[Basilissa]

Originally Posted by Avery Johnson

"We do not choose. Jesus chooses for us."

So if it said in the Bible (King James or Original) that you should kill your entire family, every last leaf on your family tree, you would do it?

This is an honest and simple question.

Oh dear. You seem to have a very false idea about God. You seem to think that God is an irrational being; while in reality, God is the most rational being in the universe!

God wouldn't just say "go and kill everybody" for no apparent reason. While there are in the Bible instances of God ordering to kill own family (Exodus 32:27-28, Deuteronomy 13:6-10, Judges 11:30-40), God always has always has a good reason to do so. Or, sometimes God just plays with a faithful man, to test the limits of his faith (Genesis 22:1-13).

Originally Posted by Avery Johnson

New-born babies, completely healthy and sin free?
Dead.
Because you believe you will go to hell if you refuse?

As it has been already kindly explained to you, babies are not born free of sin. In fact, God enjoys when heathen babies' heads get smashed into rocks (Psalm 197:9).

Well, what if it says your family will be guaranteed to burn in hell fire for all of eternity, and you still have to live your life, knowing your family is burning because of you?

How would that be because of us? It's God's decision who burns and who doesn't, not ours.

Originally Posted by Avery Johnson

But first I must decide whether or not I want to become an actual member of this whole "Cult" that you absent-mindedly call Christianity.

How else would you define Christianity, if not by following the Holy Bible - the only sacred text of the Christian faith?

That and the threads "Cranky Old Man" started a while back, you know, the ones that always talked about how raping girls is okay, and that beating your child into a coma at random times are acceptable.

What part of "IT'S IN THE BIBLE" don't you understand?

Face it. at least 75% of the stuff you post on here is criminal activity,

How is free speech a criminal activity?

you are nothing but sick, vile, racist, homophobic, child molesting, honorless assholes, and you speak your own opinions as if they are from the mouth of God.

Given that the Bible is the only source of our knowledge about God - yes, they are directly from the mouth of God.

You just ADMITTED that you would be willing to commit mass murder against your family, even new born BABIES, a crime punishable by - I don't even know what police do for something like that!!!!!

Oh, I do have a response for you, sweetie: nothing.

Just please, I ask that you think back to ALL of the posts on this website, and try really, really hard, and imagine yourself in someone else's shoes.

Why would we even want to do that? Why would a normal person want to look at the world from a blind person's perception? It's not our fault that heathens insist on not seeing the Truth!

You would be staring into the eyes of a maniac. Someone who beats the life out of his wife and kids, or if you are a woman, you are looking into the eyes of someone who is truly broken, a slave who must watch their children get raped, and beaten alive, knowing that if you do ANYTHINGto help them, that you will get a far worse punishment.

How can any of you live with the fact that you are so blind that you believe there will be a paradise waiting for you in the afterlife, but ONLY if you live your life in agony.

Just...
Please think about that.

Why?

We know what God wants.
We follow what God wants.
Why should we abandon our (correct) way of seeing the world and adopt a different (false) way of doing it?

[Dolores de Barriga]

Originally Posted by Avery Johnson

But first I must decide whether or not I want to become an actual member of this whole "Cult" that you absent-mindedly call Christianity.

Mr. Johnson, I understand your doubts, as I am in a sort of similar place with my own faith. However, your anger towards this particular congregation is rather unjustified.

One, this congregation is more honest than any other Christian denomination that I've ever heard of. All Christian churches claim to see the Bible as the root of their beliefs, as the Word of God Himself: yet, most churches ignore large parts of the Bible. When I was younger, I thought that maybe the problem was with the Old Testament - I imagined that it was somehow a corrupted/less important text, and that the New Testament somehow wiped out God's cruelty towards His creation: cruelty which oozes from every page of the OT. However, a careful reading of the NT shows that it is not the case - the NT God is still as cruel as the OT God.

Two, even if you are able to build a wall between the "nice" parts of the Bible and the "ugly" majority of it, there is still the little matter of history. Most if not all of Christian denominations are or were at some point involved in some sort of oppression of certain groups of people. That's roughly 1700 years of exploitation, slavery, and genocide, all easily justifiable by Christian beliefs.

There are three logical explanations of why all that ugly history has happened: 1) God enjoys all that slaughter done in His name, as sort of human sacrifice; 2) God does not care about humans, He just gave us some random rules and coldly observes our behavior, like a scientist watching rats in a lab experiment; 3) there is no God at all.

I really don't want to believe in options 2 nor 3 - that would mean that millions of people tortured/were tortured, exploited/were exploited, and killed/were killed for nothing!...

It just cannot be true, can it?...

Just...
Please think abut that!