One mortal sin sends you to hell forever?

[StrawberryJam]

Originally Posted by JRKH

I can certainly see where this would be confusing. The Problem as I see it that you are taking two partial views and trying to reconcile them while remaining outside the realm yourself.

God is so vast and yet simple that He cannot be adequately explained in human language, only experienced and accepted. Whether looking at personal witness or the written narrative of the Bible, you are receiving only a limited description based on the time place and limited intellect of the writers/speakers and their listners/readers.

As a rough example, take our physical world and the science that we use to explain/understand it. How much more difficult would it be to understand things if you are not a part of the system. Gravity for instance is VERY hard to explain and actually is not fully understood, yet we understand it much better because were daily effectd by it. So partial or incomplete explanations make more sense because of our personal acceptance of Gravity as a fact, and our complete participation in it.

Another example might be piloting an Airplane. You can read books on flying. You can watch videos on flying. You can even go to ground school for flying. However you will never learn to fly until you commit to the fact that flying exists, is possible, and then choose to get into an airplane and participate in it by learning to fly.

Just as a point of calification, do you accept a supreme being of some sort?

Peace
James

Hello again James,

Not wanting to sound brusk, but are you trying to use the "special knowledge" argument? That one can not learn things about christianity without being a christian? I'm not sure if that was your intention or not so I wanted to ask.

You asked,

Just as a point of calification, do you accept a supreme being of some sort?

My answer would be that the universe seems to be acting just the way it would without any perceptible Christian God running it all. Since I can not know with absolute certainty that the Christian God does not exist, I must leave that option open as a possibility, although a remote one.

My interest in the topic started with a few things that gave me some reasons to give a close inspection of the Christian faith, and now I am at the point of wanting to make sure I have truly "knocked" as your narrative promises, if one truly does knock the "door" will be opened to that one. I'm doing a lot of knocking in terms of Mass attendance, bible reading/study of commentary, Studying your faith tenents, and other things I enjoy emmensly like christian art/iconography, architecture, the catacombs and of course the ancient music (gregorian chant) to really immerse myself in the entire picture or what your world view is. Noting has led to me desireing to be baptised, or anything else so far.

[JRKH]

Originally Posted by StrawberryJam

Hello again James,

Not wanting to sound brusk, but are you trying to use the "special knowledge" argument? That one can not learn things about christianity without being a christian? I'm not sure if that was your intention or not so I wanted to ask.

I dunno -
I'm too ignorant of deep subjects like philosophy and such to know if I am using a "special knowledge" argument or not.
I would certainly not say that a person cannot learn things about Christianity without being Christian. I would proably say that a person cannot learn everything about Christianity without being Christian.

You asked,

Just as a point of calification, do you accept a supreme being of some sort?

My answer would be that the universe seems to be acting just the way it would without any perceptible Christian God running it all. Since I can not know with absolute certainty that the Christian God does not exist, I must leave that option open as a possibility, although a remote one.

My interest in the topic started with a few things that gave me some reasons to give a close inspection of the Christian faith, and now I am at the point of wanting to make sure I have truly "knocked" as your narrative promises, if one truly does knock the "door" will be opened to that one. I'm doing a lot of knocking in terms of Mass attendance, bible reading/study of commentary, Studying your faith tenents, and other things I enjoy emmensly like christian art/iconography, architecture, the catacombs and of course the ancient music (gregorian chant) to really immerse myself in the entire picture or what your world view is. Noting has led to me desireing to be baptised, or anything else so far.

Thanks for the clarification. It helps a lot.
At this point I can only suggest that you keep lurking, keep asking questions and we'll keep praying for you.

Peace
James