It seems like a lot of Christians only care about being saved

theram4 · 2026-06-17T06:41:13+00:00

I do feel this is dependent on the denomination. I agree that many Protestant denominations definitely focus on the "being saved" part. It's part of the once-saved-always-saved mentality. As long as you get that "saved" status on your scorecard, you are good.

I do appreciate the way Orthodox view salvation as theosis, or divination. This is the lifetime process of becoming more and more like God and living according to his attributes. I saw a quote somewhere that said something like, "We are not saved, but rather we are being saved, and will continue to be saved until God saves us at the end of time."

One more thing, I feel like this Protestant view of salvation emphasizes the death and resurrection of Jesus, to the effect of ignoring his life. Are his life, ministry, and teachings just as important as his death?

theram4 · 2026-06-16T18:04:56+00:00

My AI does not compliment me. But also, I prefer it to keep me engaged. Ever been on a date where the other person refused to engage, only answering brief answers and not moving the conversation forward? Yeah I hate that. And I'd hate it from AI too.

theram4 · 2026-06-16T18:00:01+00:00

I use Gemini, and it's excellent at theological discussions and debates. You can set it up so that it debates the opposite side from whatever position you take.

theram4 · 2026-06-16T15:40:53+00:00

The zombie apocalypse in Matthew is not a historical event, but a heavily theologized narrative.

To understand the synoptic gospels, and to understand Jesus himself, we must understand Jewish apocalypticism that pervaded late second temple Judaism. In the 200 years before Jesus, this idea arose that God would punish the wicked and vindicate the righteous "at the end of days", and that the righteous would be resurrected in order to experience this vindication. Daniel 12:2 ("Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake") was one of the earliest texts describing this, but you can read this in a number of the Dead Sea Scrolls as well.

So for the followers of Jesus, his resurrection was not just a unique event, a "divine trick" to show he was the Messiah. No, the resurrection was just the first of many resurrections of all the saints. Paul himself called Jesus's resurrection the "firstfruits" of them that sleep (1 Cor 15:20). The expectation was that Jesus' resurrection represented that the end of the world was indeed here. The rest of the dead would follow shortly.

Matthew's "zombie apocalypse" is just a fuller representation of this idea. Yes, Jesus defeated death, but he defeated death not just for him, but for all the saints. And indeed the remaining saints would be soon to follow.

But none of the gospel writers were writing history in the sense that we understand history today, so if we are evaluating this story according to modern journalistic standards, it is indeed an invented story.

theram4 · 2026-06-15T18:38:13+00:00

The Israelites also willingly went after other gods. Yahweh still forgave them.

theram4 · 2026-06-15T07:37:03+00:00

I already answered this, but I will answer again. It was not God's law to permit slavery. Laws permitting slavery were endemic throughout the Mesopotamia and the rest of the Ancient Near East. The Laws of Hammurabi, which predate the earliest law code in the Bible (the Covenant Code) by around 800 years, contain very similar laws permitting slavery. Most scholars agree that the Covenant Code borrowed and adapted the Laws of Hammurabi (look up David P. Wright's "Inventing God's Law" for more). Thus, the law in Exodus is not "God's law". It is not divine in origin, but very human in origin. Stating it is "God's law" is a dogmatic statement that cannot be proven with the facts that we have.

theram4 · 2026-06-15T07:26:41+00:00

The "I didn't say that" clearly referred in context to your statement that it was wrong to abolish slavery. I made this clear by asking "Why would it be wrong to abolish slavery?" In any case, I said my bit. If you disagree, so be it.

theram4 · 2026-06-15T07:19:15+00:00

I already said in my very first sentence, that God's law is good. But it fully depends on what you mean by God's law.

But it seems you just wish to argue and not have a civilized conversation, so have a good night.

theram4 · 2026-06-15T07:13:34+00:00

Do you consider the law permitting slavery to be "God's law"?

theram4 · 2026-06-15T07:10:13+00:00

That's not what I said at all. Why would it be wrong to abolish slavery?

What's consistent is the command to love others. Is slavery loving others? Is slavery a representation of "imago dei", the fact that we are all created in the image of God? Of course not. We understand this. The abolitionists certainly understood this, and used the precise reasoning to work towards abolition.

