cooterhein

Life as a non-Christian ends- and life as a Christian begins- when God transforms an unregenerate individual and causes them to become a Christian. Additionally, this is also the time at which the Holy Spirit begins indwelling you. His presence and activity is the sure sign that you are a child of God. His activity includes the initial regeneration, progressive ongoing sanctification that causes a person to be more Christlike, conviction, enabling one to "mortify the deeds of the flesh" and essentially live in obedience to God that would be impossible without God's presence and immediate help....among other things. So how do you know if this stuff has happened? Step one, ask yourself if God did all those things. Was there a time when God regenerated you? Do you know the difference between an unregenerate existence and a regenerate state of being in a way that's based on personal experience? Was there a time when the Holy Spirit began indwelling you? Does He indwell you now? What is/has He been doing? Step two: Answer truthfully and honestly. If all of those things did/have/are happen/ed/ing, congratulations. If they largely haven't happened and God hasn't done these things in/through/to you, that's too bad. That's pretty much it.

Absolutely. Some sins are much worse than others. All sin grieves God, all sin that Christians do grieves the Holy Spirit, and in terms that are more familiar to small children, all sin has to do with things that you think, say, or do that makes God sad. (There are hand motions that go along with this). And of course, some sin grieves God (or makes Him sad) to a greater degree than others. It could be expressed in terms of a simple continuum on which all types of sin find some place. All of them grieve God to some extent, and all of them merit some type of bad consequence from an eternal perspective. But some are worse than others, and some merit a comparatively worse consequences. I do believe God sees only one continuum, though. My personal opinion is that God doesn't see two separate continuums that segregate light sins from the truly serious ones while assigning completely different kinds of consequences to them- until the light sins pile up to an undefined point, of course, in which case they would snowball into a consistent pattern of sin that merits serious consequences. In my opinion, there's only one continuum. But on that continuum, any given sin is going to be worse than some and not as bad as others. Murder in the first degree would be worse than murder in the second degree, and both of these would be worse than stealing in nearly every scenario. There are a lot of different things you could steal, of course, so it kind of depends on what it is. Depending on what's stolen and who it's stolen from, one type of stealing could be far more serious than another type of stealing. For example, intellectual theft of an idea that prevents someone from getting a patent and launching their career in a major way is worse than, say, twenty dollars' worth of internet piracy via illegal download. The first type of theft could be even worse if you've betrayed the trust of a close friend, and the second type could also be worse- if, for example, you illegally download substantially more than twenty dollars' worth of material and use or distribute it in some way that profits you. Like if you own a club and download thousands of dollars worth of music so you can play the best songs at your club without having to pay for any of them- that would be more serious than taking twenty dollars' worth for personal use. Yes, they're both sin, but it's clear to me that one is far more serious than the other. That's how it tends to look in the eyes of the law, too. And most of the time- not all the time, but at least in principle- the law of the land tends to be well-founded, at least in its general principles. Different kinds of offenses are punished to different degrees and with different types of severity, and it's usually not at all arbitrary. If it's true that sin is all equal in the eyes of God, the legal system of every country in the world since the beginning of time must have really missed the boat. Forget about natural law; we must not have any clue whatsoever.

