That is dangerously close to flame bait.
He doesn't do it for Moses. Basically God says that being fully in his presence would make Moses's head explode. What he does do is show Moses of fraction of his being, which messes Moses up pretty badly for a few days and causes his face to glow.
Heaven is the state of fully being in God's presence. It is all God all the time. There is no censoring it.
It is not that God does not want them in heaven. By choosing to engage in evil acts on earth, their spirits have rejected him and his presence. Being forced into heaven while your spirit is in active rebellion against God would be worse than hell itself.
Unfortunately the alternative, being outside God's presence, really isn't much better.
If you don't like that solution, Christian Universalism teaches that all people eventually go to heaven.
I apologize. I was unaware that it annoyed you. I'll try to avoid using the word man like that from now on.
Also, sorry for asking you to calm down. I have difficulty reading tone over the internet and took some of your posts the wrong way. It is really not my intent to annoy you.
edited 15th Sep '11 11:34:29 AM by Pentadragon
^ Your example is a sticky situation that I honestly am not sure how to answer. In Catholic theology, a sin is only a sin if an individual commits the act, knows that it is wrong and feels no guilt. This would lead one to believe that an individual who commits heinous acts can get away with it if he is deranged enough to think he is doing good, but I don't really know.
God's full presence kills any human. However, it is only agonizing for someone who rejects God. So Moses would have been perfectly fine dead, but God had plans for Moses.
edited 15th Sep '11 11:50:50 AM by Pentadragon
On earth, yes, but in heaven there would really be no way to avoid it. Heaven is being at one with God.
But if they are committing acts that are considered wrong in their culture, then they would be sinning. The hope is that a missionary is going to give you a simple moral code that you can follow that will help the world community as well as yourself.
EDIT: Or something like that. I'm not sure that I presented that last part well.
edited 15th Sep '11 12:11:46 PM by Pentadragon
This topic makes my head hurt. I don't even know why I'm posting it.
"But if they are committing acts that are considered wrong in their culture" It doesn't matter what a culture says. If it doesn't cause harm in some way, it isn't bad. Likewise a culture can say it's okay to stone someone to death because they break some rule, but it's still murder. illing a non-believer would be wrong no matter what a person's culture says. And women working or choosing not to have children will always be okay even if a person's culture says otherwise. (those are just examples)
@Rottweiler: That doesn't make sense. Agnosticism only applies to religion, and it's much easier to convince someone that Stalin existed.
@Karalora: "It annoys me when people use 'man' as a catch-all for human.'" I'm a guy and I agree.
Could people also please not slam religion and say it's not possible as if it were absolute fact?
edited 15th Sep '11 12:32:20 PM by Mooglewoogle
^ Not all sins are equal (in Catholicism) nor do all sins result in immediate disconnection from God. Presumably, the more severe the sin or the more frequent, one is less in-tune with God resulting in lesser happiness. Presumably, Gandhi is in a greater state of existence than the well-meaning but morally average Catholic. The more one sins, the more one's spirit is in opposition to God.
Then there is purgatory, but that is a complicated and confusing place of theology so we won't delve too deeply. To be brief, it is a place where people who have neither accepted nor rejected God go until they undergo a reconciliation.
Hell is where souls who reject God fully go. They are so opposed to God's nature and the Supreme Law that it is utter misery for them to be in God's presence. Instead, they separate themselves from God by going as far as possible from his presence. It isn't a good place to be, put is better than the alternative.
There is probably a better way to say that and I may have misrepresented some concepts.
edited 15th Sep '11 1:15:20 PM by Pentadragon
Depends on the sect. Care to not talk in broad strokes?
Not quite, the more general principle is to set a good example so people are drawn to you not by what you say but by your actions.
The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.First off, did he set a good example? Going by the Christian definition of Saint, I'd say he did. After that, it's not necessarily about convincing the person to convert so much as just teaching that person a few values that Christians Catholics find to be inherently good. After all, a person still can make it to Heaven by virtue of, gasp, being a good person.
The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.Genreally this:
- God, an infinitely good and perfect being, cannot tolerate unrighteous creatures in heaven. No unrighteous in God's presence.
- Any sin is enough to make someone unrighteous in God's eyes, so we have all disqualified ourselves. One sin enough - all are unrighteous.
- Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice so God could forgive/transfer/remove sin. Christ's sacrifice and God's justice.
- Those who believe are no longer in danger of condemnation because their sins have been forgiven/transfered/removed. Persistent forgiveness for believers.
- Those who do not believe do not receive forgiveness. Sins cannot be forgiven "for free" without compromising God's justice. No forgiveness outside the Cross.
- Those lacking faith cannot repay God for their unforgiven sin. So, they are cast into eternal suffering as objects of God's wrath. No way to repay.
Retyped from a pdf examplaining Christianity. Ironically from a site criticizing the orthodox position as unbiblical. here
edited 15th Sep '11 2:08:31 PM by secretist
TU NE CEDE MALIS CLASS OF 1971@Josef: Hold on, let me look this stuff up, I'm not personally familiar with Saint Bernard or the concept of cherry picking someone given a title by humans.
@secretist: I recommend heading to the local library and seeing if they have a copy of the Catechism in and took a good look through because there's so many problems in those list of bullets that you wouldn't believe.
The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.

That... has to be the worst argument I've ever heard. It'd take the bronze medal even without the typos.
“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard