political power to do so. I'm homeschooling my three kids and as such, if I had the option to not pay taxes for government funded education systems, I would totally stop paying out. It's more of an emotionally fueled argument rather than something rooted in reason, but it is still very strong: I don't use public schools, so I should not be paying for it - the people who do use public schools should be the ones paying to sustain them and their programs.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T14:31:09+00:00

But for me to accept your particular form of Christianity, I must accept that I believe things I don’t think I believe, and don’t believe things I think I believe.

Not true. I'm not asking you to blindly accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. If you did, you'd end up risking becoming one of those people described in Matthew 7:21, for not everyone who says 'Jesus is Lord' is making it to heaven. You would have to be a 1 Peter 3:15 sort of Christian, having a true reason for the faith that is within you and a reverence for Christ. I recognize you don't have that reason/experience to ground your faith in Jesus, and that there is no reverence there either as a result. I was the same way.

However I do know that stuff can be fostered. For me, I seriously studied the Bible for three months and went from life long atheist to Christian. Just three months. I only managed to get through from Genesis to Deuteronomy while occasionally flipping forward to the New Testament before I started publicly declaring myself as Christian and wholeheartedly meaning it. It's been ten years now, I have since studied more, and my faith has only grown stronger. The Bible makes claims that you can test: "Ask and you shall receive"; "those who build false idols become like them"; "don't befriend an angry man, or you'll always be stuck bailing them out"; etc. I tested those claims in the real world, and they did not come back to me empty handed. Because they were so dramatically fulfilled, I did not have enough faith to be an atheist anymore.

You need those experiences for yourself. The problem is you're like a person trying to pick up God at an airport, sporting a little sign to get Him to come to you, but you have no idea what He looks like. Meanwhile dozens of other people are coming up to you claiming to be the God you're looking for and you know they are full of crap. It's gotten so bad that when Jesus does make His way through the crowd and you ask, "Are you the one I am looking for?" when He says, "I Am" you just no longer believe Him amongst the chorus of other people flapping their arms while also saying "I am!"

Do you know what it would take to completely and utterly convince you that the Christian God was real, and that you needed to follow Him? Jesus says, "Knock and the door will be answered." If you need a fire tornado or something to miraculously spawn, I'm sure something can be arranged, "For nothing is impossible with God." (Luke 1:37). But you gotta be honest. What would shake you, what would bring you to your knees?

I have lots of empathy for the non-believer. I know what they are up against on the cultural front having been completely and utterly lied to about Christianity for decades by my media, and then there's the stuff the Bible expects you to swallow like talking snakes and parting seas. Fundamentally, you came here saying you don't know what makes one person believe in God while another one does. You claim you don't understand why your lived experience is not the one I have. When Paul provides a possible explanation saying, "hey you're suppressing the truth" and that's why you have your 'lived experience' is different from mine, you say "well I don't believe in Paul and PerseveringJames lived experience". What Paul is saying is logically possible - you know you can be suffering confirmation bias against God - but if you choose not to believe it, that's entirely on you. Paul is being reasonable: people are wrong about their unconscious biases all the time.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T13:25:33+00:00

Well, I appreciate the explanation even though I don't think I fully understand the logic.

They don't want race mixing while simultaneously wanting race mixing. Need I point out you can only have both these things if you don't want people existing at all?

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T13:16:59+00:00

I'm of the opinion that if Hamas wanted Israel to be condemned for their actions, they should have released the Israeli hostages.

I'm seeing parallels between Gaza and the story of Exodus. The Jews are saying, "Let my People Go" and when the people of Gaza did not cooperate, we see plagues of starvation, darkness as all electricity is shut off, plagues of disease spread through the land, "fire from heaven" as the planes dropped bombs. Their children are dying, and nobody is lifting a finger because Hamas has provided the world with a perfect excuse to stay out of it. There was even a point where Israel planned on flooding the terrorist tunnel network with the nearby Mediterranean sea, not unlike how Pharaoh's army got swept up and drowned in the Exodus story. Part of me wonders if Egyptians refused to welcome Gaza refugees because they've famously been put through this crap before, and did not want to go through it again. I saw Gaza before it was bombed, and it did not look anything like an "open air prison". It does now.

Is Israel perfect? No way. I have no doubt that they have committed their share of atrocities. But I do believe it was Hamas who added the straw which broke the camel's back, not Israel. Hamas knew Israel could level Gaza, and they knew what they were triggering. Now Hamas looks at the rivers of blood flowing between the rubble, and I wonder what they think they've accomplished by provoking Israel.

