“I am not here to convert anyone for the power to change a life is not in me.”

But the power to change a life is in the one who sent me, Jesus Christ and that is in Him alone.

i am sorry for being an annoying prick, guys.

Rep Douglas Bruce “Lee” Kick Starts His Term
comment 5
January 16th, 2008 at 6:17 pm

I’m sorry, totally different from converting, i guess you can preach just to be an annoying prick.

“I did not mean any insult, and it is in fact rather refreshing to see that there are sane Christians out there”.

Mr. Rogers looks like that beam is not in your eye and your house must really be looking nice. Please help us and teach us more wisdom.

I praise Jesus Christ for the understanding you have.

Mr. Rogers I am curious about this verse you mention,
“If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Cor 11.31) is another verse that doesn’t get a lot of air time in most churches!

really, how do you know this?

This verse you used is from the Lords supper,
Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 1Cor21:28

We must examine ourselves and i see why Alcari agrees with you to a point. When we take the Lords supper we must confess our sins first.

Mr. Rogers if we must examine ourselves are we not suppose to share our faults and point out that we are all sinners with others and than give the only answer which is in Christ Jesus alone.

I’m sorry, the general tone of your article suggested to me that you thought, it is only possible to be a good person if one believes in Christ.

I did not mean any insult, and it is infact rather refreshing to see that there are sane Christians out there. On this site it seems that most religious people are like Hyrocket up there (if you need a better example, look at the old Ashura thread…)
I applaud your common sense, in a world where there seems to be an increasing number of people of the “burn-the-heretic” branch of religion.

I’m not sure I understand why Alcari thought I may have implied that Christ was “needed” in order to love; the point is rather that, if anyone is genuinely following him and what he said, “walking the talk” you know, that ought to be the kind of person one will keep turning out to be. There are ethical teachings in other belief systems that do indeed produce some wonderfully kind and loving people, who in fact put many Christians to shame on that count; I wasn’t commenting pro or con on any other belief systems.

And on hyrocket’s (rather snide-sounding) suggestion about removing beams (planks) from each other’s eyes, well, of course my entire point in identifying myself as a Christian includes me in the plank-in-the-eye crowd too; except that I don’t want to make the great mistake (like hyrocket seems to do) of getting self-defensive about Christians. What was that for?

Integrity is measured by how self-critical we are, not by trying to defend ourselves (that actually is a textbook case of self-righteousness); so yes, hyrocket, the plank keeps needing to be taken from your eye and from mine, and from all Christians’ eyes. I like to polish up my planks and recycle them for repairs around the home; I’ve been able to make several entire room additions that way.

“If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Cor 11.31) is another verse that doesn’t get a lot of air time in most churches! If we Christians really do think it is about Jesus, then we of all people should be the most willing to get out of the way, not get defensive when we think anyone is criticizing us. Anyway, anyone who objects to Christians being criticized clearly hasn’t read much of the New Testament, because in there, plenty of churches get read the riot act on any number of idiocies they were engaged in.

But meanwhile, back to the original point of this thread, which had to do with religion in US politics and so on … my only real point was that we Christians would do a lot better, both for society and for credibility of the faith we talk about, if we genuinely walked our talk rather than squawk about what part it ought to play in politics. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves; do what it says” (Jas 1.22 … yet another verse getting stale on the shelf).

I at least want to be one Christian who speaks up against “religious freaks,” hypocrisy, and the like; that’s also one of the best ways to keep myself from not becoming like that, either. There are at least a few of us who don’t carp about “keeping the Sabbath sacred,” who recognize that evolution is a fact (and contradicts only some simplistic readings of the Bible, not the book itself), and who realize that this nation was founded to be a free country, not a Christian one.

“get accused mostly of being too loving, too compassionate, too merciful, too willing to be servants to others, then that will be a good accusation that I would be glad to be guilty of.”

I would like that to be something that everbody (not just Christians) would strive to be accused of. Within reason of course.

Cheers

Simon Bond

You will never have to worry about that problem, ever.