I don’t understand then. Original sin is a primary tenant of Christianity. Christianity cannot exist without it. Otherwise what is Jesus saving you from? You have to deserve hell so that you can be saved.
If you don’t believe this and force it onto your children then are you even a Christian? Why wouldn’t you want to completely brain wash your children to keep them out of hell? This is not some fringe thing. It’s unavoidable and necessary to justify the Christian religion’s existence. When I grew up in the church no one told me word for word, “you’re a terrible person and you can never be good”. They just taught me the Bible and the Bible is very clear on this.
And don’t worry I’m not only attacking Christianity. Religion is easily the most harmful human invention. It has caused more suffering than anything else. Capitalism, communism, nationalism, etc are all bad but it’s not even close. Let’s eliminate religion first and then move on to the next most harmful thing.
Original sin does not require telling a 2 year old that they’re a terrible person. Quite the opposite: Christians tell their kids that God loves them. But that we are sinners is hard to deny when you look at the state of the world. And even the best of us fall short of what Jesus expects from us, but we should try anyway. To love our neighbour, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, welcome the foreigner, and even love our enemy. Nobody does all of that to the level that we should, but we should try anyway.
But clearly there are people with a more negative approach to this. I think they’re a bit too eager to prove their own point of being terrible people. We should strive to be good instead.
You just said it though. God loves you but you’re a sinner. Implied that god’s love will torture you for eternity because of your sin unless you follow the rules. Fear and love are not the same thing. Teaching anyone, especially children, that someone/something will hurt you because they love you is textbook abuse grooming. There is no way around it and you just proved it.
Yeah, that would be terrible. Fortunately that’s not how it works. It’s not about following the rules, it’s about accepting God’s grace, and about trying to do good. Salvation is not something we earn, it’s something we receive. The way it was taught to me is that all we have to do is to accept it.
Of course we should also do good. Not to earn salvation, but simply because it’s good. Although there’s also Matthew 25 that suggests strongly that if you’re there for people in need, you will be saved even if you’re not aware of God, and if you’re not, you won’t, even if you are. That sounds contradictory, but the idea is that if you accept Jesus, you accept other people, and if you reject other people, you also reject Jesus.
But Christianity is not as rules-based as Islam or Judaism (although I suspect that also varies by interpretation).
The obsession with torture is more a medieval holdover as far as I can tell, and not something any Christian I know obsesses over.
I don’t understand then. Original sin is a primary tenant of Christianity. Christianity cannot exist without it. Otherwise what is Jesus saving you from? You have to deserve hell so that you can be saved.
If you don’t believe this and force it onto your children then are you even a Christian? Why wouldn’t you want to completely brain wash your children to keep them out of hell? This is not some fringe thing. It’s unavoidable and necessary to justify the Christian religion’s existence. When I grew up in the church no one told me word for word, “you’re a terrible person and you can never be good”. They just taught me the Bible and the Bible is very clear on this.
And don’t worry I’m not only attacking Christianity. Religion is easily the most harmful human invention. It has caused more suffering than anything else. Capitalism, communism, nationalism, etc are all bad but it’s not even close. Let’s eliminate religion first and then move on to the next most harmful thing.
Original sin does not require telling a 2 year old that they’re a terrible person. Quite the opposite: Christians tell their kids that God loves them. But that we are sinners is hard to deny when you look at the state of the world. And even the best of us fall short of what Jesus expects from us, but we should try anyway. To love our neighbour, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, welcome the foreigner, and even love our enemy. Nobody does all of that to the level that we should, but we should try anyway.
But clearly there are people with a more negative approach to this. I think they’re a bit too eager to prove their own point of being terrible people. We should strive to be good instead.
You just said it though. God loves you but you’re a sinner. Implied that god’s love will torture you for eternity because of your sin unless you follow the rules. Fear and love are not the same thing. Teaching anyone, especially children, that someone/something will hurt you because they love you is textbook abuse grooming. There is no way around it and you just proved it.
Yeah, that would be terrible. Fortunately that’s not how it works. It’s not about following the rules, it’s about accepting God’s grace, and about trying to do good. Salvation is not something we earn, it’s something we receive. The way it was taught to me is that all we have to do is to accept it.
Of course we should also do good. Not to earn salvation, but simply because it’s good. Although there’s also Matthew 25 that suggests strongly that if you’re there for people in need, you will be saved even if you’re not aware of God, and if you’re not, you won’t, even if you are. That sounds contradictory, but the idea is that if you accept Jesus, you accept other people, and if you reject other people, you also reject Jesus.
But Christianity is not as rules-based as Islam or Judaism (although I suspect that also varies by interpretation).
The obsession with torture is more a medieval holdover as far as I can tell, and not something any Christian I know obsesses over.