christians do you really believe

[_KevinSim]

I have played with that concept, but I don't consider it to be relevant to how I live my life, so I just let it be.

Is it relevant to how you live your life to know whether the deity you worship is good or evil? Whether that deity is always telling you the truth or whether s/he might at some times be deceiving you?

If one can't know that a good deity would cause the souls in Hell to cease to exist, if said deity had the power to do that, then what can one know for sure about a good deity?

And if the answer to that question is that one can't know anything for sure about a good deity, then isn't each believer kind of just flipping a coin? That believer chooses to worship someone without having any idea whether that someone is good or evil?

[_KevinSim]

I'm glad you acknowledge that the Mormon God and Christian God are different.

I'm more than happy to acknowledge that there are vast differences between God as Biblical Christians understand Him and God as Latter-day Saints understand Him.

You can be a openly gay Christian. You cannot be an openly gay Mormon.

You can be an openly gay Mormon. You just cannot be sexually active without risking your membership in the Mormon Church.

What God wants, God gets. God doesn't make mistakes, but Mormonism teaches its members that God screws up all the time, which is why their doctrine has to change. To say God didn't consciously make gay people is a ridiculous position.

What's so ridiculous about it? Why should I believe that what God wants God gets? What God wants is people who will use their free will to choose to follow Him, but the LDS Church teaches it's impossible, even for God, to create intelligent people out of nothing, so God has to content Himself with the intelligent people that actually exist in spirit form. God cannot create out of nothing people who will use their free will to follow Him, so God doesn't always get what He wants.

[_MCB]

If one can't know that a good deity would cause the souls in Hell to cease to exist, if said deity had the power to do that, then what can one know for sure about a good deity?

If a person, believing in the fires of hell, chooses to repair their life, and later makes it to the point that their motivation is to be with God and please and honor God, how can you say that belief in the fires of hell is the same thing as believing in an evil God? My God is a just God, and judges all according to factors which we only understand dimly.

My personal theology is consistent with pragmatics. Like I said, it doesn't make a difference in how I live my life.

[_KevinSim]

If a person, believing in the fires of hell, chooses to repair their life, and later makes it to the point that their motivation is to be with God and please and honor God, how can you say that belief in the fires of hell is the same thing as believing in an evil God?

I didn't say that "belief in the fires of hell is the same thing as believing in an evil God." What I did was ask you, if "one can't know that a good deity would cause the souls in Hell to cease to exist, if said deity had the power to do that, then what can one know for sure about a good deity?" MCB, do you have an answer to that question?

My God is a just God, and judges all according to factors which we only understand dimly.

What do you mean by "understand dimly"? Are you saying that you don't understand entirely why justice requires God to let some people suffer unbearable agony for the rest of eternity? If that's true, then how do you know that justice does require God to let those people suffer? How do you know that he that inspires Biblical Christianity really is the good God that controls the universe, and isn't instead a possibly supernaturally powerful, evil impostor?

[_MCB]

Of myself, I know very little at all. Many things I simply have to accept on faith.

[_KevinSim]

Of myself, I know very little at all. Many things I simply have to accept on faith.

If you don't know that the (potentially supernaturally powerful) being who inspired your faith is in fact the good God that controls the universe, then the possibility exists that that being isn't that good God. And you're comfortable with that?

Why in the world would the good God who controls the universe want you to have faith in someone who might be that good God but who might also be an evil impostor?

[_MCB]

Well, if you want to get nasty about it, I don't believe in the Mormon god. He is an evil imposter.

[_KevinSim]

Well, if you want to get nasty about it, I don't believe in the Mormon god. He is an evil imposter.

I had no intent to "get nasty"; I just wanted to get at the truth.

If you believe "the Mormon god" is an evil impostor, then I've got to ask you, what has "the Mormon god" ever done that convinced you he's evil? Has he ever done something that caused more damage to the souls of men and women than letting them spend the rest of eternity in unbearable agony, when he had the power to cause them to cease to exist at any time?

[_Drifting]

Well, if you want to get nasty about it, I don't believe in the Mormon god. He is an evil imposter.

I had no intent to "get nasty"; I just wanted to get at the truth.

If you believe "the Mormon god" is an evil impostor, then I've got to ask you, what has "the Mormon god" ever done that convinced you he's evil? Has he ever done something that caused more damage to the souls of men and women than letting them spend the rest of eternity in unbearable agony, when he had the power to cause them to cease to exist at any time?

I'd have to answer no to this question.
On the basis that it really isn't clear that the God of Mormonism has done much of anything at all.

[_KevinSim]

I'd have to answer no to this question.
On the basis that it really isn't clear that the God of Mormonism has done much of anything at all.

Nonetheless, it's better for one to do nothing than it is for one to let a single soul suffer unbearable agony forever, when one has the power to cause that soul to cease to exist.

I don't personally believe the God of Mormonism has done nothing; I believe He's done a lot. But one thing you can't accuse Him of is unnecessarily prolonging the suffering of the unsaved.