There's a couple of things in the article that aren't factually accurate, and the predictions at the end of it are hyperbolic. There is some basis for what he's saying, but there's also some things I can't agree with. The biggest inaccuracy that jumped out at me was the blanket statement about how Christians have historically adhered to the Natural Law principle of self-defense and that conscientious pacifism was always the exception and not the rule. This has been true for most of Christianity's history, but it hasn't always been true, and it's changed depending on how different governments have operated and how Christians have interacted with them. Going back to the first four-plus centuries of Christianity, it wasn't a legalized religion in the Roman Empire. Christianity was marginalized; Christians were the outliers. For that portion of Christianity's history, conscientious pacifism was very much the rule rather than the exception. Christians were near-universal in abstaining from serving as Roman soldiers- that was one of the biggest things that made Christians different from everyone else. They were citizens of the Kingdom, and that meant more to them than Roman citizenship- especially in an empire where Christianity was illegal and its military operations were seldom, if ever, in the best interest of Christianity. It was a matter of trust- Christians didn't trust the Roman empire to the extent that they could be in the military and take orders from that military's leadership without compromising their religious beliefs. Of course, that all changed when Christianity became legal- and in relatively short order, it became the only legal religion. That's when Christians in the empire (and then what was formerly the Western part of the empire) generally became ok with military service, albeit in somewhat different ways depending on the place and time. The way it worked out in the Byzantine Empire was always a bit different from how it was in the West, and depending on the place and time, the line between a country's war and the Church's war might get blurred to one extent or another (more often in the West than the East, of course). A lot of that variation had to do with the changing nature and role of the papacy and the rest of the Magisterium, along with its changing relationships with different types of governments. This is more specific to American Evangelicals of the 21st century, though. Some of what this man says is true, albeit overstated. Evangelical Christians in America do tend to lean more to the hawkish side (although the true mongers are a vocal few) and they do tend to associate patriotism with being pro-war while we're at war (although that does make sense, in a way). He's also right when he says Evangelical Americans generally aren't fazed by bombings, targeted killings, puppet dictatorships, or even the secret black ops that civilians don't know anything about. But there's a reason for that, and it's not quite as sinister as Chuck Baldwin makes it out to be. It is worthy of some raised eyebrows, but it's not....what does he call it....a devilish new world order that is of Satan. It's certainly not that. It's a matter of trust. Evangelicals trust the US military to do make consistently good decisions, both from a more objective standpoint and from a specifically Evangelical perspective. That trust is necessary and good in some sense, although I doubt that Chuck and I can agree on that. It can also go a little too far, but again, it seems that I see a flaw that may be corrected in time while Baldwin sees something that looks entirely un-Christian and in need of fundamental, comprehensive, far-reaching alteration. I don't see that. In a challenging era of war and diplomacy that involves a rapidly changing landscape of players and challenges, the US government and the US military are always hard at work and they're always making decisions that can be either good or bad- but far more often, they're extremely mixed, fraught with unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences, and impossible to assess without the benefit of hindsight. The truth is, Evangelicals in the US tend to trust these efforts a little too much. We do have to trust our leaders to carry these things out to some extent, and military/intelligence operations often can't be completely transparent. But Evangelicals in the US do have a tendency to think that all, or nearly all, of these major decisions are good ones. At times, they may also be too optimistic with regard to how those decisions and actions will be judged in the future. And when the future comes, most of us weren't paying enough attention to remember what it was we should have been looking at. If I can quote Pres. Obama for a moment here, though, let me be clear. I completely disagree with the overly pessimistic assessment of the US military as a tool of Satan and its Evangelical supporters as the facilitators of the ruination of our country. (Hey, that has a certain ring to it....does anyone ever quote things for un-truth? It's morbid, but I somehow like how bad that is). The truth is, we do need to trust our leaders (elected and otherwise) to make really tough decisions all the time. They will usually make them with the benefit of expertise and intel that we don't have, and that's the way it's got to be. I don't think Chuck Baldwin sees that. However.... Often, US Evangelicals too readily assume that these major military decisions over the past 10 years have been very good ones. You know what I mean- it's assumed without ever checking to see if they really were good decisions. And even more often, they're liable to demonize anyone who calls that into question. My proposed solution is that US Evangelicals continue to support the US military and be appreciative of it, but also be better educated on some of the intricacies of foreign affairs and be prepared to interact with them in ways that try to assess whether a course of action is good, bad, or mixed in some way. We need to be open to the possibility that such an assessment might yield mixed results, and we need to demonstrate more of a tendency to go through this kind of process in the first place. Transparency is not always a realistic goal in these kinds of situations, but accountability is something that can realistically be improved. We still need to trust these leaders....quite a lot, actually. And they are worthy of that trust. But we'd be better off if that trust was a little less blind.

Hey, I got some of that MRSA. Back at the end of '07, beginning of '08. Big ol' welt, red puffy skin, started turning purple. I got it tested, lanced, and treated over the course of several weeks. I think I picked it up from a locker room from a teammate who was working part-time in a nursing home. It responded well to the treatment they gave, but they were pretty emphatic about making sure I didn't screw it up with what they gave me. If I'd done a partial treatment with that stuff and allowed enough of it to survive with resistance, the options on where to go from there would have been pretty limited. My life wasn't in danger, though. It's true that some people can die from it, but those people are either extremely old, extremely young, or extremely frail for reasons that are generally unrelated. Otherwise healthy individuals that aren't at risk in those ways do not have to worry about their lives being in danger.