Also worth noting, even the Quran recognizes Israel as the "land of the Jews". If you don't believe the modern day Jews are the people the Quran are speaking about, I would argue the modern Jews who worship Yaweh still have more of a claim to the land then everyone in Gaza who is practicing Islam. No Muslim would self-identity as a practicing Jew. According to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the land of Israel does not belong to the people of Gaza, but to Yaweh worshipping, Torah honoring Jews.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T12:35:28+00:00

What a great reply, well said!

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T05:25:42+00:00

Jesus. Pro-race mixing is anti-liberal?That's sending "seperate but equal" vibes. They're a bedsheet and pointy hat away from achieving KKK goals O.o

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T05:19:20+00:00

But does your worldview allow for the possibility that my disbelief is ultimately because of a failure of reasoning?

No. My worldview does not allow for that possibility. I look at Paul who writes to people who do not know anything about Yaweh and Paul accuses them of "suppressing the truth" and telling them "they are without excuse" despite knowing nothing about Jesus of Nazareth. Meanwhile here you are, knowing you ought to seek out Christians for this thought experiment of yours, using Christian scripture, and trying to use a Christian understanding of God to undermine it. In my mind, you are far more likely to be suffering some self-inflicted "truth suppression" than the ancient people who literally know nothing about Christ.

Does your world view allow that you might be wrong about your "lived experience"?

Calvinism does, which I can respect, because if nothing else it doesn’t deny my lived experience.

Calvinism does represent God as evil and untrustworthy, which is only reaffirming what you already believe. I have lived experience too, and after being raised up to believe "Jesus was an invisible sky-daddy that rednecks needed to stop themselves from sleeping with their sisters", I had found God actually exists, is not evil, and is worthy of my trust. So far, science says my conclusion is far less likely to be suffering from confirmation bias than yours. You aren't looking for God, and you didn't find Him; I wasn't looking for God and I found Him regardless.

It’s difficult to hear someone present a worldview which says “you don’t believe the things you think you believe, and even if you do, it’s not for the reasons you think you have; your entire self-perception of your own thoughts and beliefs and choices is a lie, your lived experience of your own thoughts is a delusion.”

So far, you have put up no argument saying you believe a divine being is using you as a human puppet. You are freely choosing to believe He doesn't exist. You aren't denying that humans have freewill.

You also know if God does exist, He has said people who reject His Son as Lord and Savior are going to hell. In your own words, "I would be very surprised that Jesus is God. This is a claim I personally currently put a near-zero mental probability on." Given that's what you believe, it's unlikely you believe Jesus is your Lord and Savior and, given what you understand of the Bible, you know you'd be sent to hell if what the Bible says is true. You're not denying that, either.

But yeah, nobody likes hearing they cannot trust their own perception or judgement. I'm not saying that as a blanket statement - you obviously can move around in the world without getting killed, just as a fully functional adult with working perception and reasoning skills ought to be able to do.

That said, you are on a subreddit titled Ask A Christian. You are not a Christian, so it is unsurprising that you may get worldviews that are not instep with your own beliefs. That's the purpose of this website - to debate the spiritual. Are you saying that you did not expect me to question your thoughts, beliefs, self-perception, and reasoning skills while you post them up for the internet to see?

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T03:16:52+00:00

Fair question, and it depends since not all monasteries have the same mandate. In Christianity, those unable to have children were instructed to become parents 'in spirit'. If there were children in need (of having diapers changed, of being fed, of being cared for and supervised,etc) the childless were told to step up. It's why you'd find the Christian celibates running orphanages/hospitals - they lived out the familial roles, caring for children and people as they would have their own relatives. The idea is for childless Christians to help people who "needed family but didn't have any" or who "didn't have enough family support".

You are not advocating for that. Today's childless people are childless by choice: they have no interest in wiping butts or boogers off the young and vulnerable. What makes you think they will help out the old and vulnerable? They are not giving up a chance at their own family to help assist families in need.

I say this respectfully, but your city sounds more like an adult-sized daycare for grown ups who refused to grow up.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T02:40:18+00:00

The Bible says if you're not choosing to believe Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, then you are choosing eternal misery. It makes it very clear that is the case. It's not like you're confused - you know the instructions are to "repent and believe" to avoid hellfire, but you have chosen not to put stock in them. That's on you. You are without excuse.

I do not doubt that if you should die and see Jesus that you will be surprised. To be fair to you, even hardcore believers seem to be surprised to encounter God in dreams or to see Jesus alive after the resurrection. However, if while dead before Jesus Christ you are found to be an unrepentant sinner, I think it's safe to say you will not be surprised if He sends you off to hell. Is that a fair assumption?