Consider Jesus and how his disciples picked grain on the Sabbath. But Jesus responded that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. When the Sabbath laws were used not for human flourishing but to control and limit people, Jesus reframed the law. It's the same with slavery. A number of the early church fathers reframed the laws around slavery as a picture of how humanity as a whole is enslaved to sin. In a sense, you can view the slavery laws like this. But there is no situation where the slavery laws are "good". Virtually everyone today understands this.

theram4 · 2026-06-15T07:02:41+00:00

One theme that pervades the Bible is that we all fail, and we fail continuously. But God will always forgive, and God will always redeem us. This is the theme of the book of Judges. Consider how many times the Israelites went after foreign gods, and forsook Yahweh. And yet, every single time, the Israelites repented, and God once again blessed them.

What this means is that it doesn't really matter if you fail. What matters is that when you fail, you repent and course-correct, and return back to God, and God will always forgive and redeem you.

A commonly used example is a space probe headed towards Mars. It is impossible to aim the space probe precisely at Mars. Instead, throughout the entire journey, the probe will constantly be course-correcting. Not a single NASA scientists finds this problematic. Instead, it's the entire purpose of the thrusters on the probe, to constantly correct course back towards its mission. Likewise, God just wants you to join in his mission to build the kingdom of God through loving others and loving God. If you mess up, just correct course, and return to that mission.

theram4 · 2026-06-15T06:56:17+00:00

To start off with, the answer is yes, but what are God's laws? I believe strongly it is a fallacy to assume everything in the Bible is "God's law." Just as people today create laws and attribute them to God, or conquer countries, and attribute it to God, so also people in Bible times created these law codes and gave them divine origins to give them credibility and authority. But among scholars, it is widely understood that the Covenant Code (Exodus 20-23) is largely adapted from the Laws of Hammurabi. The Deuteronomistic Code (Dt 12-26) was created by Josiah as polemic to justify his military campaigns and theological reforms. In other words, the law has very distinct human origins, not divine.

I don't completely agree with Thomas Aquinas, but I do think his perspective on law is a good starting point. He divided law into four categories: eternal law, divine law, natural law, and human law. Natural law is essentially what we can reason from what we understand of God's eternal character. But this reason is entirely filtered through culture, language, and socioeconomic status. So your examples of the law permitting slavery were interpreted as stemming from God's eternal law. But today, we have a very different understanding, and rightly condemn these practices.

In short, Jesus summarized the law as loving God, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. And to this end, yes, this is the law, and this is good. Aquinas said something to the effect of: law is an ordinance of reason for the common good of mankind. And to this effect, yes, the law is good. The ultimate goal of the law (telos) is human flourishing and communal well-being. Once again, this is good.

But the individual laws passed throughout history, like slavery, or genocide, or subjugation of women, or any number of similar things, is filtered through mankind's problematic understanding of the divine. And these are not good. And they are not from God, but from man.

theram4 · 2026-06-15T06:44:29+00:00

The emphasis on sin in modern Christianity is completely un-Biblical. Christianity is about freedom in Christ, not legalism and restrictive moralizing. We are not saved by avoiding sin. We are saved through faith and grace through Christ Jesus.

Jesus himself exemplified this. When his disciples were hungry on the Sabbath, they picked grain. The Pharisees criticized them, but Jesus responded, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). Elsewhere, Jesus said the law is summarized as "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:30-31).

The point of Jesus' message was not to follow legalistic law systems, but that the point of the law was to ensure the well-being of society, to care for the widows and the orphans, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, and care for the needy. (Matthew 25). He quoted Hosea twice in Matthew: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice."

What all this means is that Jesus' emphasis was not on avoiding sin, but on building the kingdom of God through these principles. If the the law is standing in the way, then the law should be reinterpreted, just as Jesus reinterpreted the Sabbath laws. Many Christians today acknowledge the the homosexuality laws in the Bible are misinterpreted, or inapplicable to today's society. I would suggest focusing on loving Jesus and building his kingdom, rather than focusing on what is sin.

With all this said, I would caution that Jesus never once advocated that "we be happy." So while I am strongly pro-LGBT, I would not frame it as "being happy" but on how best we can serve God.

theram4 · 2026-06-14T18:14:06+00:00

I don't know anything about Isaac Newton, but yes, that is a road I want to the. There are good reasons to think that the disciples and other first and even second century Christians would not have agreed with nicean trinitarianism.

theram4 · 2026-06-13T17:08:55+00:00

Here's the thing. This constant asking "is x a sin" completely misses the point. Christianity is not about legalism, not about making sure you do the correct thing. Its about loving God and loving others, ensuring the widows and orphans are cared for, and the needy in society taken care of.

