note, ive begun the clean up.
if its necessary, just quote old stuff that ive removed which had purpose.
ive noted what ive removed. the lines mentioning what ive removed will not be in the next post i make, so you can leave them there, and i will sweep up my mess.

btw im somewhat busy with work and stuff, so sometimes ill reply within a day, sometimes might take up to 3-4 days depending on how much i can be stuffed to type

<cleaned away introductions.>

Yep, got the quick overview. I'm glad you're dedicated to discussion, but it was a question with two meanings. I am dedicated to God. What are you dedicated to?

im dedicated to me, to my values, to what i want. i wanted to help the homeless, i didnt help them, i ended up volunteering for salvation army and merely collected donations off people by harassing them with noise in the city streets, those donations helped them. i wanted my money to have impact beyond my own selfish material, i donate it. (no real expenses since it flows in and i dont pay rent or pay off uni fees or car loans or stuff like that yet). why is this important? havent you met an atheist before and dont know what life without your god is like?

<removed further unnecessary off topic stuff where discussion has ended>

<removed the "check your bible stuff" since you can simply refer me individual passages where ill research, ive left the bounds of the discussion below>
<also removed the stuff underneath your grounds of discussion

And finally... I want you to guide the discussion. I don't want to answer questions you're not asking, (though I probably will anyway). So please, ignore what you're not interested in and probe what you want to know more about. No holds barred.


<previous exchange can simply be read by referring to earlier posts.>

every knee forced to bow due to his unadultered incredible-ness... by making it so there is no other option ie. not having your knee bow, surely that is violation of free will (going off topic, but this will always happen with me)

I don't see this as off topic at all, and I think we're missing each other here. Let me paint a picture. Say I told you that I could dunk a basketball. Either you believe me or you don't, maybe you're not sure. But either way you can't be fully, 100%, beyond a shadow of a doubt sure I could dunk a basketball until you saw me do it, right? Even if my old teammates told you I could. Even if I taught someone how to do it, even if Obama told you I dunked over him last week you still couldn't be 100% sure, right? There would still be doubt. Either much doubt and you outright call me a liar, or just some doubt where you are pretty sure it could happen but you may not want to bet your life on it.

Then I dunked in front of you. Undeniably.

Now you're sure. It doesn't matter what you thought before. You can't unknow my dunking abilities.
The same is true with Christ. We may doubt him now, but when the perfect proof comes no one can possibly deny him. It's not a choice, it's a recognition, an understanding.

By the time that day comes, the choices will have already been made - either you are with Christ or against him.


but knowing christ definitively is real or not is different from "bowing onto ones knee" considerably different. knowing and doing an act is what freewill entails. you are given some evidence (sensory or otherwise). you compare to your past experiences, you make a judgement then do the appropriate action according to you.

instead, in this instance, you skip the whole "judgement of information" and get straight to bowing.


<previous exchange can simply be read by referring to earlier posts.>

hmmm, i have always seen sin in the simplistic sense of merely disobeying god's directives. the fact that this view of sin fitted with your "become one with god and you wont sin" reinforced that my view of sin was what you were talking about. my bad. you are correct in saying i dont see sin the same way as you do.

As far as the gospel goes, a right understanding of sin is the first step in understanding what Christ did for us (the gospel is who God is and what he did for us). I can tell you all day long that Christ loves you and died for you, but if you don't know what it cost him to defeat sin, it doesn't mean anything. I hope I have at least piqued your interest into understanding the depth of sin.


alright, is there any possible way for you to sum up what you feel sin is into a paragraph (4 ish sentences?). its quite important since its the focal point of this question about christian heaven

<previous exchange can simply be read by referring to earlier posts.>

I see no reason to think that creativity and innovation will stop in heaven. That includes thought. Remember, in heaven you will have complete communion with God. The thought of other heavens and other gods seems ridiculous when infinity, perfect, amazing, etc., God is right there, present with you Did I mention he is infinite? That means we could spend eternity thinking about God and still have more to learn, to think about, to ponder. And we'll be in community in each other.

Also, for your definition of sin - a straying of the mind isn't sin. Dwelling upon it, letting it grow is sin. Check out James 1 - a simple progression is used to describe how we fall into sin. You don't wake up one day and decide to murder your coworkers. It starts as a thought, and you let it grow and grow until it consumes you.
Also, as I mentioned - sin is wrong being, meaning that our desires will be perfected, brought back to how it was before sin entered the world. To how we were before we separated ourselves from God. C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity is a great book, I think you might like it. The last two paragraphs won't make much sense alone but they deal with the personality of Christians. This makes zero sense out of context, but essentially, the more we lose ourselves to Christ the more of our true selves we become. That sounds terribly cultish and terrible, I know - it's not a topic I can flesh out here.