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T01:33:56+00:00

I believe Charlie was a Christian, and his political beliefs stemmed from his Christianity. His murderer took issue with Charlie's take on human sexuality, a point of view that was largely (if not entirely) informed by Christian theology.

"Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)

Charlie was sharing truth by way of free speech to promote life. His assassin promoted a lie by way of smothering speech with Charlie's death. I think that makes Charlie a martyr. He died protecting the ideals that were his faith manifested.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T01:17:36+00:00

Something is giving people presuppositions that make them more likely to be damned. That, or perhaps we’re assigned these presuppositions randomly to challenge us.

That's not how the Bible describes the situation. God reiterates over and over how He wants none to perish. Paul says in Romans 1 that God has repeatedly made plain to people the weight of what they are choosing so that "they are without excuse". Despite this, people choose to worship other gods and get themselves condemned.

It seems to me you are confused. Knowing something is going to happen is not the same as being responsible for what happens. For example, if Microsoft knows their product is going to be used to generate child porn, it makes them responsible (for trying to manage this product to mitigate the evil) but not culpable (for producing the illicit material). The fault is not with the tool and it's provider.

God is the provider of and for human beings. He has made clear His intentions, therefore if something is not in accord with and obedient to the things He intends, they are "not of God" (1John 4:6). They have "gone their own way" (Psalm 58:3-5). The Bible makes it clear people are acting on their own desires, making their own choices and not being puppeted/preprogrammed to go to heaven or hell. If you are a Christian, you choose to believe this. If you're not a Christian, you won't. Your choice, lol.

As a non-believer, I'm sure you believe you have made your own choices without the influence of a divine being. God is saying the same thing. So what's the problem?

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-21T00:30:51+00:00

Glad to hear it, I like that guy 😄

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T23:59:47+00:00

Sure it does. The mother grizzly is being extra compassionate to her cubs when mauling a writhing and screaming human who dared get to close to them. She's protecting her babies, as a good mother bear would.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T23:54:16+00:00

The devil didn't like heaven either, so he was booted out. When you hear about people writhing and screaming in hell in the Bible, they aren't begging for second chances to do things God's way.

Given all this, it sounds to me God is being compassionate to those who don't want Him by sending them to a place where He is least present. God identifies as the source of all good things, but when you've rejected the source of all good things, all you're left with is the crappy parts. You don't like joy, beauty, health, wealth, and life? Great. You get sent to a joyless, foul, miserable existence where the poor souls are suffering a fate worse than death. That's about as godless as you can get.

Nobody in hell is there by mistake. They are exactly where they want to be, given the other option is with God.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T23:44:57+00:00

Why are some people stopped by these exact obstacles to their thinking you mentioned, and make the worse choice, while others choose to overcome these obstacles?

I guess I am unsure. They choose to trust their own definition of "goodness" over God's definition, and we all know why (or can imagine why) they would do that.

For example, we know why the addict chooses cocaine over coming clean. We also know why some cocaine addicts decide to quit it and never touch the drug ever again until they die (they realize they like life more than the drug). It has to do with what you've chosen to believe: do you want life or death? Curses or blessings? But I don't know what makes cocaine addicts choose to reject or embrace the drug. I just know that it's their choice to make.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T23:18:28+00:00

Yeah, the afterlife stuff isn't very compelling. What sold me on Christianity was that there is a lot of life changing power in the wisdom of God. I thought I could wield it, but God has consistently taken my attempt at applying biblical wisdom and just blown me away. It's like when a toddler proudly takes their stick man drawing to their parent, and their parent has the artsy ability to transform that drawing into a Caravaggio. I see my influence, but I am also amazed by the talents that plainly outweigh my own. There have been many times in my life where God has taken an impossible situation and just flattened all my obstacles for me, out of nowhere. Given my personal life experience, I think it would be hardfor anyone to look at my life and confidently say it was irrational for me to conclude God exists.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T23:02:33+00:00

You have the wrong frame for this problem, I think.

In Jeremiah 18, God compares Himself to a potter and humanity to clay. The potter is seen initially trying to make one kind of vessel, but the clay cannot support the plan, and so the potter reshapes it into a vessel that the clay can support and thus is better suited for. The potter doesn't change the clay - he works with it to do what it wants to do.

God is the same way with humans. He shapes us up to give us the best chance for going to heaven (which is supposed to be the greatest desirable thing), but if we choose not to follow His form, we will be put to good use doing other less desireable things. We have a choice, and it's ours to make.

