crispybits wrote:The point player is that when I performed the action I wasn't christian and so those nasty things may have been consistent with my personal belief system. I did many of these nasty things before I became a christian like disrespecting God and burning down churches. Now I've been saved (praise the Lord!) and forgiven for all my sins by God. He has showed me his grace and love. Then I die the next day in a horrible accident involving a helicopter, a crying child and some strange purple gunk. I go to heaven right? I mean that's what the book says. How have I been held accountable for the 100s of churches I burned down and the thousands of times I called God arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully?
Yeah.. this gets into of the long-standing debates within Christianity, one without true resolution. All Christians accept that we are saved by faith, but you have Roman Catholics who are instructed to do various types of penance, some more modern Christians who almost see a kind of magic in repeatedly proclaiming and being Baptized. (that is, they sin... and then get saved), as well as folks like the Amish who hold themselves to very strict physical and belief standards indeed. Then you have the newer "Evangelical/Charismatic" groups that can seem to almost do away with any real standards of behavior. (note, I am speaking distortions... I know all of the faiths have nuances and variations).
Anyway, the thing is that being saved is one thing, hopefully it pushes us to be better people, but it in no way ensures that we truly will be better. Also, there are certainly those who proclaim, but don't actually believe in their heart. A true heart seeks God and experiences what God offers, both the condemnation and the purification. Much of that is experienced internally, not externally.
Or, to put it another way.... if you take a heinous drug-dealing pedophile, who gets reformed enough that he, I don't know-- turns himself into jail, but still has the tendencies and compare that person to an upright, church-going man who donates millions to his church an volunteers "everywhere", most people would say that the church goer is a "better Christian", but it could be that the drug guy had such a horrible upbringing that for him to even improve slightly is a HUGE effort, a huge step in faith.... and the guy who goes to church, etc had everything given to him, had no roadblocks and really should have done better. It could be that, in Christ's eyes, the drug guy is actually "more Christian". That is why God is the judge, not us.
Still... as I noted above, I would put a pedophile in jail simply to save the kids around, regardless of his state of salvation. A "saved" pedophile might, in some way, welcome the prohibitions of jail as a means of keeping himself from doing harm.
anyway, not sure that makes sense, but the bottom line is that you hit upon one of the great Christian debates. There is no absolute set answer within humanity.
PS.. not to complicate this further, but remember that Christ/God turns even bad works to his purpose. Pick any world bad event and there is always some kind of good that comes of it. Sometimes it might be a matter of humans needing to learn, sometimes something bad has to happen in order for something good to happen. Science fiction is full of such questions. Just as an example, slavery in the US was certainly bad, but without it, would we have Marin Luther King?