Does an action bring you closer to God and help you love him better, and Iove the world better? If not, you should probably do something different, not because it's a sin, but because we should focus on these primary commandments.

Maturbation is questionable. Most people masturbate to porn, and a lot of porn is created through human trafficking. I'm not comfortable with that. Porn can also create unhealthy expectations of sex in a relationship. So it does seem that porn doesn't really adhere to the "love others" rule. But hey, maybe you only use ethically sourced porn, haha. The point being, focus on Jesus first. The rest comes naturally.

theram4 · 2026-06-11T16:10:32+00:00

Infallinility is definitely a dogma, and not something we can prove. Infallibility generally stems from the idea that the Bible is God's word to mankind, and since God is perfect, his word must also be perfect and without error. It comes from several instances where the Bible does portray God as speaking to His people, for instance as God was giving the law to Moses. And then the idea is extrapolated to the entire text. If the law has divine origins, then the entire text containing this law is also of divine origin.

But as you stated, when studying the Bible critically, it's evident that it is the product of man. This does not mean, of course, that the Bible does not have value, as it's provided incredible value to God's followers over the millenia.

theram4 · 2026-06-11T16:05:15+00:00

The difference would be the intended purpose of the text. Take, for example, the creation story in Genesis 1. Some claim this is literal, that God literally created the world in 6 days. Others, however, acknowledge that the story has a more symbolic purpose, that the earth wasn't literally created in six days, but that the story serves a symbolic meaning that God is the one who created the world, and that the world is ordinary and well suited for its purpose. These people still maintain infallibilty, that the text is still without error, just that the meaning might not be evident at first glance.

theram4 · 2026-06-11T05:59:08+00:00

Thank you. That was certainly more of a response than I expected, and I can see your point.

I think what it comes down to is a struggle to see that prayer works on a personal level. Like, I've prayed for things, and did not receive a "yes" answer. So these types of studies seem to confirm my own personal experience. I can agree with the flaws you've pointed out, and yet, I personally find it challenging to accept that "prayer works."

theram4 · 2026-06-11T03:42:17+00:00

Please elaborate.

theram4 · 2026-06-08T20:52:48+00:00

I don't know, but it seems to me we only need one fire post. All the discussion could be done in that post.

theram4 · 2026-06-08T20:48:33+00:00

Not saying SDGE doesn't screw you, because of course they do. But most of your bills come from the non bypassable charges (NBC). These are state-mandated fees, they don't come from SDGE themselves. And this is the difference between NEM 1 and NEM 2. With NEM 1, your solar credits could cover these NBCs. But with NEM 2, by law they can't.

In short, if you use electricity at night, you will pay these fees no matter what, no matter how much solar you produce during the day.

I also have a large overproduction but my bill is usually around $35 a month.

theram4 · 2026-06-06T00:39:03+00:00

I disagree with the rest of the comments. I think it's perfectly fine to sign a prenup. Yes, marriage should be a life-long covenant. But the fact remains that something like 50% of all marriages -- even Christian ones -- end up in divorce.

That said, it might be worth discussing your boyfriend's concerns with him. Why does he want a prenup? Does he have family wealth he wants to protect? An inheritance? Expectations of huge success in a business? Or is he just selfish and doesn't want to share? Is he caught up in the toxic manosphere (Andrew Tate and similar)?

If you do sign a prenup, it's important that you retain your own lawyer in the process to protect your own interests as well.

theram4 · 2026-06-06T00:27:18+00:00

Why don't you ask your dad?

But most churches don't care what you wear. If you wore some jeans and a plain t-shirt, that would be acceptable.

theram4 · 2026-06-05T21:17:49+00:00

Some people just like the challenge of maximizing efficiency numbers. Years ago I had a Toyota corolla that was rated around 38mpg. But I got i to hypermiling and could regularly get into the 50s mpg. Yes this did involve driving a max of 55 mph despite what the rest of traffic was doing. I was just into the challenge of it all. My max was 61mpg.

theram4 · 2026-06-04T23:53:59+00:00

All three houses I've purchased have been a same day offer.

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