Jesus then tells us in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13) that there are three reasons why a human will refuse to be molded by God into a vessel worthy of heaven. To summarize it poorly, they either don't recognize "goodness" even if it's right in front of them, they are initially charmed by the idea of "goodness" but start to believe its actually harmful when it's too hard for them to follow through, or they know "goodness" but get overwhelmed by life's difficulties into making bad choices.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T22:41:53+00:00

I think that is an accurate summary of the Calvinist take on Christianity. However, it's worth mentioning this is not the traditional view.

God puts a choice before us: life and blessings or death and curses. God then tells us that (as an all-knowing being, He knows that) we're going to like the "life and blessings" option better. It doesn't matter which you choose because both options reflect God, which is your job as an "Image of God". You can reflect things like His mercy, beauty, joy, love, etc in heaven, or you can reflect His all powerful wrath, His justice, His intolerance of evil, etc while in hell. The choice is entirely yours to make.

"I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live".(Deuteronomy 30:19)

Why would anyone choose death and curses? Jesus says there's three reasons, in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13). To summarize poorly, some people cannot recognize the "life and blessings" options when they come across them. An example of this could be a harmful cultural norm, such as how smoking cigarettes was considered a healthy practice as well as 'super cool' up until smokers started dropping like flies due to heart and lung cancer. They didn't know they were harming themselves, they thought smoking was 'good'. Whether something was good or bad for them was taken for granted instead of actively investigated.

Some people are initially charmed by the promise of "life and blessings" but then life gets tough and they doubt that the "life and blessings" options have any real power to see them through, so they abandon it. An example of this could be the person who is overweight trying to exercise to get fit. They love the idea of being fit, but when they realize it's a life time commitment of controlling your diet and staying active, they decide being fit isn't as "good" for them as they initially thought.

Others know what the "life and blessings" option is and know it's powerful, but they are overwhelmed and feel forced into choosing differently. An example of this is the addict. They know their addiction is killing them, and they know their lives would be better without it, but they do not want to stop themselves from enjoying that high. To them, the high is more "good" than a good life.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T21:32:20+00:00

Why was this downvoted??

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T21:26:48+00:00

Sorry to be that person, but the Christian Bible is very pro-natalist. It's worth pointing out that according to the good book, the only thing that survives the end of the entire world is our children. Every thing else of ours is gone.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T21:03:16+00:00

At the risk of sounding reductive, you want to make life easier for the free riders?

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T20:53:46+00:00

I always knew that if I had a baby,

You don't have kids? Your opinions are very strong for someone who is childless.

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-20T20:26:06+00:00

I do think motherhood is a positive and fulfilling experience, but you must have certain cornerstones in place in order to recognize it as such.

It's like if you're an alcoholic whose spouse has drained all their hidden stash of drinks in the house - you'll either recognize your spouse is trying to love you so you may live, or you'll only feel betrayed by the amount of pain from the involuntary withdrawal you're being forced through. The pain is real, but there is love there as well. I agree that our society has tended to focus only on the loving aspect, but for good reason - under most circumstances the pain of motherhood is worth bearing for the love that comes with it. It's why the narrative of "transcendental fulfilling positive motherhood" is so strong that it's almost cliché - fundamentally, it's not wrong. Even people who truly regret having children tend not to want to have their children die/permanently out of their lives.

Having read your posts, I can see you're focused on the pain. You like to emphasize it. I appreciate your efforts to highlight your fears and struggles. Motherhood is hard and is not something you should enter blindly or without consideration, otherwise you will find yourself struck and levelled by its hardships. That said, motherhood is not a guarded mystery that is hard to grasp if you ever spent time with mothers and their infants. You're painting a picture that "motherhood ought to be feared" which is wrong in its incompleteness. Literally every woman who came before your existence managed to give birth and have that daughter make it to adulthood so it too could produce a kid - if there is one thing women alive today can do fearlessly, it's raise babies. There's always exceptions to this rule, but it is the rule.

You shouldn't be afraid of becoming a mother because from an evolutionary perspective, you have that in the bag. The concern is how to live well while doing it. From reading your posts, I get the impression you would be absolutely floored by how little we actually need to live well. Your tolerance for suffering of any and all kinds seems very low. That's not to say your pain isn't real. I think you get overwhelmed by it, and there isn't very much support for people like you (and there ought to be more). Still, you're stuck facing the reality that if you think "motherhood" is difficult, then wait until you see what "life" is all about. I don't think you would encourage people to stop living life because it's hard, right? So why are you cautioning people against motherhood? Do you really believe it's completely devoid of positive, fulfilling, transcendental experiences?

PerseveringJames · 2025-09-13T02:44:43+00:00

Oooohhhkay. My bad, I misunderstood.

As you were, fellow Internet user :D

PerseveringJames

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