Sunday, 30 January 2011

Christianity Question #'s 15-17

What about people who have never heard even the name of Jesus?
But we do know that the Bible says God will judge the world with justice. It also says God has made His presence known to all people through nature and through our conscience, so we all find ourselves without excuse (Romans 1:19,20).
The world can be divided into two groups: those who have heard already, and those who have not heard yet. I have confidence that God will take care of that latter group. But because everyone here has heard, you will need to make a decision about what you will do with Jesus Christ.
This is the bit I was talking about before .... Schaeffer has decided that people who have not heard of Jesus will be taken care off if they are deserving, but concedes that he does not know how. Which is odd since his quote (Romans et al) tells you plainly that those who have not heard of Jesus can get into Heaven by living a Moral Life ... it's people who have heard of Jesus who have to watch out! This also means that evangelism should be discouraged since it reduces peoples a priori chances of getting into Heaven.

Why are there so many hypocrites in the church?

Why oh why would an intellegent person find this difficult: there are hypporites everywhere, why not in the Church? Schaeffer takes the opportunity to harangue the reader to look only to Jesus ... so we need to see if Jesus was a hypocrite too.

Its actually quite tricky to pin him down on this point - for example, if Jesus had ever claimed to be the literal Son of God then that would clinch it - but if He ever did, then it is not recorded in so many words. Off the top of my head I'd offer the stuff about casting stones and turning the other cheek to the bit where he takes a whip to the Temple money changers - you can probably find your own.

Does this really matter? So He said a few conflicting things, that does not mean the basic premise was flawed. So once again, this is basically a meaningless question. At best it is a reason to avoid joining a Church ... suggesting Schaeffer is advocating some personal form of Protestantism ... and we see at the bottom of the paper that he does, indeed, encourage people to find a personal relationship with God.

Won’t a good moral life get a person to heaven?
Living a good life cannot get a man or woman into heaven, because God’s standard for "good enough" is perfection. If He allowed anything imperfect into heaven, heaven would be marred. So who can get to heaven on his own merit? No one, because no one is perfect.
So how can any one get there? We can’t live a sinless life, nor can we make up for our wrongs. But Jesus did both. God offers a relationship with Him on this earth and eternity with Him in heaven. All one needs to do is trust in Jesus’ death on the cross as the penalty for our sins, paid in full.
This is almost a non answer so it has to be read carefully. He is saying that a moral life is required, but you do not have to be perfectly moral if you are also a Christian - presumably if you have not heard of Christ, then you have to be perfectly moral ... see previous questions on this. Curous that Schaeffer splits these related questions... but it is quite common for evangelists to split up questions which give them the most problems so you won't notice the inconsistencies. vis: if it is impossible to be perfectly moral, then what of those who have never heard of Jesus? Oh yeah  Schaeffer says he doesn't know.

That's OK isn't it? He cannot know everything right? Scientists also have to settle for "I don't know" sometimes?

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