I like the ESV. It is the Extra Special Version, you know. The collective man-hours (and expertise) that went into it is unparalleled, and the results are superior in accuracy while still being readable. Most translations sacrifice one for the other, but the ESV does a very nice job on both sides. It's also representative of a truly ecumenical effort. It's impossible to keep all bias out of a translation, but you can minimize it when you build a team of scholars representative of a couple dozen different denominations (and groups of Christians that don't like being called a "denomination"). Along with the work they did in balancing one another out, the work they put into examining manuscripts from different eras is equally impressive. Again, there are different schools of thought on when, where, and how often a given manuscript is trustworthy. The work that went into the ESV included quite a lot of impressive work in finding answers to those questions. This, too, was an ecumenical effort worldwide. Many translations simply do the translation, fix little mistakes, and update wording for more modern English. But the ESV went all-out with a wholesale re-evaluation of all the different sources you can rely on. That's the main reason why it's the preeminent translation of our generation, and that in turn is the reason why it's been so carefully criticized and examined. It's not perfect, but it's stood up to the higher level of criticism pretty well. I'll also mention the NET Bible. That one is very good as well, and I don't know if anyone else is going to mention it. I also like the Holman one and the NAS....when there is legitimate criticism of how the ESV handled something, either or both of those can generally be relied on to give you something that's better. In terms of bias, inaccuracy, and a relatively low level of reading (between 4th and 6th grade, if memory serves), I'd say the NIV and NAB are equally guilty of all these things in some way. Your perspective might depend on how much you want to balance a dynamic approach with formal equivalency, though. The Message is more of a paraphrase than a translation, although the poetic parts of the Bible are done in a way that you can have some admiration for if you know ancient languages. I don't think most of it is any good for personal reading, though, and certainly not for any scholarly pursuits.

To forgive- as far as it relates to this situation- is to stop being angry or resentful toward someone. It can also mean granting pardon and excusing from some type of penalty or punishment, but based on the info you're willing to give, it doesn't seem like you're in a position to extend or withhold punishment. I would think it has more to do with anger and resentment. Can you truly let go of anger and resentment but still not trust someone? I say yes, particularly if the person is not trustworthy. The lie detector test- if it happens- could be a means of restoring trust, though. For what it's worth, the right kind of lie detector test is practically impossible to beat. If it's one of the intense interrogation types with physical/galvanic responses being carefully measured and compared over a wide variety of questions, that's going to be the most reliable method of testing. It is slightly more old-school and comparatively low-tech, but it's the most reliable by a fair margin. There are some other ways of testing that are easier to beat, even if they are more high-tech. For example, there's some brain imaging kinds of tests that can be beaten if you know something about the machine and about the physiology of the brain. But the more conventional lie detector test is something you can have more confidence in. You should look into it before you make a final decision, though. Talk to someone who administers these tests. Make sure s/he knows what s/he's doing- the reliability of the test rests heavily on the test-giver going about it in a certain way, but that way of doing things is well-established and extremely reliable when it's done right. Look into the reasons why it's so reliable. See if you can beat it, then find out why you couldn't. (I'm assuming you can't, and that's always a very safe assumption). If you look into it a bit more and you're still interested in knowing the truth, you might decide to go for it. It's pretty much impossible for anyone to beat a lie detector test if it's done right. If you're still interested in the idea, you should definitely look into more of the details for yourself and get it straight from an expert who knows why it works and has access to meaningful data, experimentation, and so forth. I'm no expert, but I do know it can be very reliable. That's what you'll find if you look into it more.

This is a thread that I started on a Catholic forum awhile back. (Before I was suspended this month, lol). http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=516624 I got exactly one response from another non-Catholic. James 2 is usually a really popular passage on Catholic forums because it gives them an opportunity to show Protestants the error of their ways, but something that includes side-by-side interpretations of the other passages that unpack Abraham along with an analysis of the semantic range of "justified"....I guess no one there wanted to interact with that. Maybe you'd like to, though. Some of what was quoted in the OP did sound a tad antinominan, so I would probably come back with Bible passages that include lots of "may genoita"....but that's me. Justification is certainly relevant to this topic, but I don't think James 2 is talking about justification in the sense that a man's works render him righteous (or such as he ought to be) or declare/pronounce him to be righteous (or such as he ought to be). Semantic domains are courtesy of BDAG, btw. Rather, Abraham is unpacked in James 2 in such a way that a person is shown/exhibited/evinced to be righteous by his works, working together with his faith in order to show it off. Now, that actually is fairly relevant to the OP, since the guy initially quoted doesn't seem to think these kinds of things matter at all. I think a three-part comparison of the NT passages relevant to Abraham demonstrates that his works did not render him righteous, nor did God pronounce him righteous on the basis of his works, but they aren't completely meaningless as James 2 demonstrates. James does express frustration at people who say these kinds of works don't matter at all, and I think the quote in the OP does demonstrate that kind of attitude to a certain extent. As it turns out, though, works matter....but not because they render you righteous or encourage God to pronounce you righteous, but because they demonstrate your righteousness. They exhibit it. This is one way in which "justify" (dih-kai-ah-oh) can be used. It's a less-traveled path as far as its semantic domains go, but this is one time when it goes there. It's not the first one you'd normally pick, but once you do the side-by-side with the other passages (Galatians 4 and Romans 3) that also unpack Abraham, it becomes clear that you have to go there in order to keep things consistent and avoid a contradiction of terms. Again though, with regard to the OP, works do matter and that's why. I think James would be frustrated with the guy. Newell. I like the guy, I know I've looked him up in the past and used some of his material in ways that were favorable to him. But I do think he gets a little bit antinomian here.