There are many "assumptions" that can be made during these arguments, and they all fall back on assuming/believing that God is exactly who he says he is. If we start with that one assumption, everything else works.


doesnt matter if its in front of you, the mind wanders. say, i was average middle class in australia. i would wonder what the average middle class is in other countries. how they could be different, why they would be different, how the system of ruling and decision makers would affect that middle class. im just saying, pondering if there might be a different 'perfect' heaven is perfectly normal IMO. you might be experiencing perfection, but that would be a subjective viewpoint, what about others with differing views/feelings. perhaps ive looked too deep into subjective realities but what if one person dislikes the brightness and gets a duller heaven and what if one person dislikes the dullness and gets a brighter heaven? a minor difference like this can expand and grow exponentially for each individual. individuality is what defines us, seperates us, this relates further on if our consciousness would be lost in heaven.

or is the ultimate ending for every human at the end of eternity to be a jesus clone in both mind and spirit?


So, here is the point where relativism has got a hold of you. Today our culture is very individualistic. Not so pre-enlightenment. Remember to be aware of how today's culture has shaped your thinking in particular directions.
True relativism doesn't work. Let's say all truth is relative and no one can make any claims to truth because it's relative. Unfortunately, that's a truth statement, which can't possibly be true because truth is relative. Oops.

Perfection is not subjective because God is perfect and he is absolute. In the same way that you now experientially understand my ability to dunk people in heaven experientially understand God's perfection. Not complete, perfect understanding similar to how you are unsure of the exact mechanics of my dunk, but understanding. Essentially, they now know Truth, God's truth and they know that heaven is perfect, because they know God and God is perfect, thus they also know he doesn't lie. Sure, I can imagine a place where dogs walk humans around on leashes, but really that's just absurd since we know it doesn't exist.
No one in heaven dislikes being there, or wonders about some perfection elsewhere in the same way that you no longer doubt my dunking ability.


As for the second part, regarding individuality. It would defeat God's purpose to engulf our consciousness into his. That doesn't happen, we retain our personality. Remember, the God of the Bible is triune - three persons and one essence, three in one. I won't pretend to have my mind wrapped around this concept, but if it's true then it means that God (somehow still 1), has 3 persons. We don't get added to some group consciousness as that defeats the reason he made us the way we are.

We will not be Jesus clones. There is no group consciousness at the end of the rainbow. We do not go into oblivion. Seriously, read Mere Christianity, and/or all of the New Testament. The idea that we go into a group consciousness is really hard for me to argue against because it is so absurd in light of what is written in the Bible. And I can't think of any mainstream denominations that struggle with this definition of oneness with God.


what about the statement "truth is relative as anyone who makes claims will always have others with a different truth" the statement you put forth was an absolute and ONLY a sith deals with absolutes. my point is it was structured like "this statement is false" and hence doomed to be illogical.

then in heaven its not know rather, its believe that god is perfect and its believe that heaven is perfect. aside from omniscience, truth would be relative. how would you "know" that god would be perfect. sure, he might seem god hasnt screwed up yet, but eternity is a long time. how does ones "understanding" allow for mere benefit of the doubt. i bet god has lost his car keys once. maybe not in the past, maybe not in the future but somewhere inbetween.

<previous exchange can simply be read by referring to earlier posts.>
its just the angels stuff

<w1ll's stuff>

<previous exchange can simply be read by referring to earlier posts.>

not all christians are perfect, and i feel safe saying almost all want to be sinners. god cant want you to be you, then change the situation so that most of "you" is not allowed or cant happen.


No Christian is perfect. Jesus is the only person who remained sinless on Earth.

Loving Jesus, avoiding sin, being a Christian... These things are not painful for me. I do not want to sin. No Christian I know wants to sin. But we do anyways, and sometimes yea, we really want to do something sinful but one part of being a Christian is true repentance. This is not a flippant thing, it is a complete turn around in attitude and a desire for change.
Let's say I'm married, I love my wife. If I did something to hurt her, I would be sad, yes? I don't want to hurt her, but sometimes I'm insensitive or impatient or I get angry, yet I still love her.
I love Jesus - when I disobey him I'm pretty bummed out, doesn't mean I want to disobey him. Christians are not stuck in this set of rules, abiding by this Bible thing until we get awesome heaven. I actually enjoy life. I prefer waiting until marriage, being honest, listening well, showing kindness and all those other goody two-shoes things. That's part of sanctification I mentioned early - you actually enjoy "being good".
Just like eating healthy and getting exercise - eventually, it feels good and you want to do it more and your body gets healthier and you have more energy and you sleep better and live longer and cake holds less appeal and super sweet foods are a little disgusting. (Not that sweets are evil) But when you do binge out, it actually hurts your stomach, because it's so used to being healthy.

