Wedding photos you can't show your babushka

Quote: Evenbob

You can't just disagree, you always
have to make it personal. You always
have to throw in some dig at my
intelligence or my personality. I was
wondering the other day why, after
all our conversations, we aren't
friends.

Dear Bob, it was not always so. Dare I say we were friends until recently. I was always happy when you would announce that you enjoyed discussing things with me in the past. I wonder if you could please turn the mirror for a bit on yourself? It is you who are the one constantly and viciously attacking me, my motivations, what I am thinking (as if you know), and my faith. Do you not think that is personal to me? Do you not think it hurts to hear you say such things (falsely) about me, my faith, and Jesus? Now I don't want you or anyone to stop asking difficult questions or throwing out challenges to my faith, it is how it grows and how we all learn things. However, you spit venom and have the audacity to claim it is true. You have never acknowledged a mistake of yours (and there has been more than I can count), you have never as much as modulated an opinion of yours, and say the same lies and myths over and over again. I do not loathe you, nor do I even dislike you but you are one of the worst people I have ever in my life interacted with online. I can't tell you how many people had told me to stop and that I was wasting my time, but I refused. I still have hope for you and for our conversations, and dare I say our friendship. I am sorry for any thing you took as a dig or took personally, but I am sorry to say that I can't take much of it back. I do believe you act online like a child, that you do not care to learn anything, are set in your ways, in regards to Christianity are terribly ignorant, have a huge mean streak, do not like to be challenged, and are bigoted in many of your thoughts.

Quote: Evenbob

Who said it wasn't. But the whole
point of 'few are chosen' is that
'few' will live up to what your awful
god demands of them and they
will be SOL.

What demands? To love God and others. God is not asking for us to be perfect, only that we strive to love. Is that so awful?

Quote: Evenbob

That's a fact.

Only in your mind Bob, only in your mind.

Quote: Wizard

Even the bible says that god does the choosing.



Granted, there are other verses you could stack on the other side of the free will/predetermination debate, but it just goes to show another question you can cherry pick verses to support either side.

Your response has nothing to do with my question. Free will or not has nothing to do with whether you can change what a sovereign God ordains and I think the answer is clear. It is a rhetorical question after all.

Quote: FrGamble

Dear Bob, it was not always so. Dare I say we were friends until recently..

This is as far as I read. We were
never really friends, you were
always way too superior acting
and belittling of almost everything
I wrote for that to be true. But
that's fine, you are a very small part
of my life, I did gain something
from our conversations. I cemented
in stone for myself why I'm an
atheist and why I dislike the
Xtion religion so much. It's all
hubris and lies and hypocrisy.
And silly myth.

Quote: FrGamble

God is not asking for us to be perfect, only that we strive to love. Is that so awful?

The way your Church loved the Jews
they forcibly converted and tortured?
All the poor women your Church
lovingly burned at the stake as
witches? If you think that's love,
you have a very twisted view of
the word.

Quote: FrGamble

Only in your mind Bob, only in your mind.

I've presented you with scholarly
written articles on the history of
your church and how it got to
where it is today. You dismiss
them with a wave of your hand
because your denial of the truth
is so deeply ingrained.

Quote: FrGamble

The problem in particular with cherry picking the verse you and Evenbob have mentioned over and over is that you are not taking into account the context. That verse comes at the end of one of Jesus' parables about a wedding feast that those who were invited refused to come. So the king goes out and literally invites EVERYONE from the highways and byways. Then when the king who fills the hall with everyone who was invited sees someone not wearing a wedding garment he throws him out and says, "For many are called, but few are chosen." This wedding garment in the parable symbolizes repentance and conversion of heart, if you don't have that then the party is not for you. However, the point is that everyone is invited. Christianity is the opposite of an exclusive club, it is an invitation for everyone to receive. However, we do have to accept it and try to live it out.

That's a good explanation. Thank you. That is pretty much my take on it too. Everyone got invited to the wedding but some got refused, albeit with good reason. I wouldn't want a bunch of self-righteous and judgmental people at my wedding banquet either. In the end, god did the choosing.

Quote: pew

Your response has nothing to do with my question.

I forgot what the question was.

Quote: Wizard

I forgot what the question was.

You get a mulligan.