Offshoot discussion of "what religion are you" thread

[Rían]

Originally posted by Eärniel
I'm sorry RÃ*an, I did see your previous post but I interpretted it differently. You can keep your LoTR though. I'm not that evil.

Your new post gave me an answer but it also raises other questions. Now if I understand correctly this time people (any time any place but I'll leave that out for now) who do not know God or the bible can be saved since in a way they will know him through nature, moral codes, ect... That implies that they might know God in another context than the bible since they don't know the bible. Then how can you be sure that for instance the god of the jews or islamites isn't the christian god in another context? How can you be sure that they are disbelievers and will go to hell?

This is a very difficult subject, and I hesitated to get into such detail, because I knew it would involve some really gray areas. However, since it is such an important question, I decided to dive on in and try to explain what I think about it. What you are asking now is certainly a very logical follow-up question, and I'll address it soon (my poor brain needs a little break first!), but I can tell you in advance that there is not a lot written about it in the Bible. This does not impugn (I love that word!) the Bible in any way, it just means that for reasons of His own, God did not choose to let us in on a lot of details in this area. In the military, we refer to it as "need to know".

I think it has something to do (but this is just thinking out loud here... ) with the type of person that can get tied up in details about lots of other things, when it really boils down to "ok, here is what YOU PERSONALLY know, now what are YOU PERSONALLY going to do with it?" IOW, some people say "until I completely understand everything about Christianity I refuse to do anything about it!" instead of saying "the vast majority of this makes tremendous sense, especially as compared to other belief systems in terms of document authenticity and many other areas - I think it is safe to say that I as a finite being can't understand everything, but because of what I do understand, I choose to take that final step of faith (note - it is NOT brainless faith - it comes after a thoughtful evaluation) and put my faith in God and what Jesus did for me". This is VERY rough thoughts - like I said, I'm just thinking "out loud" here. What do you think about any of it?

I will enjoy talking this over with you (and anyone else that wants to participate - do you want to try asking your pastor, Khamul?), and I hope to learn more myself. I feel that I learned a lot over in the "melkor evil" thread because I was forced to really think through some things at a new depth in order to be able to post about it clearly. It's hard enough to communicate in words sometimes; writing is even more difficult (at least for me!)

I just paged back down to your post and re-looked at your question, and actually, I would say the quick answer is since I believe that the Bible states the truth (for various reasons which I can get into if you want to), the other religions say conflicting things about their god so he cannot be the same as the God of the Bible. But more later....