Remember what my definition of sin is - wrong standing with God. The Genesis narrative includes "the fall" - when Adam and Eve sinned. Originally, we were created sinless. Sin is an imposed imperfection, a later addition. God wants us to be as we were originally, before sin. Sin is not an innate part of being human.


awesome, im going to branch another off topic convo into "the fall". but first comes the reply (although it will inevitably cross). so you telling me the testicles i have demanding fornication are not an innate urge? that eating some fruit giving "KNOWLEDGE" results in innate urges? isnt it the imperfection that makes us who we are?

i quote myself: "god cant want you to be you, then change the situation so that most of "you" is not allowed or cant happen."

although originally humans might not have been created with sin in mind (although technically we were, OH, the bane of omniscience). WE, were. we were created flawed. our entire life of learning expresses those flaws. ones daily nature contains those flaws. simply attempting to imagine heaven right now has me thinking robots. robots who have loss the essence of humanity that defined humanity. robots incapable of expressing any flawed behaviour that isnt programmed into them. in order to suppress primal urges, you accidentally suppress what it is to be human. you might as well be an intelligent apple.

as for the fall, ive heard several versions of it, yours would be nice to add to the collection/file under a previous user's version. this is actually on topic as the question has to revolve around the question of "sin"

The reason hell sucks is because it is perfect separation from God (and everything God is about, like Love). Which is exactly what people in hell want - God gives it to them. C.S. Lewis wrote that "hell is locked from the inside". I fully believe that people in hell would rather stay in hell than join God in heaven. Check out Luke 16, the rich man doesn't want to go to heaven he just wants some water.


This is complete nonsense. God is sovereign over everything but man is responsible for his own actions. Why wait until the end to do this, why not just clean the slate... or better yet why have free will at all since you knew they would sin, let's just have robotic automatons... This doesn't make sense with free will at all. Or with who God claims to be. Or with how I understand God's reasons for creating everything (to give of himself, a whole nother topic).

technically, thats kind of what happens when you become 'one with god', what happens to those memories of "loved ones seperated". are your feelings of longing for family dulled? do you not care so heaven has no hardship? do you become a robot due to making contact with god's omnipotence giving you reasons like "they chose their fate" which overide your emotions?

You do not become one with God, like some nirvana or buddhist heaven where you "let go" and "join the abyss". Feelings of longing for family would only be sharpened. Yes. People choose their own fate. Some choose to follow God and others do not. Really, it's the only sad part about death. And it is sad. This is a very complex question, will I grieve over my dead unsaved grandmother while I'm in heaven. I don't know how that will work. Really, it's not that important if you believe that God is who he says he is and will do what he promises.

Heaven has no "hardship". Interesting question. Perhaps heaven will have hardship, difficulty, "pain", but it will be endurable because of Jesus. John Stott sums up how I view this, "The cross does not explain calamity, but it gives us a vantage ground from which to view it and bear it. -Stott"

This section I'm a little more sketchy on the particulars.

many hardships in life are endurable. i just cant see myself (atheist) replacing my entire family (mix of buddhist + atheist) and most of my friends (although many are christian) with jesus. regardless how spectacular bearded man is, being told "they all chose to stay away" seems like a disappointing and unfulfilling answer. esp since most of them grew up in communist china (the hard communism, not the soft modernised one you see today) where religion was pretty much outlawed. i cant really see some of them as the kind of people that would "lock hell from the inside".
me? maybe, i can see a degree of bastardisation in my thinking that could lead to that, but not an eternity of not unlocking locked doors.

Remember that sin separates from God. Without the removal of sin, you cannot stand before a perfect and perfectly holy God.
You should read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. It's a very short book, told as a fictional story of people in hell, visiting heaven. And he does a wonderful job of portraying the reasons that people will, for all eternity, refuse to enter heaven.
And remember - you don't have the ultimate perspective on people's souls. I'm sure Mao's brother thought he was a great guy, and I'm sure Mao thought he was doing good for China, advancing the country... the greater good, right? That shouldn't get him into hell, right? Oh wait, he directly caused the starvation of tens of millions. Doesn't matter what he thought, the truth is important.

And the truth is Romans 3:23-25 - "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith."

That's a long sentence. Don't just skim through it.


first of all. im sinning by stealing right now (downloading pdf version illegally of that book aka. piracy (YARRRRRR))
second, i wont be able to read it tonight. meaning, ill respond to this properly next time i post.
thirdly, what is the truth? mao modernised china by kickstarting the frameworks that allow for it to happen. his truth was he was successful, your truth was that he wasnt. objectively, what was success? getting china away from feudal warlord controlled china? some sacrifices were made, but gains were made in the long run. im not supporting what he did, indeed, i see it as a failure, but thats how i see it and that is subjective. even today, you will find people with "truth" and claim what mao did was great and awesome and fantastic and wonderful and awesome.

btw, using Paul's writings.
i never thought of him worthy to be in the bible, he was a great writer sure, but that whole generation and a half gap between him and jesus with no actual contact is disconcerting when he makes up* 9 books in the bible

as in 'consists', not 'imagine.'

this was misguided convo, cleaned out.

<removed the colour queries as its not needed>

i just spent the past 45 mins typing and cleaning up only to be logged out for no particular reason. sorry but my motivation just got kicked in the face. i may reply later, but im really quite peed off right now.

I suggest getting FireFox 4, it records the text if you press the back button

No worries ducky - take all the time you want.

And I usually write my responses in a simple word processor, both for simplicity of viewing (to put it side by side with your post) and just in case.